​We were recently tasked with writing some marketing copy for a B2B client of ours, utilizing real-life success stories from their client files. The goal, not surprisingly, was to lure other prospects into becoming clients, too, when they read about these great successes. 
 
This is so straightforward that it’s boring. Right? 
 
Nope. It warrants an entire article. 
 
Who wants what? 
 
Granted, we need to cloak this story in anonymity—just as we’d needed to cloak this assignment in anonymity. We couldn’t tell the world, for example, that our client’s specific client suffered from broken systems, couldn’t serve their customers, and so on. 
 
Similarly, you don’t want to get too deep in the weeds on the technical side. And herein lies the gist of this story, and its lesson. 
 
Let’s get specific. For our client’s client—the one in the success story—they’d used Systems A, B, and C to do their work. They had problems with Systems A, B, and C, which our client helped them solve. 
 
So we could have been very specific, in calling out Systems A, B, and C by name, even when we never mentioned who-the-client-was, by name. 
 
That would have been accurate. It wouldn’t have gotten anyone into trouble. And, on the surface, it seemed to be the thrust of this assignment. 
 
But you’ve got to take a customer-back approach here. (Yes, you can make a drinking game out of how many times we say “customer-back approach” here at Copel Communications.)
 
Here’s the rub: The goal here, if you really look at it, is not to explain how the client in the success story succeeded.
 
It’s not? 
 
Nope. 
 
The goal, rather, is to tell a prospective client how they could succeed.
 
Aha. That’s different. 
 
Which gets back to Systems A, B, and C. In this world in which our client competes, there’s a lot more than Systems A, B, and C for their clients and their prospects. There are systems which compete with Systems A, B, and C. 
 
Put it this way: You don’t want to turn off a prospect just because they’ve opted to use System D. 
 
Get it? 
 
This gets back to the marketing challenge. It’s subtle, yet important. For this assignment, we didn’t want to call out Systems A, B, and C by name… but rather by function. We wanted to create blanket terms for them, for the exact reason of not alienating a prospect who uses System D. 
 
So instead of saying “We helped our client with System A,” we said “We helped our client with their transactional reporting platform” (or whatever). This way, whether you use System A or System D for transactional reporting, you both perceive the value of what the company does. 
 
As we’d said, this is a subtle difference—the matter of just a few words here and there—but it really makes the difference between attracting the prospects you want, or having them self-select elsewhere. 
 
Remember: This distinction was not spelled out to us in our marching orders. It was incumbent on us to read between the lines, to take that customer-back approach, and do the right thing by our client. 
 
Need help with a similar under-the-radar marketing challenge? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help! 

​We recently had a client assignment that went something like this (don’t worry; we’ll tell you how you can profit from this story in just a moment): 
 
We’d helped them write a huge long-form article for their website, touting their experience with a given industry, in a given U.S. state.
 
Thing is, this client of ours—a B2B consultancy—also had similar experience with other industries. And—you guessed it—in other states, too. 
 
On the surface, this is a very simple assignment. You want to broaden your reach, and your SEO rankings, for more than one industry, in more than one state. 
 
Sound familiar? Read on. 
 
Thinking outside the algorithm
 
Granted, the original article was an SEO play. In other words, it went after very specific long-tail keywords that our client knew were attainable, in terms of search domination. They’d called us in to do the writing. 
 
The original article—as you’ll recall, for one industry, in one state—was quite specific and detailed. But now there were two challenges, in terms of making “spin-off” articles: 
 
1. Talking about the other industries. 
2. Talking about the other states. 
 
Oh. And there was a third challenge, which was arguably bigger than the first two: 
 
3. Convincing Google that none of the spin-off articles were, in fact, spin-off articles. 
 
So Challenges 1 and 2 were fairly straightforward. To wit: 

• As far as talking about our client’s expertise serving other, specific industries, we were well-versed on those topics, and had plenty of material to draw from. This is good, because it already makes the first spin-off article substantially different from the original, in Google’s eyes. Of course, that won’t help with the subsequent spin-off articles targeting the same industry. 

 

• For serving the other states, a little research was required. This was admittedly a fun assignment: We found quick high-school-level fact-sheets on each state, and also visited the website of each state’s visitor’s bureau, to learn fun facts, nicknames of different areas, and so on, so we could pen these with a better level of local familiarity. 

