Marketer of the Day with Robert Plank

Category: Copywriting

  • Write Sales Copy Without a Teacher

    Copywriting is one of the best-paying writing skills you could possibly have. When you know how to write good ads (instead of just good content), you can hit peoples’ persuasion triggers and get them to buy or get them to take any sort of action (like putting your info to use or opting into your e-mail list). That’s a skill worth $500 per page instead of $5 per page.

    You don’t even need to know how to write copy from scratch, you can just make a few tweaks to bad copy to make it into good copy. Think about it. What if you found a great product with an affiliate program that had a crappy sales page? You could rewrite that copy to gut out the unimportant parts, add a few of your own points and shape the offer in such a way that gets people to buy.

    What shape is that? AIDA… Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

    Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Get their attention with a headline, capture interest with a problem and a solution, build desire with benefits and testimonials… then tell them to take action. Click an order button, subscribe to a newsletter, whatever. Today you need to find AIDA in every day ads.

    Look at 4 pieces of junk mail on your mail table or look at direct mail ads online at a site called “Hard To Find Ads” … you can find it in Google. For each of those 4 ads, write down what the Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action for each one is.

    (Come on, hurry up and do it, it will only take you a couple of minutes. Make a commitment to yourself.)

    You have only done four today, but I want you to keep AIDA in mind every time you read a web site, watch a TV commercial, see a poster at the mall… ALL successful ads use it. We have all seen commercials that are clever or funny… but you have no idea what they are selling.

    Obviously attention and action are the most obvious parts of AIDA, but attention is only the beginning… and without desire, you don’t want the product and you won’t order. Keep in mind that the elements of AIDA go in order and keep building… building… and building pressure until your prospect is ready to explode, and have nowhere to go BUT to buy.

    What’s your best QUICK tip to write sales copy on your own, if you have no one to help teach you?

  • 750 Days of Free Updates

    Today’s tweak to your sales letter:

    Do you have any overused words like “unlimited” … “lifetime” … or “fast” in your sales copy?  Those don’t get attention because everyone uses words like that.

    • If something is unlimited, tell visitors instead they can get “50, 100, even 10,000” of something.
    • If something gets unlimited updates, make it 365 days or 1000 days or 10 years of updates.
    • If something is fast, tell people your technique works within 5 minutes or 20 minutes, whatever applies.
    • If something is easy, share the success rate (percentage), a testimonial, or a case study…

    I guess it comes down to the show-not-tell approach!

    As Jason Fladlien would say, if you’re telling a story about how mean and tough a guy is… don’t TELL people about how he’s mean and tough.

    SHOW them how he weighed 280 pounds, wore a big leather jacket, had a huge beard, and you could hear his Harley Davidson motorcycle coming a mile away… he screeched to a halt in front of your house leaving a thick rubber skid mark… and even today, 7 years later, you can step outside and see the rubber mark still in the street… cracked over the years but still there.

    harley-davidson

    In my last few sales letters, at the very end, I’ve been saying one or both of these things:

    • You can check out my product and get a refund at any time within the first 30 days.  If you’re still undecided, try it out for an ADDITIONAL 30 days before deciding if you want to keep it or return and get your money back.  (This language is a lot more specific than the usual “60 day refund” explanation.)
    • You get 750 days worth of updates. I used to tell people they get lifetime updates, but everyone says that, so I tried saying 365 days of updates… but that seemed too ordinary, so I made it 750 days of updates.

    “Lifetime” is too ambiguous. Is it your lifetime, my lifetime, the lifetime of the product?  (Is it Lifetime: Television For Women… with weekly made-for-TV movies starring Meredith Baxter?)

    Does the “lifetime” only count for versions 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, etc… and when I switch the book over to version 2.0, that counts as a different lifetime?  (I’m having Scott Bakula Quantum Leap time travel flashbacks here… “oh boy.”)

    You have to be different.  Using your own numbers makes you unique. In your headlines, bullet points, offer, guarantee, even your update policy. Remember the movie “There’s Something About Mary?”  Harlan Williams says there is a how-to video called 7 Minute Abs … so his big idea is to create a how-to video called 6 Minute Abs.  “If you aren’t satisfied with the first six minutes, we’ll throw in an additional minute for free!”

    When I told my subscribers that moving my upsell to AFTER the original sale boosted conversions from 2.6% to 5.5% it had a lot more impact than just saying, “It improved conversion rates.”

    As I close this up, the ultimate irony of today’s story is that I didn’t split test the “lifetime” versus “750 day” update offer.  There just isn’t enough time in the day to split test every little thing.

