According to an article published by the Illinois Information Technology Association (IITA), 550 million Internet searches are done daily worldwide ? and only 23% of adults under 30 today read newspapers regularly.

Do you read newspapers? Why or why not?

Will newspapers close their doors within one generation? Or will the Sunday morning ritual of reading the New York Times be around forever?

Semantics ? the language you use to describe your product and offer ? can make a huge difference in bottom-line results.

If that were not true, no car dealer would advertise ?pre-owned automobiles.? They would just sell used cars.

Another example: Collin Street Bakery, headquartered in Texas, was struggling to generate sales for its fruitcake.

The cakes are delicious. But ?fruitcake? has a negative image.

One of the reasons Collin Street fruitcakes taste so good is they are made with pecans grown on the Texas river banks.

So Collin Street Bakery repositioned their fruitcake, calling it a ?Native Texas Pecan Cake.?

The results: response rates to direct mail selling the cakes increased 60% ? and the promotion was so successful, the bakery mailed 12 million pieces of mail.

It always surprises me how many marketing people jump on trends and become ?instant evangelists? for the new thing ? whether it?s blogging, podcasting, or SEO copywriting ? mainly, it seems, because it IS new.

They so badly want to believe that their beloved gimmick is the ?holy grail? or marketing ? the silver bullet ? despite the fact that such has never been found ? and, I am convinced, never will be.

I?m of a different school ? the ?show me? school. And in marketing, that means showing me that a new tool or trendy technique has a proven track record of generating a positive ROI.

Until that happens for a new marketing technique ? whether it?s blogging or whatever ? I can?t see getting excited about it. Why would you?

It does seem to me that the people who are quick to embrace the ?next big thing? ? even though it?s far from certain to be so ? are mainly the consultants who want to peddle advice on that marketing method to unwary clients.

So the consultants make money whether it works or not. But the clients lose big time when it produces zilch in results.

Right?

On September 22, 2005, Oprah Winfrey announced that her TV book club?s next pick would be ?A Million Little Pieces? by James Frey.

According to an article in BusinessWeek (10/10/05, p. 46), the book sold 85,000 copies within 4 days of Oprah?s announcement ? making it an instant best-seller. Bookstores ordered an additional 650,000 copies with the ?Oprah?s Book Club? seal on the cover.

?SEO (Search Engine Optmization) copywriting? requires that the copywriter concern himself with strategic placement of key words within his Web copy to optimize search engine rankings of the pages he writes.

The problem is that to create really powerful copy, you have to have a single core audience in mind ? and concentrate all your effort on writing to that one audience.

When I write copy, that audience is the prospect ? the potential buyer of the product I am selling.

But with SEO copywriting, you are pandering to another ?audience? ? the search engines ? and not the reader.

And by creating copy that?s optimal for attracting search engines, you are, to some degree, weakening that copy?s power to sell ? diluting its strength ? because you are worrying about two audiences: the reader and the search engines ? instead of focusing every word on the customer.

And that?s not how to write copy that sells.

I think the best approach is:

1. Write the strongest selling copy you can aimed at the human reader ? and forget the search engines.

2. Once that copy is finished, go back and check to make sure key words are appropriately placed, but?.

3. Never change a word of strong selling copy if that change will make it even one iota weaker ? even if SEO best practices would endorse that change.

In other words, write for the customer ? and not SEO.

My small poll of top copywriters ? writers with a proven track record of writing winners ? agree.

?I?d rather invest my time and energy in [writing] interesting, informative, and fact-filled copy,? says Gary Bencivenga.

Parris Lampropoulos doesn?t even think about search engines when writing copy:

?When I?m writing the copy, I?m working at one task and one task only: to get whoever is reading it to place the order.?

To which I add: Right on!

Of course, I?m sure you have your own opinion on SEO and copywriting. So: what say you?

A new study from the University of Texas, reported in NewScientist (9/17/05, p. 13), indicates that emotion may actually play a role in helping people remember factual information.

In the study, 57 volunteers were shown a disturbing film about a surgical procedure, then asked questions about their emotional state and their memory of events in the film.

Researchers found that subjects who made the most effort to keep their emotions in check had the worst recall for what they had seen.

By logical extension, sales copy that stimulates an emotional response should also translate into better recall of product facts and sales arguments.

In that way, emotion helps logic sell.

In his new book ?Libey and Pickering on RFM and Beyond? (MeritDirect Press), Don Libey states: ?I believe price has become the dominant factor in business-to-business and consumer purchasing today.?

He attributes this to four causes:

1. The Wal-Martization of America.
2. The economic slow-down of 1999-2005.
3. The Internet.
4. Online price comparison technologies.

?All things being equal, customers will buy on price,? concludes Libey.

My problem is with the statement ?all things being equal.?

Of course if everything else is the same, and only the price is different, then price is the key factor.

But even in an age where products are increasingly commodities, all things are rarely if ever equal.

For instance, a Nissan Maxima is a Nissan Maxima, regardless of whom you buy it from.

But I might buy my Nissan Maxima from Dealer A instead of Dealer B because they are a mile closer to my home ? or they offer free loaners when my car is in the shop ? or the salesperson was friendly and didn?t pressure me ? or they had the color I wanted in stock ? or a friend raved about their service department ? even though their price was not the lowest.

After all, if you went to three cardiac surgeons for quotes on the triple bypass you need, and the three quoted, respectively, $10,000, $11,000, and $850 ? would you really buy the $850 operation?

Often a low price is a warning sign to the consumer that there?s something wrong with your product ? and as Don knows, in split tests, higher prices often beat lower ones for the same product.

What do you think? Are customers primarily price driven today? Or are other factors more important in making purchase decisions?

In her new book ?Bait and Switch,? Barbara Ehrenreich writes: ?PR is really journalism?s evil twin.?

?Whereas a journalist seeks the truth, a PR person may be called upon to disguise it or even to advance an untruth,? says Ehrenreich. ?If your employer, a pharmaceutical company, claims its new drug cures both cancer and erectile dysfunction, your job is to promote it, not to investigate the ground for these claims.?

PR practitioners: Is Barbara way out of line? Or right on target?