Get Content Savvy with Copyblogger’s Chris Garrett

Chris Garrett is a self-proclaimed Internet addict who’s putting his addiction to good use. Throughout his career, Chris has worked for brands ranging from Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble to local mom-and-pop startups and charities. Nowadays his work can be found on Copyblogger, Amazon, and Chrisg.com. Recently we picked Chris’s brain about content marketing, online writing, and the all-important (and ever-elusive) perfect user experience.

AMB: Talk about your background. How have you become such an expert in online content? And we’re particularly curious about your transition from traditional advertising to online marketing.

CG: I actually moved into advertising from online! I started out in IT. I got onto the Internet in the early ’90s when the college where I worked wanted to get all of the staff, students, local libraries, and schools online. That’s when I fell in love with the web. I learned everything from books, and trial and error. It led to a job at an Internet consultancy, then a web agency, and then a much larger company that did lots of advertising and marketing-related things. I never became a Mad Man, but I did get lots of exposure to the non-coder side of the business, which made me realize I wanted to get my teeth stuck into it.

AMB: Based on your work with Copyblogger, are there any basic tips you’d give marketers about writing online?

CG: What I will say is you have to attract, engage, and then convert. Don’t try to sell right off the bat. It’s more expensive and less effective if you try to sell first and build a reputation later. So instead, attract the prospect, educate, and engage. Then when the time is right, you can make relevant offers knowing exactly what the problem is and how you can solve it. At Copyblogger, we talk a lot about attractive headlines, building a loyal audience, and making offers; but attracting, engaging, and then converting is the core of it.

A second tip would be to sign up for the 14 free ebooks at Copyblogger.

Seriously, those ebooks are an education that should be sold for thousands of dollars. They really do lay all the foundations you need.

AMB: How do you think content marketing could fit into a strategy for an e-commerce business?

CG: Case in point, consider the My Itchy Dog website—it’s all about solutions for when your dog is itchy, right? But there are tons of solutions for itchy dogs out there. So when you need a bit of help, you want to go to someone you trust. You want advice from the go-to person. You want to buy from someone with subject matter expertise. So you search in Google, find out who looks like they know how to help you, and then dig deeper. But all of that is actually leading to a purchase.

AMB: What’s your best piece of advice for an e-commerce company?

CG: Answering that question used to be much easier! I think e-commerce companies are getting really savvy, which is wonderful to see.

I’d suggest paying attention to how your site renders on mobile. The tolerance for a bad mobile experience is basically zero. Also, do you even rank in search engines? When you click a result, is it obvious that you’re in the right place? Does your site work in the best way all the way through to transaction—and even after? How is your content connecting with your ads, offers, and product pages? Is your email marketing effective? Are you increasing the lifetime value?

If I had to say one thing, it’s to make sure you have someone whose job is user experience. And then measure this person’s results using Net Promoter Score® or some in-house metric. Or perhaps this is one of the many hats you wear. But whoever it is, this person needs to work with all of the other departments to make sure everything from the first impression to customer service is delivering the best user experience possible. Don’t cheat by just copying Amazon, but that might be a good place to start!

Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, NPS, and Net Promoter Score are trademarks and registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld and are being used under license.