Five Ways To Improve Any Sales Promotion In Less Than Five Minutes

Transcription

1 Five Ways To Improve Any Sales Promotion In Less Than Five Minutes By Glenn Fisher AllGoodCopy.com

2 Five Ways To Improve Any Sales Promotion In Less Than Five Minutes Hello there! First, let me thank you for joining AllGoodCopy.com. I'll be in touch about once a week to share with you the best new copy techniques, the best new copy insight and the best new copy ideas. I'm confident that you will be able to use what you learn each week to become a much better copywriter... GLENN FISHER Much sooner than you thought. Today, though - in fact, right now - we're going to cover five different changes that you can make to any sales promotion that you're working on (or that has been submitted to you by a freelancer) to make it perform much, much better. In other words, if you apply what you discover in the next few pages, you will make more money. Nothing you'll read here is difficult to understand. In fact, a lot of it, as you'll discover, is merely common sense. And for that reason, I'm sure you'll find each element I cover to be easily adaptable to the promotion you are currently looking to improve. Above all else, though - in fact, even above the potential of earning more money - I hope you enjoy reading what I've written here. Page! 2

3 ! To become a better copywriter is one thing... To enjoy the process of becoming one is - in my humble opinion much more important. Best wishes, Glenn Fisher Founder AllGoodCopy.com P.S. There are so many more proven ways to improve your copy and make more sales. And I've detailed more than 20 of the best in a guide called Write Better Copy. You can find out how to get a copy here. I think you'll find Write Better Copy the perfect starting point to help you further develop your copywriting skills. Not only do I share more than 20 straight-forward techniques for improving response, I also lay out a number of practical exercises I use to train all the copywriters I work with. Plus it gives you the chance to catch up on some of my best advice in one place. So, to find out how to get a copy (and more about the bonuses I've included)... Check this out. Page! 3

4 Copy Tweak #1: Engaging Your Reader from the Word Go! OK. So, the first thing we need to do to your promotion is sort out your first line. We haven't the time here to sort out your headline. That's a whole different kettle of fish and there is so much I could write on that particular element of a sales promotion that it would take another report altogether. (In fact, we'll look to dealing with that report another time!) For now then, let's tighten your lead. Assume you've grabbed your reader's attention with a unique, useful, urgent and ultra-specific headline and now the battle has commenced to keep them interested. And if that is indeed the case, the battle really does begin with your first line... In fact, the challenge every first line faces is convincing the reader to read the second line. And that's it. So long as your first line achieves that goal. It has done its job. To be able to do that, the first line needs to do three things... It needs to be swift so that it is easy for the reader to read on. It needs to physically lead the reader to the second line. And it needs to intrigue the reader to such an extent that they MUST read on. Page! 4

5 To do that is not difficult. At least, it is not as difficult as some people would have you believe. The first two requirements can be solved technically. The third, however, must be solved psychologically. By technically, I mean a tweak that can be applied without any real thought. It is merely an aesthetic change. By psychologically, I mean a tweak that requires some thought. To consider on some level, the reader's emotional response to what you write. So, to meet that first requirement - it needs to be swift so that it is easy for the reader to read on - you must make sure the first line of your promotion is short. It really is as simple as that. Your first line should, ideally, be no more than ten to fifteen words. For example: It's only a matter of time before you'll be using this yourself... On the page, this appears visually clean. It's so easy to read the reader may as well read the next sentence. Therefore, your first line has achieved its primary goal: to lead the reader to the second sentence. Meeting the second requirement - it needs to physically lead the reader to the second line - is also easily achieved. In fact, we have already seen it done in that previous example. You see, to lead the reader physically to the next sentence just needs you to end the first sentence with an ellipsis, or three dots if you don't like posh names for things. Page! 5

6 Those three dots might seem arbitrary, but they lead the reader s eye - often without the reader even realising. As you can see, both of these techniques are technical. They require no more action than clipping your words and typing three full stops (or periods depending on which side of the pond you're on!). The third element, however - it needs to intrigue the reader to such an extent that they MUST read on - requires a little more thought. But not that much. You just need to intrigue the reader enough to want to read the next line. Now, because you've clipped the sentence to be around ten to fifteen words your first sentence simply won't be able to contain enough information to paint a whole picture and therefore by default you'll have created some small sense of intrigue. But to make it impossible for the reader to NOT read your second line... you should try to consciously add a second level of intrigue. Take another look at the example I gave earlier... It's only a matter of time before you'll be using this yourself... By referring to "this", the sentence is referring to something that the reader is not yet aware of. Already the sense of intrigue is being developed. But why would the reader care about an unknown "this"? Here, then, you can see the development of the remainder of the sentence... It suggests that "it is only a matter of time before..." the reader will be using the unknown "this" themselves. Page! 6

