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Archive for the ‘copywriting’ Category

Writing a sales letter is a practice in anticipating what your prospects will think, and overcoming their objections. When you’re writing your sales copy, it’s invaluable to be able to put yourself in your prospects’ shoes and predict what they’ll think when they read your copy. It may be difficult to predict all of the objections that your prospects will have to your sales letter, but one thing you can easily manage is this: catch the catch. Explain why you’re offering such a great deal or such a great product to your prospects, or they won’t believe your pitch.

Prospects Look Out for Deals that are Too Good
From an early age, most of us are told “if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” By adulthood, most people feel that they can judge whether a deal is good or not, but that little doubt lurks in the back of most people’s minds. If you do a great job of establishing the value of your product, and justifying your price, people might have trouble trusting you or your sales copy. If you make your product sound “too good to be true,” you have to explain yourself to your prospects or risk loosing sales.

Reasons for Offering a Great Deal
A few key phrases can help diffuse worry over a deal being “too good” and convince your prospects that you’re on the up-and-up. With one technique, you explain to your prospects why a product like yours normally costs more, and how you’ve managed to change the production method to realize a cost savings. Then, you can say something like “I can pass along my cost savings to you.” This lets the prospect know that you know you’re offering a really good deal, and gives them a reason for you offering a good deal. If you don’t explain this to them, they’ll think that you’ve misrepresented the value of what you’re selling, and will turn away from your product.

Another technique involves presenting yourself as the “good guy” and responsible community member to your prospects. For example, you could tell your prospects that a colleague has recommended that you charge more for your product, but you’re “not greedy,” so you’ve chosen to offer it for less. One successful copywriter said “This is such a valuable skill set that I’m offering it at this price so as not to price it out of the hands of the people who need it most.”

In most cases, it doesn’t really matter how you overcome the “it’s too good to be true” objection – just that you address it somehow. When you re-read your sales letter, look at it from the eyes of a potential prospect. If you find yourself thinking “What’s the catch?” then you probably need to re-work your copy, or add in some language explaining why you’re offering such a great deal. With this technique, you can overcome the mental objections of the prospects, and you’re that much closer to making a sale!

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Although starting a blog isn’t really a complex undertaking, it’s still a good idea to do some research so that you know you’re presenting the best site possible. You want to drive as much traffic as you can to your blog in order to keep your internet rankings climbing.

It’s also important to keep in mind that blogging involves more than just writing the posts. You have to consider such factors as user experience, site design, and the software you’ll need to get your blog running.

Here are a few resources you can check out that offer great information for starting a blog.

www.IncomeDiary.com. This is the site where Michael Dunlop, blogging entrepreneur, offers a free e-course that details his process.

www.WordPress.com. WordPress offers the software you’ll need to get started. One of its strongest selling points is the ability to customize features to suit your own needs. There are also many free features you can use to get started in a matter of minutes. It also allows you to track statistics and block spam.

www.UXBooth.com. You want visitors to your site to have a good experience; this is what will bring them back again and again. This site offers tips for creating the best experience for your readers.

www.SmashingMagazine.com. This design site presents the latest in web design and development. While you won’t need to study design in order to launch a blog, this site can be a useful resource for getting ideas about how your site should look.

www.CopyBlogger.com. This is a good resource for learning how to write blogs that will drive traffic to your site as you build your list and market products.  It offers courses on copywriting, SEO, headline writing and keywords, among other topics.

www.ProBlogger.net. Visit this site to learn about the more technical side of having a successful blog. You’ll find information about blog design, advertising, tools and services, and much more.

www.WarriorForum.com. A forum where Internet marketers talk about their trade, this site can provide useful information about sales techniques. You might even find tips for marketing methods that apply directly to your niche.

www.TaskUS.com. Although this is technically a virtual assistant site, you can use the service to create custom ranking lists and other useful information that you can post in your blog.

Once you’re comfortable with the technical and writing aspects of blogging, you can start drawing visitors to your site.

Remember that if you want to become a great copywriter, you should first be a great copyreader. You can learn so much from reading other people’s copy and applying what you learn to your own niche.

These resources are sure to give you tips and tricks that will help make your blog successful.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

More and more businesses are using social networking to share information with clients and prospects. Businesses promote products, news releases, conferences and a variety of business-oriented information through social networking with varying success. The most successful businesses don’t just share sterile updates with their followers, but instead hook their followers with interesting information that promotes conversation.

