‘I want to find ways to sell more of my products/services, but I don’t want to sound salesy.’
I’ve heard this from quite a few clients, but particularly from local customers in Cornwall. There’s definitely something in the water down here that makes people turn away from that brassy breed of marketing.
Don’t get me wrong. People want their business to succeed in Cornwall just as much as they do anywhere else. They just want to do it without looking shouty, irritating or downright ridiculous.
In this post, I’m going to show you what it’s like working with our Cornwall digital marketing agency. It should help dispel a few myths and reveal what marketing in Cornwall can be like and the results you should expect.
Just imagine those godawful marketing messages you get in your mailbox about ‘jumping on a call’ or ‘touching base’ about this AI miracle or other.
Then imagine the opposite of that. Because, if you work with us, we’ll be talking in a way that won’t sound like hard sell marketing at all.
Many businesses don’t see how they can reconcile the ‘I want to sell something but don’t want to sound salesy’ conundrum.
But they can.
At the heart of salesy messaging is stale language. Martin Amis wrote a superb collection of essays called The War Against Cliché. It’s a phrase that sums up my feelings towards hackneyed copywriting. Cliches are insincere because they are second-hand. These once-original phrases came from someone else’s heart – not your own. And when you are not speaking from your heart, you sound insincere.
Or, to put it another way, salesy.
Original ideas, however, sparkle with personality and sincerity because they come directly from the source: an individual’s heart and mind.
But how the hell do you find this level of originality? Presumably, people use cliches because finding new ways of saying things is exhausting?
The answer, actually, is quite simple from a marketing point of view. You find original messages by listening to business owners. Through my Cornwall digital marketing agency, I’ve interviewed hundreds of them and have discovered that people not only know their business better than anyone else, they have their own idiosyncratic and sincere way of talking about what they sell.
There’s gold in them hills, from a marketing and copywriting point of view. Talking to business owners – and putting their words, turns of phrase and sentiments at the heart of copy – solves the paradox of ‘wanting to sell stuff but not sound salesy’. When you find your own sincere voice, you sound different (in a good way), and you get noted and respected.
It's why we put interviews (or chatting, basically) at the heart of our process. And it really works for our Cornish clients, including ebike hire business RideOn, Penzance BID, IT experts Microcomms, web design company T2 Design, St Michael's Mount and others.
Here’s a bit more about what we do.
If you call our Cornwall digital marketing agency, we'll start by asking you quite a few questions. This is because many people – unless they are in the business of marketing themselves – know they have a problem but don’t quite know which marketing tools will best solve it. So, we'll be getting an idea of what your business does, who your audience and competitors are, what it is you're trying to achieve and the scope of the job.
Sometimes people can't figure out what they want or need. That isn't a problem. We can ask questions during our initial chat to work out what approaches will prove most effective and help your business get the best return on your content marketing investment.
At this point, we’ll provide you with a quote along with our terms and conditions.
There will be no mission creep and nasty surprises later. No mysterious phrases or hidden caveats. Just a reassuringly boring description of services and a price.
You’re under no obligation to work with us, but if you want to you can see right there in a boring old font what’s included and the cost.
If you give the nod, then the interesting stuff begins: talking about you.
We don’t start writing copy or planning strategies yet. First, we chat to you – possibly over one, two or even three sessions.
(Some people will call this ‘consultation’ and that’s because they want to charge you an extraordinary sum of money.)
(Charging an extraordinary sum of money doesn’t necessarily make a marketer good. Some marketing agencies cynically know that people see implicit value in high prices and exploit that perception to ramp up fees.)
Our chat can happen on a Teams call. I actually like to meet clients in person, preferably in a cake-related environment such as a coffee shop or cafe. (The cakes are on me, by the way.)
It's not about the cake, of course. It’s just a way to show that a relaxed and pleasant atmosphere makes a great environment to chat to clients and get to know their business. I’ve done this probably dozens of times and it’s the difference between:
A) Doing some desktop research about what a company does and writing the usual dross.
B) Uncovering actual gems about a business, in an owner’s or marketing lead’s voice.
I’ve found that using the actual words that come out of the mouths of clients is the differentiating factor between ACME copy and exceptional messages.
A case in point. I recently undertook work for IT provider Microcomms that included a session in a local pub with the marketing team, followed by an hour long chat with the MD about the history of the business. So much of the best work is undertaken at this stage, uncovering orginal facts and perspectives.
Next we'll go away, probably for a week or two, and get to work on your project. This is engine room stuff and what you're really interested in, I'd imagine, is the finished result. So let's look at what happens when you get your hands on your first draft.
One of the biggest issues for clients is: what if I don’t like the copy?
We have a high hit rate with our work, because of the groundwork undertaken at the interview stage.
But here’s the point: we am sending you not tablets from Mount Sinai, but a working draft. If elements aren’t right, we work through any issues. And, then, work through them again for up to two rounds of amends until things are right.
This usually involves tweaking and fluffing. Occasionally, with new clients, a little more work is involved at this stage, because we are still getting to know each other and how we work together.
But usually it's super-minor stuff, if anything at all.
When you’ve signed off the work, we’ll deliver the finished job to you as a Microsoft Word document. Or, if we’ve agreed to undertake design or you’ve asked us to upload copy to your website, we’ll format it accordingly.
At this point, we input your details into our database and start sending you emails from our Cornwall digital marketing agency that begin ‘Hey’ or ‘Are you sick of your website not generating leads?’ or ‘Have you heard about the latest AI tool that…’
I also stalk you on LinkedIn and ask you to like my psychotic post about What 12 Years of Marriage Has Taught Me About Marketing to B2B Businesses.
Joke. I don’t do any of that.
To be honest, we probably should maintain a client database, a newsletter and all of that. But I’ve prioritised cliff walks, tennis and having a life outside of the 9-5 over hammering my clients incessantly with upsell opportunities. In my experience, this is a positive thing for Cornwall business leads who like a hard sell about as much as they like buying a three-day-old Ginsters pasty from a portacabin café on an A30 layby run by a sweaty proprietor with anger issues.
My co-business owner and I are journalists, copywriters and marketers with, between us, over 40 years of experience working for brands, agencies and SMEs. Check out the Case Studies tab at the top of the page for me bragging about all the leads and sales we’ve made for clients.
Or find out more about my marketing services for Cornish businesses, guide to SEO copywriting in Cornwall and Cornish copywriter services.
Martin Philp is head writer at Coast Content Marketing. His Penzance-based business helps clients manage their marketing workload and increase visibility with authentic, carefully crafted content that stands out in a world of automation. Coast specialises in cyber security marketing, IT marketing and tourism marketing, and helps businesses across all sectors, including highly regulated industries. A well-known content marketing agency in Cornwall, it has many clients in the UK and abroad. Find out more about Coast's content marketing services.