Here’s a message for all those companies making “viral videos” - You don’t make a viral video. You make a video and as more and more people share and pass it around, it goes viral. It’s not viral until AFTER the fact. Hmmmph.
In a recent blog post over at Clicknewz.com, Lynn Terry asks me to do a quick post on “5 Ways You Can Spice Up Boring Sales Copy.”
Now, for those of you in the blogging and tech world who don’t know this, this post may shock you a little. I’ve been writing sales copy for the past couple of years for various sites, product launches, software products, etc. I do quite well with it and it’s my main source of income online right now.
Here goes:
5 Ways To Spice Up Your Sales Copy
1. Making this one, simple (yet powerful) change to your bullet points could make or break your sales copy. You’ll be red faced when you realize how often YOU make this mistake.
I could say “nuff said” but I’ll try to explain further.
Your bullet points take one specific aspect of the product you’re selling and transform that aspect into an emotional selling point. For example, in one of the late Gary Halbert’s newsletters, he spoke of a letter he wrote for a real estate investing course. Today, we call it “flipping houses” but back then it was all about buying houses cheap, fixing them up and selling them quickly for a profit.
Anyway… one of the tips in that course, as per the author’s own experiences, said that by painting a house, or at least part of a house yellow, it would attract a larger number of potential buyers. It was a simple one or two sentences written in the book. That’s it.
But when Mr. Halbert wrote the salesletter, he used it as one of the bullets, but didn’t tell you what the color was.
After thousands of copies of that course were sold, feedback from numerous customers indicated that that bullet alone, and the curiosity it created in the readers mind (they just HAD to know what color to paint the house), was one of, if not THE thing in the letter that clinched the sale.
Bullets in your letter are like mini headlines, a series of classified ads or whatever that sell small aspects of your product and sell the benefits of that aspect, or at least create an emotion or curiosity that the reader NEEDS to satisfy.
2. Never. Ever, EVER… say “You’d be stupid NOT to buy this!”
Make the case SO Strongly in your sales copy that it’s blindingly obvious… but saying it outright is the mark of a rank amateur copywriter. If you’re good, the reader’s own mind tells them how silly they’d be if they didn’t click the order button.
3. Know your market, or at least spend a few days researching exactly what motivates them to buy the products you’re selling.
No. I don’t mean do keyword research using some software. No, I DON’T mean looking at your competition’s sales material (because they are more than likely doing it all wrong).
What I mean is…
If you’re writing a sales letter for a product that helps women grow bigger, firmer breasts (OMG!!) WHY do they want to do that in the first place?
The main reason, is vanity and how they WANT other people to THINK about them and how POWERFUL they’ll FEEL with a bigger chest!
So here’s 2 headlines for an imaginary bust enhancement cream sales letter. Which one do you think would sell better to women in that market?
a. Have Larger, Firmer and More Shapely Breasts in Just Weeks
b. Become A Powerful Seductress In 30 Days Or Less
I dare you to split test well written sales copy written around those 2 headlines and compare the results.
4. Personality. Personalization… Yeah, people. You’re writing for people.
So talk to those people in a context they understand, or more importantly, in a context you already know gets them excited. It’s all about knowing your market and what triggers them to buy stuff.
This may not make sense at first, but think hard about it: It’s not what your potential customers are passionate about, it’s why they get passionate about it.
I know a gentleman who’s into cigars. He loves smoking fine cigars, he loves reading about them, the fact that his favorite brand is illegal in his country makes him want them even more and enjoy them even more when he finally gets his hands on them.
But one thing that stuck out in my mind more than anything else is this one thing he said once: “We just like looking at other people’s stuff.”
He was talking about an online community for cigar buffs, and how the most popular and active area was the section where members posted pictures of, and chatted about their cigar stuff. Things like the cigar boxes, those little clippers for clipping the end of the cigar, ashtrays, humidors, cigar bands, etc.
Think about that the next time you write sales copy. “We just like looking at other people’s stuff.” That statement, is powerful when you REALLY understand it.
5. Ok, lastly but not leastly (Yes, it’s a word, now.) What copywriting post would be complete without talking about headlines?
So what makes up the perfect headline?
(Don’t you just hate it when people say this…)
It depends.
What kind of sales copy are you writing, a classified or google adwords ad, a 1/4 page ad for USA Today’s Travel section or the headline for a full blown internet marketing product launch sales letter?
All I’ll say, is that if I were going to write a headline for a blog post about how to spice up your sales copy, it would go something like this:
Thanks Lynn!
Earlier today, I logged in to the HP software update service (I have an HP Pavillion dv2160ca laptop) and went through their updates… and there were drivers ready for the broadcom wireless cards. Apparently, the drivers were downloaded onto my machine that support wireless N.
Cool, now do I need a new wireless card? heh.
…ok, I haven’t read the whole thing yet, just the part Mark Frauenfelder posted over at BoingBoing.net, but I LOVE reading candid interviews with successful bloggers who were instrumental in shaping the industry.
The entire Blogging Heroes book is available on Amazon.com here (no affil.). I’ll be picking it up tonight!
Thanks Joel Johnson over at the new BoingBoing Gadgets site for being geeky enough to post about this Credit Card Money Clip concept. Freakin cool.
BTW, I’ve been reading Joel’s stuff since his days at Gizmodo, and then Dethroner. Joel is cool.
Photo credit: Roger Arquer.
I’ve been hanging out at a lot of chat rooms lately, like those at Ustream.tv and Justin.tv and watched the chatters antics. Here’s what the conversations would look like in the meat world:
Thanks Nick!
