Copy Life

Let’s take a look at two internet marketers, and tell me which one you’d rather be.

1. Johny- Johny has designed a full out campaign for making money online. He has set up plenty of good blogs, websites, review sites and used various methods of generating high quality traffic. His website is one of the top ones on the web by design and style, and it is a professional website. Even though he generates thousands of hits a day on his websites, he has a tough time converting those visitors into sales and has to work for all of his money that he makes online. Eventually, he will quit and be another failing internet marketer.

2. Billy- Billy spent two days on his one website as opposed to Johny’s month and Four websites, but Billy has mastered the art of writing an effective sales copy. So no matter what, when people visit his website he draws them in and makes them feel compelled to purchase his product or service. He is able to form a foundation of trust with the customer, and they feel a sense of satisfaction from what he is offering. Billy makes them feel like if they leave his website and never come back, the product they are missing out on can potentially change their life. He works ten to fifteen hours a week, and makes thousands of extra dollars a month online.

You see the difference? If you want to make money online and effectively work from home, you need to learn how to plan and create a sales letter that will convert visitors into buyers. These sales letters will determine whether or not you ever make any money. Just take a second to think about the last product you purchased. Why did you purchase it, well because it was a high quality product that you thought could benefit you. That’s all an effective sales letter is, and learning some of the proven techniques to writing one will boost your online profits in a matter of now time.

It doesn’t matter how good or long you’ve been writing sales letter, more often than not you will have to go back and tweak your page anyway. But the beauty of the internet is that this can be done in a matter of minutes so it isn’t to much of an inconvenience. So my suggestion to you in order to make online sales? Learn the strategies and find out what it takes to create a sales letter that will convert every one out of ten visitors instead of one out of every hundred. It will make your life easier, and help you create a consistent stream of online revenue.

You’ve got a website and it’s selling some copies of your product. You want to sell more, but how do you properly test the changes you make in order for you to know how you are improving your sales?

Internet Marketers talk a lot about testing your sales copy and your website, but very few talk in detail about the methodology of this testing. It is very easy to get confused and undo the changes that were increasing sales!

I remember when I was at school in my chemistry class performing experiments to blow things up, make acids to eat through the table and stain my lab coat and being taught how to properly test an experiment. What is interesting, is this is probably the most valuable lesson I got from the chemistry class (apart from the effect certain metals have when exposed to water). It is certainly the lesson that applies the most to my life now.

My chemistry teacher was an interesting man, he didn’t tolerate people who didn’t listen or didn’t want to learn but he was a passionate man when it came to chemistry. His fingers were stained from handling chemicals and he took an almost perverse pleasure in gassing the class or waking them up with a sudden explosion.

Then one day when he had given us a series of experiments to perform, he taught us about testing. When performing an experiment there are often many things you want to change in order to perform the experiment properly. The trouble is, as an impatient teenager waiting for lunchtime you are tempted to make all the changes at once.

“No lad,” the teacher told us, “You can’t make all the changes at once. If you do that, how are you going to know which change to the experiment caused it to work?”

Of course, this concept hadn’t occurred to any of us, we were all just interested in lunch.

He leaned back in his chair into his reminiscent pose, “In order to properly perform this experiment you need to make a single change at a time and then measure the results. Then, and only then, will you know which change performs the best and gives you the desired results. Sure you can make all the changes all at once, but what if you undo the change that works?”

These very words came back to me when I started my Internet Marketing career some years ago. If I am making changes to my websites or sales copy to monitor the conversion rate then I need to make a single change at a time, drive a sufficient amount of traffic to it, and then analyse the results.

If the conversion rate has increased, then I keep the change. If it has decreased, then I discard the change.

By performing my website testing this way you will know exactly which changes best affect your conversion rates (and profits) and be able to stack them on top of each other to gain the highest possible conversion rate for your site.

Learning how to write an effective sales piece is the closest thing to picking money off a tree in the world. You can literally turn your thoughts into money over and over again.

But of course, it is not an easy skill to learn. It can take years, but, by studying the basics you can increase the effectiveness of your marketing efforts tremendously with a few simple concepts, and do it in just a few days.

