Copywriting

Selling Cash for Profit

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I think I’m in the wrong business…

These guys are selling $2 bills for ten bucks!

I’m not going to talk about the 9/11 World Trade Center “bombing” or “conspiracy” (at least not today). Nor will I address quantitative easing, hyper-inflation or the plummeting value of the American dollar.

I just want to briefly talk about selling $4 worth of money for $10.

Do you believe someone is getting the short end of the stick in this deal? Is someone ripping someone off?

The fact is that this is a mutually profitable transaction for everyone. Both the company selling the bills and those who buy them are getting what they want. The sellers are creating revenue and the buyers are getting commemorative collectibles.

I think everyone knows what they’re getting into in this deal. It’s not like the older brother tricking the younger sibling into trading her dirty, dull quarter for his shiny new penny. Those who make this purchase know they’re paying 2.5 times more than the monetary value of the product.

And they’re happy to do it.

Good copywriters and marketers have been said to “sell money at a discount” to their clients. But I gotta admit, selling NEW money at a marked-up price is somewhat new to me.

5 Judo Moves Every Copywriter Should Know

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If you’ve been involved in copywriting for any length of time, you’re painfully aware of how challenging it can be to grab the attention of your desired readers.

Once you succeed there, you still have an intimidating uphill climb ahead of you. It takes hard work to keep that attention, channel desire, and close the sale.

You may have heard it said that marketers and salespeople without a system for selling are at the mercy of the prospect’s system for not buying.

A million thoughts and emotions scream for attention. Distractions seem to pop up at least once a minute. Then there’s the ever-present resistance to “being sold.” Like I said, your copy has a tough uphill battle.

But what if you could leverage the mind’s strength against itself, much like a judo master redirects the force of an opponent?

Let’s briefly consider 5 points of psychological leverage you can use in your copy. Each can strengthen your persuasive power by causing forces already active in the mind to overcome its own resistance.

1. Self-Perception
The most important factor in the buying decision is how people categorize themselves. The way they think about themselves and their place in the world affects everything they do.

To a tremendous degree, they choose products, services, and brands because of how they tie into their perception of themselves. That applies to both how they see themselves now, and how they hope to see themselves in the future.

For example, how many millions of dollars does Nike make selling equipment to people who are athletes? How many more millions do they earn from those who dream of being athletes?

Find out how your customers identify themselves. Use the insights you gain from that research to make your business and your offers more relevant to customers.

Develop serious rapport instantly by connecting with who your prospects and customers really consider themselves to be.

2. Belief
Gary Bencivenga said, “Almost everyone in the world, in every field of human endeavor, is desperately searching for someone to believe in. Be that person, and you can write your own ticket.

“Belief is today’s most overlooked yet most powerful key to boosting response to any ad, in any medium. Harness it and you unleash the core atomic power for exploding response. Because the hunger for belief is so vast in every market, so deep-seated in human nature itself, you can tap into it again and again — infinitely — to make yourself and your clients rich.”

Actually be trustworthy. Then present yourself or client to your prospects and customers as an individual or business with integrity. Never abuse their trust. Never give the impression that you’d deceive them.

Finally, build whatever credibility you can, and exploit it to the fullest. Experience, education, endorsements, etc. They all make you more believable.

3. Mental/Emotional Momentum
We hear it said all the time, but you can never hear it too much: good copy, good advertising, good sales pitches all enter into the conversation that the audience already has going on inside their minds.

Hitch a ride on a train that’s already in motion. Grab onto a motivator your reader is already being driven by. The stronger the motivator, the better.

Which do you think is going to get better results: adding another voice to the noisy cafeteria of your customer’s mind, or talking with him about something he’s already thinking about, caring about, and ready to do something about?

4. Curiosity
Claude Hopkins mentions in Scientific Advertising that curiosity is one of the strongest human incentives. Once it’s been aroused, we can hardly sleep until we satisfy that curiosity.

