Mark T., Seattle, WA.

Have you ever sent out a mailing and had hardly any people respond?

Whether you’re involved in marketing other peoples’ products and services or your own, you know how frustrating it can be when you don’t get the results you want. After hours of work writing the copy, designing the layout, paying for the list, the postage and processing the mailing, what have you got? All too often it ends up being just a big waste of time and money.

What’s the solution? Should you give up on mailings or on advertising?

No! Don’t shoot the messenger when it’s the message that’s to blame. Direct mail and advertising can work with the right marketing copy.

If you want to get better results with your small business marketing, you’re going to need to change the information you include in your mailings, how you get prospects’ attention and your offer. If you keep sending out the same stuff you’ve been using, you’re going to get the same old minimal results when you could be getting ten to twenty times as many people responding and buying from you.

Ready to discover how to write compelling offers that overcome every objection your prospects throw at you >>

To begin, put your mailing to the test:

1. Does it have an attention-grabbing headline?

2. Is the focus on a problem your prospects’ care about?

3. Are you offering a solution that works?

4. Does the copy include third party verification of your claims?

5. Did you make an offer that will motivate prospects to take action today?

Most mailers fall short for the following two reasons. They headline isn’t about a problem that prospects’ are concerned about so they never read further to discover the solution you provide. Secondly the offer that’s included doesn’t motivate prospects to take action and or make a purchase.

So what makes an offer irresistible?

Assuming that one through four above are in place, the biggest motivator is prospects’ perception of the value you provide relative to cost. Put another way, it’s not price that gets in the way, but prospects balk when the value of products and services aren’t clear.

How can you help prospects understand the value of your offer?

Relate the value to the problem(s) they want to solve and express this value in their own words. The benefits define value and should outweigh the cost.

Tell your prospects about what they’re going to get. Even if you’re giving something away for free, you still need to give your prospects a convincing reason to act. For example, I don’t just tell people visiting my web site to sign up for my free guide; I use the name of the marketing eBook to tell people how it’s going to help them. This simple strategy has prompted over 30,000 people to subscribe to my newsletter.

Want a step-by-step guide to show you how to create cash copy >>

You may use an initial free offer simply to build your database of prospects, but at some point you’re going to want to prompt your prospects to buy. What kind of offer will motivate people to buy?

Give away something for free or for practically free.

• Oreck successfully sold one of its vacuums by offering it free for the first 30 days along with a $130 iron as a gift.

• Time magazine’s current online offer is; “Subscribe to TIME! Plus, get 6 months more for 1 cent!!

• Cingular offers “Free Camera Phones” when you sign up for a 2 year agreement. Other phone services “give away” free minutes when you sign up.

• Send people a check. AT&T mailed out 200 million checks to former customers and 10 million became clients again. By cashing the check, prospects agreed to sign on with AT&T.

• A local Stamford, Connecticut investment advisor gave away a free workshop and grew their assets by $20 million.

• Google gives away its search top quality search services in order to attract viewers for the unobtrusive ad space they sell.

• Charles Schwab gives away access to its select list of mutual funds.

• As a skier, this is one of my favorite offers. Andes Tower, a small ski area in Kensington, Minnesota, started a free after-school program three evenings a week that included transportation to the hill, equipment and lift tickets for 4th, 5th and 6th graders. In other words, they gave away everything and then some. The benefit? Their ski shop immediately sold every piece of junior equipment (for 7th-12th graders).

The long term benefit is that they’re developing a grooming a generation of kids who love skiing and will be back with their parents to buy more gear, buy lift tickets in future years and. down the road. will be back with their children to ski.

Want to supercharge your offers? The more you give away in terms of perceived value, the more money you’ll make.

A downside to free offers is that, even if it’s a great offer, prospects tend to procrastinate. Overcome this by putting a time limit on your offer. Good for ten days or until July 20th. Give people a reason to act in the upcoming two to four weeks and they’ll line up to take advantage of your offers.

With the heads of business development, marketing and sales present, the president asked me to rank each piece in terms of its effectiveness. What a great exercise for any company to do. But how do you judge the effectiveness of your small business marketing materials?

If you’ve ever been around three or four year old children for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed that they ask questions all the time.

• Why is the sky is blue?
• Why do I need a bath?
• Why is it time for bed?

