Want to see my work?
Get your copy of my white paper that Gordon Graham — “
That
White Paper Guy” — liked so much when he read
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Charter Member
In Good Standing
A few firms I've done projects and provided services for:
Hewlett-Packard Company
Electronic instruments &
Micro-electronic devices:
Manufacturing & test engineering
(10 years).
Computers: Online help systems design & implementation,
Hardware & software plus Unix operating-system reference manuals
& learning-products engineering (20 years).
RICHARD
GAGE &
ASSOCIATES
Richard Gage & Assoc.
Attorneys at Law
www.RichardGage.net, www.RichardGageLaw.com
Complete turn-key web projects: Website planning and design,
custom XHTML and CSS programming, market positioning, and
copywriting.
These websites load faster than 99% of
all sites tested by 'pingdom.com'.
Street Hypnosis
Igor Ledochowski & Clifford Mee
Large project: Dozens of emails for world-wide, online marketing
of their popular hypnosis-based, self- improvement products
and programs.
Ensign Power Systems, Inc.
Installation, Operating, And Maintenance manuals for custom
high-reliability, military power supplies sold to US and foreign
governments.
Settlement Professionals Inc.
Special report used by a financial planning firm to market their
services related to structuring and managing personal-injury
settlement funding.
Endorsed and Recommended
By:
Elite Lawyer Project
Your Personal Injury Resource Center
Pardon our dust.
The site is still under construction but we wanted you to have
access to the good, new information now instead of making you wait.
Looking for help with your B2B Copy?
Good B2B Copywriters
Are Hard to Find—
Whether in Technology...
Or Other B2B Markets
The Problem:
Whether your company's involved in technology, supply chain, or other
specialties, when you go outside for help with marketing and advertising
copy, you have a problem.
You need a writer who can:
-
Master your advanced technology or other capabilities quickly,
without a lot of time and hand-holding from your people,
-
Write clearly, accurately, and credibly — at a level your
intended audience can readily understand without confusion or
difficulty, and
-
Persuasively present your technology, capabilities, and value
proposition to executives, engineers, management, or others
involved in the decision-making process.
The Obstacles:
But there are obstacles in your way. Which of these common hindrances
have blocked you in your work? Which are you contending with right now?
-
Agency and other copywriters can't handle serious B2B work.
Degrees in English, journalism, marketing, or advertising don't
magically produce a competent B2B copywriter.
They lack knowledge, experience, and interest necessary for presenting
complex technology and business issues in a credible, believable way
that is persuasive to engineers, executives, and other decision makers.
-
You can't find qualified writers to plan and present your
message in a way and at a level that meets your legitimate business
needs, so you drag engineers and sales staff into an ineffective role
as part-time copywriters.
That creates several problems: (1)They aren't trained copywriters.
(2)They get bogged down in details. (3)They have other "real" work
to do, so (4)your collateral gets postponed. (5)Their writing is
difficult to read and understand. And (6)your message gets buried
somewhere in the depths of the copy, (7)often leading to lower
conversion rates, which means (8)less profit at the end of the day.
-
Your in-house writing staff is overloaded. The normal ups
and downs of product launches, special projects, seasonal peak
periods, vacations, and corporate staff reductions make keeping
collateral development on schedule a virtual nightmare.
The Solution:
The only reasonable solution is getting qualified outside
help — if you can find it.
I Can Handle Your Problem...
And Slay Your Obstacles
Solving Your Problem:
I was employed by Hewlett-Packard Company for 30 years where I was
surrounded by and involved in leading- and bleeding-edge technology
the entire time.
Here are the facts about my work and
the
profits I personally put on HP's bottom line:
-
Industrial-electronics technician on a high-resolution digital voltmeter
production line (1969-70). I cut the test and troubleshooting time
for my difficult section of the machine from the previous 9 hours to
90 minutes in nine months, an 85% reduction in labor cost.
As a test and technical staff engineer, I designed, built, and wrote all
of the software for a computerized chip-testing system. It was constructed
directly from circuit diagrams and engineering drawings, with no prototype
testing or bread-boarding, and contained more than 120 printed-circuit
cards. After six weeks of turn-on and test, it ran, reliably, as
designed, for more than four years in full production, saving the company
a huge sum in lower test times and reduced scrap in contrast to previously
inaccurate test results.
As a staff engineer, I designed manufacturing tooling and
reliability/life-test systems, for manufacturing state-of-the-art
micro-electronic assemblies. The reliability of these designs cut
manufacturing costs and dramatically increased the dependability of
life-test results, with corresponding increased profits to the company.
-
After ten years with the company, I moved to marketing as a senior
writer and learning-products engineer for 20 years.
After five years writing hardware manuals for customers and field-service
and support, I moved to working on HP-UX — HP's flagship Unix
operating system.
