On Conversion Rate Myth…

After being involved in the copywriting field since 2008, I’m completely convinced that the conversion rate X% is a myth that no copywriter can guarantee.

Sure, there are many out there who claims the largest or best against the industry standard. You can measure the conversion rate after you’ve done the copywriting and other marketing initiatives, never before.

 

Working through Proven Principles and Formulas

Copywriters practically follow a formula when writing. It’s not a random string of words that you can ask any Tom, Dick or Harry to do. When copywriters craft and carve out their work, they have only one goal in mind: to sell your product. Here are things which a professional copywriter takes into consideration when churning out copy:

1. The limitations and advantages of the medium you are using;
2. The position of the copy in relations to the whole marketing initiative. Is it a stand alone marketing collateral? Is it used to supplement the sales executive’s presentation? Is it part of a contest?
3. Who is the target market? Even mass market has a niche. What is the product going to do to the user? What perceptions are we trying to create? What collateral damage can arise of using this angle?
4. Is this angle consistent with the branding and values of the company/product/service?
5. How far does technology plays a role in the promotion of this product? Will it be used online or offline?
6. What language does the target market use? Who is reading this? The gatekeeper? The technician? Or the layperson manager? Are industrial terms and jargons necessary? What vocabulary does the target market use?

These questions and factors are designed to ensure your copy is as persuasive as possible so you can convert as many customers/clients as possible.

 

Factors that Negate or Enhance Effectiveness

Consider this: no matter how good the copy, if it does not work in harmony with the market’s environment, it will never sell. Try selling a Made in Israel product in Malaysia, Iran or Pakistan. Or try selling beef burgers to die-hard or religious vegetarians.

Besides, the copy, there are other factors that come into play. In no particular order, here are some of the factors:

• Boycotts by consumer groups
• Design of the marketing collateral
• Infringement of the sensitivities of local communities
• Public perception towards the product
• Public perception towards the company
• Perception towards the sales team
• Ability of the sales team to sell
• Pricing of the product or service
• Demand for the product or service
• Suitability of the medium
• Goals of the management or decision maker – does he or she knows what she wants?
• Natural disasters or acts of God
• Suitability of the product or service in the target market
• Prior marketing initiatives by the same company
• Prior or current marketing initiatives by the same company
• Prior or current marketing initiatives by the competition
• Availability of alternatives for the market
• Endorsement by celebrities or perceived experts

These are part of the ever-growing list of factors that can and will influence the conversion rate of a copy.

 

Copywriter’s Job is to Write the Copy, But the Job of the Client…

 

To quote a UK-based copywriter:

It’s the job of a copywriter to write the copy, BUT it’s the job of the client to market their site and get the QUALITY traffic and the warm to hot leads which can actually convert to buyers.

As a copywriter, I recommend and advice my clients on how to better enhance the copy I supplied to them. Ultimately, the decision is theirs – to follow or ignore the advice given.

Dynamic Occupational Safety & Health Portfolio

Over the last three articles, you glimpsed into the benefits of having a Occupational Safety and Health Portfolio in helping you secure the job of your dreams. You have also been given some tips on how to react towards feedback about your portfolio.

By now you should realise that your OSH portfolio is a dynamic tool.

In some world-class medical universities, medical students are asked to sit for a progressive test each semester. The test contains the same question for that set of students and all students fail in the first half of the semester. Why? The questions asked on subjects, principles and procedures that these students have not study yet. In fact, they’ll only be taught about the answers to the questions in the coming semesters.

So what’s the purpose of the progressive test?

It’s to gauge the understanding and progress of the students.

Portfolio Reflects Understanding

If your understanding of a subject matter has not changed over the course of you preparing your portfolio, there must be something wrong in the process you’re using. If you’re to reflect on the knowledge, principles and theories, your mastery is shown through the many ways you can manipulate and apply that knowledge to find solutions in life.

Your portfolio is meant to reflect your growth and maturity in the field. If you’re a final semester student and yet still thinks like a 1st semester student, what difference do you have compared to your juniors? Why should your prospective employers employ you when your knowledge is no different than someone who has never studied Occupational Safety and Health?