You may have responded with a short answer like, “Because I said so,” or you may have given a long answer that provided a logical analysis of the need for a balanced diet and the role peas play in it. Unfortunately neither of these responses is what a three year old child wants or understands.

Your prospects may not be three year olds, but when they read your marketing copy they begin by asking a series of why questions. They are asking themselves:

• Why should I read the rest of the page?
• Why is this important to me?
• Why should I trust this company?
• Why shouldn’t I buy from their competitors?
• Why should I contact them?
• Why should I take out my credit card or checkbook and make a purchase?

Does your marketing copy answer all these questions?

I asked the president I was meeting with to step back from his company’s marketing materials and look at them the way his prospects do. You can do the same to evaluate your marketing materials.

Bring the home page of your web site up on screen and roll your chair back about 7 feet until only the larger items are legible.

What catches your eye? What do you read, first, second and third?

Do the same test with your print ads; pin them up on a wall and step back ten to fifteen feet.

Where does your eye go first? What messages come across first, second and third?

Using this test, two items jumped off the homepage of the company I was meeting with; the company name and their tag line, “America’s Finest”.

Unless your prospects already know your company, just stating your name won’t prompt a prospect to read your
marketing materials. And with over a million companies claiming to be “America’s Finest”, such common and general statements do little to establish your company’s credibility. They are the equivalent of telling the three-year-old, “Because I said so.”

When a three year-old keeps asking why, what they are really saying is, “I’m interested, tell me more”. The same applies to your prospects. They want your help, but first they want to know:

• Why should I work with you?
• Why should I trust you?
• Why should I contact you?

You may have thought you answered these questions but where is this information? Is it way down the page hidden in your copy or right up front where prospects can find it?

The company I was working with had the answers to all the “why” questions in their marketing materials. They had excellent reasons that their prospects should work with them, trust them and contact them, but all of these were buried in their marketing materials where no one saw them.

Don’t assume that people will take the time to search for the answers to their questions.

We’re all busy people; unless we’re given a reason to take the next step, you and I and your target market are unlikely to go looking for it. For example, a lot of ads and web sites include the phrase “Contact Us”. It’s your call to action.

But why should I contact you?

What’s one reason, or multiple reasons, I, your prospect, should send you an email or pick up the phone?

Take a look at your web site, your ads, and your marketing materials. Does the first line prompt your prospects to read the second line? Does the marketing copy give your prospects the uncontrollable urge to call you or whip out their credit card and buy from you?

Generate more leads and more business with your web site, your ads and your marketing materials by answering the question “why”. Tell prospects why they should read your marketing materials, why they should trust you and why they should buy from you. Answer the questions your prospects are posing and you’ll earn their confidence and their business.

Lauren called me from Michigan with just such a concern. She and another friend had opened a fitness salon about a year ago. After a careful analysis of the local chain’s facilities, they had invested in next-generation equipment that provided many added features.

Yet, a year after opening, and doing every small business marketing activity they could think of, they still weren’t attracting enough clients to pay the rent.

The problem wasn’t lack of effort. The problem was that prospects didn’t understand the benefits or higher value of Lauren’s fitness facility.

Remember the best selling book “Men Are From Mars, Women Are from Venus”? A key point of the book is that men and women see many things differently, and express themselves differently.

If you have children, you know that the same is true of parents and teenagers. What’s important to you is often unimportant to your seventeen-year-old, and vice-a versa.

Sometimes you wonder if the two of you are speaking the same language. You’ve probably learned to get your child’s attention by talking about their needs and interests. These may include sports, movies and access to the family car.

Prospects and business owners have different perspectives as well. You may be focused on the costly and state-of-the-art equipment that enables your enterprise to function. Your prospects’ primary concern, on the other hand, is that you solve their problem or get the job done, and your equipment and processes are or secondary interest.

Lauren’s marketing focused to a high degree on the higher quality equipment her salon provided. She was talking hydraulics and variable resistance. This approach wasn’t pulling in new clients.

Due to shoulder surgery, my exercising has been recently relegated to a local fitness salon. My objective is to stay as fit possible so when my shoulder heals I’ll be able to get back to the sports activities I enjoy.

Do I relish exercising on a recumbent bike or treadmill? Of course not. When I mentioned this to Lauren she replied, “Everyone hates the machines.”

People work out regularly because they want to achieve a particular goal. They want to get fit or lose those extra pounds. People go to a fitness center like Lauren’s because they want to look and feel better.

