Client Magnets Official Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Writing’

You know the bullet point – in fact, a few of them are included in this article.  But there’s a noted difference between the bullet points included here and the ones that you’ll find on a registration page or sales letter.  When your intention is to entice readers to buy, a simple listing of information will never do.  Instead, you must entice and provoke curiosity with bullet points that shoot right to the heart of the matter.

Expert copywriters know how to pack a real punch with their bullet points, and here are a few of their industry secrets:

• Each bullet point should be a solo act and encase its very own mini-topic. It should not rely on the points before it, or the points after it.  When bullet points are well-written, it’s not uncommon for someone to sign up as a result of reading one, topic-targeted bullet point.

• Bullet points should be enticing. Each bullet point, when read alone, should evoke an, “Oooh, that looks good,” from its reader.

• If you’re selling something (like a paid teleseminar space, for example), you’ll need about 12 to 15 bullet points. You want prospects to feel confident that you have a significant amount of information to exchange for their money; that there’s so much juicy stuff included, they simply can’t afford to miss out.

• Be specific. Let readers know exactly what you’re offering, how many steps are included in your plan, how long it will take, and what they will learn.

• Be bold. Make promises that make prospects say, “Really?  Can they really do that?”  Of course, you must ensure that you can, without a doubt, deliver on that promise.

• Provoke curiosity. An example of a bullet point that provokes curiosity is, “This 3-step plan to jumpstart your business growth can increase your lead from 50% to 300% in less than 30 days.”  Readers will stop, wonder how in the world that’s possible, and at the very least, read on to satisfy their curiosity.

• Keep your agenda out of it. Sales letter bullet points should be all about getting prospects to consider the benefits available to them.  The points should focus on satisfying readers’ desires, and should mention nothing about your needs.

• No tables of content. That’s  boring!   You’ve got to entice, provoke, and make it nearly impossible to stop reading.  When’s the last time you were captivated by a table of contents?

• Address the problems that you’ll solve. People want to know that you “feel” them.  They want to know that you’re prepared to solve their problems, because you have a good grasp on what their issues and problems are.

• Read the work of the copywriting greats. Don’t plagiarize, of course, but become familiar enough with their work that you can effectively imitate their work.

Generic, strictly informational, bullet points will never gather the effect that you’re looking for from your registration page or sales letter.  Each one of your bullet points has to reach out of the computer monitor, grab your prospect by the throat, and make it utterly impossible for that person to click away (without first signing up).

Bullet points have the potential to be powerful selling tools…as long as they’re brazen, enticing, curiosity-evoking, and shoot right to the heart of the matter.  You have the power to create powerful bullet points…by simply keeping your target in mind, taking careful aim, and shooting.

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

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What is the purpose of a sales page?

Too often, we misunderstand the purpose of the sales page itself, and consider it to be a simple finish line.  We concentrate on getting prospects to the sales page, but forget about the importance of getting them through the sales page.

The fact is, that about fifty percent of sales are lost at the ordering stage.  If prospects still have misgivings or unanswered questions after reading through your opt-in page, they’re likely to bail out.  Or, if your sales page is too complicated, they’re not likely to invest the energy into deciphering it.

Consider what improving your sales page can mean for your business plan – you can increase your conversion rate by fifty percent without sinking more money into marketing, and without working to drive more traffic to your site.

People could be turning away from your sales page right now.  That means that your best course of action would be to improve your sales-in page immediately – before you adjust marketing, revamp a homepage scroll, or optimize your site for the search engines.  Really…stop the presses and analyze your sale page.

Here are the major points you’ll need to get started:

• Make it possible for people to purchase your product any time of the day, any day of the year. Don’t complicate the system with preliminary phone calls or e-mails.  Make it easy for prospects to pay with PayPal or their credit cards, without the need for making contact with you.  Making purchasing possible while a prospect’s motivation is high is important for strengthening your sales page conversion rate.  You can give your visitors the option of placing an order by phone (some people still feel uneasy about using credit cards online), but don’t make that their primary option.

