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Bob Bly
Bob Bly is an independent copywriter and consultant with more than 25 years of experience in business-to-business, high-tech, industrial, and direct marketing. There are so many copywriters out there today; it isn't hard to find one. The real challenge is finding one who has the know-how needed to "get it" when it comes to direct response copy — especially for writing landing pages, emails, white papers, direct mail, and other long-copy assignments.
For a free, no-obligation cost estimate, call Bob at (201) 385-1220 or visit him online at Bly.com.
Articles by this Author
One of the biggest misconceptions about writing to CEOs, CFOs, and other senior executives is that they speak some alien language that has only a passing resemblance to the conversational or written English you and I use every day...
Since time immemorial — or at least for the quarter century I’ve been in direct marketing — people have vigorously debated the merits of long vs. short copy.
Are there certain industries whose business model is dependent on not helping customers — businesses designed to actually be more profitable when not giving customers the best advice, products, and service? Here are some that have been suggested to me.
Is Blockbuster lying to us? Some people think so. Blockbuster’s new commercials promise, “The end of late fees.” But of
course, that’s impossible: if there is no penalty for returning a movie
late, you could keep it forever.
“Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement,” wrote Samuel Johnson. Today we know he was right: to break through the clutter and generate a profitable response, direct marketing must make a big promise.
I was asked to comment on an article on business writing two authors had submitted
for publication. The article's premise was
that, even in our technological era, writing skills are more important
than ever. Here was the reply I gave:
“What’s the most effective length for a business-to-business sales letter?” a reader asked me the other day. Let me see if I can give some sensible guidelines to answer this common question.
The best way to get ideas for headlines when you are stuck is to keep a swipe file of successful headlines, and consult it for inspiration. Here’s a partial collection of such headlines from my swipe file, organized by category.
After a quarter of a century in business-to-business marketing, I think I’ve finally figured out an accurate, authoritative answer to the question, “What’s the difference between business-to-business marketing and business-to-consumer marketing?”
Tests have shown that varying the outer envelope can increase or depress response rates in an A/B split — even if the mailing inside is identical — by 25% to 100% or more. Here are 9 important outer envelope factors to consider...
In 1961, Rosser Reeves published his classic book Reality in Advertising in which he introduced the notion of the Unique Selling Proposition, or USP. According to Reeves, there are three requirements for a USP:
False logic, a term coined by master copywriter Michael Masterson, is copy that manipulates, through skillful writing, existing facts to help readers come to conclusions that those facts, presented without the twists of the copywriter’s pen, might not otherwise support.
Online marketing expert Debbie Weil recently asked me, “How do you know whether an e-zine is successful?” “An e-zine is successful if it achieves its stated marketing objective,” I replied.
How well do you really know your customers? Knowing that you are writing to farmers, Information Technology (IT) professionals, or plumbers is just the start. You have to dig deeper.
Those of us who make our living with words are naturally disheartened when we hear the various “war cries” of hardcore online users and marketers: “Print is dead” ... The success of James Mustich, Jr. is a refreshing exception to these
claims.
With so many Web sites crowding the Internet, you need to make an extra effort to get noticed. One way is to make your site search-engine-friendly. There are two key steps that can help you do this.
Some time ago, I wrote a column “10 Marketing Books Actually Worth
Reading,” in which I recommended ten classic direct marketing books. Here are 11 of my favorite selections from the new crop of books on business persuasion:
“Amateurs may talk about creativity, but professionals insist on structure,” copywriter Martin Chorich recently said to me. In direct marketing, structure is key: if your copy does not follow the formula for persuasion, it won’t work … no matter how creative...
When I write copy, that audience is the prospect. But with SEO copywriting, you are pandering to another “audience” … the search engines … and not the reader. Here, in my opinion, is a much better approach to writing Web copy:
Consumers today are extremely adept at detecting B.S. Conversely, people can sense when a person or organization is being honest and respond positively to that. This suggests the following guidelines for “truth in advertising” … in particular, honesty in direct marketing:
Here are a few rules of thumb that can help you select the right format — traditional letter package, self-mailer, or postcard — for your next
mailing:
It’s no secret that direct marketing isn’t what it used to be. Costs are rising, response rates are falling, and it’s tougher today than a decade ago to get long-running controls in the mail. So, what’s wrong with direct marketing?
In this column, I want to share with you the three most important things I’ve learned about writing winning e-mail marketing campaigns.
The use of white papers as a marketing tool has skyrocketed in recent years — not only for selling information technology (IT), but also to promote a wide range of products and services beyond hardware and software.
J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, is the richest woman in Britain. Rowling revealed in a recent interview she had written the final chapter to book seven more than 15 years ago, before she had a publisher...
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