If you own a fitness salon, don’t talk equipment, talk about what it does. Talk about calories burned, weight, lost, muscle tone, strength, feeling healthy, improving at tennis or on the ski slope, looks and self-image.

If you want to attract more clients to your business, whether it’s a fitness salon or your accounting practice, make sure you’re speaking the same language as your prospects. Your concerns in getting the work done may be different than your prospects’ and clients’. They are concerned with the problem you solve for them.

Whether it’s in your ads, your marketing brochure, your web site or in your sales conversations, speak in your prospects’ language. Speak in terms of their concerns, problems and goals. When you communicate to prospects in terms of their priorities, you’ll get their attention and their business.

Do your headlines capture your prospects’ attention or do they confuse them and send them away?

Are your headlines prompting prospects to learn about your products and services or click to another web site or throw away your letter?

Do your headlines make your prospects want to read the rest of your marketing copy?

Avoid the three following headline mistakes.

Don’t Emphasize Obscure Company Names
Most small businesses and many not so small businesses names aren’t household words. Unless your name is among the top ten most recognized brands such as, Craftsman, Waterford, Rolls Royce, the Discovery Channel, WD-40 or Crayola there is a very good chance people won’t associate your company name with anything.

Have you ever visited a web site or read a print ad where the company’s name covered the top part of the page and it was something like, “Pharos Partners”? Unless the name of your company describes what you do, it is not going to grab prospects’ attention. Move it to the side and make room for a creative headline.

Avoid Welcome Statements
On many web sites the first line you read is, “Welcome to our Site”. There is a reason you don’t see these in print ads. Welcome statements are a waste of time in marketing materials; they do little to help prospects understand what you do.

Delete Vague Descriptions and Statements
Statements like, “Our purpose is to connect you with information and resources to achieve your maximum potential”, could apply to a number of different professions. It could refer to a cooking school, a management consultant or an eldercare program.

- Are you wasting valuable space where your headline goes to feature a company name that doesn’t describe what you do?

- Does your headline include “business speak” terms your children or mother-in-law can’t explain?

- Is your description of product and services specific or is it so generic that it could apply to other types of businesses?

- Does your headline focus on the selling points that distinguish your products and services from the competitions?

Writing Headlines that Get Your Prospects’ Attention
People look at web sites the same way they look at magazine ads. They scan the page quickly to see if the product or service is something they want. On the web or in a marketing brochure, if you capture their interest, they’ll keep reading.

The best way to do this is to give them a clear idea of the problems your products or services can solve and/or the benefits you provide.

Use a few carefully selected words such as:

- Leverage your expertise to attract a steady stream of clients
- Reliable Office Supplies, free next day delivery.
- In-home sports training for exercise enthusiasts
- Web and print design that helps your business grow
- Costa Rica Travel, Unique off-the-beaten track tours to jungles and beaches

Your page headline should communicate clearly what you offer clients, which problems you solve and the benefits you provide.
Do your headlines:

- Clarify what you do?
- Describe the problems you solve?
- Define whom you do it for?
- Explain the benefits?
- Emphasis a key selling point?
- Compel your prospects to keep reading your marketing copy?

Imagine that you worked at an exercise facility and wanted to attract clients for your massage business. Here are some possible headlines you might use for your flyer and associated critiques.

- George Jenkins Massage
(It’s your name but so what)

- Are You Bothered By Back Pain
(Better, it defines the problem)

- 7 Ways to Get Instant Back Pain Relief
(Defines the problem and a solution)

- How Computer Users Can Banish Back Pain in One Hour
(Defines who your target market is, the problem and the benefit)

Grab your prospects attention in the first few seconds with your headline. Then follow with compelling copy that clarifies the value of your products and services and you’ll generate many more sales.

You may be surprised to learn that it’s not money or love. Is it making offers of products that are “guaranteed”, “limited”, “proven”, “easy and simple to use”, “on sale”, “includes a free offer”, or “new”? You’re getting warmer.

Offers like the ones above are helpful in getting a prospects’ attention and are some of the most important words you can use in your marketing, but they pale in comparison to the number one motivator that makes your products and services irresistible to your prospects.

What is it that makes your target market want to read your small business marketing materials, email you, call you and buy from you? Before I give you the answer, let me tell you a story.