Most sales letters follow the same formula no matter how long or short they are. As a rule of thumb, long sales letters always out perform shorter ones , as long as the content is relevant.

In other words, it should be exactly as long as it needs to be in order to produce the sale. (The more you give, the more you will get.)

There is rarely a sales letter that is too long. Remember, this is not for you. It is for your prospects, so take yourself and your feelings out of the subject, and make it as long as it needs to be to get the job done!

Creating a sales letter that holds a customer’s attention until the end and takes them through a planned emotional journey is the art.

That is what takes years to learn. How to suck someone into your sales copy and spit them out at the other end with a hysterical urge to whip out their credit card and buy from you.

There is a formula. Some may even call it manipulative. This means you must be very careful and use this power with caution and for good, or it will come back to haunt you.

There is no way I could even begin to scratch the surface of how to write compelling sales copy, as it takes years of practice to master, but here is the basic format for most sales letters, and you can use this anywhere! Emails, phone calls, websites, conversations, etc.

Ok, back to the structure: Headline: Qualify them. This mentions a benefit or a pain that the reader wants or has so they can raise their hand and say “He is talking about me!”

Story/Problem: Expose their pain. Build a relationship through a story. People get pulled into stories and find it hard to move on until the end, just like reading a great book. The solution; I found a solution. Here is what happened and how it will help you.

Educate: This is how and why it works. Offer; Here is how you can get it and ease your pain/increase your pleasure. Know what you are really selling.

I will tell you right now it is not your company and it is not your product. You are not selling ORAC values or compensation plans. You are selling a way to avoid pain or acquire pleasure.

If you are selling a health product for example, you are not selling the ingredients of it. You are selling a longer and healthier life. You are selling relief from a painful ailment so grandma can play with the grandkids again.

You are selling prevention and peace of mind over the fear (pain) of failing health. When you are marketing your opportunity, you are not selling compensation plans or training calls or a debt-free balance sheet.

You are selling pleasure through the attainment of wealth. You are selling pride and achievement. You are selling the education of their children. You are selling their dream car. You are selling the solution to painful bills and a frustrated spouse. You are selling a solution (to pain), and benefits (pleasure).

“John, if I could show you how to make guaranteed $2,000/mo within nine months so your daughter Suzy can go to college and become a doctor like she has always wanted.”

“And if I could show you how to do that without making a major investment and without spending more than one-two hours a night on your business, is that something you would be interested in?”

Assuming those are the reasons why John gave to you, do you think the ingredients of your product or the date your company was founded will really matter to him? Nope. Sell the solution. Sell the benefits.

How do you tell the difference between a feature and a benefit? Most people cannot. It is rather easy actually. This little trick is priceless and will shock you the first time you test your emails and other writings with it. After every sentence you write, jump into the shoes of your prospect and ask this question: “so what?” Come on, try it.

This was taken from a well known MLM company’s website and reflects the norm throughout the industry.

“Designed with the part-time member in mind. An incentive to achieve with rewards at every level. Dynamic Compression on the 2% Emerald bonus and on the Diamond Override Bonus! My Biz Bonus for 20% of CV on new Team Member’s cumulative orders, for the life of the new member’s orders.

Plus, a Consumer Bonus that pays 50% of the CV on the first order on new CDPI sign-ups! A Top Distributor’s reward for bringing in new business and new volume. The highest overall payout of any major company in the industry, great awards and recognition.

Now read each sentence and ask the question, so what?(Please do that now). See what I mean? It is meaningless until you show me how I can benefit from it! Now let us turn these features into benefits.

An incentive to achieve with rewards at every level so as your business grows, so will your compensation. Dynamic Compression on the 2% Emerald bonus and on the Diamond Override Bonus which will maximize the size of your check and put more money in your pocket! The highest overall payout of any major company in the industry will ensure that your time, money, and efforts are invested wisely, and that you earn what you really deserve!

See the difference?

Writing good sales copy is an art. Unless you’re a professional copy writer it takes a bit of crafting to compose a sales letter that drives huge sales.