 
(Did we do this 49 times? No. We didn’t. Our client had us rank all 50 U.S. states by population, and we went after the biggest 25. Smart, and cost-effective.) 
 
So now, armed with these different buckets of data, it came time to write all of the spin-off articles. 
 
Sure, we could’ve commanded Word to do a search-and-replace, on the original article, to plug in “Industry B” for “Industry A,” and even “State No. 2” for “State No. 1.” And even though the resulting article would be totally fine in the eyes of an Industry B prospect living in State No. 2, Google would not be amused. 
 
So it was time to get more creative. We had to re-order ideas and arguments, move paragraphs, re-title headlines and subheads, and change the phrasing within most sentences… to the point where the spin-off article was materially different from the original, yet still sold, potently, to the proper audience, toiling in the proper industry, while living in the targeted state. 
 
To AI or not to AI
 
We know what you’ve been thinking all this time: Why not hand off a basic assignment like this to ChatGPT? Isn’t that, after all, what it excels at? 
 
Yes and no. As we’ve discovered, ChatGPT can really help non-writers look better. For actual writers, the opposite is true. And that was the case here. We actually let ChatGPT take the first stab at this assignment. And its results worked in letter, but not in spirit. There were just too many flubs, none of which would be acceptable to this demanding client of ours. 
 
Could we fix those flubs ourselves? Absolutely. And we, at first, tried. But we quickly realized that it was actually less work to follow the process we’d described above than to babysit ChatGPT for this. 
 
Fast-forward a few weeks, and all the articles were written and illustrated (with the graphic team taking an analogous approach to ours) and posted online. The client was happy, and most important, the effort paid off in the SEO results. 
 
So it was a lot of effort, but certainly worth it. 
 
Need help with a tricky assignment like this? While we do a lot of big-picture marketing and creative strategy, we’re not afraid to roll up our sleeves and get into the weeds. Contact us and let’s talk. 

​We don’t know a company in the world that enjoys the prospect of exhibiting at a trade show. It’s often the epitome of stress. 
 
But you can alleviate a good chunk of it. Hence this article. 
 
Grab the lowest-hanging fruit
 
Sure, you’ll want to promote your presence at the upcoming show. That means creating ads and memes for social sites such as LinkedIn. 
 
But what if that were already done for you? 
 
Duh. It is, in most cases. The hosting company will typically create artwork that you can use for your own purposes. It’s in the “Exhibitor Kit” you got when you signed up, and/or it’s available for download on their website. 
 
These will be pre-created ads that say “Hey [Industry]! [Our company] will be at [Name of Trade Show] in [Location] on [Dates]! Look for us in Booth [Number]!” 
 
Granted, these won’t be stunning. Often, they’re stunningly generic. But they are there and you’re effectively getting them for free (with your paid entrance fee). So download ‘em, populate ‘em, and post ‘em. 
 
And if you belong to multiple LinkedIn groups—you do belong to multiple LinkedIn groups, don’t you?—be sure to post these things in every group you belong to, at regular intervals. 
 
That’s one little bit of pre-trade-show stress reduced. 
 
By the way, be sure to take advantage of all the stuff that the exhibiting venue gives you in advance. Submit all the information about your company to help populate, say, the mobile app that visitors will use to navigate the venue. You certainly don’t want to be left out of that. 
 
Update what you bring
 
Is your booth or stand-up display skin still showing that outdated version of your company’s logo? Or artwork featuring people wearing Covid-era masks? Now’s the time to re-visit those materials, and update them as needed. 
 
This also applies to things like handouts, leaflets, flyers, brochures, and even business cards (you have them ready for that new sales rep you hired, right?). 
 
Note that all of the above-mentioned materials are fairly production-heavy, as in turnaround time. So prioritize those first. Get the input out the door and into the vendors’ hands, allowing ample time for both revisions and delays. 
 
Also consider the promotional items you’ll bring. We had a client who would prioritize what kinds of goodies to give away at their booth based on whether or not they would fit into a carry-on bag, LOL! It’s true. Whatever works for you. 
 
