BOO! 
It’s Halloween, time to talk about monsters, goblins, witches and ghosts. Well, this is a marketing blog, so maybe I’ll just stick to the subject and talk about ghostwriters.
In case you don’t know, or aren’t exactly sure, what a ghostwriter is: it’s a person who writes a book, article, speech, or ahem…marketing blog, for another person, giving them authorship. In marketing it’s actually a pretty common occurrence.
Marketing Ghostwriting
Though the intention is that you NOT realize it, you probably encounter marketing ghostwriting every day. In marketing we do it all the time.
Why do we do it? Many times the person we want to author an article is too busy to write it. They may know what they want to say, but not how to get their point across. Quite possibly they are a terrible writer. It’s not meant to mislead—most often it is meant to make the message clear.
Communicate Your Marketing Message
In business the purpose of written marketing is to communicate a specific message. What better person to ghostwrite an article than a marketer?
Marketing Genius
A common misconception about marketers is that we’re know-it-alls. The truth is (as much as we hate to admit) we don’t know everything. You know I don’t believe this because one of my own marketing messages is that my clients are experts in their own fields. They are the know-it-alls when it comes to their businesses. How is it possible that a marketing consultant like me could ghost write a blog about, say interior design or mortgage lending? Easy, I sit down with my clients, I get to know about how they manage their business, I pay attention to the way they talk about their work, get to know their personalities, sometimes I even watch them in action with their customers. I also get a little help.
Ghostwriters need a little help.
We look to our experts: our clients. We decide what it is we want to accomplish and they give me a little help. Sometime it is a draft paragraph or two, a couple sentences, a list of bullet points, a voicemail, anything to get the ghostwriting started. If necessary we do a little research to fill in the details. When it’s time to publish the proper author is credited and everyone is happy.
Ghostwriting for marketing isn’t a trick and isn’t spooky, but it’s a great way to promote yourself as the expert even if the writing part is a little scary.
There are lots of reasons why your business may not have marketing staff: you may not have 40 hours of marketing work to be done each week, you may not be able to afford salary and benefits for additional employees, or maybe you just don’t want those goofy marketing people dancing around the office everyday.
Neither is marketing. Alright, I wouldn’t begin to presume marketing is anything close to brain surgery, but the point is why would you do the marketing work yourself when you can work with a marketing expert?
Marketing isn’t about the latest, greatest, coolest, fanciest, funkiest, most award-winning…”campaign”. Yep, all those things are pretty good, but what’s most important is your business. Well, that and getting more of it.