That doesn’t mean it can’t be done. The craft of writing sales copy that sells means effectively relating to your visitors, properly selling them on your product’s benefits and creating trust.

Here are 8 secrets on how to write sales copy that’s sure to draw plenty of interest:

1. Use an Attention Grabbing Headline & Sub-Headline

You sales copy must grab attention immediately or you can kiss them goodbye. Web surfers are skimmers so you need to draw them in quickly if you want them to continue reading. Your headline should be in bold fact type with words that create curiosity that persuades them to read further.

Follow your headline with a sub-headline that highlights the best benefits of what your product is about. Use color to stimulate the reader’s senses by creating your headline and sub-headlines in different font colors.

Test your headlines often. Changing just one word can increase a reader’s interest by over 1000%. Do this by creating a few good headlines and test them to find out which ones create the most interest.

2. Create a Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Your USP is your angle or sales position that you use to help your products stand out from the rest. For example, offering free delivery, a money back guarantee or a bonus offering can make you stand out among your competition. Offering something that helps you make your business ’special’ is what you need to find. Once you find it, emphasize it in your sales copy.

3. Prove Your Credibility

The internet is full of false claims and untrustworthy scammers, so internet surfers want peace of mind that you are a trustworthy business and are going to make good on your claims. Additionally you will want to move out ahead of your competition. To accomplish this, your sales copy need to include the following:

- Brief explanation of your background along with how and why you are knowledgeable in your field

- Include testimonials from existing customers

4. Emphasize the Benefits

Display proudly the benefits of your products. Do this with concise and to the point bullet points. There are items that convey how your product or service will benefit your potential customer.

For example, let’s say you sell a running shoe that has a special arch support, the feature would be the arch support and the benefits might be more comfort and longer endurance. Effectively communicating the benefits will give you the edge over your competition.

5. Instill an Element of Fear

Here’s where emotion can make an impression. Your reader has arrived at your sales letter because they need help. It may be to resolve a problem, make life easier, find more time, earn more money, whatever it is; they are looking to you as a possible solution. Determine what it is the reader will face if they don’t resolve their problem and spell them out in bold letters.

6. Include a Guarantee

Always offer a guarantee. A buyer is much more likely to make a purchase if they know they can recover their money if not satisfied. It eliminates the risk to them. This means offering a 100%, no-hassles, no-questions asked, money-back guarantee. If you offer a quality product and project confidence in its value, you won’t have many returns.

7. Offer at Least one Good Bonus

If you can over-deliver in value your customers are more likely to buy. Seal the deal by including a few good bonuses that make your product offer more appealing.

8. Initiate a Call to Action

Make that call to action. Tell your visitors what to do. People want to be directed on where to go. For example, use phrases like:

“For more information click here”

“To get your free trial click here”

“Order here”

If you simply make a suggestion or make it hard for them to figure out what they should do next, you could potentially lose sales.

9. Include Your Personal Handwritten Signature

In closing your sales letter, add your own personal handwritten signature. This adds a personal touch and projects a sense of sincerity. You can do this by scanning in your signature to a separate file and adding it to your sales copy. It’s also a good idea to include it on your website and/or blog.

10. Use a Postscript (P.S.)

Below your signature include a P.S. that restates your main offer and add to that a ’special bonus’. Your special bonus should include a time limit. This adds urgency to your viewers buying decision.

Studies have shown that after reading the headlines, a viewer will often skim to the bottom of the sales letter and read the P.S. first, so displaying your offer information along with a time sensitive bonus is not only appealing, it will also capture the skimmers.

In this article we outline the key points that you MUST incorporate into every sales letter you wield. These four factors really will make or break your sales page. Then we’ll discuss some hard-hitting sales letter tactics that I’ve used myself with explosive results. Unlike other scams these tactics actually add value to your package while increasing your credibility.

First, why even bother writing good sales copy?

Well, in an online world where your prospects are already wandering around in a state of confusion and mistrust, your sales copy is the one chance you have of establishing credibility, building trust and convincing your prospect that your product can solve the very problems that torture them day in, day out.

We Start With The Basics – AIDA

Attention
Interest
Desire
Action

It’s absolutely crucial that all your sales pages contain this powerful mix.