    I’m a sloppy copywriter.  My Fast Food Copywriting method says write it quickly and sloppily… get it out there… then go back later and fix it up.  A really quick and easy patch-job is to remove ambiguity and add imagery… add numbers!

    What’s your best technique to add specificity to your sales letters?   Comment below to tell me!

  • Don’t Read This Blog Post

    Whatever you do, don’t read this blog post.

    While you’re at it, do your best NOT to think about a giant, fuzzy polar bear.  Standing on a tiny little iceberg.  Floating in the ocean.  Drinking a bottle of Coke.

    You can’t do it?  (At least most of you can’t.)  Most of  you probably pictured a polar bear… and even if you couldn’t you thought about what that polar bear, standing on the iceberg, drinking a Coke, would look like.

    Your subconscious cannot process negatives.  If you have a sales letter with phrases like, “Don’t delay” … guess what… people are going to think about delaying BEFORE they can think about what the opposite of that means.

    Jason and I are both marketing nerds but he is definitely way more of a copywriting nerd than I am.  When the four of us were in Hawaii having dinner, he blurted out, “By now, you must be wondering…”

    Great copywriting phrase.  Not only does it make people think “by now” … it makes sure they read the copy before that sentence.  It focuses the selling on “them” and reminds your prospect that you are thinking of them.

    In that same conversation we also nailed the fact that the subconscious can’t process negatives.  So, something you can do today in 5 minutes or less is: open up the sales letter for your most popular product… search for negative words like not, don’t, can’t, cannot, couldn’t, wouldn’t, shouldn’t, stop… and rewrite them quickly.

    I’m definitely not over agonizing over sales copy, but this is a quick way to increase conversions.

    The other day somebody bought one of my high ticket ($97) and we talked a little bit back at forth over e-mail.  His signature link led to a killer non Internet Marketing niche squeeze page with a walk-on video, great headlines, perfect heatmap positioning… all the right stuff.

    The walk-on video did a very good job of convincing me to opt-in and I was about to, just out of curiosity.  But one of the very last sentences in the video was: “There’s no reason you shouldn’t sign up.”

    Oops… I processed the phrase, “You shouldn’t sign up” … didn’t feel quite right, and left the page seconds later.

    Want to know something funny?  In my Fast Food Copywriting sales letter, I used to have the word “not” in the copy 14 times, “don’t” 7 times, and “can’t” 3 times.  I just spent 60 seconds editing them all out.  I never said I was perfect, just that I can write average sales copy very quickly.

    Can you take a second to check your own sales copy, and see how many “nots” “don’ts” … “nevers”… and other negative words you have in your sales copy?  (A quick way is to paste your sales copy into a text file and replace the word ” not ” (not including the quotes but including the spaces) with nothingness just to see how many results show up.

    You’re probably too embarrassed by that number to post below, aren’t you?

  • Read a Sales Letter Aloud

    Are you still participating in the daily video challenge?

    If you missed out on it, the task is you just record one video every day.  It could be a live-action video, it could be a Camtasia video.  It could be just 5 minutes if you want it to.

    Many many months ago, my friend Steven Schwartzman paid for someone to create a YouTube video out of his site… all he did was record a Camtasia video reading the sales letter for a few minutes.

    Due to the rules of the Daily Video Challenge, you’re not allowed to do that.

    On the plane ride back from Austin, Texas in April… returning from the Warrior Event… I copied a few peoples’ WSO sales letters by hand and it works like MAGIC!

    Record a Camtasia video of you reading a sales letter aloud… a sales letter of either a competitor’s product, or a product in a similar niche to yours.

    It will also help with your speaking skills. At one point, recorded a PowerPoint Camtasia presentation for Kevin Riley’s Recipe for Post Product Launch.

    Guess what that means?

    1. I now have a web-based video presentation that I loaded into an autoresponder series. I’m using Ben Prater’s method of sending out regular follow-ups to reduce refunds.
    2. I also have an audio product. Camtasia allows you to export just the audio of a presentation into an MP3. I separated the audo into two folders because audio CDs only hold 74 minutes of audio.
    3. I can easily produce the Camtasia files as a DVD if I want to.

    I used it as an incentive for people to purchase from me as an affiliate. If it brought me in enough profits, it would justify buying resale rights… but it didn’t, so I didn’t buy the rights.  That’s a heck of a lot better strategy than simply blindly buying up rights.

