Companies make millions of dollars on their literature alone. It’s basically another product they get you excited about. The reason it doesn’t work to help you grow a business is because no matter how fancy and slick the message looks on card stock, it won’t work unless your target audience has a connection with it.

There is an art and science to writing the kind of compelling copy that attracts your target audience. I’m talking about the people who have a want, need or desire for what you have to offer. Not everyone wants your product, but if you know how to craft the right message, you can easily attract the right person. Keep reading to find out how it’s done.

Hidden Secret #1: You need to understand your target audience. Who is your market? It’s not your next door neighbor or the person standing in front of you in line at the grocery store who is going to want to reach out and grab your product from you. What are their fears and desires? What makes them tick? Knowing who they are is the only way to write the kind of ad copy that will make them want to call you.

Hidden Secret #2: Determine what you are trying to accomplish. Do you only want to get a few people who are serious about doing a business, or do you want to get a lot of people who can give you a lot of retail sales? The more hoops people have to jump through to get to you, the more serious they will be. Let your copy do the funneling for you. The more specific you get, the less time you will spend weeding through people who aren’t serious.

Hidden Secret #3:  Keep the price out of your copy. The more you elude to it, the fewer the response you will get. Instead, focus on the pain your prospect has that will make them want to contact you and try your product. Create a picture of how it will make their life easier and more enjoyable. Marketing is about solving specific problems of the consumer. Don’t let the attraction of money steer you away from helping people.

Hidden Secret #4:  You need to make extensive lists of the benefit of your product or service. Write them all down. The more specific you can get, the better. You should be focusing on the word benefit so much that you almost get sick of hearing it. That is how important it is to writing compelling ad copy. How is your target audience going to specifically benefit from taking your products.

Hidden Secret #5:  Be Specific.  If you are in the weight loss industry, losing weight is not specific enough as far as benefits go. Think of other things that can happen to your prospect if they use your product to lose the weight. Is it all- natural? Will it solve other health problems along with the weight loss? The more specific, the more serious your prospect will be.

Hidden Secret #6:  The end of your copy should totally resolve your prospects problem with your benefit. You found the solution, and it starts with getting a free report or expert guide. You are the expert and the more they know that, the better your results will be. Never end with a price. Just show them how they can get even more information from you.

Hidden Secret #7:  Do not focus on gimmicks just to get people to call you. You will waste all of your time trying to convince them to use your product instead of helping people who really want it. Ads highlighting free samples or coupons will only generate people looking for hand-out. They might generate a few sales, but you won’t find the kind of people who will explode your business.

96% of all network marketing distributors wind up quitting because they do not get proper marketing education. My business didn’t grow until I learned the right techniques, and they weren’t taught by my company or upline. Attracting the right audience comes from practicing the art of writing ad copy, not buying pre-designed flyers. Apply the secrets above and you’ll be well on your way to making your home-based business a success.

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.

I figured it out the hard way – struggling for years making lots of mistakes in my copywriting. I don’t remember the exact moment this technique revealed itself to me…but I use it all the time now. Last week I shared the secret for the first time to a good friend…

We were sitting at an elite golf club here in South Florida. She was complaining how everything in her business was taking off beautifully…except for one thing…
She HATED writing copy.

For her writing copy was like walking on a wet carpet with socks on.

And it’s not like she can outsource copywriting so easily. The good copywriters charge as much for one sales letter as a used Cadillac (or two!) (And good luck trying to find someone who’s reasonably priced and still an effective copywriter.) There’s no avoiding the fact – if you want to succeed in business you must write great copy.
I leaned closer to her, “Do you want to know the secret to writing great copy that has your personality AND that works AND that you can write in a fraction of the time?”
“You’d better tell me!” she said.
Okay…here’s what to do:
There’s two parts to this technique – Swiping and Infusing. The first part is swiping…

 Part 1 – Swipe the Structure of Master Copywriters

Bookmark the sales copy of master copywriters: John Carlton, Dan Kennedy, Ali Brown, Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero, etc. Get on their lists and keep all their emails.
When it’s time for you to write your sales letter or email simply follow their STRUCTURE. When they establish credibility, you establish credibility. When they agitate, you agitate. Go down the line and imitate the architecture of their letter or email.

Look – it’s called COPYwriting for a reason!

Now let me be clear…don’t copy them exactly! That’s plagiarism. It’s not cool and will get you in trouble. AND you don’t have to copy them exactly – this is where the second part of my technique comes in…

 Part 2 – Infuse Your Personality in Your Writing

Follow the layout of great copy from the masters…but don’t copy their style. It’s their style – not yours. Instead, look at what they wrote and ask yourself, “If I was sitting at a coffee shop with a potential client, how would I say the same thing in my own language?”

The secret is to write like you talk.

When you’re excited about something, how do you talk? Do you have a certain rhythm to your speech? A special flow? THAT’S what you want to capture in words – while sticking to the structure of the masters.

This may take some practice…

The biggest mistake I see entrepreneurs make when trying to write copy is they think they have to sound important. It’s like they put on a Napoleon hat that says “Doing Official Business.” No, no, no. That’s not it at all. You want to write like you talk to your best friends.

There’s an art to writing like you talk. It’s still crafted writing. Look at Hemingway. The trick is writing like you talk and then editing like crazy. The best book on the subject is “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser. (This book changed my life. In college I spent weeks laboring over a simple essay. After I read this book I can now write pages and pages with ease and grace.)

