Copywriting
Can’t Write Your Next Sales Letter? Dictate It Out Of Thin Air!
Writing anything is pretty tough, whether it is writing articles, putting together a report, writing a blog post - but especially creating sales copy. Let's figure out what your options are...
Hiring A Copywriter
Finding someone to write your sales letter for you sounds good, right? You just pay somebody some money, and out pops a brand-spanking-new sales letter.
But it's not great, because the copywriter doesn't necessarily know you. He doesn't know your voice. He hasn't seen your product. He doesn't understand what your customers' problems are.
And the worst part is you paid money to get something that is worse than if you had made it yourself!
Writing It Yourself
There is a free option: that is that you try to write the sales letter yourself. However, unless you have been trained in writing sales copy, it is not going to be that great. It is also going to take you for ever, and you might not even finish it. If you are not a writer, let alone a copywriter, your skills might be better put to use creating videos or marketing your solution.
Also, many people who have not written on a regular basis don't write the way they sound - which means your sales letter is going to seem completely different than the way you come off in person or in audios.
What is the solution then?
Put together a list of problems your customers have, and a list of benefits that you have that will solve the problem, and...
Dictate Your Sales Copy!
You are going to use the same exact elements as a sales letter: like a headline, sub-headline, body copy, your story, a problem, and so on. So you might need to consult for one hour with a copywriter, especially to help you flesh out the headline and organize the copy.
But if you know your niche and you know your product, and you are passionate about it, you can dictate out an audio file, get someone else to type it up for you. And now you have a complete sales letter that sounds exactly like it came from you - because it did!
Also keep in mind that once you have the sales letter dictated, transcribed and properly formatted, you can send it to the same copywriter again to get it critiqued.
This will probably take only about an hour, and critiques where the copywriter gets on a phone call with you - or preferably a webinar - work the best because you are not waiting around for him to finish.
The next time you need a sales letter done, dictate it! Meet with the copywriter for one hour to flesh out the plan of the copy. Dictate it, transcribe it, format it. Then meet back with the copywriter again, to make it shine.
Have you dictated sales copy yourself? What kinds of things are you dictating? Are they articles / reports / sales letters? Or something I hadn't even thought of?
Leave me a blog comment below with your response.
The Reasons I Buy Your Stuff, Finally Explained
Why is it that people pay you money for your services, products and memberships?
It really helps to figure out not just how people found you, but what is their reason for joining your community? That way, when you send emails and write sales letters, you can appeal to all the groups.
I can't speak for anyone else, but here are the reasons I buy your stuff...
The Entire Step-By-Step Training
Four years ago, I joined a Membership site from Jim Edwards that taught everything I needed to know. It taught how to create videos, how to make reports, gave me tips on sales letters... And a lot of the things I learned were not taught directly to me. They were things I observed from his marketing and his videos.
I joined that site as a relative newbie because I wanted to learn and apply one hundred percent of what he showed me.
That training helped me get over a lot of obstacles. For example, I had not ever created video. I had some idea in my head that I needed to have green screen, that I needed to have different camera angles and different screens. But most of his videos were simple PowerPoints. At the time, PowerPoint videos were not very common. And that was the biggest benefit I got from learning and taking all his training, was making PowerPoint videos.
Eventually I outgrew that training and quit. But I short-cut a lot of things that I might have taken a long time to figure out, or maybe would not have figured out at all.
The Quick Fix
I have joined other membership sites, just to get one piece of the training. It is very important that when you join some kind of site, you know what your goal is.
Jeanette Cates delivered a three-month training program about product creation. And although most of the things she taught I already knew, I joined because I wanted to get motivated enough to record more audios. That was my one goal from joining: to record more audios.
I joined the site, picked up some extra tips about how to make my audios better, recorded them and then showed them to her for accountability. I also used those audios to build my list, and I reported back to her about how many opt-ins they gave me and how many sales those led to.
