Last week I got a postcard in the mail. I love junk mail because I’m a copywriter and I love to dissect direct mail pieces and think about what I would have done differently if I were the writer or a member of the creative team.

I save the best and worst pieces of junk mail I get in a special folder in my filing cabinet.

The postcard I got last week was shocking. I’ve blacked out the name of the company because I don’t really think I need to go there, but I will say it’s a company that’s been steadily going in the toilet from what I’ve seen and experienced over the past ten or so years of dealing with them. I will quite often go out of my way not to deal with this company these days because the customer service is horrible, the prices are much higher than their competitors and they charge a special fee when you pay cash instead of charging your purchases to an account…but I digress.

Maybe you received this same postcard in your mailbox and didn’t pay attention to it. This is the front:

Let’s examine the message.

First of all…I feel a bit cozy because I always like hearing that I’m a valued customer. This company wants to help me start my year off right by offering me 10% off my next purchase of $100 or more. Wow! (Strong headline – very important)

Notice that big huge 10% off? Kinda stands out. And 10% off of $100 or more…I’m going to save at least $10 on something that will help me start my year off right. How great! (Draw attention to the discount, grab the reader’s attention – very good)

Now I better hurry because as you can see at the bottom of the message, the offer is going to be ending soon. At the end of the month. (Creating urgency, adding a call to action – terrific)

So I flip over the card to find out more and here’s what we see:

Pretty self explanatory. In a big blue box we see that we have a Bonus Offer Number to use when we place our next order of $100 or more so we can save 10%. Great! (Telling me exactly what to do – perfect)

But wait. Look at that huge paragraph of small print.

Let’s take a closer look:

Okay. There are some exclusions to this “any purchase over $100″ and it looks like as a valued customer, I’ve received a 10% coupon that I can only use when I buy more than $100 worth of bedding, clothing, shoes or a small kitchen appliance from this major department store. Oh wait. Maybe not, because apparently if it’s a “shop by phone” item that doesn’t qualify either.

My question as a consumer is:

Why did they bother to send me something with so many conditions? If this multi-million dollar company really values me, why do they have to make me work hard to figure out which items apply for this discount?

If I’m so valued, wouldn’t this company (which is a pain to deal with) try to lighten up and give me 10% off any order of $100 or more without such a huge list of exclusions?

My question as a copywriter is:

Why on earth did this postcard ever get to the printing and mailing stage? If there were so many conditions, wouldn’t it have been a smarter “marketing” move to let people find all that out after they already got to the website and picked the things they wanted and had made a decision to buy them before realizing they didn’t apply with their coupon? Cause then although they would have been pissed off, they still may have gone through with their purchase even though they didn’t qualify for the 10% off because they’d already decided they needed and wanted those items.

I don’t know. If you’re going to call such attention to the fact that your customers are only valued enough to get a 10% discount on a $100+ purchase on small ticket items like bedding and clothing then why bother with that postcard at all?

I can’t imagine who thought this was a good idea. If that were my postcard and I was being told by corporate to promote a sale on small kitchen appliances, bedding and apparel (which appears to be what applies in this promotion) I would have made it a big deal that with this coupon code you save 10% when you buy more than $100 worth of apparel, home decor and small appliances and played that up.

Then it would be a sale based on a positive – Look at what you can save on!

Instead of the current negative – Look at what we don’t want to give you a discount on!

But what do I know? I’m just a freelance copywriter working from a little home office.

I wonder how many other people saw that postcard and had the same reaction as me. A big belly laugh and a trip to the recycling bin. Well, in my case, it’s going in my swipe file, but if I was not a writing geek it would be in a blue bag.

What do you think?

Do you think getting 10% off, even with so many conditions, is a great way to start your year off right as they state on the postcard? Was it a good marketing move? A smart promotion?

Or are you with me when I say that I feel about as much like a valued customer as I do when they charge me $2 to pay cash?

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I’m a professional writer. I maintain other people’s blogs for a living – and I do it well. When I start working with a new “ghostblogging” client, I propose a posting schedule depending on the their budget. I always stress the importance of sticking to that schedule because posting on a regular schedule is basically the cardinal rule of blogging.

I’ve broken the cardinal rule of blogging.

I’m writing this post on January 6 and the last date I published a post was October 23. If I could be arrested for breaking a blogging law, I would be in jail.

I know that I should have just picked up and gotten back on some kind of regular posting schedule at some point, but the more time that went by after that last post just made it harder to “show my face” here (at my own blog) again.

You might be thinking that it’s pretty dumb of me to be highlighting such a bad personal blogging history here, considering I am a writer by trade, but I’ve decided to be transparent about this.

I’m actually pretty lucky that I still have such a thriving business because besides this blog, I have been letting all of my marketing slide. Breaking another cardinal business rule, I have been very busy with copywriting projects and working on new ventures that (besides being really active on Twitter) I’ve all but stopped marketing.