Avoid Sterile Updates
Some businesses create social networking accounts, but just don’t “get” the purpose of networking. These businesses share sterile updates, like “New article posted today” or “New article posted today.” These updates just aren’t very interesting, and they don’t generate buzz or interest in the way that more conversational updates can do.

Instead of saying “Teleseminar today,” a business could say “Excited about the teleseminar today, with 300 people registered and more openings available!” You’re conveying the same basic information, but in a more engaging way. This more conversational style generates buzz and makes it more likely that people will follow your links or want to find out more about what you’re promoting.

Find Ways to Interest Your Followers
Don’t just share a bunch of self-serving updates whenever you have a new product to promote, or an action you want your followers to take. Find ways to interest your followers, and make them want to know what you’ll share next. This can be interesting quotes related to your business, or just general quotes designed to make people think or give them ideas.

You could also share interesting things that other people have posted on the Web, either via sharing links or Re-Tweeting things that other Twitter users have already shared. You don’t have to spend a lot of time creating interesting content in order to interest your followers; just share interesting content, even if it already exists elsewhere.

Promote Conversation to Build Social Networking Success
One of the single most successful social networking marketing techniques hardly seems like marketing at all: promoting conversations. Promoting conversations, particularly when they tie back in to your business, is a great way to keep and build followers, and even boost sales.

One business that uses social networking to promote conversations is a motorcycle part supplier. Every Friday, they ask people if they’re working on their motorcycles or riding for the weekend. People share information about the repairs they’re making, which gives other people the confidence to make similar repairs, or undertake their own repairs. This translates directly to additional sales for the parts supplier, because people order parts to make their repairs. All of this is because the supplier asks a single question every weekend that promotes conversation.

Bottom line: if you’re using social networking to promote your business, don’t just promote your business. Don’t just share sterile, boring updates. Engage your social networking followers. Share interesting information and links, and encourage conversations. You don’t have to talk directly about your business to boost business performance; in fact, some of the best performance boosts come when you don’t talk about your business at all, but instead facilitate interaction among your followers.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. She publishes a free, weekly newsletter for trainers, speakers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Michael Dunlop is the successful young entrepreneur behind such blog sites as www.RetireAt21.com and www.IncomeDiary.com. His sites have upwards of 200,000 visitors each month.

How does he do it?

In his words, “It’s all about creative content.”

When you post a blog with unique content or present standard content in a creative and engaging way, you attract more people. The people who are attracted to your content will then link to it or tweet about it. This is what’s called link bait or tweet bait.

For example, Michael posted “the top earning websites in the world.” He listed what each site earned in the last year, and then broke that down to how much they made in a second. When people see that Google made $691 a second, it catches their attention and they link to his site or tweet the information.

This strategy can work in any niche. Whatever your area of expertise, you can post lists of top earners or “10 best …” Those readers who already follow you will share the information with their network, attracting even more people to your blog.

To save you the time of researching these types of lists, you can use a service such as www.TaskUs.com, which will do the work for you. They will provide you with all the information you need, which you can then copy and paste to your blog. For a reasonable fee, you can see a return that is worth thousands.

You can also post lists that reflect your own personal opinion. For instance, you might post a list of people who have influenced you in your career, or the top ten reasons why it’s great to work in your field.

Since a list of the best of anything is really subjective, some readers might disagree with your choices. Don’t be upset if that happens. It means that they are paying attention to you. The more comments that people post, the more conversation you’ll generate.

The point is to be creative. People are drawn to lists because they present interesting tidbits of information that are easily shared. David Letterman discovered that years ago – his nightly top ten lists have long been shared around the world.

When you offer creative content in the form of link bait or tweet bait, you will begin to attract more readers to your blog. As the number of people linking to your site increases, so does your internet ranking. And it happens instantly. So start thinking creatively about some lists that will give your readers information that they simply can’t wait to share.

There are several universal principles that apply to attracting all types of clients. But, if you really want to focus mainly on corporate clients, there are some areas where your approach will need to be different.

List-building is essential, whether you want corporate or individual clients, but to effectively build your list of corporate clients, you’ll need to employ alternative methods to the usual online blogs, teleseminars and social media.