I remember getting up at five on Christmas morning when I was six years old. I tiptoed halfway down the stairs and sat there in my pajamas looking at our Christmas tree and the presents underneath. I stayed there for hours until my parents finally got up sometime after seven.

What got me out of bed so early? Yes, I was awed by the tall tree draped with lights and dripping with tinsel. But the presents were the key motivator. Not so much because I was dying to possess more toys or eat more fruitcake, but because I wanted to know what was in each one of those colorfully wrapped boxes under the tree. My curiosity was so powerful I couldn’t sleep and I was up long before anyone should be on Christmas.

Whether you’re six or 60, curiosity is one of the most powerful motivators. What prompted you to read this far? You wanted to know the answer to the question I posed in the article’s title.

We’re all curious. Dorothy Parker said, “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” Spark a prospect’s curiosity about your product or service, and there is no stopping them. They’ll want to know if you can help them and how you are going to do it. Get them curious and you’ll get their business.

How can you use curiosity in your copywriting?

The headlines you use in your marketing are like the brightly colored wrapping on Christmas presents. With the right words, you’ll grab your prospect’s interest and it won’t let up until they’ve satisfied their curiosity.

Below you’ll find two ways you can use headlines to prompt prospects’ curiosity.

Suggest a New Solution to A Problem
Use a question or a statement such as:

“Want to Attract More Clients and Grow Your Business?”

“How Much More Could You Be Making With These Ideas…?”

“Discover How to Attract All The Clients You Want”

“Sign Up For Your Financial Analysis To Find Hidden Resources You Can Retire On.”

Ask a question that is relevant to your prospects, and they will look for the answer to follow. Promise a solution to a problem and its guaranteed to get the curiosity of your prospects and prompt them to contact you. Then deliver on your promise.

Use Unusual and Provocative Headlines
Engage your prospects. Get their attention with a headline that is thought provoking or incomplete. Create a “cliffhanger” with your headline and prospects will read your marketing copy to satisfy their curiosity.

The tabloid newspapers use this strategy to sell papers every day. Take a look at these three samples:

“How to Use Liposuction to Repair Adobe Reader 6? And give it mouth-to-mouth respiration too”
- from the Inquirer

“Monkeys At My Car!”
- from the SUN

“February To Be Canceled”
- from the World Wide Weekly News

Unusual, unexpected or incomplete headlines can generate interest. The problem with many of the tabloid headlines is they aren’t always credible or accurate. Instead you can use the same idea of using a cliffhanger but use it ethically and accurately to catch your prospects’ attention. For example:

“My Prize-Winning Roses Would Wither Up and Die If It Weren’t For…”

“Soup on the rocks.”
- by Ogilvy for Campbell’s

“Have you ever seen a bald-headed sheep?”
- from a 1954 ad for NIL-O-NAL, a lanolin cure for baldness

“They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano But When I Started to Play!”
- written by John Caples for a mail order course

A creative headline will make your audience pause. It will prompt people to read your marketing materials and lead your prospects to buy.

Curiosity is a powerful motivator. Put it to work for your business. Create curiosity with your business card, mailings, sales letters and website. The more curiosity you create on the part of your prospects the more inquiries and sales you’ll generate.

Are you curious about how many more clients you could be attracting and how much more you could be making?

Stop wasting time and start pulling in clients like a magnet with your marketing message, your marketing plan and your web site.

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It’s getting people to buy from you now, today, this second. It’s overcoming your prospects’ natural tendency to put off making a decision. Without a sense of urgency they won’t take action, won’t take out their credit card or send you a check and you won’t make as much money as you could.

What keeps your prospects from buying from you today and what can you do about it?

Everyday I look at the list of things I want to do; return calls, writing, coaching, managing the business, biking or kayaking, dinner with the family etc and its chock full with more things than anyone could ever do in a day.

What do I do first? I circle the items on my list that are urgent to my business and to my sanity, the things that are my top priorities for the day. If I complete those items then I take a look at the other items on my list.

But you know what really happens?

Typically other urgent items get added to the top of the list and some tasks wait a long time to get done or simply fall off the list. Sound familiar?

You may have the world’s best product or service and be getting a trickle of orders but if you want to turn it into a torrent you need to prompt your prospects to buy today! Take fifty prospects in any given month and only one of them is likely to buy.

It’s not that they don’t want your product or service. But without any sense of urgency, your prospects don’t take action and your sales stagnate. How frustrating is that?

