Know What You're Aiming At

This entry was written on Aug 31, 2009 by our Copywriting Guru Jeffery Loquist

While in the Marine Corp I spent time as a rifle instructor while at Cherry Point, NC. One of the most enjoyable aspects of this job was night firing. Every so often some of the Marines would get to come out after the sun had sank deep into the West and fire off some tracer rounds just for kicks (they called it practice).

Now, it wasn't the firing so much that was enjoyable as much as it was watching a bunch of grown men and women fire aimlessly at targets they couldn't see and then watch their hopes fall to the wayside when they realized their target was sans holes. On this night, as he did every night after a fire, the Range Gunnery Sergeant shook his head as he walked down Range Road saying, "What's the point of shooting at something if you can't see it."

Come to think of it, he kind of had a point.

What does any of this have to do with Copywriting?

The answer is everything.

Just like firing a gun into the darkness, starting a new Copywriting project without proper keyword research is kind of a waste of money. Think of your words as the bullets and your keyboard as the rifle. Like a skilled marksman, you know that spraying a bunch of ammo is wasteful and could probably do more harm than good.

Talk to your clients and find out who their target audience is and what keywords or phrases are the most relevant to the content you are preparing to write. Even if the client can only provide you with a basic set of terms, there are several good keyword research tools that can help you on your mission, including theGoogle_AdWords_Keyword_Tool,  Keyword_Discovery and the WordTracker_Free_Keyword_Tool. These tools will save you the trouble of searching for individual key terms and will help you develop quality web content that will hit its target every time.