If it weren’t for the referrals from happy clients and the time I spend on Twitter, I’m pretty confident that if all my clients disappeared one day, my business would disappear too.

You should never, ever stop marketing your business. I’ve said this to countless other entrepreneurs over the years, but I’ve let it happen to me. You don’t stop marketing, even when you’re working full time helping other people market their businesses. Because one day all that work might dry up and then where would you be? Ground zero.

I got off lucky. I still have lots of work, lots of people like me to write for them and they tell other people about me, but I need to get serious here and create a new marketing plan for the new year. One that’s easy to implement, easy to stick to and effective.

I have tons of ideas. In fact, I developed a whole new line of service offerings last fall that I just haven’t gotten around to plugging into the business.

That lax attitude stops here.

I will be setting aside some time in my week…every week…to work on marketing my business. Whether it’s doing more with my Facebook fan page, setting up blog posts to publish on a regular schedule or getting more press releases and articles written and submitted online…I’m going to actively market my business.

If you’re one of my current clients, or if you’re planning to work with me in the future, don’t think this means I’m going to allow myself to get swamped with work and there will be no time for your projects. No matter how many projects come at me, I know how to schedule myself so I don’t bite off more than I can chew.

If you’ve been feeling like me – guilty that you’re not keeping up your blog and letting your marketing slide while you’re busy working in your business – I hope this post gives you a bit of inspiration to turn over a new leaf.

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I participated in one of those silly little Facebook exercises a few weeks back. For my status, I posted something along the lines of, “Pick the one word you feel describes me best and post it below as a comment. Then I’ll do the same for you.”

I don’t normally participate in these things, but this one sounded fun. A lot of my Facebook friends posted words I wouldn’t think would top the list of ways to describe me like, “strong” and “inspiring.” I was expecting more “goofy”s and “nuts”s to be honest. These things were wonderful to hear, but one of my friends who I’ve known for years in real life and in the social networking Internet world, PEI real estate agent Carol O’Hanley, left my favorite reply.

The word she chose to describe me was “genuine.”

I can’t even tell you how much that meant to me, especially since Carol knows me in person and we bump into each other all day long in places like Facebook and Twitter. If she perceives me as being genuine, then I’ve accomplished my goal because the last thing I want is someone thinking I’m completely different in person than I am online.

When I started my copywriting business, I already knew exactly the type of clients I wanted to attract because I know what kind of writing I love to do and what kind of people I love writing for. I made the decision to become a freelance copywriter because writing makes me happier than doing anything else and I didn’t want to waste a single day as a writer working on projects that made me stressed out or cranky.

That’s why I market my personality. The content on my website is me. My branding is me. Facebook updates and Twitter one-liners come from me, I share what I’m feeling and what I’m doing even when they don’t make me sound professional 100% of the time. Because ya know what? I’m not professional 100% of the time. I take breaks throughout the day to play with my children and to bake cookies. I conduct myself professionally with my clients, but not to the point of being stuffy.

I guess I found the key to attracting my ideal clients is to be transparent.

My ideal clients will love that my websites are always decorated for the holidays – it’s my absolute favorite part of the Mann Made brand. The people who appreciate my Halloween pumpkin and spider web are the exact type of people I love working with. If someone thinks it’s foolish, that’s the perfect prequalifier for me.

When someone follows me on Twitter, they’ll know right away if they like me or not. They can get a sense from my 140 character tweets of whether or not they like my writing style. When they read through my website and blog posts or browse my portfolio, they’ll like it or they won’t. And I’m just fine with that either way.

If I were to hide the quirky, fun, creative side of my personality by agonizing over every personal Twitter update I made or holding off on the silly humor in my blog posts, I wouldn’t be being me. And being Jaime has worked out pretty well for me so far. I attract awesome clients. I stand out because my website is colorful, fresh and fun. I end up working with people who want to inject their own personality into their marketing because they realize that’s what attracted them to me.

If you wish you had clients with more of a sense of humor why not focus on attracting those types? If you only want to work with people who are serious and focused, work on attracting them.

Afterall, if you’re not being authentic, do you really think you’re doing anyone any favors?

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There’s a group in my area for caregivers of children aged 0-5 that meets once a week. It’s called “Baby Steps” and last night the discussion was around separation anxiety.

Through our chatting, we struck on a very interesting point. Separation anxiety happens to parents just as much or more than to children. I, for example, started my business to allow me to be at home with my children, and it took my little girl’s own prompting to make me register her for preschool (today was her first day). I had big-time separation anxiety and had to get out of my comfort zone to do what will certainly be best for my daughter.

I only have to think back to the day I moved away from home to know that my mother experienced some major separation anxiety when her eldest child was leaving the nest.

Separation anxiety is basically what happens when you’re forced out of your comfort zone.

I learned last night that separation anxiety is most common with babies aged 10-18 months when they gain the ability to recognize people. They know when someone holding them is not their mother, and most children that age make their anxiety known. But I don’t feel like that anxiety ever really goes away. It just changes depending on our situation in life.

