Educate Your Customers And They Will Come Back More Often
Become A Knowledge Bank
Build a library of information
Have readily available to your customers, books, brochures and videos with all the latest information on your products and services, techniques, possible applications and designs.Technical or motivational information that you can loan out to your clients for their benefit.
The More Information You Give, The More You Will Sell
The More
Information You Give, The More
You Will Sell
As a general rule, 2 minute TV commercials will out-sell a 30 second commercial and a 30 minute ‘infomercial’ out-sells both again. Remember your ads are targeted at the ‘players’ – the people who want what you are selling and have the money to pay for it. They will read your ads (or watch them) if what you say is interesting and relevant to them. Some of the most famous ‘long copy’ ads include:
- ” 6,450 words for Merril Lynch Stockbrokers—1 insertion brought 10,000 responses from interested investors.
- ” 5 pages of text for selling Schlitz beer—within a few months Schlitz went from fifth in sales to first.
- ” 600 word ad for Puerto Rico by David Ogilvy got 14,000 readers to send in a coupon.
- ” 800 word ad for Mercedes Benz headlined “You give up things when you buy the Mercedes Benz 230S—Things like rattles, rust and shabby workmanship” increased sales from 10,000 cars a year to 40,000 a year in the USA.
- ” A copy-rich Yellow Pages ad got a $40,000 increase for the owner of a video repair shop the month Yellow Pages came out.
- ” Demtel built a $50 million dollar a year business virtually overnight with their 2 minute ads.
I could give you dozens of examples, but test it out for yourself.
Create Your Own ‘Formula’ For Writing Great Copy
Create Your
Own ‘Formula’ For Writing Great
Copy.
Anyone can learn how to write good ads and sales letters. There was a time
when I didn’t have a clue how to do it. It took me days and weeks to get just a 2
page letter drafted—the sort of letter that now takes me 30 minutes to write and
which sells five times as much. To write great ads and letters takes . . .practice,
practice, practice.
And how do you practice? Just do it, and keep doing it. Like everything you
ever try for the first time, it gets easier as you go along. Remember the first time
you rode a bike, went swimming, talked to your first customer, made the first
sale? I’ll bet you are a good deal better now than you were when you started. All
it took was practice.
But to be really great at something, you have to practice the right way. And
that’s exactly what I am going to teach you here . . .how to write great ads and
letter copy, even if you’ve never written an ad or sales letter in your life!
Create A ‘Copywriting Power’ Questionnaire
Create A
‘Copywriting Power’
Questionnaire
To prepare for this formula, we need to create a “copywriting power’
questionnaire, which is a very powerful document as it will reveal almost
everything you need to know to create hot ads or letters that will sell your
products and services. The questionnaire is a copywriting guideline—a
guideline for getting the best information from your business to be able to:
- Get to know your product or service, inside and out.
- Get to know what you’ve tried in the past (so you don’t waste your time trying it again).
- Get to know your customers as well as you possibly can.
- Get to know your target prospects as well as you possibly can.
- Define your goals, your business objectives and your dreams.
These five questions are ones you absolutely must ask yourself. Think
carefully about the answers to these questions, because if you plan on writing
your own ads or sales letters to sell your product or service, this questionnaire
will be one of your most valuable tools. I don’t believe it’s a magic pill for
writing hot ads . . . but it is a solid first step in the process of creating great copy.
Here are 15 questions you must answer before you write a word of copy.
Write them out in the spaces provided below:
The ‘AICPBSAWN’ Formula
The
‘AICPBSAWN’ Formula
Let me introduce you to the AICPBSAWN formula of one of America’s best
copywriters, Brian Keith Voiles, a man who charges a minimum of $10,000 for
an ad or letter!
The AICPBSAWN formula is more of a procedure and I call it a formula
because when you combine all of the existing elements, they become something
greater than they are independent of each other.
So here are the different elements of the procedure — in order of how
they’d appear in your ad or sales letter:
AIDA
AIDA
If you’ve studied advertising at all, chances are that you’ve come across the
ever-popular procedure for writing ads: the AIDA procedure. Each letter in the
procedure stands for a key word:
A = Attention: Get your prospect’s attention.
