​Many prospective clients ask us how we work, in terms of fees, here at Copel Communications. In this article, we’ll tell you. 
 
We provide writing, marketing, and creative services to numerous different clients: consultancies, B2B businesses, and ad agencies, to name a few. And over the years, we’d found that many of our clients wanted, well, all of our services. Which was fine by us. 
 
Indeed, more and more, in addition to pure deliverables, such as written pieces (web sites, B2B video scripts, blogs, bios, etc.), our clients wanted us to consult, and to manage, for them. This isn’t out of our wheelhouse: In a past life, we’d served as Creative Director of a New York ad agency, so we’re used to directing other creatives, such as web designers, graphic artists, video editors, voice-over artists, other writers, you name it.
 
So it’s more than natural for us to help direct what are largely hybrid marketing teams these days: Some of our clients will have a few people on staff, such as a graphic artist and/or intern; they’ll also have a roster of vendors, such as digital marketing firms (the companies that, to dumb it down, do SEO and make social ads), video editors, and so on. 
 
And of course, many of our clients turn to us for marketing direction and strategy, as well as the tactical/operational/managerial details we’d just described above. And of course, when it comes to writing, we can switch and wear that hat. 
 
So the way that we work with our clients, these days, has evolved in sync with what they tap us to provide. In the early days, we were mostly doing writing/deliverables. So we would bill for just that. 
 
But as we’d noted above, that’s become more the exception than the rule; nowadays, most clients use us for both the writing/deliverables and the consultative services, too. 
 
And so that’s the way we bill, in case you were curious. For a typical client, we’ll work on what we call a retainer-plus-deliverables basis. First, there’s a monthly retainer: For a nominal flat fee each month, that client will get up to a given number of hours of our time, with the intention that it feels like they own us/we’re on staff. They can call us, email us, have us join or lead meetings, and feel like they never run out of hours. 
 
And of course they get all this without having to pay a big salary, or our insurance, taxes, benefits, vacation, equipment, overhead, anything. It’s a classic 1099 arrangement, with all of the perks thereof. 
 
So each month, at the end of the month, they’ll get an invoice from us for that flat-fee retainer. This includes, for example, directing all of those other creative/marketing people/assets we’d mentioned previously, as well as the big-picture strategic marketing consultative services. 
 
And if there happens to be any writing that also needs to be done, for that client, that month, the fees for those specific deliverables will be added, as line items, above the fixed-fee retainer. Hence “retainer plus deliverables.” For many years, now, that arrangement has worked well for our clients, and for us. It’s just the right mix of fixed vs. variable. 
 
There are, of course, exceptions. Some clients just pop up for little projects from time to time, so we charge them for, perhaps, discrete marketing-strategy sessions and/or deliverables, as needed. 
 
So in case you were interested in working with us, you now know how we typically work. We can give you more details, and a quote to fit your specific situation; just contact us. We’d love to hear from you! 

You might wonder what we here at Copel Communications—who daily toil in the trenches of executive-focused B2B messaging on behalf of our august clientele—have in common with those purveyors of click-bait ads that crowd your screen when you’re invariably trying to read something else.
 
You know what we’re talking about. Headlines, photos, and clickable tiles all doing their best to tempt you with teasers such as: 

• The Five Places Where Mold Is Hiding Inside Your Home
• Why Pediatricians Say Your Children Should Never Touch This 
• Her Red Carpet Dress Was A Little Too Revealing 

 
Admit it. You’ve clicked on some. Despite your deepest-held belief that it wasn’t worth your time. And you were always right. You swore them off, just as you’d had back in college on a bleary Sunday morning: “I’ll never have another drink again in my life.”
 
Yet there they are. Thriving on with virus-like invulnerability, despite the evolution of ad blockers, AI, and your own conviction to avoid them. 
 
Because they’re so juicy. They promise so much to your can’t-hold-it-back lizard brain. 
 
Okay. Let’s pivot back to B2B. This story actually has, believe it or not, a point. 
 
Marketing and advertising--any marketing and advertising, regardless of how buttoned-down and high-end—has a simple goal: Make that target audience sit up and take action. 
 
Oooh. How do we get them to “sit up”? No, we’re not espousing the use of salacious images or language (want to have fun? scroll through a page of click-bait ads and count the instances of cleavage leaping out at you, LOL!). 
 