While these do increase your exposure and will help to grow your list, attracting corporate clients requires you to be doing a lot more offline rather than online. This is the most significant difference between being a magnet for corporate clients as opposed to individuals.

•    Get your articles published – not so much online as in trade magazines that are read by your target audience. This is a phenomenal way to build your list, and it will also enhance your credibility and expertise in your area. When a potential client sees your name attached to a publication that they trust and turn to for trends and advice, they will be more than eager to get on your list.

•    As tempting as it may be, limit sending companies your automatic newsletters or articles online. Corporations and large companies often have spam filters in place that will intercept your material before it’s ever read. Treat your valuable content better than that by making sure it gets into the hands of your intended target market through print media.

•    Advertise at the back of the trade magazines that are prominent in your field. To start with, pick the ones that you read yourself. Your ad doesn’t have to be large or costly. A small classified ad offering your free report can generate some very good leads for you. In fact, when I was first venturing into the corporate track I landed a £50,000 contract with just a small classified ad.

•    Do an offline mailing. This can actually help you to build your online list for later, as well. For example, one of my clients wanted to target corporate women. She put together a mailing campaign promoting a teleseminar to 500 people, and received responses from 125 people. While she physically put something in the post, the contact information she received back included email addresses, which she added to her list.  Once you establish a relationship offline, you will be able to maintain it by contacting your clients online whenever you want.

If you’re going to target corporate clients, you need to think in terms of offline, as well as online, marketing strategies. Of course you shouldn’t abandon the benefits that online exposure can give you, but don’t discount the advantages of doing business the old-fashioned way, before the advances of modern technology made it so easy to reach large numbers of people at once.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

The sales letter is your most important marketing tool for building an audience and gaining attendance at your event. It forms the core for your entire marketing campaign, be it online or offline. As the single most important piece of marketing material you’ll develop for your event, the sales letter is worth an investment, either in terms of time or finances.

Writing a Sales Letter Yourself
As the most important marketing material you’ll have for your event, it’s vital that you produce a good sales letter. If you’ve got a low budget or you simply prefer to maintain control of your event materials, you might want to try writing the sales letter yourself. If you do decide to go this route, make sure you understand what you’re doing before you start your draft.

Because the sales letter is such an important marketing piece, it’s worth investing in training that teaches you how to write a sales letter. Don’t assume that writing a sales letter must be easy. Copywriters use tried-and-true techniques to lead into a sales pitch, list benefits, overcome objections and inspire readers to action. If you don’t utilize these techniques in your sales letter, you could be missing out on potential audience members. Training that teaches you how to write sales letters may cost you both financially and in time spent, but it’s an investment well worth the cost.

Hiring a Copywriter to Write Your Sales Letter
If you don’t have the time or inclination to write a sales letter yourself, you might choose to hire a copywriter to write your sales letter. In some ways, this is an extremely beneficial way to approach the sales process. When you hire a copywriter, you’re getting the benefit of that copywriter’s experience writing sales materials. A good copywriter knows the techniques to motivate attendees to register, and can use that knowledge to help make your event a success.

When selecting a copywriter for your sales letter, ask for samples of prior sales letter writing. Additionally, request conversion information. A copywriter who writes a high-conversion sales letter wants to brag about it, while copywriters who can’t provide conversion information may not have written any high-converting sales materials.

How to Turn a Sales Letter Into Other Marketing Materials
A sales letter is just the starting point for your marketing campaign. You can also turn a sales letter into other marketing materials by taking some of the bullet points or takeaway points and creating new materials. You could create postcards, a landing page, brochures, flyers or other sales materials simply by rearranging and nicely formatting your sales letter. The sales letter contains all the information you need for your marketing; all you need to do is convert it to whatever end format you want to present to potential attendees.

Whether you choose to write it yourself or hire a copywriter, I recommend you invest in a good sales letter. Your sales letter is going to be your point of contact with potential attendees, and it can single-handedly create a successful event.

If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

No matter how good you are at what you do, if not enough people know about you and your product or services, your business won’t be as successful as it can be. Word-of-mouth recommendations will certainly help promote your business, but the best way to let prospective clients know you exist is through one-to-many advertising.

This means paying to get your company information on lists, on web pages, in publications and anywhere else that your market may be. There are several important things to keep in mind regarding how and where you should advertise.

