32 Reasons to Hire My Friend Laura

You should talk to Laura if you:

1. Need a Versatile Writer
2. Need to Implement Better Processes
3. Want to Make Your Clients Look Good
4. Want to Get Good Information from Experts
5. Want Someone Who Appreciates Floatie Time
6. Need Greater Consistency
7. Want Someone Who Learns Quickly
8. Need to Sustain a Long Argument
9. Only Have Eight Words
   
10. Want to Grow Your Pool of Writers
    
11. Want Someone to Give It to You Straight
    
12. Need Team Players
    
13. Want a Client Perspective
    
14. Want an Agency Perspective
    
15. Want to Address Problems Proactively
16. Want Someone Earns Respect for Your Organization
17. Like to Laugh
    
18. Have a High-Profile Project
19. Can’t Afford to Waste Any Touchpoint
20. Want to Leverage the Collective Experience of Your Writers
21. Want to Make Human Connections with Your Targets
22. Want to Exceed Expectations
    
23. Want to Communicate in Words Your Audience Understands
24. Want a Writer’s Writer
25. Work With People Who Don’t Understand Marketing
26. Need to Fill in the Blanks
27. Need to Hold Onto Business
28. Want People in Your Organization to Help Each Other
29. Need to Improve a Website
30. Are Not the Headmaster of the School for the Fearful
31. Want to Get the Right Message Out
32. Are Trying to Sell Something

If you want to work someone who’s so good she inspires a site like this, check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.

Here’s marketing in a nutshell: find ways to sell something to somebody who should like to have it, while finding a nice middle ground between being so low-key they don’t realize you’re selling something and being so aggressive they never want to buy anything from you. You can’t lose sight of the fact that you’re trying to sell something, but you can’t approach your target audience that bluntly.

Laura knows how to create concepts and write copy that sell effectively at the same time they inform and even entertain the people who encounter them. One of the first major projects where I saw Laura excel was a catalog for a large technology client. In the past, the company had produced large catalogs that covered a wide range of products, but this time it wanted a smaller catalog that focused on an emerging approach to technology.

Laura worked with one of our art directors to create an engaging catalog that helped readers figure out how they could find a good entry point into this new realm. The catalog was clearly organized and punctuated by clever, sometimes even funny introductory pieces that made you want to keep reading. The result? You learned even more about the company’s breadth of products and more reasons why you should buy them.

The catalog became a huge success for the company, both in terms of sales and because more of the company’s international business units invested in translating the catalog for other regions—something that had been a stumbling block for the larger catalogs. As a result, it became a model for several future projects.

If you want to sell something—that is, if you want to make meaningful connections with people who should want to buy what you’re selling—check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.

You’ve heard the cliche that there are no dumb questions. And yet, there are many people who are so afraid of appearing dumb that they don’t ask questions. Even when not asking keeps them from learning information that’s important to doing their jobs right the first time.

That’s why I love something that Laura wrote once to encourage her colleagues to not be afraid to ask questions:

It’s really not a sign of weakness to say you don’t understand. I say it all the time to my clients when I’m trying to understand what the heck I’m supposed to be writing about. Sometimes it seems like I should know, but in the end, I realize my job is to make sense of the information so I can communicate it.

Don’t get the wrong idea—Laura is extremely smart and the vast majority of the questions she asks are insightful and demonstrate a firm command of the source material that she’s been given. But ultimately, she’s more interested in asking questions that get to the key information she needs than she is in asking questions that demonstrate how smart she is. I really admire that self-confidence and commitment to doing what’s best for the project.

If you want someone who’s not afraid to ask questions to make sure she gets things right, check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.

With such a large percentage of marketing budgets moving to online vehicles, many organizations are looking for writers with strong backgrounds in interactive work. To be sure, there are important considerations like keyword density and intrasite linking that can trip up writers who are not used to organizing complex, multithreaded messages into a coherent marketing piece.

But a writer like Laura who has extensive experience in organizing long-copy collateral and wide-ranging messaging can be extremely effective in the online realm. Recently, I got to watch Laura at work on an overhaul of a relatively small (25-page) website for a custom packaging company. Initially, she developed a new site map, which identified several opportunities for the company to tell a more coherent story about itself before diving down into the specifics of particular product lines.

Later, she wrote compelling content for every page of the site. Laura’s writing, as always, spoke clearly to the needs of potential clients and perfectly balanced the need for important details with the need for brevity. She also created ways to link between the major sections of the site to encourage visitors to read more and have a greater understanding of the company than they might from only the home page and one drill-down page.

If you want to bring clarity to the organization and the content of a website, check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.