Do you feel that you’re wasting valuable marketing efforts on tire-kickers: a large and growing market segment? They subscribe to all your free offers — but leave their credit cards behind.

Early in my business life, I talked to anyone and everyone, enthusiastically. I gave away classes, e-books, articles and more.

But soon I was forced to confront the reality of opportunity cost. While I was chatting happily with the freebie-seekers, I lost the opportunity to update my websites, create new products and write more articles. — activities that would most likely bring “real” paying clients.

1. Communicate “professional” and “commercial” on every page of your website.

Like many professionals-turned-marketers, I was nervous about sounding too sales-y. But when I began learning more about copywriting, especially copy for the web, my style became more direct. As soon as you arrived on my website, you knew: Sales were happening here.

What I learned: Serious buyers rarely got turned off. They want to be sold. Freebie-seekers and tire-kickers got the message quickly: You have to pay to play.

Every copywriter’s nightmare. We write beautiful copy for a client, who takes one look and says, “You can’t be serious! This is too sales-y…or too simple…or too different…”

And I’m reminded of the days, many years ago, when I volunteered as a Pet Adoption Counselor with the San Francisco SPCA. Looking back, I must have been training for what I do now. I had lots of enthusiasm. People often teased, “You’re selling cats!” Sure enough, many visitors went up with a crate holding a furry bundle of joy.

Our Volunteer Coordinator kept reminding us, “Don’t judge the visitors. You’re not going home with this person. The adopter who drives you crazy may be the best thing that ever happened to a dog.”

True.

And copy works the same way. We don’t judge our friends the way their dogs and cats do. And we don’t read our copy like our own customers.

I tell my own clients, “You may not like this copy. But you’re not the target market, even if you think you resemble your clients.”