Entries from March 2008 ↓
March 13th, 2008 — Tactical Copywriting
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Enjoy and God bless,
Andy Havens
March 26th, 2008 — Tactical Copywriting
Just a quick note about something I’ve been thinking of offering…
Please let me know if you would be interested in a Video Critique of Sales Pages - there are two ways we can go with this…
First is a critique of known high converting sales pages. I’ve been doing a few of these and I think there may be some value in it. I don’t expect these to be expensive - maybe $10 each.
The second concept is a private critique of your sales page. This I would offer on two levels. The first level being more of an “exectutive summary” (you being the executive) pointing out any major problems I spot.
Or I could do an in-depth critique where I examine your page line by line.
These two services seem to be a good value at $100 and $300 respectively.
What’s your opinion? Am I way out of line? Charging too much? Too little? Is this a service you might be interested in? Please let me know by dropping a comment below.
I appreciate your input.
God bless,
Andy
March 24th, 2008 — Tactical Copywriting
Headlines are critical to any sales letter. Most copywriters and testers agree 80% of readers will take a look at your headline and then decide whether to read any more. I expect more marketers experience faster, more dramatic results from headline changes than any other element. All great information but what do you DO with it? Let’s take a look…
Right now, before you do anything else, get it in your head: No matter how good you think your headline is - you’ve got to test it. Don’t fudge here.
And that means you need to come up with at least two headlines - more is better.
We’ve already discussed the “hook” headline - where you take that unique, extraordinary fact and turn it into a sensational teaser. Think “National Enquirer”. Think “Cosmopolitan”. These publications live or die by attention grabbing headlines. When it comes to a “hook”, you just can’t beat the tabloids. But what if you don’t have a good hook?
Never fear, there’s other ways. Your headline should contain your strongest benefit. Think of the most powerful benefit your customer will get. Do NOT exaggerate! Make sure any claim you make can be substantiated with cold, hard facts. But it’s also acceptable to use the facts to your advantage also. How?
Let’s say you are selling a “gem dectector” that instantly reports what type of gem is in a piece of jewelry. You know one person used it to find a diamond ring that sold for $12,234 and she was able to buy it for $300. (Notice how this is ALSO a “hook”?)
“Soccer Mom Discovers Diamond Worth $12,234 at Rummage Sale Turning a $300 Invesment into a $11,934 Profit Using the Roncoid Gem Detective”
Subhead: “You too can find valuable gemstone jewlery almost anywhere for almost instant profits!”
Sometimes you can change a single word and see huge results. In the headline above I might change $11,934 into “3978%”
Famous Copywritier and Marketer Ten Nicholas says he writes at least 200 headlines for every product he sells. These days you could test every one but you shouldn’t have too. Some headlines you’ll be able to weed out just by looking at them.
Do you have to pump out 200 headlines for every sales letter you write? No, but if you do you increase you chances of success exponentially.
One other tip: Look for “hidden” and “obvious” benefits. Why obvious benefits?
For one thing what may be obvioius to you may not be obvious to your reader. And it may be just the thing your customer is looking for. Many marketers, including your competitors miss this. What about “hidden” benefits?
These take a bit more to dig out but they are nearly always worth the effort. Hidden benefits often require you look at customer perceptions rather than the product itself.
Toothpaste marketers know this. Fighting cavities is fine. Whiter teeth is a boone, but the hidden benefit of transforming yourself from a goofy nerd to a magnet for the opposite gender is golden.
One other thing, don’t be afraid to reword and/or restate your benefits in the body of your copy. Reiterate them in you bullet copy too.
Now you know why I feel your sales letter should start by looking for benefits. Benefits are the meat of your copy and are used again and again. Your headlines should contain your strongest benefit or a hook. Keep in mind your hook should also offer a benefit. While a good hook doesn’t HAVE to offer your strongest benefit, if to does, it is to your advantage.
Now go write that winning headline!
God bless,
Andy
March 21st, 2008 — Tactical Copywriting
Every good copywriter (heck even most bad ones) have a “swipe file”. It’s a collection of excellent sales letters you can learn from. I’ve put together a swipe file of high-converting sales letters on the Internet for you. So what do you do with them?
Well, you could do a lot of things. Bookmark them (easier to bookmark my page), study them, or best of all copy them. No, I don’t mean steal them for your own us, I mean get out your pen and paper and copy them word for word.