But there is a lesson—a valuable lesson—that can be applied, from click-bait, directly to the C-suite. 
 
Those click-bait ads persist, despite all the obstacles we’d listed above, for one simple reason: They work. 
 
They generate clicks. And eyeballs. And revenue. They’re as American as apple pie. 
 
What then, is this “valuable lesson”? 
 
It’s simple. Learn from the power of click-bait. Leverage it. You needn’t dumb it down; for goodness’ sake, it’s already at rock-bottom. 
 
But you can smarten it up.
 
Aha. 
 
Each click-bait ad is tempting because of the secret it hides, and the promise it dangles. Those are universal truths. Consider this headline which we just made up: 
 
Logistics executives are rapidly implementing this new automated reporting solution
 
What’s the secret? The solution. 
 
What’s the promise? Learn what it is. 
 
What’s the lizard-brain button being pushed: Good ol’ FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out. 
 
It doesn’t really look like a click-bait headline… until you parse it the way we just did. 
 
Whaddya know? Lesson learned. Lesson applied. 
 
Need help with your next marketing challenge? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help. 

​If you’re reading this, you’re targeting executives as part of your business. Read on. And learn. 
 
We were once directing a young video editor, in a Zoom call, about how to approach a project we’d handed him: a script for an exec-focused video. Our client wanted to be on this call, too, and kept mentioning that we wanted to be at “C-level.” 
 
We saw the look on this kid’s face. And quickly realized: 
 
Oh my goodness. He thinks our client is saying “sea-level.”
 
We were right. He couldn’t figure out what the video had to do with being submerged in the ocean. 
 
Once we explained it to him--“C”-level and not “sea”-level—he understood his marching orders better, and went on to deliver a perfectly good video for us. 
 
But back to your challenge: Marketing to executives with purchasing power. 
 
Sure, we can embrace some basic tenets here. This isn’t about flashy images or breathless claims. The tone should befit the audience. 
 
And of course you want to convey the value of what you’re offering, whether it’s a product or a service. Those are fairly given. 
 
But here’s what isn’t: 
 
We recently produced a marketing piece for a client of ours which was showcased on a global media platform (can you tell we’re being cagey here? we need to be). This piece we created was exposed to literally billions of people. 
 
Checking the metrics on it after it had been published a while, we saw that it had garnered just 300 views. 
 
Failure? 
 
Nope. Success. Deeper diving showed that it had reached exactly whom we’d wanted it to. Execs. 
 
In other words: This is a small audience.
 
Remember the quote “Speak to the target. Let the others listen”? It certainly applies here. 
 
Unlike mass-market approaches, this is not a quantity game. It’s a quality game. And here we’ve learned, from some of our incredibly astute clients, some interesting, if counterintuitive, tips: 

• Call ‘em out directly. We’ve penned YouTube descriptions, for example, which start out with: “Attention: C-suite executives. In this video…” Why bury the lead? Why make them wait to see if this is for them? Help them along. 

 

• Speak their language. This certainly isn’t counterintuitive, but it requires good research and attention to detail. Take verbatim notes (or record the call) when you treat with other executives. Pick up, and use, the exact words they use. This is where we’ve learned phrases such as “operating leverage” and “scalable capacity.” 

 
So if that executive leader is looking to advance their strategic roadmap via automated decisioning, you’d better 1) know it, and 2) say it. 
 
This is a very subtle and nuanced challenge, that you shouldn’t entrust to a junior writer or AI. The stakes are high, and you’ve only got one chance to get it right. 
 
Need help? Contact us. We work on these kinds of projects—sorry, “initiatives”—all the time. 

This is an article about producing B2B videos: the kind you post on YouTube to bring in prospects. In this story, it was actually about the slick home-page video we were creating for a client’s new website. 
 
For these types of videos, the approach is usually pretty straightforward: You send off your approved two-column (“Video” and “Audio”) video script to your video editor, who does the rest. This includes finding stock footage and music, building titles, editing the footage, and farming our the voice-over or V.O. 
 
It’s that last part we want to talk about here. 
 
Sure, you can proceed the way we just described. But we don’t recommend it. Here’s why. 
 
We’ll use the case of our client, and their new website, as an example. For their new site, they were also updating their brand, and, more importantly, the audience they wanted to target. Specifically, they were going more upscale in their demographic. Very high-end. 
 