I was thinking about comfort zones when I was brainstorming topics for this blog post, and I thought about my friend Sally Kuhlman’s newest endeavor. Sally has been a virtual assistant for years, that’s how I know her, but she recently launched a new blog “Sally Around the Bay” where she blogs about her adventures around San Francisco Bay. She says that one of the reasons she decided to do this was to force her outside of her comfort zone to try new things.

I think all entrepreneurs can take a cue from Sally.

When’s the last time you separated yourself from yourself? What’s keeping you in your comfort zone? What will it take to force yourself out of it?

Are you afraid to start a blog because you’re afraid of how your thoughts will be viewed by the world? Do it anyway. You know, in this day and age you can hire someone to write your blog posts

Have you been meaning to launch an info product but keep getting in your own way?

Is there a brilliant tele-seminar sitting in your brain waiting for you to get the guts to go ahead and do it?

I was terrified before I first spoke to a group about writing better copy. The first time I got a booth for my business at a trade event I was scared. When I released my second ebook I was no less nervous than I was with my first one. It’s hard to put yourself out there, but you just have to go for it if you want to grow your business and if you want to grow as a person.

Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to be a writer and to me, having someone value my work enough to publish me is the ultimate marker of my success. I’ve gone way outside of my comfort zone and have started pitching magazines on article ideas. Guess what? An editor has responded to me. They loved my query and it looks like I will be published in a magazine this fall.

Sometimes you’re not getting what you want most because you simply aren’t stepping outside your comfort zone and asking for it.

What would you do if you stopped listening to that voice in your head telling you you’re not good enough, or that everyone will laugh at you?

What if the only thing stopping you from being a brilliant success is you?

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I never knew how much I really loved trees until I moved to a home surrounded by them. Tall, healthy and beautiful hardwood trees are everywhere. A birdfeeder hangs from the Maple in my front yard and in return for feeding them, sparrows and chickadees serenade me throughout the day. A stand of birch in the back will make the perfect spot for a hammock one day and the mighty oaks next door have thrown their acorns into our yard in previous years and tiny oaks are springing up in my flower gardens.

Where I grew up, there weren’t trees. There was an ocean…the beach was my backyard playground…but no trees. I always thought the notion of collecting acorns off the ground and raking leaves in the fall was so poetic. Now my four year old asks every day if it’s fall because of the leaves changing and her and her little sister were thrilled when they saw little green acorns on the grass in our neighbor’s yard.

A couple of evenings ago, we were at our neighbor’s house chatting about the acorns and how the girls would sit out there all day and pick them up. The neighbors loved that idea because the more nuts my girls picked up, the less there would be for the squirrels. She said if she had any idea how many squirrels would show up to enjoy those acorns that she never would have planted oaks all those years ago.

Squirrels are destructive and they actually ate the neighbor’s outbuilding a couple of times. So I understand the frustration.But I can’t help but think, the pleasure she and her neighbors have gotten from that tree over the years must make up for the squirrels.

Trees do a lot for us. Besides the sciency things like cleansing the air, those oaks have provided shade on hot days and a a break from the wind on cold ones. Oaks are gorgeous to look at and I’m sure they must have been climbed by children at one point or another and I know my children will enjoy making crafts out of the fallen acorns over the next few weeks. Squirrels can be a big pain, but they only last while the nuts are on the ground…for a couple of months. Is the joy you get from an oak tree for the rest of the year, for decades, worth more than that?

Do you love your business as much as the day you planted the idea seed? Have you watched it flourish and grow over the years only to discover the squirrels? Of course it’s probably not going to be actual squirrels for you…I’m trying to use a metaphor here…but it might be the headache of bookkeeping or the pain of dealing with crabby customers.

Have you ever caught yourself thinking that if you knew how much hassle it would be, you’d never have started your business in the first place?

I don’t know about you, but I think there’s something awfully sad about that.

As I look out my window and watch a pair of blue jays enjoying the view atop a branch of one of those oak trees, I for one am very glad that my neighbor planted those trees.I actually suggested she get a cat to naturally take care of the squirrel problem.

What I would suggest to you for your squirrel is more complicated than a cat. Maybe you need to rebrand yourself or renovate your marketing message to start attracting different kinds of customers.

And maybe you’re just tired like most solo-preneurs and you just need a break. Maybe your clients and customers whose lives you impact in a positive way feel just as passionately about the product or service you sell as I do about the neighbor’s oaks. And here you are wondering if it was ever worth starting the business in the first place.

No matter how many bad days I have as a business owner, no matter how much I hate my squirrels (taxes and filing and stuff) I would never wish it away. And I’m pretty confident that if I went to my clients and said I wish I never became a writer, at least a couple of them would tell me I’m crazy.

After all, for every pain in the butt squirrel, there’s a beautiful, sweet sparrow.

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