Copy tactics are techniques, or tools if you will, geared to improve performances of sales materials.
Many decades of copywriting as produced an odd concept of copywriting science and art. The concept is that the standard of the industry – the sales letter – must be written and viewed as a whole. But in practice sales letters are improved by changing different parts of the letter and testing these changes against the orginal.
Why not assemble sales copy from the parts to begin with?
In practice, this is how it’s done. Few copywriters sit down and write the whole letter in one sitting but we all like to think we do.
So first I suggest you build each “part” of your sales letter, then assemble the parts into a whole but I don’t stop there…
After your letter is assembled, I suggest you start testing each part. The basic idea has been around for decades…
Basically you present two slightly different versions of your letter to a group of people and keep track of which version generates the most sales. The results are often astounding and that’s where the fun begins…
When I started out as a copywriter it didn’t take me long to figure out there’s a better way to write killer copy.
You see almost any copy can be improved by testing. It’s safe to say if it can’t be improved… move on to something else! But there’s another message peeking out from the obvious “any copy can be improved by testing…
A persistant tester can eventually outperform almost any copywriter no matter how good he or she is! Notice I said “tester” NOT “copywriter”. Now this premise does carry some ground rulesl…
One has to at least be a student of good copy. You have to know what to look for.
Plus it helps to have some basic knowledge of salesmanship. John Carlton, likes to say (I’m paraphrasing) a good “street-wise” direct sales guy will outsell the average “Madison Avenue Wharton MBA” any day of the week. Why? Because there’s nothing like being face to face with a potential customer when it comes to finding out what it takes to make the damn sale.
In any case, I don’t deal too much in theory, opinion or hearsay on these pages. If I’m not sure about something I say “test it”. And if I am sure about something, I say “test it again!”.