7 Why? What is about this "this" that will mean the reader must use it? And bingo! There you have a second level of intrigue. By this point - with the clipped sentence, the physical suggestion of the ellipsis and the unavoidable sense of intrigue - the reader cannot help but read the next line. Your job is done. And your promotion is improved. And don t forget, there are so many more proven ways to improve your copy and make more sales. I've detailed more than 20 of the best in a guide called Write Better Copy. You can find out how to get a copy here. Page! 7

8 Copy Tweak #2: Overcome the most immediate objection Whatever your promotion is selling - regardless of which niche you might be working in - the most immediate objection that readers of ANY long copy promotion will raise is exactly the same... "Why the hell should I give you my money?" That's it. Really. More advanced copy theory will tell you to think up all sorts of potential objections and come up with innovative ways to overcome them in your promotion... And don't get me wrong... That is all well and good. Further down the line that advanced thought will come in handy. But the fact of the matter is, so few copywriters deal with the most immediate objection adequately. The irony is, if you deal with that it in the right way, all of those other objections will start to fall away without you even having to worry about them. Now, most people think that the sales promotion is in itself the tool for overcoming that most immediate objection of 'why the hell should I give you my money?' It's not. Even if you have lined up a series of powerful promises and EVEN if you've poured on the proof with testimonials, bank statements and track records... you have not actually tackled that most immediate objection. Page! 8

9 You might think you have - most copywriters do - but you haven't. What you've ACTUALLY done is say what the product or service could do for the customer (the promises) and prove the product or service is worth your money (the proof). Fair enough, I know what you thinking: surely, the promise and the proof is the reason why the product is worth the reader's money. But proving the product or service is worth paying for is a different thing to overcoming the reader's most immediate objection of why they should give you their money. We've all seen the Loreal adverts where some pretty woman says ambiguously: "Because you're worth it" as a supposed justification for purchasing the product they're touting. But worth is not enough to overcome why. Those adverts, my friend, are nonsense. To tackle the objection you need to directly address the reader on a personal and psychological level. You need to forget about the product or service you're selling altogether and tackle the objection itself. You see, the objection doesn't really have anything to do with the product or service - the objection is really about the reader giving you money and nothing more. The important thing to do is show that you understand the reader's concern, that you understand that they are unsure about parting with their money. It's not possible to do this in one line. Page! 9

10 No matter how well you litter your promotion with attempts at doing this, to effectively overcome the reader's most immediate objection, you must include an entirely new section in your promotion; half a page at least. And what should that section include? Well, as I say, you should forget about the product or service. What you must do in this extra section is provide what I call a 'Sympathetic Acknowledgement'. What I mean by that is that you should explain to the reader that you understand their position... You understand why they might have some hesitation when it comes to paying for the product or service. But you also understand - and this is key - that deep down, by reading your promotion to this point, they want to be convinced. An example of how you could handle this - and perhaps the most often used version - is to explain that you (as the author of the product or service) were once in the same shoes as the reader. Like them you read lots of different long copy promotions that promised various things but never delivered. You can explain how you knew what it was like to be hesitant in sending off your money, but then you can start to turn the argument around and by suggesting that you know how they feel, you can link the section to your guarantee and explain to the reader that you've specifically created your guarantee to tackle that exact feeling. This is just one of the simplest approaches. You could add much more detail to your personal story and enhance your sympathetic acknowledgement by doing so. Page 10!

11 If you're writing a promotion for your own product or service, be as open and honest as possible at this point. And if you're writing the promotion for someone else, interview them more specifically to get further details about them and their own experiences with receiving long copy promotions that will enable you to make your sympathetic acknowledgement section more genuine. If you do it right and make the reader feel like you're on their side, you'll find that most immediate objection is much more easily overcome and your promotion will work much, much better. And don t forget, there are so many more proven ways to improve your copy and make more sales. I've detailed more than 20 of the best in a guide called Write Better Copy. You can find out how to get a copy here. Page! 11

12 Copy Tweak #3: Making your offer match your price You get handed a product or service to write copy for... Or you've created a product or service that you're going to write the copy for yourself... When creating the product or service a price has been decided on. This is a mistake. Yet this is exactly how the production and marketing of a product is handled. You must change this. Otherwise - unless the product or service has by chance been priced correctly - when you come to the offer section of your promotion, it will - if not fail completely - be seriously hampered. Most people assume that if you handle every other section of a promotion correctly, the offer will naturally follow and not require anything more than lips service. As I say, this is a mistake. The offer you make in your promotion is equally - of not more - important than any other section. Not only does it need to be a good offer, it must work in unison with the promises and guarantee you are making throughout the rest of your promotion. In fact, it goes further than that. To ensure your promotion works to the highest level it can, your offer must meet a number of criteria. Page 12!