• Keep it super-simple. You can’t take anything for granted – including your prospects’ levels of literacy.  Maybe English is their second language, or maybe extensive vocabulary and complex sentences scare them away.  Ask a ten-year-old child to read and comprehend your sales page.  If the child can’t grasp it, then simplify it.

• A testimonial will go a long way toward that final click. Including the words (and maybe a photo) of someone who experienced great success or satisfaction with your product or service can help to seal other deals.

• Title your order form/page in a non-threatening way. Acceptance Form, Registration Form, and No Risk Acceptance Form are some good examples of headlines that reassure.

• The text on your order page should be written in your prospect’s voice. For example, “Yes, Dr. White, I’m ready to start enjoying the benefits of XYZ Fiber today.”

• When you involve your prospect in the ordering process, they take ownership, they feel responsible and in control, and they’re less likely to jump overboard.  Utilize things like check boxes and drop-down menus to make them feel that they have invested in the process, and you’ll contribute to higher conversion.

• If you’re offering any kind of a guarantee or return policy, the order form is the perfect place to reinstate that offer. It’s a good idea to write this part in the prospect’s words also.  For example, “I understand that if I am not completely satisfied, I can return…”

• Set up an autoresponder to send out an e-mail immediately following a customer’s order. In the e-mail, reinforce the wonderful decision that they’ve made.  Include an additional testimonial, and convey the confidence that you feel in their ability to experience the same success and/or satisfaction.

When designing your sales page and order form, put yourself in your prospects’ shoes.  Try to understand that money-spending is a fragile decision for a major portion of the population, and that it’s your job to instill buying confidence, erase misgivings, and answer questions.  You can’t be there…but you can take the action that gets the transaction…with a first-rate sales page!

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

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Do you feel like you have more ideas than you have time to implement? That you have more options and opportunities than you could possibly follow up on in the hours available in your day?

As the mother of two small children, I can certainly relate. I only work in my business three days a week, so I know what it’s like to not have time for labor-intensive and time-intensive lead generation activities.

The solution to that is SYSTEM.

In my book, SYSTEM stands for Save Your-Self Time, Energy, and Money.

Here’s just one example of how to do that. Something that works very well for me in my business is article marketing. This has been a tremendous source of leads both offline and online since I first started my business.

Article marketing has been absolutely fabulous for getting me established as an expert. My articles have played a key role in encouraging phone calls from potential clients who have read them. They establish me as an expert to the powerful decision-makers in companies who read them.

Article marketing is power, however, if you don’t do it in the proper way, it will end up being very time-consuming for you.

First, you have to come up with the ideas for the articles. Then you have to actually write the articles. Then format, upload and distribute them. There’s a good deal of time involved in all of those things.

But, if you systematize it, you can significantly reduce the number of hours you invest without sacrificing the quality of your end product. I syndicate my articles all over the web, and my article writing possibly takes me two to four hours a month. And that takes into account everything I do with articles.

I post an article a day to my blog, but I don’t post it. As I shared with you, I’m only working three days a week. If I did the posting myself, my blog post would only be updated three days a week. I’ve found a way to use technology and my team to automate all of this.

Look for the places where you can do this in your own business. This is a really important area for the busy, stressed, overwhelmed business owner. You have to learn to systematize. Implement practices and technology that can simplify some of your processes. Utilize the talents of someone for hire so you can make time to follow up on the ideas, options and opportunities that can further advance your business.

Save yourself time, energy and money and systemize in such a way that you feel good about your business and you can move forward at the same time.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

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Writing articles relevant to your target audience is a great way to build your list. By providing potential clients with content they can use, you’ll give them a reason to visit your sign-up page. Here are three tips for effectively using articles to build your list.

Tip #1: Survey Your Target Audience First
Fusing the needs and wants of your target audience into the titles of your articles will ensure what you’re writing is relevant. Take time to find out what they really want to know, what kind of information you can offer that will have them turning to you for more.

