Internet Marketing RSS 2.0
# Wednesday, October 29, 2008

You know that writing good sales copy is important for success. You need to compel consumers to click on your ads. You need to persuade consumers to opt-in to your mailing list. You need to persuade to buy your products and services. You accomplish all of these things with your sales copy. How do you write good sales copy?

Good sales copy doesn't require a professional copywriter. You can write good copy yourself. Start by looking at examples from your competition. What do their ads and landing pages look like? You also need to test, which means tracking results and comparing variations in your ads and landing pages.

Copywriting comes down to one thing. You want the consumer to take an action. You want the consumer to register, make a purchase, etc. Good sales copy follows four basic steps to compel a consumer to take an action. These steps can be described in the acronym AIDA. It stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. You'll see what these steps are in terms of a landing page.

(1) Capture the consumers Attention.
This is the job of your headline, and perhaps the following sentence. You've to got to make the consumer want to read the rest of the copy when the consumer comes to your page. If you fail to do this in the online world, the customer will be gone in 5 or 10 seconds. Your headline needs to make the consumer stop and take the time to read the rest of your landing page.

For example, imagine your market is actors and you have a product to help them win roles from auditions. Your headline may be something like this.

"Do you know how to prepare in the ten minutes before giving your audition?"

(2) Create Interest in your Product or Service.
After you've got their attention, you need to make them interest in what you have to say. The common practice in sales copy is to describe a problem that the consumer may have that your product or service will provide a solution to. Then demonstrate how your product or service provides a solution.

Again, for auditioning actors, your copy might be like this.

"Most auditions are cold read auditions. A typical audition consists of you getting a side when you arrive an audition. You will have ten or fifteen minutes to read over the side and prepare to read in front of the casting director or agent. The casting agent will decide to call you back or not based on your cold read. Do you know what to do in those ten minutes to prepare for your audition?

  • How should you develope a character in ten minutes?
  • Should you try and memorize as much of the side as you can?
  • What should you do if you are reading with the casting director or agent?
  • What do you do if you are paired with another actor or actress?
  • Does the scene require you to cry on command?
  • Will you have to improvise parts of the audition?
  • What will you do without props and proper setting? Is your character supposed to enter through a door?

Get the Productname now to discover the answers. The Productname teaches you how to deliver a great cold read. Delivering a great cold read is the most important step toward wining an acting role."


(3) Build desire for your Product or Service. You created problem for the consumer, now you need to describe how you product is the solution.

You may have heard to list benefits instead of features. You never want to talk about features. Instead, you need to talk about what the feature will mean to the customer. Will it save them time? Will it make their task or life easier? Will it save them money? These types of things are benefits. This is what you need to concentrate on, telling consumer how they will personally gain from your product.

In addition, testimonials are often used at this stage. Many consumers place stock in testimonials from other parties, and they help build desire.


(4) Compel the consumer to take Action. This is last part of the sales letter or landing page. Here to give the consumer the chance to take the action you've been leading them to.

Often you'll see a call to action used, like "click here now" or "get your copy now". This is appeals to the subconscious mind of the consumer, and telling them specifically what to do.

You may use tactics like creating a sense of urgency with an ordering deadline.

It is the accepted best practice to give the consumer only the option to take your action. Don't give them a navigation menu, or any other click. Create your sales letter so that they either take your action or leave.

 


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copywriting
# Wednesday, October 22, 2008

A consumer will not buy a product. Consumers purchase solutions to problems they are having. They make a purchase in order to fill a need or a want. You can encourage a consumer to buy your products by making your sales copy trigger an emotional response. They are five major emotional appeals sales copy uses to persuade consumers.

The primary emotion is curiosity. You've probably seen many ads making outrageous claims. These ads attempt get attention by making consumers want to know if such statements are true. In general, the more shocking the claim, the more you can peak curiosity. The more curious you can make a consumer, the further they follow you down your sales funnel.

Internet marketing Adwords ads tend to work on curiosity. Have you seen the ads where the marketer claims to me making $90,000 a month? Have you been curious to find out if that's true or how he did it?

Another emotion is insecurity. Almost everyone has certain aspect about themselves that they are insecure about. In addition, certain demographics tend to share insecurities. For example, teenagers tend to be insecure about their popularity in school. Your sales copy can promise to address feelings of insecurity.

Good examples of insecurity in advertising are commercials for insurance for senior citizens. These commercials appeal to the health concerns of the elderly, and promise security with their policies.

Fear is the third emotion you can use. Consumers have many fears, death, financial debt, loss of someone close to them, aging and more. Your sales copy can appeal to these fears, and them promise alleviate them with your product.

Pharmaceutical commercials for high blood pressure or heart disease tend to rely on fear. These commercials use statistical figures to provoke fears of disease and death.

