Kickstart Your Copywriting Process! With http:// Why I m Having This Class Copywriting is hot. Everyone out there will tell you that copy is the most important element to your marketing and promotional materials. Copy never sleeps. It represents YOUR business to tons of potential new clients, even when you re not there. Copy makes you stand out. It puts you in the driver s seat as the expert in your field. Copy doesn t spoil. Killer copy can be used over and over again in different promotions to massacre the competition. (That means more money into your coffers instead of theirs). Copy is the center of EVERY marketing campaign. Nothing happens until the copy gets written. Without copy to breathe life into your product or service sales don t happen. Period. Copy is the underestimated secret weapon. It s the single most reliable way to guarantee that you are the obvious choice over your competitors - every time. But where do you get help with it?? Most good copy isn t signed. Good copywriters can be pricey or they re too busy. Copywriting is a learnable skill that people need to empower their business. People should write their OWN copy because they know 1
their business strengths better than anyone. Overview - What Is Copy? Copy describes what you do and persuades the reader to take some action. These are some of the materials you can use copy in: Web site content Press releases Advertorials Marketing materials such as invitations, posters, flyers, brochures Sales letters E-zines E-books 1) Before you ever sit down to write a single word of copy you must thoroughly RESEARCH. Copywriting is a team sport. There is you, the writer and the reader. The reader gets to decide when the game s over. As soon as the reader is gone, they re not reading your copy anymore. So you re anticipating what s going to keep them interested and intrigued with your copy ahead of time. And that s why doing this research and competitive analysis is so critical which you must do before you write a word of copy. Research is the most important thing you could possibly do in copywriting. This is the foundation of your house. This is what everything relies on and I spend at least 50% of my time researching what it is that I m going to write about before I ever sit down and write it. Ask yourself Who s your target market? What have you done before that worked? What have you done that didn t work? How are you driving traffic to your site? What s your product? 2
Way Back Machine, which is at www.waybackmachine.org 2) In order to adequately connect with the reader, you need to DEFINE your product and/or service using FEATURES and BENEFITS I think we probably already know what features and benefits are. But so we are all on the same page, please allow me to explain. A feature is the adjective of the product. It describes what the product is. And the benefit is the emotional component of what the person gets out of the product. People want to know that they made a good purchasing decision. So they WANT to be convinced and persuaded as to why your product or service is better. 3) KEYWORDS and KEYWORD PHRASES should be incorporated in your copy for continuity as well as search engine optimization. Go to http://inventory.overture.com and type several keywords and phrases in their term suggestion tool. Example: Here s a search on stay at home moms. In July, 3565 people searched that term. Searches done in July 2004 Count Search Term 3565 stay at home mom 586 stay at home mom job 214 business for stay at home mom 213 stay home mom make money to be a stay at home mom or 203 work Versus the term stay at home mothers which got only 463 searches in July. What a difference a word makes! 3
Searches done in July 2004 Count Search Term 478 stay at home mother 128 stay at home mother business 102 home job mother stay 4) If the prospect doesn t read the HEADLINES or SUBHEADLINES he/she is not likely to read any other part of your copy. Headlines are the ad for your ad. Imagine you are reading the newspaper. When you go through the newspaper you don t read every story, right? Or even a magazine. You flip through the ones that get your interest. They are the ones you will stick with. Copywriting is the same way online or off line. Headlines: 1) Are the first thing they see. 2) Are the first hurdle to keeping them on your page. 3) Set the tone. 4) Illustrates what they re going to get. 5) Should be a summary of the entire page. Online you get 3-8 seconds to capture the attention of your audience. Once they click away, the odds of them coming back are extremely reduced. David Ogilvy, copywriter extraordinaire said, "On the average, 5 times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy. It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90% of your money." Ted Nicholas, who wrote copy that literally made companies billions of dollars said, "Based on hundreds of tests conducted, a good headline can be as much as 17 times more effective than a so-so headline. And this is with exactly the same body copy!" 4