I then wrote a long series of customer-tutorial manuals for HP-UX, one
of which I arranged to have moved into the bookstore market. Originally
written in 1987, I titled it The Ultimate Guide to the Vi and Ex Text
Editors. It is still widely considered the best book ever written
on the subject, and though out of print, is still being sold via
print-on-demand by Amazon.com, as of February 2014. Book royalties paid
to HP more than covered two years of my salary.
Plus, a simple change I made in how manuals were produced and updated
slashed HP's production and warehousing costs, putting more money on
their bottom line than my entire salary spanning 30 years.
For four years, I had exclusive responsibility for the master reference
manual for the HP-UX operating system (commonly called Unix man pages).
My job was to maintain and update it for each new system release, and also
improve and create new content for it. I overhauled the typography, and
internal formatting standards, then dramatically improved the overall
usability for customers.
Lower production costs and streamlined procedures enabled me to stay
on top of a project that later took nearly a dozen people to handle
because they lacked technical skills to do B2B work in a technical
environment.
I understand your problem finding capable writers.
I then overhauled, redesigned, and created a new online help system
for HP-UX system administration because the original system was not
very helpful.
[Quite frankly, the previous writer didn't know enough about what users
needed to know to even explain what they needed to know so they could
do their job. That's a very common problem among writers attempting to
do what needs to be done for B2B businesses and marketers.]
Well into the program (which I handled by myself), usability testing in
Germany reported the online help as "excellent to exceptional" in
usability, content quality, and overall usefulness.
Why? Because I always write for customers and I know in the end,
they're the ones who sign my (and your) paycheck. There's a reason
why I was kept at the top of the pay curve as the top writer in a
department of 45 writers and learning-products engineers, and it
was rooted in my focus on doing what was right for customers.
That's also why customers gave me their unlisted home phone numbers and
an invitation to call anytime (completely unsolicited). Just imagine
my response when a manager in a meeting would say, "We need to get
closer to our customers."
Slaying Your Obstacles:
I don't have a degree in English. Instead, my degree includes an extended
major in physics, a minor in mathematics, and extensive studies in other
areas, including speech-theater, humanities, industrial arts, business,
and others.
My last English class was more than a half-century ago.
But I've obtained substantial training in direct-response copywriting from
the most successful, best known, and most widely recognized and absolutely
best masters of the craft to be found on Planet Earth. Knowledge that
cannot be found on any college or university campus anywhere.
Names like Bob Bly, Clayton Makepeace, Perry Marshall, John Carlton,
Drayton Bird, Joshua Boswell, Mark Ford (pen name Michael Masterson),
Gordon Graham, Jonathan Kantor, Michael Stelzner, and numerous others,
many of whom have become my own good friends.
I've also studied the work and writings of no longer living writers from the
past, including Rosser Reeves (Chairman of the Board, Ted Bates & Company,
the world's fourth largest advertising agency), Claude Hopkins, Eugene
Schwartz, David Ogilvy, Gary Halbert, and many others.
College professors familiar with these names, much less their writings are
rare. That's why most college graduates have never heard of them and that's
why they can't do good copywriting that works.
I also took graduate courses in electrical/electronic engineering and
advanced mathematics.
Therefore I build my writing on principles, not theories.
But I also back serious education with broad personal experience and
ventures in business and life.
I've owned my own businesses since the mid-1960s, including a store-front
retail store and two cable TV systems, commercial sound contractor, and
residential construction general contractor.
I also designed, manufactured, and marketed a 5-horsepower dust-collection
system all over the US and Canada, introducing me to some of the
intricacies of commercial exporting.
Now add to that more than 25 years of part-time direct sales to consumers,
and other business enterprises.
Don't underestimate the value of experience and perspective gained while
raising nine successful, productive children. It certainly helps
provision the well-furnished mind that world-renowned copywriter Drayton
Bird says is essential to good copy.
I can handle serious B2B copy because I've been a B2B writer for more than
a third of a century, and one way or another, there's a high probability
I understand your customer because I've bought from a company much
like yours.
That means I can also take your message to your customers and connect with
them effectively, then explain complex, difficult material in a way that
is simple yet effective enough to meet the needs of the non-engineer,
non-technology, decision makers in your target audience.
As an engineer, I've written and read white papers enough to know what
they need to contain and how to present them. Same for case studies and
other collateral because I understand what prospects need to know. I
have you covered, whatever your B2B copywriting needs might be.
You Had A Problem. I Can Handle It.
Want Problem Gone?
Easy ... Just Contact Me
By phone or email — Contact information:
Clarke Echols
1579 S. Taft Ave.
Loveland, CO 80537
(970) 667-6736
email:
Clarke@verinet.net