13 Sounds like more hard work - especially if you need to convince the creator of the product or service to change their price in accordance with your promotion. But believe me, it's worth it. In the long-run, your client - or your own back pocket - will thank you for it. So, what exactly do I mean when I say that your offer and guarantee should work in unison with the promises you make throughout your promotion? Well, to allow me to show you how this works in the simplest way, let's take two extreme examples. Example 1 - Changing the Guarantee The promise you make in your promotion - as informed by the product or service you're selling - is that the reader will make an extra 12,000 in the next year thanks to your share advice. The share advice will cost the reader 300 for the year and they have 30 days to receive the advice to see if they like it before they have to commit. If, after receiving some of the advice, they don't like it, inside those 30 days, they can get a refund. Sounds good, maybe? Sounds like a pretty normal offer. But in actual fact, it's pretty weak. Or at least, it's a basic and un-innovative offer that will see the business that makes it consistently underperform. So, how do you make a better offer that is in unison with your copy? Well, in this case, you don't even have to chance the price. Page 13!

14 You're copy should show why it's worth investing 300 now to make 12,000 in the next year. But to really optimize your promotion, why not offer the reader an entire year to try it out? They still pay the 300 up front, but you can work into your copy that if the service doesn't return them 12,000 in the next year they can get a full refund. This will make the offer infinitely stronger and substantially increase the effectiveness of your promotion. Example 2 - Changing the Price Let's say you're selling a system that shows people how to pick out trades on the FTSE. The price of the system is 400. If they check the market twice each day, you expect they'll be able to spot 4 trades a week. Each trade has the potential to make, say, 50. So, in theory, even with a few losses, it's reasonable to expect someone to make 300 a month following the system. And indeed, it's that potential 300 a month that is the main promise in your promotion. You're offering people a 30-day guarantee during which they can get a full refund and all in all it's sounding like a pretty good offer. Hang on, though. It's not bad, but it's not great either. It can be improved. And by slightly altering the price, you could increase the overall sales of the promotion and product significantly. Page 14!

15 In fact, I'm talking about increasing the money you make by 50%, despite the fact that the system will be cheaper. You see, your offer will be so much stronger if you price the system at 300. It's all down to psychology. The reader will now see that in that 30-day guarantee period they could make the cost of the system. The price and the offer are now working in unison. Despite it the system being 100 cheaper, you will sell considerably more and therefore, in the long run, generate much greater revenues. Both of these examples show how a very small change to the guarantee period or the price can make a huge improvement to the offer your making. And when an offer works in unison with the price and guarantee you're job as a copywriter becomes a lot easier. Though it might seem strange as a copywriter to try to influence the price or guarantee of a particular product or service, believe me, you should as it the outcome will be much more beneficial for everyone involved - the product or service creator, you the copywriter and the reader. And don t forget, there are so many more proven ways to improve your copy and make more sales. I've detailed more than 20 of the best in a guide called Write Better Copy. You can find out how to get a copy here. Page 15!

16 Copy Tweak #4: The right way to use an author image A sales promotion landed on my desk recently Nothing new there; being a professional copywriter, hundreds land on my desk every week. But this one caught my eye. Unfortunately, it was for the wrong reason. You see, it wasn t the headline that caught my attention. In fact, when I got round to reading it, I didn t think much to it. A few too many clichés in my opinion; it lacked a truly unique idea. What actually caught my attention was the image of the author himself (or rather, the image of the man behind the system the promotion itself is undoubtedly written by a professional copywriter). I took a picture and you can see the author image on the right there. What s wrong with that you might wonder? He s not an ugly man. He s presenting himself quite smartly. And he s apparently on a promenade or boat, therefore making the implicit suggestion that he s a wealthy man and if you buy whatever he s selling, you could be wealthy too. Page 16!

17 Fair enough, right? And yes, as far as author images go it s not a bad one; if maybe a little cliché. However, there is one major flaw with the presentation of this author image. It s something that might seem pedantic, picky or even pointless. But believe me, it makes a difference and that difference, no matter how trivial it seems, could be the difference between making a sale and not. And besides, it s something so easily fixable that it s loopy for you not to do it. The problem is that you have no idea who on earth this man is. In fact, I keep saying it s an image of the author but it might just as well be the author s uncle, their best friend or their lover. Who knows?! As any reader would after seeing this picture, you scan the front page of the promotion to see if you can identify who this man is. You can t. And therein lays the problem. Before you ve even started to read the promotion properly, you re already distracted trying to find out who this bloody guy is. Worse still, how can you trust him if you don t know who he is? Why does he not say who he is? Is he hiding his identity? Is he embarrassed? Is he a criminal? Of course, in the reader s mind this all happens subconsciously; the reader s very brain is designed to immediately filter the information it IS given so that it can start to fill in the blanks, the information it s NOT given. Page 17!