The idea is to embed these letters in your brain. Don’t laugh. Gary Halbert made John Carlton do exactly that. I’ve done it and so has dozens of top copywriters I don’t feel worthy to hold a pen for. What have you got to lose?
Give it a shot. You’ll find the letters here (be forwarned, the page isn’t “pretty”):
Click here for Andy’s list of Hot Hot Hot Sales Letters.
March 20th, 2008 — Tactical Copywriting
One kind of headline is the “hook”. John Carlton is legendary for this style of headline. What makes a good hook?
Basically a good hook is born from good research. Look for the unuaual twist that makes your subject stand out.
“Amazing Secret Discovered by a One-Legged Golfer Adds 50 Yards to Your Drives, Eliminates Hooks and Slices…. And Can Slash Up To 10 Strokes From Your Game Almost Overnight!”
This i s one of Carlton’s headlines.
Even if you don’t play golf you might be tempted to read this just to get the skinny on this one-legged golfer guy.
John continues on with the story promised by the headline. Now think about this. Tthis headline..
- arouses your curiosity
- promsies a story
- offers some believable yet highly desireable benefits
As for your own headlines… you should put your best benefit in it. If you can find some extraordinary tidbit of information you can build your message around like the one-legged golfer secret - you can use some sort of hook like this one.
But beware! Make sure you can back it up! Don’t go around making outrageous claims you can’t prove. It’s called false advertising and it’s illegal. Even if you can make a fairly incredible claim and back it up - don’t make it too incredible because folks may not believe it anyway.
In the copy to Carlton’s page, it goes on to explain, quite reasonably, how all this makes sense AND gave credence to the secret that could only be revealed to those who ordered.
March 19th, 2008 — Tactical Copywriting
If you sell anything online chances are you’d sell more if you could… right? Since your sales page is really your online sales representative it only makes sense to make sure it does the best possible selling job for you. Here are 4 tips to improve any sales page.
Should You Really put your best foot forward?
Before answering that, you should know by your “best foot”, I’m talking about your best information - NOT - just looking good. So should you give away your best stuff? Absolutely! Why?
Because this establishes your authority immediately and that separates you from any competition. It also showers you with credibility which is something you’d pay a fortune for if you could buy it.
Plant questions in the readers mind to maintain interest.
Our brains are hard wired to answer questions. In the previous section, I asked a question. One reason was to demonstrate this point but there was another reason too. If I said “Put your best foot forward” you would have immediately shut me out because you already “knew” what I was going to say. By posing the question you not only kept reading but you also kept searching. And that’s something any writer wants from a reader. But there’s more…
Give your visitors a ride
Joe Sugarman talks about writing copy that becomes a slippery slope for readers. Each part of the letter is designed to move the visitor to the next part until they reach the ultimate conclusion. Usually the order button where there is nothing left to do but buy. And no reason not to buy. Your subheadlines, bold and highlighted text should help. Structure these elements so they make it easy for scanners to zip through your sales page but compelling enough to make them take notice. Do this by pointing out key phrases offering irresistible benefits or designed to invoke curiosity.
Be Clear on What YOU Want!
How many people visit your site and leave because they don’t have a clue about what you want them to do? Too many sales pages never make it clear what they are selling much less what they expect out of the customer. If you want an order ask for the order. If you want a name ask for it. Give compelling reasons in form of benefits as to why they should do what you want but don’t beat around the bush - state what you want from the visitor.
By putting your best foot forward, planting questions in readers minds, giving them a ride and showing what you want them to do you’ll increase visitor response to your web page dramatically and make a huge impact on your bottom line.
March 15th, 2008 — Tactical Copywriting
Everybody has a story to tell. A well-told story is the essence of getting your message across. People love stories and they will read yours if it’s the least bit interesting. Surprisingly, it doesn’t take much. You’ve heard of the “elevator speech” where you get to the heart of what you are and do in the time it takes to ride an elevator…haven’t you?
I first learned to tell a story is 60 seconds, long before I heard the term “elevator speach”.
Quite a few years ago, I worked in radio - both on-air and in sales (and production, and copywriting, and well… it was a really small station :-). My boss, Jack, loved selling 60-second commercials. Ah-haa! You say - more money.
Well, no not really. Yes, 60-second spots cost more but an effective ad always makes money so this should be irrelevant. Jack was a solid radio man who knew the business. What he said about 60-second spots was “it gives advertisers time to tell their story”.
Jack was not only right but way ahead of his time in a way. In other ways it proves another solid principle that is rarely fooled: people respond to short easy-to-grasp ideas offered in a clear manner.