An effective way to find out what they want is surveying, and there are some great tools available. Two popular, easy to use tools are AskDatabase.com and SurveyMonkey.com. Ask the people in your target audience what issues they struggle with, and then tailor your titles and content accordingly.

Tip #2: Create Your Article
As you write your articles use key words and content that will demand the attention of your target audience.  Some of us enjoy writing our own articles, but if you don’t, you can still create great content. Buy a digital recorder and record yourself answering the questions your target audience is asking.

You can also record yourself whenever you give a talk to a group. Once you have some recordings made, hire a transcriber to transcribe your audio. At that point, you can either edit the transcript into separate articles yourself, or hire a copy editor to create the articles for you.   By recording yourself and then having a good copy editor create articles from your transcripts, you’re more likely to meet the requirements of the editors on article directories.

Tip #3: Submit Your Articles
Once you have articles ready to submit to article sites, take advantage of article submission services to do that for you quickly and easily. Submitting articles yourself is time-consuming and distracts you from doing things only you can do for your business.   Be sure to provide a link back to your sign-up page.  As people read your articles, they should be directed back to your site.

Put Your Article Strategy in Motion. Writing and submitting well-written articles filled with useful content relevant to your target audience is an effective way to build your list. Consistently creating and submitting articles won’t build your list overnight, but great articles can definitely drive traffic to your sign-up page. If you haven’t tried article submission, it’s time to add it to your overall marketing strategy.

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

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There aren’t many of us who enjoy admitting to our weaknesses. Recognizing our own vulnerabilities makes us feel, well vulnerable.

Here’s the thing, though. If you want to emotionally connect with your audience – and you do want to do that – you have to find the strength and the courage to be vulnerable. I personally think one of the most powerful ways to really take your marketing to a whole new level is to find within yourself that courage to be vulnerable.

I’ll give you the perfect example. At a two-day intensive workshop, I met a gentleman who was really intense about studying direct marketing, copywriting and Internet marketing.

He had really been going for it. But he was very frustrated and shared that he was spending as much on his advertising as he was making. So he was basically at zero.

When I looked at his website, I observed what I call “copywriting by numbers.” If you looked at it, on the surface, you could find absolutely nothing wrong with what he was doing.

If you looked at it with this kind of copywriting, direct response mindset, everything he was doing was ticking all the boxes. On the surface nothing was wrong.

But the fact was, there was something missing.

He had a very personal, very vulnerable reason for creating his business, but he wasn’t sharing it. He had no real emotional connection with his audience.

The story is basically that he had a dog who was his lifelong companion. The dog became sick, was diagnosed with cancer and given a very short amount of time to live.

And he obviously wanted to do everything he could to save his dog, and ended up finding some different techniques for really assisting dogs in this situation.

He packaged the information he found into an e-book which he sells to other dog owners in the same situation. But when you visited his web site, you didn’t feel the emotional connection to him as a dog owner.  He didn’t relay anything about his own personal situation.

He could have been selling anything from his website from the way that he was – or actually, wasn’t – emotionally engaging his audience.

As we talked about it, he shared that he was finding it difficult to be that vulnerable and open up about his experiences. It was such a soft spot for him. It was easier to just play it safe and try to keep the copywriting at an intellectual level.

He was actually frightened that people would laugh at him.

And that couldn’t be more untrue. In fact, quite the opposite. People can sense when there’s real truth in marketing. And it was obvious as he talked about his dog that there was genuine true feeling there. His motive for setting up his business wasn’t just about making money.

His purpose was really to help other dog owners in a similar situation get through what had been a very traumatic time for him. But because he wasn’t allowing himself to be vulnerable, this message wasn’t coming across in his marketing.

And yes, he is selling information on saving a dog’s life, but the same could be true if you’re selling products or information to business leaders.

That feeling that you have the courage to share is actually what’s going to inspire your customers and turn them onto your message. That is what’s going to make them feel that you’re the person they want to learn from.

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You’ve heard the expression, “Choose your words carefully.” That’s particularly true in copywriting.