I = Interest: Arouse your prospect’s interest.
D = Desire: Intensify your prospect’s desire.
A = Action: Get your prospect to take action.
In general this formula is useful and good. It’s been used successfully for
several decades and anything that’s lasted that long must work well. But, like
I’ve mentioned before, today’s buyers (whether business or consumer), are more
sophisticated, more suspicious, more skeptical and basically just plain not as
anxious to buy from just anyone, anymore. We’ve all been “taken” one too many
times.
That being the case, we’ve got to let go of the old formulas for creating ads,
and come up with new, powerful, proven formulas for advertising success.
Attention and Interest
Attention and
Interest
There’s nothing like a powerful, targeted headline to get your prospect’s
attention, their undivided attention. What’s the biggest benefit he gets from
doing business with you, or what’s the prospect’s most pressing problem or
frustration you can solve for him. What’s unique about doing business with you
over any of your competitors? (Headline, graphic, opening paragraph, opening
statement, unique selling advantage, etc.)
It’s critically important that you grab your prospect’s complete and
undivided attention. In this society of instant gratification and innovative
products and services, we are all bombarded to an incredible extent by
advertising messages, so that rather than listen to them all — we just tune them
out.
Some studies suggest that we are subjected to as many as 2,500 messages
daily. That’s a lot of information to consider—everything from newspapers, TV,
radio and magazines, to newsletters that you subscribe to . . . there are
advertising messages everywhere you look.
The first thing you’ve got to do is capture your prospect’s attention, and
there’s no possible way you can do this if you haven’t done your research. You
must know your prospect inside-out, and you must have walked at least a “mile
in his moccasins” to understand.
Using ‘Multi-Selling Channels’ To Get New Customers
Using ‘Multi-Selling Channels’ To Get New Customers … Even If You Have Little Or No Money!
This is the best kept secret in the mail order industry. If you are marketing products directly through TV infomercials (half hour commercials), newspaper ads and mail order . . . you will sell 8 times more again if you also get the buyers into your retail store.
In fact, the really switched on retailers and corporations (including banks), are jumping on the direct mail and direct response marketing bandwagon like hungry fleas jumping on a dog. All hands on deck so to speak.
Your Credibility
Your Credibility
Whilst reading your ad, your prospect is constantly asking “So what?”.
Whether it’s conscious or unconscious, it’s for real . . . and it’s something you
must deal with. That’s why you must tell them why they should believe what
you’re saying is true. You must present “evidence” in a convincing way that will
win them over. You can do this with . . .
- Success stories
- Case studies
- Testimonials from people who are like your prospects
- Testimonials that focus on benefits
- Endorsements from ‘celebrities’ of your target market
- And other ‘credibility boosters’ and believability builders.
One of the powerful differences between this system and the AIDA formula,
or others like it, is the fact that you put the credibility-boosters near the very front
of your ad or sales letter. Why? Simply because we are all tired of being
scammed . . . “taken” . . . “ripped off”. It’s happened one too many times for
each of us, and we’re all on our guard to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Putting your testimonials, celebrity testimonials, case studies, or any of the other
credibility boosters near the front will help your prospects overcome their fear.
You can even put powerful testimonials right in your headline . . . and once
you’ve done that, the next thing you have to do is . . .
Proof
Proof
Proving what you’re claiming is true has a lot to do with credibility, but it’s
more along the lines of presenting your offer and your claims in a believable
way. Understand, people won’t “buy” your claims unless you back them up with
“proof” that’s presented to them in a believable way.
Being honest is important – but what’s even more important as far as
generating sales goes, is that you must be perceived as being honest. You see,
creating powerful, compelling offers is great – and yet powerful, compelling
offers can be their own booby-trap. Let me explain.
When you present your prospects with an irresistible offer, one that sounds
“too good to be true” even if it’s totally “legit”, it makes them wonder if it is true.
Therefore, a powerful offer that sounds fantastic can sometimes be it’s own worst
enemy. That’s why, immediately following the offer, we pump our prospects
with “credibility boosters” and then give them “proof” that what we’re saying is
true, and that the offer is for real.