Speaking of updating your materials: You’ll want to tweak your slide deck, for whether you’ll be showing it at your booth, presenting in a conference room, or entertaining prospects in a hospitality suite. Fortunately, unlike those printed materials such as booth skins and brochures, you can update your slide deck with just a few clicks, no vendors or turnaround time required. 
 
This is similar to your website. You do have a big tile on your home page advertising your upcoming presence at the show, don’t you? 
 
Don’t reinvent the wheel
 
Here’s a classic question: “How do we get more prospects to visit our booth and give us their contact info?”
 
It’s a valid question. It’s also one that’s been brainstormed, and answered, a zillion times. So don’t reinvent that wheel. Use the latest iteration of Google, a.k.a. ChatGPT. Simply ask it that exact question. It will effectively search the entire internet, and give you a list of suggestions, from giveaways and contests to customized swag bags. 
 
Speaking of not reinventing the wheel: We had a client employ a little desktop carnival-wheel game, wherein visitors could spin for prizes. Again: Ask ChatGPT: What are some good prizes? Obvious answers are discounts on your services, loss-leader free services, Amazon gift cards, “Spin Again” slots, and so on. 
 
Speaking of Amazon: these little wheels are easily found there. They’re inexpensive. And they’re made of dry-erase/white-board material, so they’re easy to customize—and re-customize, say, when you run out of a certain prize. 
 
And be sure to pre-write the “Congratulations!” emails you’ll be sending to all the prize winners, since you’ll have their email addresses—and will have input them into your CRM. 
 
For the love of QR codes
 
How can you not love QR codes? They apply to almost everything we’d mentioned in this article. Put them on your flyers. On your swag. Business cards. Everywhere. Link them to the most appropriate page on your website—which, in this case, might be a special landing page for trade-show attendees, replete with some kind of promotion/savings for visiting that page (and providing their contact info, booking a call, or other similar call-to-action). 
 
Everything we’d mentioned above is stuff that you can, and should, do well in advance. The sooner you do it, the more pre-show stress you alleviate. 
 
Need help? Contact us. We’d love to pitch in. 

We can’t count how many corporate videos we write here at Copel Communications. That’s because video is simply a killer medium, however you look at it: 

• It’s dense, combining visuals and narration faster and more succinctly than any other medium. 

 

• It’s low-hurdle consumption, since it’s way easier for your prospect to watch your video than, say, read your white paper. 

 

• Extra bonus: The hosting platforms out there really love it and favor it, aiding and abetting your SEO efforts. 

 
But video can be a killer in other ways, too. Like production budget. Turnaround time. And keeping the project on track as it goes. 
 
In this article, we’re going to explain a way to keep your next corporate video on-track, using a technique we’ve developed, honed, and proven over the years. 
 
Note that we say “corporate video.” The technique we’re about to describe doesn’t work for narrative films, home movies, or Hollywood blockbusters. But it’s great for videos you need to make quickly and cost-effectively—and which, more than anything, sell.
 
The old-school approach
 
A video script is formatted in two columns: one for audio, and one for video. Very straightforward. (And wholly different from, for example, the WGA format for screenplays, which is structured to support dialogue being delivered by actors within a given scene.)
 
But if you ever looked at a video script, you’ll know, without even reading it, that it’s hard to read. It’s like looking at the blueprint of a jetliner and trying to figure out what makes it fly. 
 
There’s stuff all over the place: Indications for on-screen titles, transitions, sound effects, music cues, suggestions for stock footage, directions for layering of motion graphics, et cetera, et cetera. 
 
It’s a very useful tool for a video editor. Or a voice-over artist. But for you (or for your client), it’s pretty indigestible. 
 
The old-school approach is straightforward: Start with that script.
 
And that’s the rule we’re about to break. 
 
Going rogue
 
There actually is somewhat of an analogy for the work-around we’re about to describe. And it’s based not in corporate video, but in feature films. 
 
In Hollywood, it’s known as the “treatment.” For our corporate purposes, we’ll call it “the spine.” 
 
It goes something like this: 
 
A Hollywood screenplay is typically just over 100 pages long (with the rule of thumb being one page for each minute of on-screen time). The treatment is a short narrative description of what happens in the finished movie. Like a synopsis. It could be a page; it could be five pages. Regardless, it’s quicker and easier to read than a 100-page screenplay. And it can be useful in getting people with limited time to wrap their heads around the movie-to-be. 
 