Now that doesn’t mean you need to go back and restudy primary school grammar. In fact—and this may surprise you—some of the most effective copy is often full of grammatical errors that would have been red-penned by your English teacher. Perhaps the most famous example is “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.”

If you want to be a strict grammarian, the tobacco company’s choice of the word “like” has to be replaced by “as.” When editors started pointing this out, Winston’s advertising people put a new spin on it, retorting in their commercials, “What do you want, good grammar or good taste?”

So feel free to throw out the rules of grammar. You don’t have to be grammatically correct to write effective copy. That doesn’t matter. Nobody is issuing marks for who has the best grammar. The marks are for who gets the results, and that’s measured in how many people take the action you want them to and in how many sales you make.

Be Active, Not Passive

So word choice is not about grammar. It is about evoking a response with your words. For that reason, one thing that you’ll want to do in your copy is make your language as specific as possible. You’ll want to choose words that create visual images, words that intrigue, arouse, excite, motivate and compel.

Along those lines, active verbs tend to do much better than passive verbs. Instead of writing, “This product is better than that product in value,” you might write “This product surpasses that product in value” or “This product’s value exceeds that product’s.” Instead of saying, “You need to have motivation,” you can write, “Get motivated.” That’s an active expression.

Passive writing relies too much on “to be” and “to have” verbs. Active writing uses “to do” verbs. Look through your own copy and count the number of times some form of the word “is” shows up. Find ways to replace “is” with verbs that indicate activity. “Doing, not “being,” gets the job done.

Be Concrete, Not Abstract

Verbs are not the only words you need to choose carefully. Your choice of nouns can have a dramatic impact on your results, too. In most instances, concrete nouns will serve you much better than abstract nouns.

What’s the difference between concrete and abstract? It’s the same as the difference between ideas and things, mental concepts and physical reality. You can’t imagine abstract words in a wheelbarrow. Because abstractions can’t be clearly pictured in the mind, they are harder for people to grab onto and act on.

As an example, “a list of the top three financial goals for our company” is a specific and concrete way to describe the abstract concept “our financial objectives.” The vague and abstract idea “our strategy” can be made concrete by calling it an “our action plan” or, even better, “ten steps to reach our goal.”

That’s why, where possible, you want to use more tangible language. When you start to use active verbs, concrete nouns and tangibles, it’s much easier for people to relate to. You will get better results, too.

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The hopes and dreams, ups and downs you’ve experienced since starting your business would probably make a terrific story. In fact, it should make a terrific story, one you tell the world as part of your unique appeal. The story of how and why you’ve built your business can be a powerful addition to your marketing presence.

There’s a way to tell your story that will engage potential and current clients. It will make doing business with you more attractive. Nothing makes us more interesting than the story of who we are. Here are five tips for telling your company’s story effectively:

1. Imagine Your Story as a Movie: If you were writing the screenplay for the story of your company, what would you write? Let your story unfold, from the first day you realized you wanted to be in business and everything after that. There are a few very basic themes about which all movies are made: the Cinderella story, the hero or heroine saving the day, and so forth. Which theme does your story take?
2. What Was Your Motivation? Something you should definitely share is your motivation for starting your business. Did you look around and see a need no one else was filling? Were others in your field only offering part of the picture? Was there some big turning point in your life that prompted you strike out on your own? Whatever it was, revealing how it all started is an important part of your story.
3. Who Are Your Heroes? Who inspires you? A superhero? A character in a book or movie? Imagining someone heroic for inspiration can add real strength to your story.
4. What Have You Learned? Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame learned the value of perseverance as he struggled to sell his fried chicken recipe. What lessons can you share that might inspire others?
5. Tell the Truth: Honestly revealing your struggles as you built your business makes you appear more vulnerable and approachable. Many successful people have shared stories of hitting low points on the way up. Even if your company’s growth wasn’t in a straight line, sharing how you’ve regrouped and adapted can make a compelling story.

Knowing who you are and why you’re in business makes doing business with you more attractive. Begin to develop your own company’s story to share with others. Tell the truth in a compelling and interesting way that will cause others to appreciate who you are. Make your story a metaphor for your business, something that makes you unique.