Advertising guru John Caples claimed to spend hours, even days on the headline. Much less time on the actual copy. Headline-Building Formulas Formula 1: Use benefits from the brainstorm technique Go back to your features/benefits exercise. Once you identify your ultimate feature, you ve found your headline. The lesser features become the subheads. Formula 2: Adapt it from proven headlines. Go through magazines and pay attention to what headlines attract you. Start keeping a file of them (this is called a swipe file, by the way). In copywriting this is not considered plagiarism but a perfectly acceptable way to get ideas and tested material. Or adapt from the classics like: Original: Breakfast Of Champions! (Wheaties cereal) Adaptation: Breakfast of Millionaires. (Barron. financial magazine) Original:.They Laughed When I Sat Down At The Piano But When I Started To Play!...(John Caples) Adaptation: They Laughed When I Sat Down At The Piano. They Stopped When I Picked It Up. (Gold s Gym) Formula 3: Write to a formula 1) How To. How To (get, have, acquire, own, profit from, etc.) How To Solve All Your Money Problems Forever! How To Easily Get All The Clients You Could Ever Want! 5
Or use a quantifiable number 7 ways to get your dog to listen to you 5) 79% of all readers scan on the Internet according to a study by Jakob Nielson making BULLETS & WHITE SPACE critical to leading the eye down the page. Bullets are the little typographical symbols that signify a list is coming. They show items of equal importance are listed on separate lines. The reader sees them as little mini bits of knowledge that help them make their decision about buying from you. These are extremely powerful in copy. Often these will little guys will make or break your sale. They are very quick to read and can explode on impact, creating an emotional response more effectively in many cases than a longer paragraph. The most effective bullets have a 1, 2 punch. They list the feature then the benefit, then an added benefit. Example: Karate black-belts never get a chance to strike and any defensive move they make only gets them hurt more seriously! a dramatic reduction in debt and the total disappearance of tax problems (and nearly half soon get out of all debt completely) 6) The purpose of the first sentence is to get them to read the next sentence. The purpose of that sentence is to get them to read the next. If they don t read, they won t buy, which is why the COPY FLOW is so important. The Bucket Brigade: This comes from the times before fire departments got organized. If there was a fire, the townspeople 6
would line up and pass buckets of water from the nearest pump to the fire, while another line was passed back from the fire to the pump. The water moved along briskly without let up or slowing. That s what we aim for in copy. Each sentence should lead you into reading the next. All the elements in an advertisement are primarily designed to do one thing and one thing only: get you to read the first sentence of the copy. Joseph Sugarman He also said, The sole purpose of the first sentence in an advertisement is to get you to read the second sentence. Smart guy, that Joe. In journalism school, these were considered empty phrases. Now that I know about copywriting, I think differently. But there s more Don t stop now or you ll miss it Before I tell you about that, let me tell you a quick story about this Wait till you hear what happens next And so on 7) Testimonials, outbound links and offering information at no cost are all ways to boost CREDIBILITY Let someone else do the bragging for you. "Before Lorrie s teleseminar I had never written direct response sales copy in my life. But after just one class, she completely changed my attitude about writing. I went on to write a killer sales letter for our first annual Blessings in Adversity campaign which raised over $25,190 in just 30 days for St. Jude Children s Research Hospital to help children with cancer." Nicole Williams 7
8) You show your prospect that you are the solution to their pain. Remind them of their problem, exacerbate it and be the answer with a STRONG CALL TO ACTION. P.T. Barnum said that without the hype, something terrible happens. Nothing!! It still is true, but people are starting to get very, very savvy. Yes, I think its impact is lessened, and yet I will say not to discount these things that have worked and will continue to work for decades. We still continue to have a guttural, emotional response to a lot of words. Some words like discover the secret of. 9) Despite our high-tech world, we still think in Stone Age minds (source: Psychology Today, May 2001). That makes ENTICEMENT particularly important when trying to connect to the prospect on an emotional level. Use the 6 human motivators in your copy: The same tactics used today in copy were used over 100 years ago in ads. Human psychology doesn t change. We re still motivated by the same triggers: Gain/Greed Love Self-indulgence Self-preservation Pride Duty/Guilt 10) Reading your copy ALOUD can help you find potential errors and smooth flow of your copy when you PROOFREAD, EDIT and REVISE. Read your copy out loud! Don t edit yourself too early. Set your copy aside for at least 24 hours and then edit. It doesn t have to be perfect! 8
There are no absolutes in copywriting. I think you re going to find one guy or gal who says one thing and there s going to be somebody else, I guarantee, who says the opposite. So you want to be careful about what you read and what you hear. Always keep an open mind. Red Hot Challenge: Find 3 other businesses doing what do or selling what you sell. Do a brief comparison/contrast to your company. Work on your Unique Sales Proposition. How are you different? Write at least 3 features with corresponding benefits about your business or product. 9