April 2nd, 2008

Once you’re running a company newsletter or business blog, you’ll have a face in front of customers you’ve never even met. Just like you dress for the business you’re in, you need to talk with a certain professionalism. The same is true for your written materials. It’s just one more impression you make on your customers.

I interviewed a vice president at Washington Mutual some years back, and I asked him about his fancy gold watch. It was a bevel-faced Concord, a $20,000 timepiece, according to him. I asked him why he would wear such a thing and he told me that 80% of his clients don’t notice a nice watch and couldn’t care less, but the other 20% do notice and do care, and it’s that last 20% he needed to impress.

Your business is not so different, though the watch is not the tool you need. Your business blog or company newsletter is the marketing tool you use to tip the scales the same way his watch was for him. If you publish written materials, your goal is to win more business.

80% of your clients may not care about spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors, but the other 20% does, and they may doubt your professionalism because of it.

A copyeditor can quickly and cheaply read through your work and make all corrections, and that can win over that fickle fifth of the readers who want the I’s dotted and T’s crossed.

The benefit is that the readers upon whom you make a positive impression increases by 25%. It only takes a single extra sale in most cases to more than justify the cost of the copyediting.

A real estate agent at John L. Scott once hired a colleague of mine to proofread and copyedit her marketing materials. They were good but had some small, common mistakes. At a cost of about $100 per month, she found that her work only had to bring in one extra transaction every three years to cover the cost. Needless to say, the impact was much greater.

If you are already working with a content provider, whether they advertise copyediting services or not, ask them for a quote. Don’t hire someone you haven’t already worked with, or who doesn’t come to you with personal recommendations.

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