As my main focus, I write exclusively for privately held "entrepreneurial" IT companies that sell new, complex, expensive and hard-to-explain products and services to sophisticated buyers in the business to business (B2B) arena.
The reason for it is that I have significant industrial experience in the IT sector, including engineer, software developer, project manager and technical buyer, so I can match the structure and the tone of your documents to the methods buyers use to digest information and make buying decisions.
As the saying goes, if you want to understand what John Smith buys, you have to see the world through John Smith's eyes. Well, during my engineering years, I gained significant experience as being the proverbial John Smith, so I know the psychology of buying.
I know some people insist that subject matter expertise is not important for copywriters, and they're right. If your readers are laypeople or idiots, you don't need subject matter expertise.
But as my former badminton partner, a commercial pilot, was fond of saying...
"You can recognise a pilot by the way he climbs into the cockpit."
In my own area of interest, I can recognise a skydiver by the way she puts on her parachute.
When your buyers have advanced degrees in certain subject matters, they instantly recognise that the promotional pieces they are reading have been written by laypeople or pretend experts from Elance.com or from one of the many other content farms. The word "spamducation" by Jonothan Stribling comes to mind when I'm thinking of these content farms. You lose your credibility and the buyer's perception of your expertise and reputation instantly goes from respected authority to replaceable vendor or even to a third rate punk and a raving idiot.
And at that moment, real buyers instantly transfer your materials to the purchasing department, and the next available purchasing agent starts beating you up on your terms and prices. Now you're just another peddler and get treated accordingly.
A few years ago a new client complained that they had sent out a direct mail package on some computerised cardiology equipment to doctors, and they had zero response.
I read their stuff and found the problem. Their layperson writer called a heart attack a heart attack. But doctors call it myocardial infarction. Using the wrong name was enough to lose credibility.
Another client sent out an email and called the "QRS complex" (of ECG signal) an "EKG bundle". That was it. This one error tanked the whole campaign.
Luckily, a few weeks later, we managed to correct both problems, and both campaigns turned out to be very good.
But terminology matters a lot.
So, if you want to be treated as a respected authority, then the writer's subject matter expertise is important. Otherwise it's not.
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