Attention – Your Title Can Turn Off Your Prospects Before They Even Read A Word Of Your Actual Sales Letter.

Your headline MUST create attention in your prospects minds. Get into your prospects head and ask yourself this important question:

”What is the most important BENEFIT that can solve the biggest PROBLEM/HURT that my prospect faces.”

Then put this into your sales letter headline. You need to create serious waves here – the headline must draw your prospect into the main body of your sales letter. A good headline gets them there.

Interest – Is Your Sales Letter The Life & Soul Of The Party?

Do you like talking to the dim-witted dullard at the party? What about the chattering fool who yaps away endlessly about himself? No. Neither then does your prospect want to spend time with a sales letter that’s either lacking any emotion or (going completely the other way) stuffed to the brim with pointless fluff.

To create interest in your prospects, you need to understand your products benefits and their own concerns. You need to understand your industry and what your product has that your competitors don’t. Like a devilish murder mystery novel, each paragraph must be more exciting than the last.

As interest builds, so your chance of capturing the sale increases.

Desire – Make Them Almost Taste The Benefits & Then Make Them DESPERATE To Get It!

To create desire, you’ve got to convey the BENEFITS of your package. Go ahead and tell the prospect what they will gain when they click on the order button. What about the pain they’ll avoid? Time saved? These are things that people look for before spending their hard earned cash, and they want to know that your product delivers.

Action – The Last, All Important Word

You’ve got to urge your prospects to take action NOW. Make the order button prolific and readily available. If your product has limited availability or is a (genuine) special offer, then let your prospects know about it.

AIDA is a simple yet powerful guideline of setting up sales letters that do what they’re supposed to – convert targeted prospects into customers. Now let’s look at some advanced tactics. These, when incorporated skilfully into an AIDA based sales letter have the potential of driving your response rates through the roof.

Beyond AIDA – Strategies To Maximise Your Sales Letter Responses

I could have settled with just using AIDA to create my sales letters, and I’m sure I would have continued to do well. But would I have achieved some of the OUTSTANDING results I’ve enjoyed in more recent years? Almost certainly NOT.

Now, I’ll walk you through some legitimate tactics that I use to make my sales letters hyper-responsive. The great thing about most of these is that they benefit the CUSTOMER too – and ultimately that’s the best way of increasing your sales in the long run.

Tactic Number ONE – Limit The Number Of Licences Offered (Digital Products)

If your product is digital (eg an eBook or membership site) then consider placing a limit on the number of licences available. This benefits you as the information developer because it creates genuine urgency to purchase. If customers miss out, they’ll have to pay a higher price to get in and that’s a powerful motivator. The benefit to the customer is that the limited number of licences means they have a better chance of success if they use the private label rights content/videos etc provided.

There’s of course also a downside to you on this – limited licences mean that once your product gets to higher levels, the natural forces of price vs demand means that you’ll sell less when the product price moves up. Even so, I can tell you I put a licence limit on many of my products and it creates a frenzy of sales as people try and get in at the lowest price levels. It’s a potent order trigger.

Tactic Number TWO – Pile On The QUALITY Bonuses!

It’s true – both the number of bonuses and their respective quality can really be the “title clincher”. A platter of highly targeted bonuses that are in demand can be enough to get your prospect to buy immediately.

You can even implement the following tactics with your bonuses:

- Fast action bonuses where (for example) the first 50 people to order get a bonus that everyone else doen’t.

- Time limited bonuses – where the bonuses only apply for a certain length of time or number of orders.

Make your bonus graphics visible on your sales page and if possible link to the full sales page of each bonus. If you produce many products, avoid serving up the same tired old bonuses – it can count against you as your existing customers may begin to feel they’re missing out on the bonus experience and your repeat sales may actually suffer.

Tactic Number THREE – Free Updates For LIFE!

Customers love paying for something ONCE and getting additional value from that purchase for months and even years into the future. That’s just plain common sense, yet the vast majority of digital products that I see being offered online do not come with updates of any sort.

