Empathy, Editing, and Paper Clipping: The Keys to Marketing Content that Sells

What happens between your business and increased sales?

It could be paper cuts caused by your marketing content.

Yes, I'm talking about those surprisingly painful little slices that seem to be drawn to the most delicate parts of your fingers.

In my 20+ years of writing and editing marketing content, I've seen many successful entrepreneurs, small business owners, and freelancers dedicate significant resources to content marketing only to hit a sales wall in due to common content issues that cause paper cuts.

What causes paper cuts in content? The following list will give you an idea, but it is by no means exhaustive:

Bad first impression Irrelevant graphics Unexplained terms Lack of social proof Weird color scheme Unequal exchange of value No way to contact you Broken shapes Content looks dense Unclear differentiation No way to close the gap Bad text flow Heavy and negative language Unanswered reader questions broken basket Content lacks structure Lack of thought transitions Heavy jargon No clear selling proposition Lack of evidence Preaching Aggressive sales language Unresolved objections from readers Grammar errors and typos

It's true, none of us are perfect. We all make mistakes.

But it's precisely this way of thinking (we all make mistakes) that leads too many content writers and content teams to put prospects at risk of paper cuts.

The real danger of paper cuts is that they add up.

Death by 1,000 paper cuts

Have you heard the phrase "death by 1,000 paper cuts?"

The original phrase is "death by 1,000 cuts". It's an ancient Chinese method of torture and execution by...I'm sorry to put this visual in your head...slow carving.

An 1858 illustration from the French newspaper Le Monde illustré, of the execution in lingchi of a ... [+] Auguste Chapdelaine, French missionary, in China

By Unknown author - Le Monde illustré, February 27, 1858, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1814449

Today, death by 1,000 paper cuts refers to dying of 1,000 small ailments or being crushed by 1,000 minor problems instead of just one big one.

And that's exactly what happens to buyers when they read poor marketing materials.

Here are examples of how paper cutouts work in different content forms.

Paper cuts from your website

Websites are a form of content marketing responsible for a lot of paper cuts; how's it going?

getty

Imagine that a prospect lands on your website, which has been in need of an update for many years. "It looks like it was built in 2008," they think. Paper cut, paper cut.

Because they need what you offer, they don't hit the back button to get back to search results. They read on. "Wait, is that a typo? " they think. Paper cut.

"What does that mean?" » they think, read and reread but do not understand the text. "Sigh." Paper cut, paper cut, paper cut.

They click on your services page and notice that the images are misaligned. Paper cut.

After suffering seven paper cuts, your prospect is in pain. They leave your site looking for another consultant.

Paper cuts from an ebook

Your marketing ebook may look cool, but is the content giving potential buyers paper cuts?

getty

Another prospect responds to a LinkedIn ad and downloads an ebook from your SaaS business. It looks good, so that's a plus.

They open the ebook expecting to skim the titles to see what's most important and worth reading...but there are no titles. Paper cut.

Still interested, they begin to read.

Then, after 97 words, the author begins to push, sell,...