Vanity is the next emotion. People tend to want to improve themselves. Your sales copy can promise to make them look better, feel stronger or be healthier. Fitness equipment uses vanity in their advertising. How many home gym machines promise all three of the above?

Greed is another powerful emotional trigger. Almost everyone could use more money. Internet marketing ads make use of greed, promising more traffic, more sales and bigger returns.

Your goal as a copywriter is to use these emotional triggers and tie them to your product or service. Explain to a prospect how your product will benefit them. Persuade them that your product will make their life easier or safer. Promise to make them happier and healthier. Appeal to their wants and desires.

 


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# Saturday, October 18, 2008

Should you scare your customers? Should your sales copy persuade visitors by attempting to scare that they are missing something vital without your product or service.

Machiavelli was an Italian renaissance author who wrote a work called the "the prince". His book was intended to instruct the young Italian rulers of various city states how to govern. One of the main points of the work was the conclusion that it is better to feared than loved.

Could you use fear to persaude your customers to buy from you?

Much of the sales copy in adwords ads today focuses on making the consumer either curious or greedy. This is particularly true in the ads for internet marketing. Most of them make an outrageous claim, like "see how I'm making x dollars a month". This ad is designed to appeal to marketing consumer by appealing to his greed. Plus, the more outrageous the amount, the more curious the consumer is to see how the advertisers is doing it.

This is a very good tactic. Appealing to these two emotions is a great way to approach sales copy.

But, in a column of Adwords ads, you want your ad to stand to out. You should always strive to stand and be noticeable in the crowd. So, if other advertisers already advertisements of this type, could you profit from a different tactic.

As Machiavelli discovered, consumers also respond to fear. In recent years, politcal campaigns have tried, or accused each other of tried, to use fear to get candidates elected.

You could appeal to a fear your consumers have in the first line of ad. Your second line then informs them that your product or service provides a solution. This will compel your consumers to click your ad.

 


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copywriting
# Sunday, October 05, 2008

Google penalizes Adwords ads with poor click through rates. If your ad is not generating clicks, it's making it more expensive for you to advertise. Discover how to improve the click through rate of your ads.

Your Adwords ad is sales copy. You are attempting to persuade a potential consumer to make a decision based on your ad text. This is the art a science of sales copy. Sales copy can be defined as salesmanship in print.

The trick in Adwords is that you only have 95 characters to do it in (25 character headline + 2 lines of 35 character description). That is daunting task for any professional salesman.

The following tips can improve the sales copy in both your Adwords ads and in your landing page or sales letter.

1) Speak to the customer
A general rule of sales copy is that you want to appeal directly to the consumer. By using the word you, you address the consumer in a direct personal way, as if you were speaking to them. Use you in your sales copy instead of your product name or I.

2) People buy solutions, not products or services
Another general rule of sales copy is that a customer is looking to find a solution, not buy a product. A customer doesn't want to buy a drill, instead they need a way to make a hole. You need to sell a solution. A perfect example of this are Billy Mays TV commercials for Hercules hooks, Oxyclean, OrangeClean or any of his products. Did you ever notice the commercial starts by describing or creating a problem? The commercial then proceeds to persuade you that they have the solution to the problem. The commercials are like that because the method works.

3) Feature versus Benefit
You may be tempted to list a prominent feature of your product. Don't. Instead, make a list of every feature you can think of. Then write down the corresponding reason the customer would want that feature. You can often move from feature to benefit by using "what that means to you, Mr. Customer is". That becomes a benefit. Then don't describe a feature in your ad, but describe a benefit.

4) Use a Call to Action
A Call to Action is a sentence instructing the consumer to perform a task. The consumer will often be subconsciously persuaded to do it. A call to Action generally begins with a verb (the action). Here are some examples.

  • Click here.
  • Download your copy now.
  • Call now.
  • Get help.

5) Keyword or Phrase
Your ad will be more attractive to the customer if your ad text contains the keyword or phrase they searched on. Right away your customer will view your ad has highly relevant, because the keyword is right there. The headline is a particularly good place to have the keyword since your customer sees it first. this tactic is done automatically if you use the Adwords strategy from adwords-marketing-tool,com

6) Use Free if applicable
Using the word free is likely to increase your CTR. Make sure your landing page does freely give away what you promised.

7) Hype words
Hype words like amazing or incredible may help you attract attention. But be careful, overuse them and you sound like a snake oil salesman.

8) Sense of urgency
You can create a sense of urgency with a phrase like limited offer. This encourages a customer to make a purchase on the spot. If you have the space available, you can describe the consequences of failing to act.

9) No risk
Consumers are cautious of being taken advantage of. A money back guarantee or a no risk free trial helps persuade you consumers.

10) Test your ads
The only way you'll know if your sales copy is working is to test it. Split testing is the accepted method of testing your ads. You run two ads simultaneously. After the proper amount of time, you compare CTR or ROI and declare a winner and remove the lesser ad.

 


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