Because your portfolio is dynamic, your portfolio can incorporate change. You can revisit your thoughts and understanding in the past and ratify it through writing a newer article – an update. There are many authors I know – whether OSH related or not – who update their books every now and then.

Knowledge is Dynamic

Your portfolio is meant to demonstrate your mastery of occupational safety and health workplace knowledge. In the Information Age, knowledge and information doubles every two years besides being obsolete in the same time.

Think of the many “miracle substance” which – after a few decades – is revealed to be extremely hazardous to humans.

Knowledge is never perfect, knowledge undergoes the scientific and philosophical debates and with new understanding, the perceptions towards the knowledge changes. Let’s take cheap child labour and slavery. Once upon a time, it’s accepted as true and valid in many countries. Today, it’s condemned by human rights activists and many businesses and democracies.

Realise this: knowledge is dynamic, so your understanding and reflection of that understanding must also be dynamic.

Transition from Generalist to Specialist

Your OSH portfolio is also a marker of your transition from a generalist to a specialist.

For instance at the Diploma or Certificate level, your are taught or exposed to the general principles and practices of workplace safety and health. So few diplomas and certificate specialise immediately in fields like toxicology, occupational hygiene etc.

Thus, your portfolio should represent the transition. Show that you mastered the basic concepts in OHS in the general sense. Based on your focus, company or industry, demonstrate how you can use your understanding and mastery of the knowledge in the circumstances or scenarios that exist in your chosen industry.

Take Action, Draft it Now

You have every reason to promote yourself through an OSH portfolio – online or offline. There is a never perfect timing for action – you need to begin with an action, react to the reactions and take charge by foreseeing the obstacles and challenges  of the future.

No amount of literature, video or audio can help you without action on your part.

Take action, draft your OSH portfolio today. Make it a priority.

Handling Reactions towards Your Safety & Health Portfolio

Everyone has their own critic. Open up YouTube and you can read all the hateful comments towards a lot of videos. If you believe in God, even this All-Powerful Being has critics. If you believe in Science, even science has its critics. So, as you put your portfolio out there, be ready for criticisms. The key is to ignore these noise. Here are some ways to handle the reactions towards your online safety and health portfolio:

Have an Open Mind

Give the other person the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the other person is challenged by the idea you put forth. Perhaps the commenter has done something similar in the past but saw his efforts burn in flames.

If the criticism is constructive in nature, i.e. sheds a light on an unexplored path, use it to your advantage. For the criticisms that purely criticise and call you names, just delete it off.

Having an open mind also means that you must be aware of your own limitations. There could be an error in reasoning due to insufficient or lack of information. If you made a mistake, then admit it and repair the mistake.

Convert Failure into Feedback

Your ability to turn your failures and mistakes into feedback is vital to your long term success. The road to success, as someone once said, is filled with failures.

Many recite the mantra: you either win or lose. I denounce that mantra and replace it with this: you either learn or lose.

Keeping your open mind, find out where it went wrong. Never do it to blame, but do it to repair. Blaming, complaining, cursing, fuming etc. merely drains you emotionally and your energy. It’s easy to slip into the victim mode and do nothing.

Reply after Cooling Down

If you intend to reply to a criticism, never do it while your blood is boiling! Yes, you have the right to give her the piece of your mind, but it doesn’t mean you need to. You never know if that other person can benefit you.

And even if the other person doesn’t benefit you, it wont mean anything if you’ve flamed the person on the Internet. It merely reveals your inability to cope with criticism and ability to be (emotionally) manipulated.

Compile an Action Plan

Use the feedback you get from your safety and health portfolio as a blueprint for an action plan.

What action plan?

The action plan that’s going to take your from where you are to where you want to be. That action plan. If someone recommends that you contact another, why not? Just take action.

It’s so easy to turn seconds into minutes, minutes into hours and hours into days. So easy and effortless that you don’t need to do anything! But for someone who took action, you’ll be eating the dust of his trails.

As they say, the road to Hell is filled with good intentions. Intentions alone cannot give rise to results – it’s your action or inaction.