The treatment, as we’d noted, is a narrative, third-person account of the story and its characters. But a good creative treatment should be fun to read, and typically will include some choice snippets of dialogue, to help convey the mood and “sell” the piece. 
 
The ”spine,” for your corporate video, is similar. But it’s even simpler. The original name we’d given it was the “audio spine,” and that should tell you a ton. 
 
Think about it. Your corporate video doesn’t feature, say, two characters toughing it out in an argument or bar-room brawl. It shows stuff that you do, and a voice-over narrator is your guide. 
 
Ta-dah. That’s where the “audio spine” comes from. 
 
If you can write that announcer track, you’ve cleared a huge hurdle. 
 
Plus, you have something that, unlike a two-column video script, is incredibly easy to digest, regardless of the reader/audience. 
 
Hence, the “spine.” 
 
On your way
 
So the trick is to write that “spine” first. Iterate and improve it via review and revision. Then get sign-off on it.
 
From there, you can paste the approved “spine” into the “Audio” column of your to-be video script. At that point, it becomes straightforward—although of course, not simple—to populate the rest of the script with visuals, sound effects, and all the other elements we’d mentioned above. 
 
The nice thing about starting with a “spine” is that it’s fast and easy. It locks the most important element of your video script early. Which keeps all the subsequent steps on-track, and thus faster and better cost-contained. 
 
We use this approach a lot. So should you. 
 
Need help with video scripting? We’d love to come to your rescue. Contact us today to get started. 

​Boy do the months ever sail past. Time, already, for our annual round-up of our top posts for consultants from 2024. Here’s your chance to catch any you may have missed, or to brush up on others you may want to re-visit: 

• How to clone your favorite client. You already know who your favorite client is. How do you 2x them? Find out here. 

 

• Wait, what… we actually use ChatGPT? Do you know how often people ask us if we consider this tech to be an existential threat? It’s not. The trick is in how you use it… as we reveal here. 

 

• The business gift that keeps on giving… follow-on work. We credit our brilliant clients with the most brilliant ideas. This one may well top the list. You’ve got to try this trick. 

 

• What should you give your clients for free? Do you draw a line in the sand, based on billing? Of course not. Discover the tips and cool stories here. 

 

• The advantages of the hard-to-schedule on-site work session. When should you go in-person, when virtual would be so much quicker and easier? The answers might surprise you. 

 

• What is a marketing “content package”? And why would you want one? Put it this way: When does delivering more, cost less? Up your marketing game with these tips. 

 

• Wait, what… you sent a printed letter? And got business from it? Is “old school” the “next wave”? Find out which use-cases qualify for what you’d otherwise guess is an obsolete marketing technique. 

 

• Can you write a good “next steps” email? (And how much is that worth?) We spent an hour writing a single email. And made money off of it. Find out when, and why, you should, too. 

 

• You’d be surprised by how many emails we ghost-write for our clients. We had to cloak it anonymity, but this article includes the story of the email we ghost-wrote which netted our client millions. 

 

• When should—and shouldn’t—you respond to that RFP? At what point do you commit your team to pursuing that opportunity… and at what point do you conclude, “No, that would be a race to the bottom”? 

 

• The easiest marketing videos you’ll ever make. Even if you’ve never made a marketing video in your life, you’re already sitting atop a video goldmine. Intrigued? Read on. 

 
As we start working on next year’s articles, we’d like to take this time to thank you for tuning in to our 2024 entries. We love sharing the love, and your comments make our day. 
 
Have suggestions for an upcoming post? Contact us. We’d love to hear from you! 

Thanksgiving is a tradition. Writing an article about what to give thanks for? Well, we’ve been doing it for so long each November, that it’s also a tradition here at Copel Communications. 
 
Before we list what we’re thankful for, let’s turn the table on you. What are you thankful for this year? It can be big. It can be small. It can be professional. It can be personal. 
 
The thing is, there’s always stuff to be thankful for. You don’t need a national holiday to remind you. Just like you don’t need to book a spa day to take care of yourself. Or hug your kids to remind yourself that you love them. 
 