1.  When it comes to buying NEW advertising, you must treat it as a risk.
Essentially, you are gambling on the results you hope to achieve when you try any NEW method of advertising. When you do buy advertising from a new source for the first time, view the money you are spending like chips you would plunk down on a roulette table. You won’t know for sure whether you’ve laid your marker in the right place until you give the wheel a spin – until you test the source and track the results.

2. Like gambling or buying stock, don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose.

3. Trying to predetermine how many leads the money you’re spending on advertising will bring you is pointless. You can’t know for sure because there are many variables. Some of the variables are under your control.  Some are not.

4. The copy you send out should be one of the variables under your control.
Your content should say what you want it to say, in the way you want it said. Make sure you are consistent and clear with your message.

5. Research your advertising options.
When you hand over money for an ad, it’s guaranteed that the ad will go out and that a certain percentage of people will see it. So, you do have some ability to determine how many people you can potentially reach through certain means of advertising. Typically, look for publications online and offline that are targeting the audience you want to target.

6. Consider list advertising.
In addition to traditional advertising, you can pay companies to send a mailing to their list, both online and offline. Sometimes they have a collection of advertisements and send them all in one go. You can also do a “solo mailing,” where they will mail their whole list one email about your product or service. This is a great value in that you are not vying for attention with other advertisers, but it will cost you more money to stand out.

7. When you’re making a decision to advertise on a list, look not only at the size of the list, but at the owner’s relationship with the list.
Here’s what I mean by that. When you’re buying this kind of advertising, it’s easy to be swayed by the size of the list. The list owner may have a list of 100,000. You could argue the point that if only 10% of them open their emails, you’ll get 5,000 leads from that.

But, what influences the result more is the relationship that the list owner has with the list. Those really big lists may seem tempting and even look like a shortcut to you. “I’ll just advertise in these and sit back. This will produce all the leads I need.”

But, if the list owners send mailings to those lists every single day, they are not going to get the same attention as the list owners who only send mail once a month.

Some list owners might send out 100,000 emails, but have only an 8% open rate. It could be that only 8,000 people are even opening that email.

Ask questions like, “How often does your list hear from you?” “What are the types of things they hear from you?” “Can you give me any statistics on the percentage of opened emails you get?”

Look for Part II tomorrow …

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Whenever you are putting together a piece of copy, it is a good idea to follow the advice of Steven Covey and “start with the end in mind.” This is true whether you are writing an email or a long sales letter, a brochure or a page on your web site. The surest way to arrive at your desired destination is to know where you are going before you take your first step.

It follows quite naturally that the initial question you need to ask is “What are you hoping your reader will do at the end of this piece of communication?” How you answer this will determine not only everything you write, but also how successful your communications are in achieving results.

Always Go For The Goal

On a web site, for example, you may be writing copy for your opt-in page. What is your ultimate objective? Most likely, you are hoping visitors will identify themselves by giving you their e-mail addresses along with permission to send them mail. Everything you write on the page should be directed toward that end.

Or perhaps you are planning a seminar or workshop and creating invitations to send out by post. Obviously you want each recipient to book a place the event, but you can be even more specific than that. Ask yourself, “How exactly to I want people to respond?”

Do you want them to pick up the phone? Should they send back a pre-printed form? Or would you rather have everyone visit your web site and register there? Being able to visualize the desired outcome will help you direct your readers to that action.

Whatever you are writing, keep the end firmly in sight and limit your writing to the shortest course that will take the reader there. If you are putting together a lead generation advertisement, just stayed focused on generating the lead. You don’t have to do more than that.

Unfortunately, sometimes people put too much material into their copywriting – more than they need to get the job done. This can actually be counterproductive, distracting readers from taking the desired action. Avoid this, by all means. Edit out any copy that is off the mark.

A Caution About Copywriting

Having said all of that, it is also important to let you know what copywriting can’t do. All the best copy in the world cannot compensate for the wrong product or service being offered to the wrong market.

Whatever you are planning to sell or promote, be absolutely sure you’ve done your homework before you start writing about it. You need to be able to say with confidence, “I know that I’ve got something which is targeted to the right group of people, and I know there is some demand for it.”

That’s a critical first step. If for any reason you haven’t done it, no matter how much thought and effort you put into your copy, it will be wasted. On the other hand, for the right product being offered to the right target, copy written with the end in mind will really help things take off.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com