How can you add curiosity to your business, product, or service? To your marketing message?

5. Likeability
People like to do business with people they like. I’m sure you know of instances where the only reason people continue to hire less-than-ideal service providers is that they have good relationships with them.

When customers like you, barriers are removed, doors are opened, and everyone feels good about the process.

Personality is of the utmost importance when attempting to be likeable in print. No one enjoys stuffy, emotionless, impersonal wording.

Write until it sounds as if you were talking directly to one of your prospects. Be yourself. Don’t manufacture a personality. Sounding contrived can be worse than being boring.

Even great copywriters in hot markets convert less than minor league baseball players. In many cases, you’re getting legendary results if you can close 5 sales from 100 leads.

That’s why I encourage you to stop fighting against potential customers and simply use their mental and emotional momentum to get the results you want.

Kinda like judo…

Framing for Failure

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If you’re anything like me, you find yourself “framing” quite a few of the statements you make in day to day conversation. This can be constructive or detrimental, depending on how you do it.

Framing is simply saying something to prepare your hearer or reader for what you’re about to say. For example, “Listen up! What I’m about to tell you is important.” That’s an example of positive framing.

You can do some harm to your cause by setting up your comments with something like “This is gonna sound really dumb, but…” (I’m really bad with that one.)

I had thought about this topic before, how negative framing such as the second example hurt your chances of being persuasive or sounding authoritative. Why do I talk like that? Why does anyone do it?

It all came to a head when I was looking at a letter my sister wrote yesterday. She used the other “bookend” to frame her argument after she had said what needed to be said. It was something like “This may not sound like the best idea, but I believe in it.”

So, why do we talk and write that damaging stuff? Here’s my thinking on the subject.

We lack confidence in our position. We think something is wrong with what we want to say. Or that the audience is going to shoot us down.

So we choose to soften our statements by framing them. It’s more for the us than for them.

Rejection will come easier because we have prepared everyone for it.

Imagine using these kinds of remarks in a sales pitch. “You may not like this product, but here it is anyway.” “Most people choose the competitor, anyway.” “You don’t really want this additional feature, do you?”

See how much that hurts you?

Negative framing is something that I’m going to work on eliminating from my speech and writing immediately. I encourage you to join me. Let’s get some guts about ourselves to make strong, bold statements without feeling the need to cushion them. No more self-destructive talk.

Courtship Copywriting

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A thought for your consideration (which happens to be a comment that I made on John Carlton’s blog last summer)

Selling is just like a marriage proposal. You can’t just walk up a stranger and ask her to marry you. You have to take the process one step at a time, starting with small, easy-to-make choices (“hey, wanna catch a movie?“). Make the first step for your prospect irresistibly easy to take. Over time, the actions get larger.

Long copy allows the message to start small and move the customer increasingly toward making the purchase. Short copy doesn’t have that ability-there’s no time!

Long copy is can be a “greased slide” to the sale. Short copy is one big step, and grease on a step (stair) is not usually a good idea.

This is what Gary Bencivenga called “throwing the monkey fist.”  Most big tasks can’t be accomplished in one move. Master salespeople (that includes smart marketers) use a sequence  of expanding steps to move the prospect to take the desired action.

Think about it…

More importantly, implement it.

How Would George Carlin Respond to Your Ads?

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From the Marketing Beyond Advertising blog:

Do your ads sound like ads? Do your ads boast about your superior service, your wide selection, or name the number of years you’ve been in business?

If so, you may be guilty of Ad-Speak.

Introducing the Carlin Ad Speak Calculator!

This cool tool will analyze your advertising copy and tell you if it sounds too salesy, too much like and ad.

I think its rather neato.

Advertising that sounds like advertising is easy for your target audience to ignore. If it does get read, it’s often disregarded.

Your message has to interrupt your readers enough to grab their attention, channel desire, and direct them to you and what you offer.