Sure, this was conveyed in the video script. And we could have entrusted our video editor (who is fantastic, by the way) to source the V.O. on his own. 
 
Instead, we worked with the client to produce the V.O. first, before sending the script to the editor. This gave us the advantage (“luxury”?) of casting that part ourselves, letting our client listen to audio samples of different V.O. artists, and then narrowing down to the final one. 
 
Then we were able to work with this voice-over artist very directly and intently, explaining to him the exact audience we were looking to target, the similar reads on his reel that would be relevant/close to what we wanted, the intended look and feel of the finished video, and so on. 
 
Armed with all of this info, that V.O. artist delivered. He nailed it. You could just see the gorgeous video it would accompany… even if that video hadn’t been created yet. 
 
Take 2
 
Now we could send that V.O. recording—along with the script, our client’s logo, and other files—along to our brilliant video editor. 
 
And think of this: Not only did our producing the V.O. (whose cost was ridiculously nominal, by the way) save our editor work and time, but it also provided killer input to help create a better video.
 
All he had to do was listen to the thing. It helped him pick just the right background music—on the very first try! It helped him source the right stock-footage candidates, with minimal back-and-forth from us.
 
We knew, all along, how this video was supposed to come out. That’s our job. It was tougher for our client to visualize in advance; that’s neither their job nor their skill-set. But boy were they delighted when the final product came together. 
 
And note that nothing mentioned above increased the production budget of this video. It was simply a matter of choosing to sequence it in this way which elevated its production value so much, and so efficiently. 
 
Have a creative project you need help with? Contact us. We’d be delighted to pitch in. 

​In case you were unaware, here at Copel Communications, we alternate our blog articles between those directed toward business owners/consultants (at the top of the month), and our “creatives” audiences of ad agencies and other creative folk (at mid-month). 
 
This article is one of the latter. 
 
And it begins with a story. A colleague called us up not long ago, bemoaning the fact that her creative agency (we’re obfuscating/anonymizing here) had seen a sudden drop in business, since all of her clients were switching to AI for their creative work. To say she was unhappy was an understatement; there was a distinct edge of panic in her voice. 
 
But was she right? 
 
And how does this story relate to you, and your business? Are the ubiquitous doom-and-gloom headlines correct? And what the heck is an “Upwork moment,” which we’d teased in the headline? 
 
Let’s unpack this part-by-part. 
 
They’re going where?
 
A little more (fudged/anonymized) info about this colleague of ours. Her creative agency serves big you-know-them national brands. They’ve entrusted her and her great staff, for years, to deliver beautiful hand-crafted creative which elevates these brands to their respective audiences. Collectively, there’s billions of dollars of brand equity at stake here. 
 
Now ask yourself an obvious question: 
 
Are these huge brands suddenly asking ChatGPT to do the same thing for them? 
 
Yeah, we’re laughing, too. 
 
These huge brands know that ChatGPT can’t come close when it comes to quality. They also know that ChatGPT (or any other widget of its ilk) treads in very murky waters when it comes to copyright clearance. 
 
Do you honestly think that they’d risk their billion-dollar brands on that? Do you think that they would dump our colleague and her team, in order to get such sketchy and legally-questionable content… merely to save a few bucks? You think they don’t have “a few bucks”? 
 
Or is the answer perhaps far more mundane? 
 
Spoiler alert: It is. 
 
As we’d told our colleague: “This isn’t AI. It’s just a downturn. A basic dip in your business, wherein a few accounts happen to be slow at the exact same time.” 
 
You could hear her sigh of relief. “Oh,” she said. “That, I can deal with.” It was, in short, familiar territory. Solve-able via old-school tricks like shaking the trees and good old-fashioned business development or biz-dev. 
 
Beware the ostrich
 
Does this mean that AI isn’t a threat, or at least a factor? Get your head out of the sand. It’s a real thing. But then again, so was Google. So was the internet. We’re still breathing. The world didn’t end. The sky didn’t fall. 
 
Which brings us back to our “Upwork moment.” Several years ago, back around 2013, Upwork and other gig-economy platforms, such as Fiverr, burst onto the scene. Many people predicted that they would rob us of all our work and that we here at Copel Communications would promptly go out of business. 
 
We’re still breathing. The sky is still blue above us. 
 
But Upwork and Fiverr are still here and thriving. So what gives? 
 