18 As a copywriter, you need to help the reader s brain fill in the blanks as quickly and as easily as possible so that it can digest the actual information you want it to digest about the product or service you re selling. So, even though omitting the name of the author below the author s image might seem trivial, it actually causes a lot more distraction than you might think. Naturally, to solve the problem is simple: in any sales promotion, whenever you feature an image of the author, directly beneath it you should print the author s name. That way, you help the reader s brain along in its calculations and you guide it on to the actual details of the promotion much quicker. I think David Ogilvy once mentioned something along these same lines in regard to the pictures he often used in his adverts: beneath every picture there should always be a description of what the picture is. He suggested that when people see a picture, their eye is naturally drawn to the bottom of the picture in the hope of finding an explanation of what the picture is of. What Ogilvy did not go on to say is why the absence of an explanation is a problem. But here I have, and I ll say it again for good measure When you feature an image of the author in a sales promotion but do not state that it is the author or what his or her name is, it leaves the reader s subconscious with an unanswered question. Unanswered questions are bad. Why? Page 18!

19 Because in a sales promotion, unanswered questions soon evolve into objections. And of course, the more objections you allow the reader to generate, the less chance you have of making the sale. So, don t make this mistake in your sales promotions: ensure that whenever you feature the image of the author, you clearly state below the image his or her name. And don t forget, there are so many more proven ways to improve your copy and make more sales. I've detailed more than 20 of the best in a guide called Write Better Copy. You can find out how to get a copy here. Page 19!

20 Copy Tweak #5: How to make sure you don t misuse your PS It s no secret In a long copy sales promotion, the PS at the end of your letter can be an incredibly effective tool. But if you take the PS for granted and over-use it, you could actually do more damage than good. It s essential then that you understand the purpose of a PS, understand what makes it work and ensure that you don t misuse it Remember, in most cases, the PS is the last opportunity you have to converse with your potential customer. It s the last chance you have of convincing them to buy your product or service. That s why, at this final point, you need to make sure you nail it. Now, that considered, as I m sure you can work out yourself, the purpose of a PS is to tell the reader of one last benefit of your product or service. Ideally it should be one final, as yet unrevealed benefit that clinches the deal. Using a PS like this can be particularly effective and certainly more effective than summarising what you ve already discussed in the main body. This naturally leads us to understanding why the PS works. After covering the bulk of the sales argument in your promotion, the majority of your work should be done. The prospect should be ready to buy. By adding a breathless PS, it looks like you ve been so involved in explaining all the benefits in the main body of the Page 20!

21 promotion that you almost forgot to tell them about this one final benefit. They were pretty much sold before, but with this new information coming to light the deal is done. A great example of an effective PS might be to offer extra value in excess of what you re already offering in the promotion. You can see a good example of this here, where after concluding a sales argument for a low-price betting service the PS offers a free bet that is actually greater than the cost of the service This is what you should be aiming to achieve in your PS make your offer irresistible and close the deal by directing your converted customer to the order form or buy now button. Page 21!

22 What you shouldn t do at this point is undermine your PS by making it a parody of itself. You can see an example of what NOT to do with your PS here Can you see how this repeating PS almost becomes a joke? For a start it just covers ground that should already have been effectively dealt with in the promotion. There s nothing new, no final clincher. But to make matters worse it lists multiple PSs! Page 22!

23 ! To me and to the majority of potential customers rather than convincing me of the product or service s value, it makes me imagine a ridiculous door to door salesman having the door closed in his face and desperately trying to plead as to why you shouldn t ignore what he s saying. Ultimately you should be confident enough in your sales promotion to not need a PS That way, when you do use a PS (and correctly use it to mention a new benefit) it will give your promotion a final boost that makes it perform even better. So, I encourage you to try this idea and I encourage you to put into action the other four ideas I've share with you in this report. Do so and your sales promotions are almost guaranteed to work better and in turn you'll become a better, more highly paid copywriter. Over and out, Glenn Fisher Founder AllGoodCopy.com P.S. Remember, I've detailed more than 20 more ways to improve your copywriting in a guide called Write Better Copy. You can find out how to get a copy here. Page 23!

24 I think you'll find Write Better Copy the perfect starting point to help you further develop your copywriting skills. Not only do I share more than 20 straight-forward techniques for improving response, I also lay out a number of practical exercises I use to train all the copywriters I work with. Plus it gives you the chance to catch up on some of my best advice in one place. So, to find out how to get a copy (and more about the bonuses I've included)... Check this out. Page 24!