The beauty of this model is that as you add more and more content/resources/ related to your package it becomes increasingly attractive to new prospects. The icing on the cake is that your existing customers are delighted and that establishes further trust and credibility and that’s a very big plus.

So there you have it – a summary of writing sales pages that sell and additional sales-letter tactics that genuinely increase the credibility, value and pure WOW-factor of your packages.

The Internet is a virtual goldmine – call it a virtual El Dorado, if you will. And, there’s a gold rush out there. Just about every small business owner is doing his best at selling his product, waiting to get that big break – something that will bring home the bacon, the ham and the pudding, and much more.

But, to get that big break is not so easy. And one of the reasons for that is small business owners treat their website as a display unit – a showcase for displaying their wares. Well, they couldn’t be more wrong because a website is much more – the website should be treated like a salesman who not only displays products but also communicates with the visitors and manages to convince them to buy the product. And for that to happen, a website needs good, sorry, make that great, copywriting.

Fundamentals of Good Web Copy

First impressions are the truest and they stay for a long time. And any website’s copy must create that killer first impression that can go a long way in making a sale. Needless to say, good web copy should be absolutely free from grammatical mistakes, and so it is essential to hire the services of a professional writer to create outstanding web copy. Apart from the grammar and writing part, here are the other fundamentals of good web copy:

1. It has to be accurate. A single false claim or even an exaggeration can have disastrous consequences. Every fact that is mentioned must be reliable or verifiable. Remember, if an exaggeration is discovered by a customer, he will blast the website on his blog and on various bulletin boards. Moral of the story: Say what you mean and mean what you say.

2. It has to be written in a conversational style. Like we said before, the website acts as a salesman and, just like a salesman, it should communicate with the visitor in everyday language, without confusing him with long words and big sentences. Think about how you talk in real life and then put it down on paper, and get it fine-tuned by a professional. Remember: short words, short sentences help!

3. The copy needs to be organized and should flow seamlessly from one paragraph to another without jumping the gun. There is beauty in logic and people love to read an interesting bit of copy that takes them by the hand and leads them through the jungle of words.

4. The copy has to be to the point. A heavily worded document is tedious to read and web visitors have short attention spans. Combine these two facts and figure it out for yourself!

5. Hype and oversell kills. Avoid them. Stick to the basics. Period.

6. Finally, the copy must be interesting to read. There’s no joy in reading short copy with short words that just goes blah blah and does not interest the visitor. It must be ensured that the copy has enough twists and turns to compel the visitor to read it in its entirety and then make a purchase. A website owner must liken writing copy to making a movie – plot, character, story, tautness, drama and suspense.

Okay, What’s Next?

Okay, let’s say now that you have sufficient knowledge to write web copy that will hold your visitor right up to the end. The next step is to build in the pitch that will make the visitor act and buy the product. And you can build up the visitor’s desire and make him act by building a value proposition, by making him an offer he cannot refuse!

And, to build in this value proposition the website owner has to persuasively tell the visitor that if he buys from his website he’s getting a whole lot of benefits, along with a knockout deal on the price too. Once the website describes these benefits, it must then create a sense of urgency by announcing a time-limited offer or limited-visitor offer – something that will make the visitor act immediately on impulse and clinch the deal.

This is one of the oldest sales techniques and it doesn’t fail – provided you have got all the fundamentals of good web copy going and the product you are selling does have some sort of a market – no matter how small the market may be.

A Few Tips & Tricks

1. Always proofread and perfect the copy before it is published.

2. The copywriter must always place himself in the reader’s shoes before he writes the copy. If the copywriter does not get motivated or enthused by his own writing, then he must junk it until he gets it right.

3. The copy must not be written in an “I-am-clever-and-I-know-it” vein. Rather, it must connect with the readers by considering them as equals.

Conclusion

To conclude, you must get your inspiration and energy from these two super quotes: “The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean” by Robert Louis Stevenson, and “Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish” by John Jakes.

Now combine the two and see the wisdom in them and go ahead and write that eyeball-grabbing copy you always wanted to write but didn’t do so because you were waiting for a spark that would egg you on. And we hope this article has given that boost to your imagination. Good luck.