Chime in. Leave a comment. It might make you feel better; rest assured that it will make us feel great. 
 
The little things
 
Sometimes, it can be a tiny bit of tech that makes your day nicer. We recently upgraded our AirPods, and are thankful that we can finally adjust the @#$% volume without having to reach for a phone or ask Siri. 
 
Here’s another technical marvel: A remote-controlled training collar. Our dog has a habit of running out in the middle of the night to bark at the deer; a little beep and vibration from the training collar broke him of that habit. He might still be looking at the deer at 3 a.m., but he’s not barking at them anymore. So we’re thankful for a better night’s sleep. 
 
Clearly, we’re starting small. And non-professionally. Let’s shift gears. 
 
The bigger/business things
 
In 2024, we’re especially grateful for the power of networking. Whether it’s via in-person gatherings, Zoom meetings, LinkedIn, or forwarding a colleague’s Pitch59 card, it’s opened up new business possibilities. More importantly, it’s connected us to some really nice people. 
 
People first, business second. If you don’t like that person, you won’t like working with them. More importantly, the opposite is just as true. 
 
We’ll still reach out to, say, second-level connections on LinkedIn, and simply say “hi” to people whose profiles look interesting. It’s better than spamming them with a message-bot. Many people are understandably jaded these days, but there are still plenty of people out there who will respond with a “Hi, it’s nice to meet you.” 
 
Again: People first, business second. 
 
Saving the best for last
 
We can’t build much suspense here, because you know what’s coming. Aside from the Big Two (having good health and being lucky enough to be in the USA), we’re grateful for our friends and family. 
 
That includes the dog. He’s been a good boy. 
 
Have a thankful-for to share? Contact us or simply comment below. We’d love to hear it. 

​Every hear of a “paper edit”? Probably not. 
 
Let’s dive, quickly, into the topic you tuned in for: Making the easiest marketing videos you’ll likely ever make. 
 
It gets better. They’ll also be among the least expensive to produce. 
 
And they’ll also be among the most powerful. 
 
Salivating yet? Let’s get started. 
 
Recycling is good for the planet… and your business
 
A client of ours recently recently pitched a new prospect via a Zoom call. Specifically, they “ran the demo” of the company’s offerings, which included both a PowerPoint slide deck and a demo of specific SaaS (software-as-a-service) offerings. 
 
The call went great. Our client closed the deal. What could be better than that? 
 
How about closing lots of deals? 
 
From the exact same call.
 
You’re smart. You’re already way ahead of us here. Why do we even try to build any suspense? LOL! 
 
The key: Our client recorded the Zoom call. With the prospect’s permission, of course. Important point: the recording did not show the prospect on screen. Only our client, who was presenting. 
 
That recording is worth its weight in gold. It’s a verbatim capture of the best possible sales pitch, with our client hitting it out of the park. 
 
The entire video ran about 20 minutes. 
 
And in it, our client—the one who was running the demo—was making killer point after killer point, with each one nicely illustrated by either a powerful preso slide or quick SaaS demo. 
 
We watched this video, and realized that it was marketing gold, being served to us on a platter. 
 
The paper edit
 
“Paper edit” is an old-school video editing term, which surprisingly isn’t so old-school or even outdated. It’s exactly what we created in this case. And it’s what you can do, too. 
 
(You know you’ve got some good recorded Zoom pitches by now. And if you don’t, you know you’re just itching to record your next one.) 
 
Here’s the task. Take that 20 minutes of raw footage, and convert it into as many little McNugget-sized videos as you can. They should run anywhere from about ten to 30 seconds each. 
 
So you just need to park the video in a window on one side of your screen, and a blank Word doc on the other. Watch the video and look for the organic “start” and “end” points of each little mini-video. Write down the time codes for each. Then come up with a title for that specific mini video. Lather, rinse, repeat, and you’ll have a “paper edit” which you can hand off, along with the big raw-footage file, to your favorite/least-expensive video editor. You will have done the heavy lifting; at this point, your editor simply needs to follow your instructions. 
 
They’ll need to create a master “set of bookends” first: This will be the opening title card, underlying music bed, and tail-end/call-to-action (CTA) title card. Once you approve those, you’re off to the races. Your editor will be able to crank these out like a machine.
 