As you get good at this technique you’ll look forward to writing that next article or email. And your readers will appreciate it because your writing is suddenly interesting. This all translates to a more loyal following and more sales for you.

Good luck and have fun with your writing. Make it your own. Make it another form of self-expression and you’ll be free from ever having to pay ridiculous amounts to a copywriter.   

© 2008, James Roche

Well, let’s pretend you’re at a cocktail party, you’re huddled with a group of friends gabbing about everything under the sun, around you hundreds of other conversations are mingling with your own making the voices sound like a “hum” to anyone just observing this party.

That’s what it’s like to a web site visitor when you’re cramming a whole bunch of cocktail party copy onto your home page. It’s confusing and it’s white noise and chances are good that it will result in a “click” signaling that the party’s over and your visitor is long gone.

Two of my personal pet peeves are 1) people who want to give me every piece of instruction under the sun on their site. I don’t care if I’m developing cold-fusion. If you give me more than 300 words of directives I’m outta there.

And 2) don’t yell at me. That’s my mother’s job. When you use lots of CAPS OR EXCLAMATION POINTS !! I feel like you’re yelling at me and frankly, lots of exclamation points scare me. I mean let’s be honest, no one can be that excited about anything.

When I spoke to AME’s Internet expert, Nancy Hendrickson (she’s also one of the top copywriters in the country), she told me about the elements of good copy.

“The Internet has made ‘brochure-style’ writing obsolete,” Hendrickson told me. “Studies have clearly shown that people do not read web sites – they skim them. That means your copy must be written to catch the eye – and keep the visitor on your site. How do you write scannable web site copy? By incorporating:

lots of white space
bullet points
highlighted and bolded words
images

In addition, your copy needs to use simple words, short sentences, and include the keywords your site visitor probably used to find your site in a search engine.

Writing Great Web Site Sales Copy
When it comes to the Net, “maybe’s” rule. Unlike storefront businesses you don’t have to get a “yes” or “no” answer, you can get a maybe and still make the sale. “Maybe I’ll sign up for the newsletter now and decide if I want the book later” or “Maybe I’ll just get one of the reports and come back later for the book.”

On the Net you may be dealing with more maybe’s than you are yes’s or no’s, so your site (and your web copy) should reflect this sales strategy. We’ll go more into depth about selling on the Net in another issue, but for now start thinking about everything you could sell (besides your book) that will help address the “maybe” visitors out there. Before you put pen to paper to write your sales copy, be clear about your goals.

While you may be building the site to sell your book, as you start to look at the broader reach of your message, your goals might change.

Regardless of these goals, one of the best things you can do for your site is add a means to capture a name and email address so you can market to your visitors again and again and again.

“Marketing wisdom,” offers Hendrickson, “shows us that your best customer is your current customer. That means if someone is interested enough to visit your site, they’re probably interested enough to learn more about your current book and your next book. How do you notify them? By capturing their e-mail address.”

When it comes to sales copy, the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) is more important than ever. Says Hendrickson: “People want to know what benefit they’ll receive from buying your book. Don’t be shy – tell them! Will they get an inscribed book plate, will they laugh for 6 hours, will they learn something fascinating, or will they be applauded at Christmas for all their cool book gifts?

Although visitors want to know you, the person, sales copy is much more about telling them how their life will be better, safer, happier, funnier once they’ve bought your book.”

Once your sales copy is written, do NOT make your visitor search all over your site in order to buy your book! Put your BUY THE BOOK button in an obvious, easy-to-find space. You may be laughing now, but we’ve worked with authors who buried the BUY link so deep in the site it was impossible to find!

The reality, of course, is that most authors don’t really like writing sales copy, and that’s okay. However, unless the world is filled with your relatives, you’re going to need sales copy to sell your book. So, if you feel you don’t have the skill or desire to write good sales copy, hire a professional and let them write the words that will help you strike web site copy gold.

1. Know the recipient’s profile and demography. It is important that you know what type of people the recipients will be based on their demography in the business society. I hate to be discriminatory of some sort but knowing the demographic profile of the people who will receive the web copy can greatly contribute in the decision as to what kind of writing style is to be employed, what sort of wording and verbiages should be used, and how far can the writer go in technical terms of making an explanation.

2. Create a highly clamorous subject line. The subject line will act as the pulling factor of the web copy letter. The subject line, when interesting and captivating enough, can immediately pull the reader and the recipient to open the web copy letter, thus moving the recipient to subscribe to your newsletter or ezine, and creating a potential life-long customer. If the web copy subject line does not air too much of an interest to the recipient, then it may come to a point of being tossed in the spam section.

3. Originate an equally persuasive and strong web copy content. If you are unable to pull the interest of your reader based on the subject line that you have, then you need to develop an equally powerful web copy to keep the interest alive right up to the last sentences of the copy. The key here is to keep the reader’s attention long enough, leaving them no choice at the end of the web copy but to take immediate action.

Following the above steps should equip you with the necessary skills to achieve optimal results with your web copy writing. This skill should not be taken lightly, and since you are representing your company, make every effort to test your web copy in real-time keeping track of traffic statistics, subscribers, etc. If you are unhappy with your results after a period of time, go back in your web copy and change some things around that will make it more appealing to potential clients. The easiest way to do this is to put yourself in the client’s shoes. What will catch your attention? What will motivate you to make a decision the moment you finished reading a web copy letter? Once you answer these questions yourself, making a few changes to your web copy won?t be a problem at all.