If your car needed repair work, would you go to a garage that offers free esti­mates? You likely would. Today, most garages offer them.

Not only has it become a cus­tom­ary prac­tice, but also every­one expects a free esti­mate from mechanics.

How­ever, here’s an inter­est­ing sce­nario. Let’s say your car broke down at the worst pos­si­ble time, and you are in a ter­ri­ble hurry. (If you’re like most peo­ple these days, you are.) Plus, you specif­i­cally wanted a free estimate.

If you had to choose a garage quickly, which garage would you choose? Would you go to the one you only think that offers free esti­mates? Or would you go to the one you know for sure that does? Espe­cially if you don’t have much time?

As sim­ple as it may sound, by com­mu­ni­cat­ing some­thing that’s usu­ally taken for granted by your tar­get mar­ket, you will be cho­sen more often. Rather than claim­ing supe­ri­or­ity, like “we’re #1,” you’re imply­ing it by demon­strat­ing what makes you superior.

A men­tor once told me, “Impli­ca­tion is more pow­er­ful than spec­i­fi­ca­tion.” In mar­ket­ing, it means that you should imply your supe­ri­or­ity rather than claim it outright.

If you claim supe­ri­or­ity, your claim appears self-​​serving and what­ever you do say is sus­pect at best. But if you imply supe­ri­or­ity, your claim, although not directly stated, is accepted as more cred­i­ble, gen­uine, and, para­dox­i­cally, concrete.

Peo­ple will uncon­sciously assume that you are supe­rior. You are com­mu­ni­cat­ing your supe­ri­or­ity, not in some mar­ket­ing piece you wrote or paid for, but in that most elu­sive yet vital of places in all of marketing…

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Last year, a bunch of copy­writ­ers who also blog — like yours truly — shot the breeze on the Nuts and Blog­bolts talk radio show.

It was an inter­est­ing and at times spir­ited discussion.

After some talk about con­tent and copy (or should I say, writ­ing con­tent ver­sus writ­ing copy), the show’s host, Mike San­sone, asked each pan­elist if we would indi­vid­u­ally respond on our blogs to this question:

“Writ­ing for the vis­i­tor is more impor­tant than writ­ing for the search engines. Can both be met with­out sac­ri­fic­ing quality?”

Ryan Healy posted his answer on the sub­ject. Good answer. I agree with him, because he makes some great points. But I also dis­agree as I think there are ways around it.

So I guess my answer is both “yes” and “no.” Here’s why.

First off, I’m not a search engine opti­miza­tion (SEO) expert by any stretch. How­ever, I do know enough about SEO to know that it’s pri­mar­ily based on three major factors:

Code, links, and content.

Let’s take a look at each one…

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I remem­ber 10 years ago.

In the wake of rumored pro­pos­als to reg­u­late the web, in 1999 the CRTC, com­pa­ra­ble to America’s FCC, offi­cially declared that the Inter­net is not a broad­cast medium.

Now, that rul­ing was sig­nif­i­cant for many reasons.

Tech­ni­cally, the Inter­net is a medium. But the gov­ern­ment based its deci­sion on the fact that the web is inter­ac­tive with its audi­ence — unlike other uni­di­rec­tional, one-​​way broad­cast media such as the TV or radio. As a result, reg­u­la­tors con­cluded the Inter­net could there­fore police itself.

(The “Net Neu­tral­ity” debate of late is a per­fect exam­ple that it is different.)

Nev­er­the­less, my point here is not a polit­i­cal one but a marketing-​​related one.

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After read­ing some of my arti­cles on how to find copy­writ­ing clients, one of my stu­dents, Jeff, asked me an inter­est­ing question.

He’s an aspir­ing copy­writer and wants to build his own free­lance copy­writ­ing busi­ness. When he read that I wrote copy for free when I started my career as a copy­writer, he told me he was think­ing about doing the same.

How­ever, he won­dered if he should ask for some­thing, any­thing, in return. In fact, here was his question…

“Mike, my friends have a very small busi­ness, and they have asked me to do copy for them. They say they can’t really pay me that much. I have told them I will do it for free as long as I get rights to the copy and can use it for a ref­er­ence and in my port­fo­lio. I think this is a won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity to get more expe­ri­ence, but my wife wants to see some money on the table.

“I value your opin­ion. Can you help?”

Here was my answer.

Ask­ing for a con­ces­sion in exchange for offer­ing one is always the way to do it. While I believe your trade-​​off is good in prin­ci­ple, it’s still mea­ger. I would con­sider some money — or some larger con­ces­sion on the part of the client. Here’s why…

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Lately, I’m see­ing a lot of posts in pub­lic forums and blogs these days about peo­ple get­ting sick and tired of see­ing “crappy,” “hypey,” used-​​car, Ginsu-​​like, looooong copy.

Some of them come from guru-​​bashing naysay­ers who hate mar­ket­ing, which I always take with a grain of salt.

But some are intel­li­gent, mature, and com­mon­sen­si­cal. They are inter­est­ing because I believe that, while neg­a­tive feed­back does have its place, it’s often misplaced.

Here’s why. They blame long copy when all too often it’s not the copy’s fault. More impor­tantly, it’s not because of the length. Let’s get some­thing clear off the bat: long, Ginsu-​​like copy does work. It has always worked. It will always work. And it’s here to stay.

But (and it’s a big “but”)…

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In The Death of The Saleslet­ter, I talked about hid­ing con­tent so it could open up based on a user’s actions and thereby per­son­al­iz­ing the saleslet­ter, dynam­i­cally, on the fly.

You can hide con­tent on the same sales page, mak­ing the page look shorter and less intim­i­dat­ing. And only desired con­tent appears depend­ing on a user’s choices.

What does using this tac­tic help to do?

In some cases, peo­ple break saleslet­ters down into var­i­ous pages, and add links to them in the let­ter. I don’t rec­om­mend this with long-​​copy saleslet­ters. Tra­di­tion­ally, I rec­om­mend that the extra con­tent opens up in a pop-​​up win­dow instead, as to not distract.

But with this tac­tic, and other than the poten­tial for per­son­al­iza­tion, which is its biggest ben­e­fit, it means that peo­ple read­ing a saleslet­ter don’t have to be both­ered by…

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As part of my coach­ing pro­gram, stu­dents can ask me unlim­ited ques­tions via email. One com­mon ques­tion I seem to get is, “I’m new to copy­writ­ing, where do I start?”

Since my coach­ing stu­dents also get access to any of my dig­i­tal pro­grams, they also get access to my Copy Doc­tor web­site, where I share over 50 hours of saleslet­ter and copy cri­tiques, recorded on video. It’s a great start.

But one stu­dent said some­thing that struck me:

“I learn bet­ter by doing than by watch­ing. Is there any­thing you can recommend?”

Great ques­tion. Some peo­ple are more visual (they learn bet­ter by watch­ing), some are more aural or audi­tory (by hear­ing), oth­ers are more kines­thetic (by doing or feel­ing). And I also thought it would be a great ques­tion to cover on my blog. So, here goes…

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