Once you’ve crafted a story to tell, begin to use it in your marketing. Deepen your connection with clients by giving them insight into your company. Share your story with prospective clients to help develop trust. There’s one more bonus to chronicling your journey in business. Once you clarify for yourself your path as an entrepreneur, you’ll begin to attract the business that will create the next chapter in your story.

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Do you know the connection between yourself and your business? Do you realize that there’s so much more going on in your business than just what appears on the surface?

When you do make that connection, it will alter your marketing in a very positive way. And once you make that connection, it’s something you can’t undo. And you won’t want to.

I met a client at a workshop who had just made the connection to the underlying story of her business. She appeared to be quite the confident woman. That is the way most people perceive her. But, she started thinking about the fact that seven or eight years earlier, when she had split up with her husband, she had become a very, very unconfident person. That is how the end of her marriage had left her. I remember her exact words, “My ex-husband used to tell me I was no good at anything.”

After a few months of counseling, her counselor told her, “I think I know you now. How could you let someone have this much of an effect on you and take all your confidence?”

During the course of our conference she realized that she had actually been on a quest to find her confidence again. And she was determined to not let anyone take it away from her ever again.

And basically that forms the basis of her business program now. The golf training program she offers came to the scene because she helped a lad who completely lost his confidence with his golf. And that’s how the golf kind of found her and got her into the whole golf side as a niche.

And here’s another other thing that really strikes a chord. When she gave a talk to about 50 or 60 women at a group session, one of the women raised her hand and said, “It’s alright for you. You’re really confident. It’s alright for you to tell us that this works and all the rest of it. I’m not a confident person.”

And the thing is, she was once just like that woman, and told her, “But I haven’t always been like this. I’ve had to really work on it. I really have had my duvet days as well.”

I’m sure you’ve had those days, too. Those days when you just want to hide out under the covers. And often, it is okay to share that with your audience. It isn’t always easy to be that personal or vulnerable, and conveying those kinds of emotions can be difficult to do on a website or in marketing materials. But when you find the right moments, like in smaller settings or speeches, they can make a lasting impact.

Choosing to share your own “duvet days” is a huge step. What we can learn from this particular woman is that there are times to show that you can be vulnerable. Times when it’s okay to ask for help. And it’s okay not to be right. It’s okay to be needy.

She had to work on all those qualities while trying to regain her lost confidence.  And. the message I got from her is that what she’s teaching people now is about much more than just knocking a couple of points off their handicap. It’s much more than just playing golf. And that really resonates with her audience.

When you make a connection like that in your business, it will resonate with your target audience just as well.

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One question people always ask me is, ‘How long should my copy be?’ They ask this about brochures, sales letters and even web sites. Along the same line, when they see or receive those long sales letters, or scroll down lengthy web pages, they also ask, ‘Do you really have to have so much copy?’

Some ‘experts’ answer this by saying, ‘long copy gets better results than short copy.’ Like most truisms, you need to take that with a grain of salt. Long copy doesn’t get good results just because it is long. It works because it does everything it has to do, and nothing more. In fact, high-quality short copy will out-pull poorly written long copy every day of the week.

So in my opinion, the right length for every piece of copy is the exactly the same. It should be as long as it needs to be to get the job done. If it takes eight pages to get the response you want, then that is the length it should be. If you can get as many readers to take the same action in a single page, then one page is sufficient.

Avoid The Pressure of Squeezing It All In

My original job was as a salesperson. In all the time I sold face-to-face, I never had a sales manager say to me, ‘Bernadette, I want you to go into that office and get the order. Oh, and by the way, I’ve got you on a stopwatch. You have to do it in five minutes.’

No sales manager would ever do that. A few might feel the urge from time to time, but it would be very rare to find a sales manager that would actually put a sales team or their customers under that type of pressure.

And yet, you do hear people saying things just as impractical when it comes to sales materials, such as ‘I need to write this letter, and I’ve only got two sides of an A4 sheet to cover it.’ Why would you deliberately put yourself under that kind of pressure?