As it turns out, Upwork was a really great find for businesses who, say, wanted dirt-cheap copywriting and didn’t care too much about the quality. So if you wanted to hire a writer from India who would create a 2,000-word blog for 15 bucks, Upwork was a godsend. 
 
This did not put us out of business. All it did was to better delineate various strata of clients and providers—and we don’t interact with either of them. Our work is higher-end than that, and our clients are, too. If you’ve read this far into this article, 1) thanks, and 2) you’re likely in the same watertight boat. 
 
Which gets back to AI. Sure, there are tons of people, worldwide, for whom AI/ChatGPT-generated content is good enough, and you certainly can’t beat the price. That is, free. 
 
For them, it’s a godsend. For us—and for you, and for our now-breathing-again colleague—it’s just another way the rest of the landscape is evolving around us. 
 
The sky ain’t falling tomorrow, either. 
 
Have a comment? Leave it in the comments below, or feel free to contact us directly. 

Wait. What? SEO for YouTube? Is that even a thing? 
 
Here at Copel Communications, we are not SEO gurus. But fortunately, some of our clients are. So we learn a lot. And when it’s prudent and discreet to do so, we’ll share some of the love. Hence this article. 
 
Short takeaway/spoiler: You can, and should, max out the SEO for your YouTube videos. In this article, we’ll discuss how. 
 
But first, the genesis of this story. 
 
As we’d noted above, this comes to us from an actual client assignment which, as we write this, is ongoing; they have tons of YouTube videos (most of which, incidentally, we also scripted). 
 
The challenge, as our client made clear, was to drive more search-query traffic to this huge repository of videos, spread across multiple playlists on our client’s YouTube channel. 
 
But how? 
 
There are two parts to this. Both are basic, yet nuanced. They are: 
 
1. The actual title of the video. 
2. The YouTube description of the video
 
Let’s review each. 
 
1. The title
 
We’re talking B2B videos here. So you might have an existing video about a product or service that you offer to prospects. And what’s its title? Sure, it’s something like “Our Great Product.” 
 
You must understand that there’s the real world, and then there’s the SEO world. In the real world, populated solely by humans, “Our Great Product” is a perfectly good title. It tells people what the video is about. Simple. No clutter. Great. 
 
But in SEO World, it’s unfortunately insufficient. You want to “think backward” from what someone who would ultimately want that product or service would be searching on in, say, Google (or in AI; more on that in a minute). 
 
So if your Great Product solves Challenge X for, say, logistics executives, you might want to revise and expand the title accordingly: “Challenge-X-Solving Product for Logistics Executives Seeking Productivity Gains.” 
 
Not terribly exciting in the real world, but a step forward in SEO Land. 
 
But wait. That new title is pretty darned long. Aren’t there limits on this, imposed by, say, YouTube? 
 
There sure are. Titles max out at 100 characters, including spaces. The one we just noted above was only 66. So there’s room to play. 
 
Often, depending on the viewing device (desktop or laptop browser, tablet, or phone), that title will get truncated and lopped off with just an ellipsis (three dots or “. . .”) after the first few words. Meaning, the first few words are the most important. Because those are the ones that will stick. So factor that into your re-naming. Put the most important stuff first.
 
It's not the real world. Sure, humans will read this stuff, too, but they’re only part of the audience. The rest is web crawlers, spiders, and all the algorithms that the search engines employ to serve up results which hopefully include your video. 
 
Now that you know about 1. The Title, let’s proceed to 
 
2. The description
 
Clearly, this is much longer than the title, but some of the same rules apply. Stuff will get cut off before you see the clickable “…more” to reveal the rest of the copy; a quick test on our desktop browser clipped it off at around 60 words. 
 
The max is 5,000 characters (not words), which can include links, text, and hashtags. 
 
That’s a lot of copy. It’s almost like a blog. About 1,000 words. 
 
Again, you want to fill this with info that your human searchers are searching for (what problems will the product or service showcased in your video solve?), as well as what the web crawlers want to find. For our recent project, these videos often offered solutions that helped with numerous arcane technology platforms, so we included bullet lists of those platforms in the description. 
 
The search engines like stuff like that. 
 
Know what they don’t like? Verbatim copy stolen from your website; they’ll ding you for that. So you want original copy. 
 
And you want it written by a human. All the search engines can spot AI-written copy from a mile away (as can we), and they’ll ding you for it. 
 