The Carlin Ad Speak Calculator is just another way to take a critical look at your copy. It will even list the elements that you’ve used that are commonly considered advertising lingo

Have a little fun, a little laugh, and another look at the quality of your message.

Lessons from Copywriting Legend Jim Punkre

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Jim Punkre is a legend. He’s widely considered to be among the top ten copywriters in history, generating over $1 billion in sales over his 35 year career.

I can’t even describe this treasure trove of copywriting and direct mail wisdom from an interview Daniel Levis did with Jim for his Masters of Copywriting compilation.

You can take a look at Part 1 and 2 on Clayton Makepeace’s Total Package.

Highly recommended!

7 Guidelines for Writing Eye-Grabbing Headlines

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1) Use surgical precision. Know who your prospective customers are so that you can concentrate on stopping them in their tracks with your headline. Determine which words and themes appeal to your target right now; what is he thinking about? Wondering about? Worried about?

Headlines really serve a single purpose: they use words to get your advertisement read.

Advertising forefather Claude Hopkins, in his legendary work Scientific Advertising, further explains:

“The advertisement is read only by interested people who, by their own volition, study what we have to say. The purpose of a headline is to pick out people who you can interest……what you have will interest only certain people and for certain reasons. You care only for those people, so create a headline which will hail those people only!”

A headline must not “cast too wide a net.” There is no way to appeal to everyone without decimating the strength specificity creates in capturing your target. The attempt gain everyone’s eyes is an error that is all too prevalent in advertising today. The headline will only appeal to people who are interested in the product or service offered. Readers will not waste any time investigating an ad that isn’t selling something that pertains to him. Men don’t generally care much for tampon headlines…

Keep in mind that YOU are reading this article for a reason. Most of the people surfing the web will never read this article.

2) Go for the heart! Almost any expert (and anyone who is genuinely honest about their own purchasing patterns) will admit that people base their buying decisions more on emotion than logic. Shoppers buy what they want, and use reason to justify their choices. The most powerful purchase-driving emotions include Fear, Greed, and the Desire for Love and Prestige.

3) Focus on the Customer. The headline should be more about how the customer will benefit from the product or service than about the thing itself. As the old sayings go, “People don’t buy drills because they want drills, but because they want holes,” and “Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle.” Readers care about what you offer only insofar as they care about what they get out of it. Construct your headline with this in mind

4) Avoid hype. You will lose credibility if you rely on it. There are far too many superlatives and big promises that don’t reflect reality. “Super Awesome Cogs” sounds great, but that headline doesn’t convey any meaning to the reader, other than a setup for disappointment (which the he will protect himself from at all costs.) “New Cog DOUBLES Your Car’s Gas Mileage” better describes what the product does without resorting to hype.

5) People hate to be sold. They love to buy, though. If you can show your audience how to get something that they already want or know they need in a way that is easier, cheaper, or better in some other way, your advertisement will produce good results. Trying to convince a reader that they need something they know nothing about is a losing endeavor. Don’t fight against your target; go along with him. Help him get what he wants.

If the ad is for something that may be unfamiliar, the headline will have to appeal to a need or desire that the reader is familiar with.

6) Test Rigorously. Try different headlines. There is no need to guess at what will work. Find out with certainty by testing different word usage, benefit presentation, etc. This is a good rule in general, as each market will respond uniquely to different parts of your advertising.

7) Consult the masters. Advertising writers and marketers find instruction as well as inspiration from successful advertisements put together by others. Copies of headlines and body copy are often kept in “swipe files” for future reference. What worked well for others has a good chance of working for you.

The other aspect of learning the art of headline writing is studying classic works on the subject. From legends of the past such as Hopkins, John Caples and Robert Collier to contemporary pros like Clayton Makepeace and John Carlton, there are many lessons to learn. Discover the secrets of advertisers that have produced millions of dollars in sales. Continuing your marketing education will always be profitable, especially for a beginner.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of headline-writing guidelines, but following these seven tips is essential if you want to reap the benefits of effective advertising.