Ensure that whatever your action may be, it gets you closer and closer to your goal. It’s pointless to allow yourself to deviate from that goal – unless it’s a new goal.

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(Posted originally in Ilang in the Sampan 2.0 – http://musings.aldrictinker.com)

Building a Safety & Health Portfolio

Congratulations! You’re studying Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) in an institute of higher learning! Perhaps you just concluded a non-OSH programme and doing your OSH certification or academic qualification.

Responsibility to Create Demand

As a student, one of your primary responsibility towards yourself is to ensure that whatever you learn in college, it will help you secure your OSH job of your dreams at the salary you want. In other words, you are responsible to make sure you’re valuable and demanded by many firms/companies.

Showing You’re Practical

To help you started, maintaining and keeping a safety and health portfolio can mould that critical and creative cognitive skills required when you’re an OSH professional. Through this portfolio, you want to show your prospective employers that you can apply the things you have learned – as well as be updated at all times – in the prospective employer’s workplace.

Yes, knowledge is power. Applied knowledge, however, is in demand and makes money. Brian Tracy urges that whatever you learn, make sure it contributes to your bottom line. As an employee, your bottom line is your salary.

 

We overestimate what we can do in 12 months, but we underestimate what can be accomplished in 5 years.

– Brian Tracy in Ultimate Goals Prorgram

Getting Started

Begin from Day 1. Have a focus: where do you intend to work after graduating? In what industry do you want to start earning the big bucks from? Where do you want to be 5 years from graduation? Are you working in Malaysia or overseas? Use this as the objective(s) and theme of your portfolio.

For example, if you want to work in the shipping industry in 5 years time, mould your portfolio in that direction. Be alert to any and every development in the shipping industry. Start liaising with people in the industry. Find out what the shipping industries expect from the top 5% OSH professionals working for them. And, from Day 1 and as you progress, build up the portfolio or skills that takes you closer to that position.

Case Studies and Reflection

Fill up the pages of your portfolio with case studies. Based on the developments in the news, local and foreign, apply the theories and principles that you’ve learnt in the classroom. Ask:

• How does it apply to the industry?
• How does it not apply to the industry?
• How can it be refined further to be applied in that industry?
• What alternatives are there in applying the principles?
• What are the possible applications of the principles and theories besides the one currently in practice?
• How would new solutions benefit your industry/company?

Do this exercise and you’ll be ahead of many in your class – if not your college.

The perception is students study the syllabus just to sit for the exams. With this portfolio, you think 5 years into the future. You’re forced to see how relevant or irrelevant the principle or theory is. You are beginning to think for application, not theory.

As you find more innovative solutions, you can join the Top 5% of the industry. Why? Only the top 5% do more and beyond what the remaining 95% does.

Offer Review

Use your portfolio to compile your finings in your industry of choice. Critique the current practices in the field and offer alternatives. Rest assured, firms are more than happy to employ people with better and cost effective solutions. It saves money and boosts productivity.

Be Specific, Be Focused

I cannot emphasise this enough. Begin to be specific: which industry do you want to work in? Which company or top 5 companies you want to work with? Based on that, tailor your portfolio to meet the needs of that company/those companies.

Also, as focused as you may be, be consistent.

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(Posted originally in Ilang in the Sampan 2.0 – http://musings.aldrictinker.com)

OSH Students: What is a Safety & Health Portfolio?

For the purpose of this entry – and the next three after this – Safety and Health Portfolio means your collection of past work, observations, application of knowledge and case studies that can be used to increase your value in the perception of your potential employers.

Your résumé or curriculum vitae/cv is the summary of your experience. It should be short, simple and concise. If you read Malay, here is one eReport I did on the 33 ways to ensure your résumé is thrown before it is ever read: <Read on Scribd> or <Download from 4Shared>.

For occupational safety and health (OSH) students, you do not have to be at a disadvantage. One way to show that you’re valuable is by building your own early-days portfolio. Show that you can apply what you’ve learned in the classroom or lecture hall into the real world. After all, employers hire you to solve a problem, not talk about theories and principles.

In this four part series, you can form a picture or have an idea of what you want to accomplish and how to go about it.

So, here’s to your employment and professional success!