Which gets back to AI-based search vs. classic Google search. The landscape is still shaking out as we write this; even the term AEO (“ask engine optimization”) may not have legs. But what we’re seeing already is a refreshing overlap of what makes for good SEO content vs. AEO content. If you can nail the SEO side, the AEO side will likely catch up. 
 
Bottom line: Depending on the number of YouTube videos you already have posted, this could be a quick or long-term retrofitting assignment. And it should definitely shape your efforts for future videos; write the new titles and YouTube descriptions at the same time that you write the scripts. It will save you time and effort. 
 
Need help with any of this stuff? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help. 

​Do not get us wrong. We are not luddites here at Copel Communications! We love shiny new tech. 
 
We use AI a lot, too. 
 
So don’t think that this article—about yanking the plug on Apple Intelligence—is about some kind of irrational fear of technology. 
 
Nope. It’s far simpler than that. 
 
It’s about helping our clients to make money. 
 
Wait, what?? Apple Intelligence stands in the way of that?
 
A solution in search of a problem
 
The comedian John Mulaney once compared his aging body to the iPhone: each year it looks the same, but it just gets worse. LOL! 
 
We’ve been on Apple tech since the very first generation of Macs, so we have a well-entrenched more-love-than-hate relationship with the folks in Cupertino. But Apple Intelligence crossed a new threshold for us. 
 
Sure, you’ve seen all of the “ingenious” new features that Apple will foist on you, every single year, with every new OS update, whether it’s for your Mac, your iPhone, whatever. Each one purports to be the greatest thing ever—which is a tacit admission that the very thing it’s replacing, which had been identically hyped at its outset… wasn’t. 
 
Fine. It’s easy for us to throw stones, and we’re well aware of Theodore Roosevelt’s famous “Man in the arena” quote (the important part: “It’s not the critic who counts”). And besides, every time Apple rolls out a controversial feature, it typically back-pedals with a new slider whereby you can disable it. Liquid Glass, anyone? 
 
You certainly remember--remember? it’s still ongoing—all the hype around Apple’s version of AI. It was so special that it wasn’t just AI, i.e., artificial intelligence. Oh no. The “A” now stood for “Apple.” Apple Intelligence. Capitalized. 
 
It would solve everything in your life. 
 
Until it didn’t. 
 
The last straw
 
As we’ve taken pains to make clear: We’re not afraid of technology. When Apple Intelligence rolled out, and even as it got updates and bug fixes, we stuck with it, waiting (and wondering) for it to help us in our daily lives. 
 
Until it tried to answer emails and text messages on our behalf.
 
Woah. Stop the presses. It’s one thing to suggest some verbiage. It’s another to insert it into a reply by default, whereby our accidentally depressing the spacebar would constitute “Send.” 
 
A client asked us a question. We were about to give them a well-considered and nuanced answer, with a few factors to consider. 
 
And there’s Apple Intelligence, replying to our client with “Sounds great! I agree!” 
 
Fortunately, we caught this before any damage was done. 
 
Here at Copel Communications, clients pay us for our intelligence. The real kind. Not the over-hyped artificial kind. 
 
Hence the illustration for this article. We effectively rocketed our way to System Prefs to disable this hallucinogenic digital sidekick. 
 
Should you? Your choice. 
 
But now you know where we stand. And should you contact us, you also know that you’ll get a real reply, from a real sentient human. 

​Question: As the year draws to a close, are you merely older… or wiser? 
 
Not to flatter ourselves, but we think we can help with the latter. That’s because it’s time for our year-end round-up—an annual tradition here at Copel Communications —of our top posts for creatives like you. 
 
Catch the ones you’d missed. Or revisit those that helped. Enjoy! 

• How to keep your business videos on the rails—and on budget.  There’s a technique, developed in Hollywood, which will actually make the production of your B2B videos go faster, easier, and cheaper. Check it out. 

 

• What are website “pilot pages”? And why should you use them? Be efficient. Be frugal. Adopt best practice. And learn just what the heck “pilot pages” are, and why they’re an essential step in your next website or site re-brand. 

 

• Where do you draw the line, literally, with creative direction? When should you purposely create low-quality input and/or downplay the quality of the input itself? This is a fine line to walk, both literally and figuratively—but it can yield stellar results from other creatives who work for you. 

