Answers To your Marketing Questions
I asked you guys what questions you had about copywriting and marketing. And a few of you have answered.
So let’s take a look.
NE asked:
When writing a sales letter for a squeeze page what is the best way to write headlines which draw people in?
You have to know your audience.
Start by asking yourself three questions:
Who is my prospect?
What is their need or want?
Show how your solution provides them with the answers.
So really think deeply about your prospect. Who are they? What is their most pressing problem?
Also, you need to test different headlines. Different headlines pull different responses.
The best headline test is one which tests different assumptions about your prospect. You can test on price, ease of use, etc
Also, you need to consider the stage of awareness among your prospects. Gene Schwartz describes this in detail in his great book Breakthrough Advertising.
What’s the stage of awareness?
Think of the weight loss market.
Years ago you’d run an ad Lose Weight. And it would pull.
Over time though, your response would go down. People would be tired of seeing the same ad. Yet, the desire to lose weight is still rampant in your audience.
So you need a new mechanism.
So… then you need to run an ad\”Lose xlbs in 30 days”.
Of course this ad would tire as well.
And then you go onto the next stage of awareness. If everybody is making the same promise then you need a new promise.
OK, onward…
FJ asked - how I write bullets. Bullets or fascinations as they’re also called are those short one two sentences you’ll read in a sales letter.
When I’m writing for an info product, whether it’s a book or DVD I always write the bullets first. This gets me ‘into’ the heart of the product.
For instance, if it’s a book I go through the book, page by page writing bullets from each page. I look for snippets of information which I can arouse their curiosity with. So they read the bullet and wonder what the heck the answer is. When I’ve finished I should have several hundred bullets. Then I cut out the weakest ones.
So how do you turn a piece of plain information into something far more riveting?
Let’s take a look at an example:
Take a boxing promotion I’ve written in the past. A section of copy says
“Now look in the mirror, Draw your chin slowly down to your collarbone, again being certain that the right ear is not too much exposed and that the part of the head where the horns of the goat would naturally be, is presented toward the mirror.
So I wrote a bullet:
How copying a goat protects your chin from brutal punishment. And you should do this move whenever you launch an attack.
And from the same promotion there was a piece about how using your heel to punch harder. This became….
How to use your heel to deliver lightening quick blows FAR more powerful than your opponents hardest punches. (Sounds unbelievable doesn’t it? But you’ll discover it works every)
Some bullets are easier to write than others. The easy ones spring off the page at you. Others, you have to think more deeply about.
Final bit of advice; You’ll know your bullets are good when you read them and they arouse your curiosity.
JC asked: If you can record a sales pitch and transcribe it into a letter.
It’s true. You can record your salesperson giving a presentation and turn this into a sales letter. Simply go back and polish the letter after you’ve written it out.
Now, as for the right angle.
Research Deeper. You need to interview the person who the letter is from. Dig deep. Find that nugget of human interest. Something which will grab the reader. And make them want to read on.
Why did the person make the product?
How did he discover it?
And so on.
If you dig deep enough you’ll find the answer. Even if you have to go back and interview the person again. It can be hard I know. I’ve come off the phone after speaking with a client. Gone away and thought about it. Only to come up with more questions to go back to the client with.
Try it and see.
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