My son, home for the summer from college, is the same in regards to cleaning his room. It’s low on his list of priorities and the piles of clothes never get cleaned up despite repeated requests. However my wife’s latest threat that she’d start throwing out anything she found on the floor did get his attention.

We all do the same thing – put things off we know we should do. When do hardware stores sell out on flashlights or batteries? When a hurricane is about to hit or the power goes out.

Do you want to keep losing sales because your marketing lacks the urgency it needs to prompt prospects to buy? Want to eliminate obstacles to sales and increase your profits?

Use this link to find out >>

How can you create a perception of urgency and increase your sales?

Use FEAR!

No, I’m not suggesting you try and scare your prospects with impeding doom, catastrophe or the threat of random acts of violence. Making your prospects panic isn’t the best way to start or maintain a long-lasting profitable relationship and you’d probably get in trouble with the law.

What I’m talking about is using FEAR OF LOSS as a motivator. Tell someone they’re about to lose a great opportunity and they’ll want it even more.

Does this really work?

Take a look at online auctions. If you’ve followed a few you’ve noticed that a week before an auction ends, there are only a few bidders. Then, boom, in the last few hours or even in the last minute the number of bidders will double and the price people are willing to pay skyrockets. More than once I’ve seen items be auctioned off on Ebay for more than its retail price in stores.

Why? Why does this work so well? No one likes missing out getting something they want.

If you want people to buy from you today you need to put it at the top of their list so its urgent. You can use:

- Time
- Limited supplies
- Offer added benefits

Of course make sure your offers are believable and accurate.

The auction model works particularly well because it combines limited-time and limited-supply to create a sense of urgency. You can do the same with your marketing.

Are you losing 67% or more of potential sales because of obstacles in the marketing and sales process? Want to discover how to stop losing money and easily increase your profits from the same number of prospects?

Find the answer before you lose another sale. Use this link to get the details >>

- Charlie

1. Using Headlines to Grab Attention!

80% of your eventual sales will come as a direct or indirect result of your headline. Why? Because 80% or your readers will either read on or go elsewhere on the strength of the headline alone. This goes for both online and printed media.

2. “Putting Quotes Around Your Headline Boosts Sales”

Just placing quotes around your headline will Increase sales by 20 to 50%.

3. Don’t Put a Period in Your Headline

A period denotes a full stop – and that also stops the readers momentum. However, question marks. exclamation points and three ellipses (…) are very acceptable. (See Next Point.)

4. Multiple Exclamation or Question Marks Are A No No!

One is plenty. As soon as someone sees a multiple “!!!” they’ll instantly think it’s BS.

5. KISS – Keeping It Short & Simple

If the headline is too lengthy, it probably won’t get read.

6. Please, Use Only One Major Point – Idea – Benefit -Promise – Fear

The headline is not the place to be a Jack of all Trades. Put in more than one thrust, and you’ll just confuse your audience.

7. Fancy Fonts Don’t Work

Fancy fonts are hard to read. Hard to read means lost sales.

8. Keeping Your Headline Between 16 to 24 Point Size is Optimal

Don’t go overboard in headline font size. Sure you want it to get noticed, but you don’t want to overwhelm your audience either!

9. Does Your Headline Offer A Specific Benefit To Read Further?

If not – toss it. It won’t generate much interest.

10. Adding Specifics Spikes Interest

“5,242 Satisfied Users Can’t Be Wrong!” Putting in a specific number adds credibility and interest to the message.

11. Is Your Headline Negative? If So – Can It Be Made Positive?

Sure, sometimes you have to go negative to make a point. But if at all possible, emphasizing a positive benefit will outperform focusing on a negative consequence.

12. Using Sub-Heads Will Underscore Your Main Headline

What’s a SUB-HEAD? It’s just what it sounds like – a smaller headline beneath the main one. (And sub-heads CAN have a period at the end.) Here’s a tongue-in-cheek example:

“EVERYTHING YOU’VE LEARNED ABOUT NUTRITION IS WRONG!”
Uncover the shocking truth about health foods, exercise, and vitamins.

13. Color Counts – Making Your Colors Work For You

Make your headline even bolder by using a vibrant color. Red, maroon, very dark blue all work. Yellow, pink and light blue are no-no’s!