 

• How do you get good creative input from non-creative types? If for no other reason, click on this article to see the awesome AI-generated “nerd” we created for its illustration! LOL! Seriously, though: Great tips in this article, too. 

 

• When will real intelligence serve you better than the artificial kind? If AI makes things easy, isn’t it better for challenges like marketing taglines? Well… no. Read a true (anonymized) client story here, and grab some useful takeaways for your business, too. 

 

• How can you update your brand, yet keep it familiar? It’s a paradoxical challenge: Update your brand, keep it from going stale, yet keep it familiar, too. But how? Get the guidelines and guardrails you need, right here. 

 

• One blog is worse than none. Really! Even if you’re not a marketing guru, you don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot. Ready to cringe? Read this true story about a supposed marketing guru who did just that! Yikes! 

 

• The biggest shifts in book publishing since Gutenberg. You want your exciting new manuscript to be picked up by one of those famous New York publishing houses… or do you? You might be quite shocked to learn about the new reality of book publishing. Get it, quickly, right here. 

 

• We made a Gantt chart in Word! (And so can you.) Talk about counterintuitive: Here’s a way to make a Gantt chart not only in Word… but in reverse! Trust us: This will make you look like a hero to your client or boss. 

 

• How to live with a ghost (writer). There is a very specific way to structure your relationship with the ghost writer or copy-editor you choose to develop your thought-leading book. But what is it? You might be pleasantly surprised to find out what it is. So find out here. 

 

• What we’re thankful for, 2025 edition. It’s become an annual tradition here at Copel Communications, dating back over a decade. And we haven’t run out of things—or more importantly, people—to thank. Sit back and enjoy this one; it will inspire you to appreciate others in your life, even more. 

 
Well, that’s all for this year. Have a suggestion for a post for next year? Contact us. We’d love to hear from you! 

If you’re an aspiring business book writer, this article is for you. And if you know someone who is, this article is for them. Share it with them. 
 
Our topic: How to get the most from your ghost copy-editor. 
 
We feel pretty qualified to weigh in on this topic, having ghost-copy-edited numerous books for various authors, some of whose works have gone on to become Amazon bestsellers. 
 
First things first: Credit where it’s due. Those aforementioned bestsellers did not become bestsellers because of us. It was due to the authors’ vision, as well as the complete marketing team that guided the book through its gestation. 
 
Still. We were along for the process from concept to completion. 
 
Interested in penning a business book? Let’s dive in. 
 
Division of labor
 
When you hear phrases like “ghost writer” or “ghost copy-editor,” you likely think of some celebrity, sitting back and sipping martinis, while some poor hack does all the work of actually writing the celebrity’s so-called “memoir,” or whatever. 
 
And that may well be true, in that instance. 
 
But that is not what we’re talking about here. 
 
Here, we’re talking about you, as a thought-leader in your business area of interest. You want to share your wisdom and experience with others. Done right, everyone benefits: Your readers elevate their knowledge. And you elevate your status as an authority. Heck, a published authority. 
 
So this is, clearly, not about sipping martinis and letting someone else come up with the ideas. The ideas here are yours. All of them. 
 
After that, however, it gets fuzzier. 
 
And that’s not a bad thing. In fact, the opposite is true. When this process is done right, it’s custom tailored to you, and no one else. We’ve worked with authors who are detail freaks. We’ve worked with authors who are bulls-in-China-shops. And in every case, it’s our job to accommodate their style of working. 
 
Ta-dah. If you take nothing else away from this article, it should be this: Your preferred and most comfortable style of working is the one that is best for you, when working with a ghost copy-editor. Period.
 
It’s hard enough for you to get these ideas out of your head and down on paper. And then to pay someone to lubricate that process can feel like adding insult to injury. 
 
But if it’s a good fit, it will be the opposite. It will be intuitive, stress-relieving, and rewarding. You’ll get to see pages appear that make you say, “Dang! I never realized I was that good!”
 
And that’s just when it comes to the finished product: the pages. In consultant-speak, that’s the “destination.” Which is certainly crucial. But equally important is the “journey.” How do you like to work? In person? Via Zoom? Transactionally and asynchronously, via email? Or some crazy hybrid of all of the above? Are you serious? Are you playful? Do you work in marathons? Or sprints? 
 
Again, it doesn’t matter. Whatever works best for you is what’s best. Period. 
 