    When you buy up resale rights, you can stick in your own upsells, and create your OWN affiliate program…

    In our Daily Seminar membership, we’re buying up the best resale rights possible to teach you the basics… while the content we create ourselves, focuses on the more advanced stuff.

    Hint: This month in the seminar, I’ll be posting a very special paid version of the Daily Video Challenge, with actual step by step tasks for you to work on the entire month.

    Leave your ten comments for me and Merry Christmas!

  • Testimonials

    Like I mention in Fast Food Copywriting, testimonials on a sales letter aren’t important. It’s the proof that’s important (testimonials are a form of social proof.)

    When I launch a brand new product, testimonials are the last thing on my mind. Usually my strategy is: I set up a simple dimesale so the price goes up with each sale, the price increases quickly and that’s my social proof.

    I post my special offer on forums and link to my product via the forum post instead of the actual URL to the sales letter to get people posting on the thread… more social proof.

    Once the initial launch has died down I can usually cannibalize these forum posts and use them as testimonials. I look up the person’s picture and URL and contact them asking if it’s ok to add their comment as a testimonial — with a link to the sales letter so they can see how it looks. I’ve almost never been turned down… who doesn’t want their URL mentioned on yet another page?

    I have mentioned before that 2008 is the year I am doing everything right. I have a blog I update every week or so. Every one of my products has an affiliate program and a plug and play solo ad so affiliates can easily promote it. ALMOST every product also has an upsell to another product — many have more than one.

    May 2008 was the month where I made sure just about every sales letter had a testimonial… with a picture if possible. Check out the sales letter for Head First PHP. I have 10 testimonials on the right sidebar of that page and 5 more at the end of the sales letter.

    How did I do it?

    Simple: They are all on a mailing list, so I added a timed follow-up to offer a bribe… in exchange for a testimonial.

    Notice how I worded that. I sold them on the bribe first, the “what’s in it for me” … and then said, here’s what you need to do to get it.

    It’s no different than a sales letter. You need to SELL them on the benefits of that bribe. You need to have a headline (in an e-mail that’s more like a simple sentence), tell a story, and lead in to a call to action.

    This time, the call to action is not to buy, but to write up a review for you… much more difficult.

    Have you ever thought of how many steps you put your customers through even for the most simplest transactions?

    Opting into a newsletter

    1. Type in first name.
    2. Type in e-mail address.
    3. Click submit button and wait.
    4. Read thank you message.
    5. Login to e-mail account.
    6. Find the confirmation message.
    7. Click the confirm link.
    8. Finally get to that download page!

    Ordering from you

    1. Click the order button.
    2. Type in their e-mail address.
    3. Type their first and last name.
    4. Reach in wallet and find credit card.
    5. Choose mastercard, visa, etc.
    6. Type in 16-digit credit card number.
    7. Type in expiration date.
    8. Type shipping information (sometimes).
    9. Click Confirm link.
    10. Get to that download page.

    Writing a testimonial means: (1) Hitting the reply button. (2) Finding where they saved your product on their hard drive. (3) Reading through the product to refresh their memory. (4) Explain their favorite part and what they did with it. (5) Add a URL and their name at the bottom. (6) Hit the submit button.

    No call to action ever takes one single step… they’re ALL complicated.

    You are asking for a BIG favor from your customers by asking for a testimonial. Think about it… most of those 10 steps in the order process required very little thinking, or work. The only cost really was in money. This time, you are asking for their TIME… something much more valuable than money.

    The call to action on a testimonial is a tougher sell than selling a product. No big deal, you’ll get lower conversion rates… but you MUST sell them.

    Here are my five tips to getting testimonials:

    Testimonial Power Tip #1:
    Always ask in a timed followup (7 to 30 days after purchase).

    Just write your blurb and stick it in a follow-up and forget about it. This way when you get new customers, your autoresponder will automatically ask them for that review. You won’t have to keep asking, figuring out who you’ve asked and who you haven’t… it’s easy.

    Testimonial Power Tip #2:
    Offer a bribe.

    Head First PHP contained an e-book but also a daily video. My autoresponder sent a link to a new five minute video… every day for about 30 days.

    At the end of those 30 days I said, if you want a link to download all the videos in one zip file, send me an honest review and I’ll give you that link. That’s how I ended up with 15 testimonials in the span of a couple days.

    Testimonial Power Tip #3:
    Ask multiple times.

    Sometimes people won’t get your e-mail, they’ll get busy or they won’t understand the bribe well enough from just one e-mail to do all those steps required to giving a testimonial.