The Content Format

14. The Readability Factor – What Fonts You Use Does Make a Difference

The best fonts to use on the web are either Verdana or Ariel. These are easiest to recognize off a computer monitor. The next best are Georgia or Tahoma. Don’t use the default font for online content – which is usually Times New Roman. Times New Roman should be reserved for paper media only.

And please – make the font large enough to see! Not everyone has 20/10 vision – so using the equivalent of a 7.5 point font will only cause your visitor to squint, growl and leave. Font size should be a minimum of 10 point.

15. Italics – They’re Not Online Friendly

For Online Copy – Don’t! Italics are deuced hard to read off a computer monitor. Use them at your own peril. For paper media, use them sparingly.

16. Why Underlining May Not Be Wise

Again, for online content, steer away fro underlining words or phrases in your copy, unless it’s an active hyperlink. Exceptions can be made for underlining in made for underlining in headlines or sub-heads.

For a paper sales brochure or letter, use underlining sparingly to emphasize a major point.

17. Use Bolded Black, Red Or Maroon Font Color For Emphasizing Online Content

Your goal is to draw the eye and your reader’s attention to the important parts of your sales message.

NOTE! There’s a time when you SHOULDN’T USE RED FOR EMPHASIS. The time to use another color is when you mention cost. The price should never be in red! Try blue, or black, or hunter green instead.

18. Be Careful With Blue!

The blue receptors in the human eye are the fewest – meaning this color is the hardest to recognize and assimilate.

19. Break Your Copy Into Digestible Chunks

Nothing turns off a reader like a big, honking, never ending paragraph. If something looks too long or too tedious to read, it simply won’t get read.

20. Sentences Should Be About 10 Words Long

Avoid ones much longer than 18 words. More than 20 words? Go back to the drawing board – or break them up using commas or em-dashes. (Just like I did here!)

The Content Message

21. Problem, Agitation, Solution: The Three Basics of Persuasion

This formula is a proven winner. Basically you describe a problem (the one your target audience is experiencing), then get them all hot and bothered about why it’s making their life miserable, or at least less enjoyable. Then offer your solution – and cash those checks!

22. Writing at a 6th to 7th Grade Level To Increase Responses

Now hold your horses! If you think I mean talk down to your audience, you’re sadly mistaken. Do that and you can close up shop and go home. You’re aiming here to make your message understandable. The human mind can best and quickly comprehend messages aimed at a 6th grade level – connecting you with your audience

23. Watch Your Words! Keeping To Good Grammar

Making obvious grammatical errors makes you and your message look sloppy. Keep to the rules, unless you’re emulating the spoken word or local vernacular. For instance: “You’re Gonna Love This New Design!” would be acceptable.

“Your Gonna Love This New Design” isn’t.

This goes for punctuation as well. Learn the rules, and break them by choice and design – not ignorance.

24. Write To your Audience, Not to Yourself

If your copy doesn’t appeal to the person reading it by directing the message to them as often as possible – then forget about putting it on your site or on paper.

Write to your audience! Use the lingo that your visitors normally use. For example, if you’re selling sports shoes to teenagers – don’t go into how the darn things are made. Your audience couldn’t care less. The shoes aren’t “fine quality” they’re “rad.” They aren’t “great bargains” they’re “awesome buys.”

25. Use “YOU” and YOUR Sales Will Soar

When writing your sales message, talk about the prospect at least three times more often than you talk about yourself. This means use the “You” word, and tone down using the “I” word.

26. Tell Me a Story And I’ll Be All Eyes and Ears!

People love stories. If you can – start off with a short story, and you’ve got ‘em hooked. Jump right in with facts and figures and you’ve got ‘em lost.

27. When At All Possible – Write Using Contractions

“You Will” becomes “You’ll”
“Can Not becomes “Can’t”
“Will Not” becomes “Won’t”
“Is Not” becomes “Isn’t”

And so on …

EXCEPTION: In making a point for emphasis – sometimes the whole phrase is better. Such as: “YOU WILL BE SATISFIED!”

28. REMEMBER! BENEFITS FIRST – FEATURES SECOND

When you write about features you’re telling your prospect what the item or service does. Ho Hum. When you write about benefits – you’re explaining how your item or service will improve their life.

Stress Features – and your prospect will walk. Stress Benefits – and they’ll take out credit cards and buy.