In our case, the 20 minutes of raw footage yielded more than 20 different short videos. They were so simple to create, that we didn’t even need our usual high-end editor for this assignment. Rather, we handed off the footage and the paper-edit doc to our client’s digital marketing firm; they were able to make these little vids for us—and put them to use, too, since they were able to easily fold them into the account’s digital marketing strategy. 
 
Sure, we continue to make slick, highly-produced videos for this same client. But they’re more expensive and less frequent. These little videos are awesome for keeping the world informed and teased, while easily building up your social presence on platforms like LinkedIn, simultaneously boosting the brand and impressions. 
 
Need help with an assignment like this, or others? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help. 

​RFPs—that is, Requests for Proposals—come in all shapes and sizes. Broadly, there are the ubiquitous ones that populate the world of government services contracting. There are plenty of private-sector RFPs out there, too. 
 
In this article, we’re going to address the tipping point that must inform all of your RFP pursuits: the notorious “go/no-go decision.” We’re looking out for your best interests here, trust us. 
 
All-American competition
 
A little background first. Why would a company (or the government) issue an RFP? The bigger question could be: Why wouldn’t they? 
 
Think about it. If you’re an entity that needs to spend money on services (or products, but we’ll focus on the former here), it’s entirely safe to assume that 1) you want the best possible services at 2) the lowest possible price. And what’s fairer, what’s more American, than level-playing-field competition? 
 
So. You issue an RFP. And you let all these suitors compete against each other. You get exactly what you’d wanted. It’s a beautiful thing. 
 
Or is it? 
 
The race to the bottom
 
Let’s get real jaded, real quick. How well does the government do things, compared to private industry? By and large, not nearly as well. There’s no profit motivation. There’s no “Government 2” that they’re competing against. There’s a baked-in complacency and a literal ability to print more money if they need it. 
 
This shows in their work. Think of all the shoddy government services you’ve had to suffer through—IRS, DMV, U.S. Postal Service, Amtrak, you name it. Think of how many times you’ve said, “If only Amazon were running this!”
 
And the crazy thing is, tons of these shoddy government services are actually provided by private-sector contractors! Why? Because they came in with the lowest bid.
 
We’re over-simplifying here—there are other ways that the government procures things, and even in the private sector, there are SLAs or “service-level agreements” which stipulate a minimum required level of performance—but, as we’d intimated, nice and jaded, RFPs often represent a race to the bottom. Cheapest possible—and just passable. 
 
Now pivot this scenario to your business. Would you want to willingly join in, in this death spiral? 
 
To RFP or not to RFP
 
The upside, for you, of competing on an RFP, is that it’s typically a pretty big contract. And it’s all or nothing. You either win it, or you don’t. And either way, you’re putting in a ton of work. 
 
Hmmm. 
 
This gets to the very core of the go/no-go decision. 
 
We were told, years ago, about an NFL coach who had a plaque in his office. It read: “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing, Coming in second is un-American.”
 
Yowch. Painful. Brutal. But refreshingly similar to your RFP go/no-go decision. 
 
It boils down to this: Only respond if you can, and will, crush it. Partial measures are a total waste of time; expend that energy on other biz-dev. Assess your capabilities and those of your likeliest competitors. Can you crush the competition? If you can almost crush them, what would it take to push you over the top? 
 
Here’s a little anecdote for you. We were recently invited to compete on an RFP for a slate of marketing services. We could see, right away, that it wasn’t a great fit. We knew we could crush a certain part of what this company was requesting, but there were other parts that weren’t our specialty. 
 
We were just about to pass on this one when--hmmm—we learned, through the grapevine, that a few other companies, which we know and have worked with before, were also invited to respond to this exact same RFP. 
 
Know where this is going? Imagine where it went? 
 
Of course. We reached out to those other entities, and said, “Let’s consolidate!” 
 
And that’s exactly what happened. Working with the others, we created a veritable Dream Team… and crushed the RFP. 
 
By the way, there are interesting and creative ways to craft the actual RFP response itself, to help you win it, which go beyond the scope of this article. 
 
We’d love to help you in this realm. Contact us and let’s talk. 

​"Ghost Email Writer.” Kind of an odd role to put on your resume, no? 
 