    Add multiple followups either a week or a month apart saying: If you’ve already given me a testimonial… thank you… now take action and actually use it. Also say if you haven’t given me a testimonial, now’s your chance to get that bribe.

    For another product (Black Hat PHP) I bought resale rights to a product and used that as a bribe. I cut up the sales letter into follow-ups.

    • In one follow-up I explained the problem.
    • In another, I said here’s the solution and here’s what you can do to get it.
    • A week later the follow-up said here’s a video demonstrating the bribe, if you still want it, send your review.
    • A week later, a list of benefits… and by the way, here’s how you can get the bonus for free.
    • A week later, here’s the final summary and call to action… review my product so you can get the bribe.

    Testimonial Power Tip #4:
    Follow-up if the testimonial isn’t good enough.

    People will try to do the bare minimum to get that bribe and when that happens, ask more questions. When someone says, “It was good. I liked it.” Ask what did you like? Did you use it on any web sites? What did it do for you?

    • Teach you how to build a bird house with half the materials and 1/3rd the cost… if it’s a how-to build bird houses product.
    • How to finish your homework faster and get better grades so you have more time to relax and play video games if it’s a “how to do homework faster” product.
    • Decreased your blood pressure, gave you more awake time, and enough energy to run a marathon if it’s a “raw super foods” infoproduct.

    Ask questions and try to get some real answers about what they liked the best, what was the most useful and most importantly how it affected them.

    It might take a few back and forth replies but eventually you can get enough from that e-mail interview to put it together into a decent testimonial.

    Testimonial Power Tip #5:
    Be specific.

    It all goes back to what’s in it for me. Social proof comes in three steps: First, proof that you (the originator) did it… second, proof that someone ELSE did it (these customers) and third, proof that THEY (the prospect) can do it. Without step #2 you just can’t have step #3.

    By getting your customers to tell you which chapter they liked the most, you can continue selling within your testimonial by mentioning all these cool benefits.

    That’s how I get customers to hurl testimonials right at my head, the easy way. If you want to know how to write that sales letter so you have a place to stick those testimonials, my latest project is: Five Minute Copywriting.

    Please, comment below and share your tips for getting testimonials and social proof to spice up your existing sales pages and therefore increase your conversion rates and get more sales.

  • Is Your Photo on Every Sales Letter?

    Earlier this week I realized I had been doing something very stupid… leaving my photo OFF of my sales letter!

    Seriously, you already go to the trouble of adding your photo to Facebook and MySpace…

    Why Aren’t You Doing the Same Thing on Your Sales Letter?

    I noticed this when I attended my first internet marketing luncheon. It was just a warrior lunchtime get together in New Jersey (I flew down from California to New York City for the weekend just to attend).

    Immediately I recognized Mike Ambrosio and said hello to him… because his photo is on all of his sales letters! I also recognized Mike Merz, and of course when Mike Filsaime showed up, he was surrounded by so many groupies, no one could go talk to him. (So many Mikes.)

    So… I knew who three people were, but the other 50-ish people were total strangers.

    At the Warrior Event in Austin this April: I recognized Willie Crawford (his picture is EVERYWHERE) and Dr. Ron Capps the NicheProf, Marlon Sanders and Jason Fladlien… but again, that was about it!

    Even some of the speakers were people I’d heard of… I’d read their sites, responded to them in forums, but didn’t recognize them.

    For that reason, I went through all of my sales letters this week and added my kisser to them.

    On some sales letters I was able to do an “align=right” and place it to the right of the text, but sometimes I just gave up, centered that image, and placed it below my signature line at the bottom of the page.

    Can You Please Do the Same on Your Sales Letter?

    I’m not saying adding your photo will get you recognized instantly at real-world seminars. At the very least it will remind your potential customers reading that sales letter, that you’re a real person.

    You don’t have to be wearing a suit or a hawaiian shirt… any picture will do.

    • If it’s a family photo, crop the image so it only shows you — that way your kids aren’t appearing on your sales letter.
    • If you look like crap, crop the image even more so it only shows your head.
    • If you think you’re ugly, resize the photo of you down to 100×100 pixels.
    • If you don’t even have a digital camera, find a friend with a camera phone.

    You have every reason to post your photo on a sales letter. Stop procrastinating and just do it.

    Please comment below and tell me when you finally realized you needed to have your photo on your sales letters.

    If you don’t have your photo on there yet, add your photo to your sales page and post the URL here for all of us to look at.