For instance – you won’t sell a SUV to a soccer mom based upon engine size and horsepower. You’ll sell it on safety and carrying capacity. (You can fit the whole soccer team inside – with room for groceries. And the anti-locking break system will make sure you & the kids arrive home safe and sound.)

29. Being Active, Not Passive Brings Home the Bacon

When writing, try and use the active voice as much as possible. Here’s an example:

ACTIVE: This product will catapult your profits right through the roof.

PASSIVE: Your profits will be catapulted through the roof by using this product.

30. Keeping Your Eye on the Goal: Focus On Results

As you’re going through all the benefits your product is offering, focus on the “end results.”

It’s not a diet, it’s a thinner, trimmer body. It’s not a fountain pen, it’s a writing experience. It’s not a home business, it’s a way to escape the rat race and achieve financial security.

31. Use Strong Testimonials to Blast Those Sales Into The Moneysphere

By using strong testimonials, you can increase your sales by an astounding 250%!

If possible, show actual names & addresses. Always get permission before you post a testimonial. Don’t alter the testimonials, except to correct obvious spelling mistakes. Also – never make them up. That’s not only unethical, but illegal.

32. Show Me the Proof, And I’ll Buy

Put pictures of canceled checks, income statements, or other proof that your service will do as you claim. If it’s a product, put supporting evidence that it works. For your website, using a current date script implies everything is up to date and real.

33. Sprinkle with Facts To Augment Your Sales Message

Sprinkle your sales message with actual facts and figures. Here’s an example:

“165 million Americans get on the Internet every month. 135 million of those consumers go there to shop. How are your sales doing?”

34. AIDA – The Marketers Mantra

This is the grand formula for writing successful copy. AIDA stands for:

A – Attention (Awareness): Attract the customer’s attention

I – Interest: Raise customer interest by demonstrating advantages, benefits and features.

D – Desire: Convince prospects they want, desire and need the product or service you are offering.

A – Action: Tell the prospect what action they should do next – like purchasing your product!

Some have added another letter to this formula:

AIDA(S):

S – Satisfaction – Satisfy the customer after the sale so they become a steady source of repeat business.

35. Use Bullet Points to Highlight Lists

Have a long list of items? Then try breaking them up by using bullet points.

36. Use Pictures to Supplement (Not Supplant) the Content

Studies have shown that quality pictures or images of your product or service can increase your page views by up to 300%. They can also increase your wanted actions by 200% (link clicks, downloads, responses, signups, phone calls, whatever …) and increase the amount of time someone stays on your site by as much as 50%.

Pictures make a great supporting cast – but never make the mistake of using them as the lead actor.

37. Long vs. Short: Which is Better?

As long as you have something to say – long copy won’t adversely affect sales. In fact – it’ll more than likely improve them. The rule here is simple: Sales copy should be long enough to fully explain the product or service and the benefits in purchasing – and not one word more.

38. Using the “Barstool Technique” for Selling and Profit

When writing your copy, make believe you’re talking one on one with your prospect. Write like you’d talk to your buddy at the local watering hole, or to a close friend while sharing a cup of coffee at the kitchen table.

39. I Feel Your Pain… Really!

This is known as empathy. If you can share a common trait or cause, this “I’ve been in your shoes” technique can be quite powerful. But to be powerful, it also has to be real. If not, you’ll just come across as a lying, insincere blowhard.

40. Give Them The Fish, Not the Line

Today, people are looking for ways to reduce stress, and to make their life easy – or at least easier. Your prospect doesn’t want you to teach them how to fish – they want you to deliver that fish to their door fully cleaned, cooked and ready to eat.

Put the emphasis on how your product or service will make your prospect’s daily grind go smoother – and hassle free.

41. Being Precise Makes More Money

You decide which is more enticing: “Lose that blubber faster than you’ve ever thought possible!”
or…
“Drop 10 Pounds in 10 Days!”

Door number 2 will outperform its vague cousins every time. But … make sure you can back up your claims. Complete honesty is the best policy.

42. Meeting Objections Head On

In almost every service or product, there are bound to be at least a couple of objections your prospect can make. The price is too high, the wait is too long, the paperwork is too lengthy. Meet those objections head on, with reasons why your product or service is worth the extra cost, time or expense.

43. Curiosity Rocks! How to Instantly Generate Interest

Make your prospect curious, and you have them by their attention lapels. For instance:

“Do You Know The 7 Secrets To Great Sex?”
“Revealed: 8 Foolproof Methods to Conquer Insomnia”
“By This Time Next Month, Be $24,505 Richer!”