It’s on ours. More importantly for you, however, is the answer to this question: 
 
Which business emails that you need to send are so important that they would warrant having a pro step in to pen them?
 
That’s what we’ll explore in this article. 
 
Touchy subjects
 
There is a common thread when it comes to emails that we ghost-write for our clients. It’s generally what we’d call “the big ask,” which kind of goes hand-in-hand with “the humble brag.” Both of these are hard to do. They put you, as the writer, in an uncomfortable situation. 
 
Err in one direction, you look like a jerk. Err in the other, you appear too meek. And in both of those situations, you don’t end up getting what you’d wanted. Talk about a fine line. 
 
First things first: You don’t really need to hire a professional writer, like us, to write an email like this. You can really work your tail off, and polish it, run it by colleagues, and even push it through ChatGPT if you want it to sound generically-correct enough. The question is: Is that worth your time? If you’re reading this article, chances are, it’s not. (Spoiler alert: We charge a mere pittance for things like these, for our clients, especially considering the upside ROI they deliver.) 
 
But so far we’ve been dealing with generalities. Let’s dive in and give you two real-life examples. 
 
Ghost-Written Email Example 1: To a former client
 
We recently helped a client create a series of marketing videos for their B2B consultancy. On their website, they’d had an ancient, but great, testimonial from an old client of theirs. They hadn’t spoken to this client in ages. 
 
Can you guess where this is going? 
 
Of course. A written testimonial, on a website, doesn’t do you much good when you’re creating marketing videos. Talk about a big ask: We wanted this former client to record themselves, on camera, giving a testimonial about this company that they’d worked with, a long time ago. 
 
Yikes. 
 
And so our client asked us to ghost-write the big-ask email for them. Confession: It wasn’t easy. 
 
But the finished product went something like this: It opened with a “Hello, old friend, we hope you’re doing well,” followed by “we’re so glad that our company has helped your company succeed.” We also thanked them for letting us use their written testimonial on our website. 
 
And that was the segue to the videos we were making. We’d already had the first one produced by the time we ghost-penned this email, so we included a link to it, so that the former client could watch it and see how good it was. 
 
Then we got down to the big ask: Could they simply read that same testimonial on camera, and send it to us? We even included its text in the email, like a script. We noted that, “By our estimation, this should take about, well, 15 seconds! So hopefully it’s not a huge ask.”
 
And we closed by saying, “Just as we have helped your company, you’d be doing us a huge solid by helping ours.”
 
The email worked. The old client was flattered by the request, and promptly obliged by recording and sharing a quick video. Bonus: Our client’s firm suddenly became top-of-mind for this former great client. Talk about a nice dollop of biz-dev! 
 
Ghost-Written Email Example 2: To “the secret handshake club”
 
Whereas the previous example was written to be sent to one specific, known person, this next one was intended to be sent, one-to-one, to a select number of very exclusive recipients who were all total strangers to the sender.
 
We need to be very cagey here, as this one is super sensitive. That said, it’s one of the best emails we’ve ever written, and it’s ended up netting our client millions. 
 
This client of ours had carved out a profitable B2B niche doing technical “cleanup work” for large enterprises. But they longed to broaden the business, and their client base, to include the specialists who helped those enterprises create the situations that inevitably required cleanup afterward.
 
Those specialists were the targets of the email. We can refer to them here as “the secret handshake club,” because that’s how close-knit, clubby, and insular they are. 
 
Our pitch, which we ghost-wrote for the owner of our consultancy client, went something like this; note how it combines the Big Ask with the Humble Brag:  
 
“Hello Mr. or Ms. Secret Handshake Club Member. I would like to help you as you advise big enterprises as they embark on big initiatives. Full disclosure: I’ve never done this before. But I have helped numerous enterprises with the ‘clean-up’ that’s come from all the overlooked issues in these initiatives, which I’m uniquely qualified to spot, given my experience. Would you have time for a quick call this week?” 
 
Guess what the response was? 
 
It was awful. That’s right. It’s a secret handshake club! Most of the sends ended up with no response whatsoever. The few that did respond, had some choice suggestions for our client, which we can’t reprint here. 
 
