Image by eye of einstein via Flickr
Ever hear of “so long and might as” project syndrome?
It’s what happens when small projects slowly (and sneakily) turn into big ones.
It all began when a family friend started remodeling his house. One thing led to another, and the project kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
Here’s what happens
For instance, the living room looks kinda grungy. So you repaint it. Then, of course, the dining room starts to look dingy in comparison. So you think, “well so long as I’m painting the living room, I might as well paint the dining room too.” Then you notice that the wooden floor in the hallway looks all scratched up. So you refinish it. And on and on and on.
This happens with copywriting and marketing projects too. So long as you’re placing an ad or writing a landing page asking people to download your ebook, you might as well ask them to sign up for your newsletter too. Oh, and maybe follow you on Twitter or Facebook.
Stop the scope creep!
Keep that up with home renovations and pretty soon you’ll be buried in paint, lumber, new plumbing, new fixtures, and large appliance boxes. You’ll swiftly turn a $200 project into a $2000 project.
Let that scope creep affect your copywriting and your marketing and you’ll confuse people. They won’t know what to do first. The danger is that they may be overwhelmed and end up doing nothing at all.
The other variation on this is when a simple project (write three blog posts) turns into three blog posts, plus a landing page, plus a newsletter, plus an email campaign. This is great if there’s additional payment to go with the additional work. Make sure you stop and make it clear to your client that adding to the project adds to the bill too.
Keep your call to action simple
The best thing to do is to focus on one thing. Ask for that thing, such as downloading that ebook, or calling for a free quote. But just that one thing, don’t add sharing buttons to your landing pages.
It’s OK to offer several ways to contact you (email, web, phone). Some people prefer to talk to someone, while others would rather just send an email and be finished with it.
Options that make your customers lives easier are fine.
Just don’t end up like the poor guy in the photo (still working one year and four months later).
Oh, and the family friend? He ended up starting a renovation business called “So Long and Mightas”