Directed at the proper target audience, these lead-ins would be virtual interest super-magnets.

44. Use Descriptive Action Verbs to Nail Down Sales

• Put The Swagger Back in Your Step!

• Hammer Out Credit Card Debt Now!

• Fend Off Debt Collectors Once and For All!

45. Imagine This … Painting Mind Pictures

Paint a vivid picture of what your prospects life will be like by using your product or service. Make it as real as possible, pressing all the hot buttons applicable to your audience.

“Just imagine where you’ll be six short months from now. Financially secure, never worrying about where the next dollar is coming from. Taking that long waited vacation, treating your wife to all the good things in life – that up until now you just couldn’t afford…”

46. It’s FREE! This Technique Never Goes Out of Style

It might sound hokey, but people love free stuff. If you can offer quality freebies just for looking or buying, by all means do so. Now, take notice of the word “quality.” If your free offer is perceived as junk, then your product or service won’t fare much better in your customer’s mind.

47. Reduce Anxiety or Buyers Remorse to Close the Deal

It’s ingrained and hard wired in most of us: Parting with the cash produces stress. Anything you can do to make that process go down easier is to your direct benefit. Offer a FREE trial or a FREE sample to overcome reluctance.

48. GUARANTEED! You Gotta Have One

If you’re selling a product, you all but have to offer a guarantee. If you’re selling online – no guarantee means no sale. Contrary to popular belief, a longer guarantee means less returns and more profits.

One technique that is working quite well is to offer a 110% return on the money invested if the product or service doesn’t meet the buyers expectations. While there will always be those who’ll try and take advantage of your offer, the increase in revenues more than makes up for it.

49. Including an ACT NOW! Limited Time Offer to Bolster Response

Put a deadline in the sales message. By acting now, the buyer will get x additional premiums, or x more months of service, or an upgrade to a higher class of membership. If you do have a fixed date deadline – don’t extend it. That makes you look like a liar. Buy now before December 31st means just that. On January 1st, they’ll have missed the boat.

50. Don’t Put Up Buying Barricades!

If you’ve done your job and got your prospect clamoring for your offer, don’t squash the sale by making it difficult to purchase. Make it crystal clear how to order. If online, pose your buying hyperlinks in an action orientated manner. For example:

Grab Your Future By The Tail Right Here!
Who Else Wants To Retire in Three Years!
Ready for those slim thighs and 6 pack abs?

51. Including a P.S. – It’s a Integral Part of Any Sales Message

After the headline and the initial paragraphs, this is one of the most read segments of any sales message! Make it strong and bold. One good idea is to add an extra benefit not before mentioned – or a consequence of delaying by not jumping in right away on your offer.

52. Redundancy Check – Cutting Out The Fluff and Filler

After writing your masterpiece, get out the red pencil. Go through every line and cut out any redundant words or sentences. If you’re not sure a word or phrase is necessary, it probably isn’t. For instance, the common word “that” is overused to the point of exhaustion. Cutting it out from a sentence usually makes no difference in how it reads – except for making it smoother.

53. Flow Control – How To Make Your Copy HUM! (And not Ho-Hum!)

After you’ve cut and revised, sit yourself down and read what you wrote ALOUD! Yes – aloud. Shoo away the dog and close the door if you feel self conscious. But speak every word as you read. Not only will you find umpteen mistakes that passed you by before, but here’s another good reason:

When speaking, if any phrases or sentences get you tongue tied, revise or eliminate them. They are just interrupting the sales message flow.

54. Keeping A “Swipe File” Will Keep You Current

Every day you probably come across dozens of sales pitches and messages. Some are notoriously bad. Some are works of persuasive art. Start saving the ones that pique your interest or have actually induced you to buy. Hey! If they were good enough to get your money, they must have something behind them.

Don’t plagiarize of course, but no one says you can’t borrow techniques, principles and styles and use them in your sales copy.

55. Never Stop Testing & Improving

What works for today may be tomorrow’s dog. There is always room for improvement, and testing your current copy (called the “control”) against newer versions will make sure you’re getting the biggest bang for your sales message buck.

But remember: When changing or revising your message, do it one point at a time. Otherwise, you’ll never know what exactly produced the altered results.

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