But then one—just one— Secret Handshake Club member wrote back. “Okay,” they said. “I’ll bite. Contact my assistant to book a call with me next week.” 
 
And that was all it took. 
 
That call led to a test project. That test project turned a toe-in-the-water tester into a new client. That client effectively provided entry into the Secret Handshake Club. 
 
Fast-forward to today, and that consultancy client of ours now splits their billing, 50/50, between their classic “cleanup” projects and Secret Handshake Club assignments. 
 
And it all started with one inexpensive, yet really well-crafted, ghost-written email. 
 
Have a challenge that warrants a ghost-written email? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help. 

​Everyone’s heard of the 30-second elevator speech. But sometimes, it’s a much taller building. 
 
We were recently asked—and this will happen to you, too, soon, if it hasn’t already, so brace yourself—to present our pitch before a business group, with a six-minute time allotment. 
 
Quick: How do you present your business, to a target-rich environment like that, in six minutes? 
 
Follow-on question: How do you carve up those six minutes? Do you spend all of them, well, presenting? 
 
Audience first
 
If you’ve read any articles from us here at Copel Communications, you’ll know that we take a near-religious approach to taking a customer-back approach to everything we do. Start with the customer. What do they want and/or need? Then work back from there, i.e., “customer-back” approach. 
 
Same thing applies for your six-minute preso slot. Know who’s in that audience, in advance. Do your homework. Are they like-minded businesspeople in a similar or adjacent vertical? Or—as was the case for us—are they perhaps members of a networking group, looking to lubricate the two-way process of referrals? 
 
Get your best possible grasp on who they are. What they need. How many will be in the room. The type of room: real or virtual. How much time will there be for Q&A? Is that baked into the six-minutes? Or is it additional? And if so, how much? 
 
Rule of thumb: The more annoying you can be with preliminary questions like these, the more you’ll succeed. 
 
Working backward
 
So. We were going to be facing a business networking group—a common venue. What kinds of businesses? All kinds, with the distinction that they, like us, all operated in the B2B space. 
 
How did they differ from us? 
 
Oooh. That’s a good question you should ask yourself. In other words, how can you differentiate yourself and your offerings? That’s how you’ll cut through the clutter, make your presentation interesting and engaging, and increase your odds of successful business development. 
 
For us, fortunately, the answer to the “how do they differ” question was easy. While we toil in marketing, and many of the others in the audience either do, too, or certainly have exposure to it, we were unique in that our background is 100-percent based in creative services. So that made for a neat way in. 
 
Outline, outline, outline
 
Turns out, for us, the six-minute allotment included the time for the Q&A. That’s a huge detail. So our outline went something like this: 

• Quick personal background. Knowing we were unique, among this crowd, to have worked in creative services, we were able to do some cool “show and tell” with pencil sketches, layouts, and stories. 

 

• Add credibility. You can—and should—do this, too. Don’t be obnoxious, and don’t belabor it, but don’t miss this opportunity. For example, we’ve served as a judge of the Clio Awards. Even from the beginning, our earliest clients included big names such as Warner Bros. and Taco Bell. 

 

• Who we serve. This, you shouldn’t be shocked, was custom-tailored to the audience and their clientele, too. The point here isn’t to be academic. It’s to build business. 

 

• Teaser on how we work. We have a unique—and, frankly, cool—methodology here at Copel Communications. So we quickly walked through this, as if each audience member were a new client of ours. We went slow. Wanted each cool point to sink in. Get them excited about the process and its possibilities for them.

 

• A referral “in.” Since we were fishing for referrals here, we prepared a list of “Questions you can ask your clients,” the answers to which would likely steer them our way. 

 

• Q&A. Given our six-minute total, we allotted about 2.5 minutes to this—with the obvious invitation for subsequent one-on-one’s with whomever wanted/needed more time. 

 
Close, close, close
 
Odds are, your business doesn’t do anything like what we do here at Copel Communications. Yet we’ll bet that that outline above is easily 90-percent useful to you. Some things are just universal. 
 
A speaking opportunity like this, is just that: An opportunity. Seize it. Work the room. Book meetings and calls. Send follow-up emails. 
 
Need help prepping for a six-minute presentation, or other similar opportunity? Contact us. We help our clients with challenges like these all the time.