So we’ve done brainstorming sessions to help authors tease out ideas. And we’ve worked with others who have simply “thrown stuff over the wall” at us, nearly completely baked. 
 
And what’s our reward? Sure, we get paid. But the far bigger reward is seeing the happiness that our authors derive from both the journey and the destination. 
 
Remember: “Ghost.” Our name does not appear, anywhere, on any of the books we’ve helped shepherd to press. So it’s got to be a good relationship—on both sides—for it to work. 
 
Writing a book is a big project. It takes a long time, typically measured in months. So be sure you choose a ghost you can live with. 
 
Have a book project you’d like to discuss? Contact us, and let’s see if it’s a good fit. 

Steve Jobs famously said “It’s not the customer’s job to know what they want.” 
 
What did he mean by that? Is that a hard-and-fast rule that you should never break? If not, when should you break it? 
 
And most importantly, how can you generate more revenue from the answers to these questions? 
 
Let’s dive in! 
 
Creative inference
 
That (in)famous Steve Jobs quote was about his notion of eschewing focus groups when it came to product development. His thinking was, that if you’d asked a customer, say in 1983, what they “wanted,” in terms of electronic brainpower, they would have simply said “a better calculator.” They couldn’t envision a Macintosh, because they didn’t know what was technically possible, nor how to transform that technology into a wholly new product category which would surprise and delight them at every turn. 
 
Gee. Steve Jobs was onto something. Who’da thunk? 
 
Is this a hard-and-fast rule? Hate to be squishy, but it depends. If you really want to nail product or service development, you can certainly borrow a page from Steve Jobs. The whole idea of creatively inferring what customers want, based on their day-in-the-life situation, is a specialized practice that doesn’t come naturally to many business owners; as such, there are consultancies (and we’ve worked with them) which specialize in this. 
 
Let’s talk about marketing. And let’s assume, for now, that you’ve got a product or service to sell which already checks the surprise-and-delight boxes for your customers. 
 
If those customers are repeat customers, you have an opportunity here. Yep: you can ask them things.
 
Oh, the sacrilege!
 
Survey the situation
 
We recently helped a client craft a customer-satisfaction survey campaign. We say “campaign,” because it included a few components. Pay attention, and you’ll get ideas for your own business: 
 
Our client had always conducted customer-satisfaction surveys at the conclusion of any engagement with any of their clients. It was, and is, a sound business practice: It helps them to continually improve. 
 
But, assuming that they’re doing most things very well, it also makes for a very nice marketing opportunity. 
 
Think about that: Let’s say you’re a client of this company. They just served you very nicely. You’re about to move on, and lose that precious top-of-mind awareness of what they do… when you get a friendly email from them, asking you to please complete their customer-satisfaction survey. 
 
Aha. You’re instantly reminded of them! When you complete the survey, you’re instantly reminded of just what they did, and how good they were at it. What a wonderful reinforcement!
 
…But what if you don’t complete the survey? Then what? 
 
Well, you still got the email, inviting you to participate. And there was another dollop of incentive therein; as we’d said, this was a “campaign.”
 
Sweetening the deal
 
The customer-satisfaction survey email was a classic opportunity for our client—and for you, reading this—to easily capture low-hanging re-sell and/or up-sell opportunities. 
 
That’s because the email included a referral offer. 
 
It went something like this: 
 
“Complete the survey, and we’ll send you a $25 Amazon Gift Card. Bonus: After you’ve completed the survey, you can earn a $500 Amazon Gift Card by referring a new client to us. And to make you feel better about referring us, you can tell your friends that we’ll give them a $1,000 discount off of our services because you sent them our way! Everyone wins!”
 
You got that right. Everyone wins. 
 
So. The survey is somewhat anti-Jobsian, in that it asks customers how they feel about something that they already bought. But in that regard, Apple is no different: We’ve actually received surveys from them, asking us about products we’ve purchased from them… which have actually included radio-box options for products and features that Apple has not released yet (32-inch iMac, anyone?) So much for their ultra-secretive/customer-detached company culture. 
 
You can also use this technique for other, very basic stuff: What topics would your clients like to see addressed in your upcoming blogs, webinars, or YouTube videos? Ask them.
 
And if you toss in, say, a referral program along with the ask, we surely won’t hold it against you. 
 
Have a marketing challenge you could use help with? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help!