Now back to your story:
It would hurt to work up a few fersions of your own elevator speech. Get the basics of who you are in as few words as possible. Expand a little for those times when you have more time. But tell your story. Here’s my own example:
I’m Andy Havens and I help business people sell more by improving response to their marketing message. First I look at what they say and replace weak points with strong ones. Then I test my concepts for them for guaranteed results. Go to SalesPageMakeovers.com for a free consultation on how I can help you gain more profit with no more effort.
Now is that the end-all and be all of elevator speeches? No. It doesn’t have to be. Yet I think you’ll agree it’s clear and concise and it tells you what I do when I ‘m not blogging here. You may also notice a “call to action”. It’s important to let folks know what you do but also guide them as to what you want them to do with this information.
Your own story can be as long or short as you need it to be. I say the longer the better because you can always edit it when needed.
So get started now. Brainstorm if need be - write down all the things that make up who you are and what you do. Work out a story. If you need help, find someone who is good at telling stories to offer suggestions. It’s worth it.
In your sales letter your story should be a focal point of your message - it tells WHY you’re doing what your doing. Look at my “Anatomy of a Sales Letter ” for an example of how that works. There’s a link to it at your right.
While your story doesn’t HAVE to be focal - it’s often a natural. My point is if it works - great. If not, don’t worry, you still need to get your story down on paper.
In case you’re wondering, yes we are almost ready to tackle that headline! Stay tuned.
God bless,
Andy
March 14th, 2008 — Traffic
Update: This answers all my questions - maybe yours too 
Here’s the deal I finally solved the problem I was having and it was dead simple. The probem was my blog wasn’t validating. The solution?
Change my theme. Apparently the Technorati validator couldn’t see my blog, or the post, whatever so I went the wordpress classic theme, validated my blog and swapped back to this one. Like I said… simple. I also posted my solution on the discussion page so maybe someone else can follow suit.
And that’s why I’m leaving this post up, just in case someone has the same problem, they might be able to get a quick answer here.
Sometimes you just need to help folks.
I’m trying to join technorati, hence this post but they don’t want to validate it. Strange. Maybe they are just overwhelmed with folks. Who knows?
The problem is this is the kind of blog they would want and if they can’t get this one added in in a reasonable time, what good are they?
As a traffic increasing strategy. Hmmmm. Should I leave this post or delete it?
Technorati ProfileTechnorati Profile
March 13th, 2008 — Tactical Copywriting
One volume gives you 22 ways to hit your customer’s hot buttons - those sensitive spots that drives people to take action and buy now.
It’s called “22 Hot Buttons”. Instead of thinking of this book as a “copywriting” book - consider it a tactical manual geared toward directing customers to quick action. It’s laid out so it’s easy to grasp the concepts and then refer to them quickly when you’re ready to use them in your copy. Check it out…
Click here to learn more about “22 Hot Buttons”
March 12th, 2008 — Tactical Copywriting
News: Today I’m adding an excellent product for anyone interested in writing better copywriting - Paperless Copywriting.
When anybody asks me about learning copywriting I always say three things: read as much as you can, write until your fingers bleed sales copy and test your copy in the market. Do those three things diligently and you’ll be able to write decent copy.
But what if you HATE writing? You can outsource the copywriting - no problem. Just one question… how do you know if you’re paying too much?
Anyone can call themselves a copywriter. Any copywriter can write lousy copy. Even the best bomb more often than you think. One way around this is testing. We deal with that a lot here. (If you need help testing - check out SalesPageMakeovers.com where we can help you test or do it all for you.
But if you hire someone to write copy for you - shouldn’t you have a good idea of what to expect? Plus if you know something about what it takes to write good copy you can make your copywriter’s job a lot easier (and save money) by providing good information about your product and the competition. So where do you learn about writing good copy?
There’s all sorts of books, ebooks, courses… you name it. You can read all of the stuff posted on TheGaryHalberLetter, John Carlton’s BigDamnBlog and a host of others. Or you can pick up a copy of Paperless Copywriting (I suggest you do all three eventually).
I’ve paid thousands of dollars to learn the stuff in this package. It’s good.
Paperless Copywriting is a collection of 10 of the best copywriting titles on the Internet all at your fingertips. You’ll even learn how to build an effective sales page. To learn more, click on the link below…
Click Here to Learn More About Paperless Copywriting…
God bless,
Andy