Length Is Not Really The Issue

A better approach is to forget about length entirely. You need to write the copy first, using enough words to convince the reader to do what you want. Once it is written, then you can see how long it is.

This is true not only when you are writing for a web page, but also when you are getting something printed. You have got to first see how long it needs to be, and then make the decision about how many pages you are going to get printed.

Yet how many marketers go to a printer first, get a quote for a certain brochure size, and then try to squeeze all of their sales messages into the available space? They have simply got it the wrong way around. It really is putting the cart ahead of the horse.

So if you remember only one thing about how long copy should be, let it be this: Your copy needs to be as long as it takes to get the job done—not a word more and not a word less.

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It’s been said that there are only seven stories in the whole world. Of course you’ve heard hundreds and hundreds of stories, but actually many are basically the same recurring themes, just told with different characters.

Telling a story -­ your story – is one of the best marketing techniques you can use. Incorporating this technique into your marketing promotions will help you to engage your prospect and motivate them to buy from you.

To get you started – here is an overview of Christopher Booker’s, “The Seven Basic Plots.” See which one fits your business story.

1. Overcoming the monster. Think of the story Dracula, where an other-worldly monster turns victims into the living dead. It must be slain. Now think of the monster in your business, the thing that you absolutely had to get rid of once and for all. How did you do it? That’s the story you should tell. Teach your customers how to get rid of the extra paperwork, or the extra taxes. Use the drama of turning the burden into a monster. Then teach them how to overcome it.
2. Rags to riches. When Vivian Ward wins the heart of Edward Lewis in Pretty Woman, she is transformed from someone who started out in rags to literal riches. Rags to riches is the story of transformation – financial or personal. It could be about your own experience or about experiences you’ve helped others to reach. If the theme of your business is transformation, telling rags to riches tales will hold prospective customers spellbound.
3. The quest. This is a story that takes its hero on a journey to find a promised land or prize. And along the way, the hero must overcome obstacles and threats before reaching his goal. Homer’s Odyssey is a classic example, as Odysseus strives to reach Ithaca. So if you’ve figured out how to get from point A to a much prized and distant point B in your business, that’s your quest. You’ve reached the prize and can share your journey with others through your marketing.
4. The voyage and return. Think of Peter Pan and Robinson Crusoe. They share the theme of voyage and return, starting with someone in an ordinary situation who finds themselves transported into a strange world. When they return to their reality, it’s often with a new perspective. But the real story is what they encounter along the way. So if you’ve taken your voyage and returned to your business, tell your audience all about the pirates and mutineers you met along the way, and how those experiences brought you to where you are now.
5. Comedy. This is a very broad category, one not easily defined by a specific example. But if humor and comic situations are part of who you are, they might be the best tools to describe your business. Remember Animal House? The theme was that some people just don’t fit in – does this describe your “outside the box” business? If you’ve managed to break out of a boring day-in-day-out routine, you might think of Groundhog Day. The point is, if you can apply comedy to your business story, by all means use it.
6. Tragedy. Hopefully your business story isn’t a tragedy, but you may be able to use the theme in your marketing. If you think of Bonnie and Clyde or Madame Bovary, they are stories of people who knew better but were unable to stop their destructive behaviors, with tragic results. In marketing, you might talk about customers you were too late to help, or those who didn’t take your advice and made a mess of their business. You could also tell about a mistake that you made along the way, and how you’ve come through it.
7. Rebirth. The classic example here is A Christmas Carol, where Scrooge is a mean man who is reborn after a series of dreams and interventions completely alter his personality. This theme fits anyone who says, “I finally saw the light.” Stories could be about someone struggling for a long time and then suddenly seeing things in a whole new way because of some new information or a new understanding. If your business has been reborn, tell your customers about the experience.

So start to think about which plot fits your story. Maybe you’re already using one of them. If so, that’s great. If not, see which one best describes your business. Which is the story that will emotionally engage your audience? That’s the tale you need to tell.

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