More often than not, I will join someone's site just for one particular thing. This is why, in addition to explaining the step-by-step of what they are getting in your sales letter, go into the details. Tell them EXACTLY what result they will get from your training - because you never know what outcome people are looking for.
Community
I have joined a number of monthly membership sites, just to get my name out there. It is one thing to leave blog comments, or post on a free forum. But the audience there has not been proven to buy anything.
On the other hand, if you join somebody's "$100 per month training" and are allowed to leave comments or make forum posts, you know that every single person reading your messages has at least $100 per month to spend on some form of training.
Also, because it costs money to get into this community, it is more exclusive, which means it is a smaller crowd, which means you have less competition as far as getting your information read.
Some of my best connections came from the inside of these communities.
Brownie Points
When a friend of mine, Stu McLaren, offered training about his WordPress Membership Software, I joined - even though I had previously taught similar membership training.
I joined this site basically to become the "Star Student." I listened to all the training calls, read all the blog posts, and when he had call-in days, I made sure to have some kind of question, to make sure I understood all of the content. And I contributed a couple of things just to make sure all the bases were covered with his training.
Although you should definitely position your sales letter and marketing materials to "Why newbies can best benefit form your course," keep in mind that some experts may join, to keep their own training up-to-date, or even show support for you.
And those are the four reasons why I buy eBooks, reports, services and memberships. Did I leave any reasons out? What is the top reason YOU join someone else's community or pay them money for something?
Let me know down below, in the form of a very brief comment.
Top 21 Ways to Ruin Your Business
A split test of mine recently finished and the conversion rate increased from 2.21% to 3.92% by changing JUST the headline -- but not even the words on the headline... the COLORS!
Imagine that, an additional 14 signups to a "$47 every 2 weeks" membership site -- an extra $1400 monthly passive income -- from such a small change.
Why does this happen? Why does split testing even work?
I'll tell you why... it's because: Continue Reading »
The Emperor Has No Close: How to Avoid “Just One More Thing” Syndrome
Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) who is worth over 5 billion dollars and is a fantastic speaker, has a unique close that if you try to emulate it, will kill every single webinar pitch and every single sales letter you have.
I'm not a huge Apple fan, but Steve runs an event once a year called MacWorld Expo... you've probably heard of it. A bunch of geeks go to this event and he shows off all the latest stuff their company has put out.
At the end of the presentation, he stops and says, "Oh yeah, one more thing..." And then reveals something big, like iTunes or the iPod Touch. Continue Reading »
4 Reasons Not to Have a Membership Site, Plus 8 Reasons You Should Start a Membership Site
A couple days ago I asked my list if they had a membership site yet... I got 300 responses to that question and I want to share the results with you right now:
- 165 people, or 54.8% own membership software
- Out of that half that owned membership software, 89 people or 53.9% have at least one paying member
- Total, those 89 people who had a profitable membership only accounted for 29.6% of the responders
So Strange!
Some of these people paid $197, $297, even 4000 bucks for a membership script but only half of them are doing anything with it.
So let me share with you a couple of reasons that stopped me from creating membership sites (I've created 19 of them in the past 12 months... and only ONE before that time period!)
Because I Can
Let me tell you about the first product online that got me to pay higher than $100 for the very first time (this was years ago).
He called it a "Because I Can" sale. Basically the guy put together a huge package with a bunch of his own products, including resale rights.
- This was long before that kind of thing was common!
- JV giveaways didn't exist yet...
- Pitch webinars didn't REALLY exist yet...
He set the start price at $37 and the end price at something like $297, and the sale only ran for about 3 days. Every few seconds the price would jump up a fraction of a penny. I waited until it was above $100 before I bought.
Back then I think my highest priced product was $197, and if I sold two copies of it in a week I would be jumping for joy. I might not have had a $1000 launch yet. I was still full-time in college, rent was only $625 a month (a lot for me at the time). I didn't have a full time job or any other source of income.
But... I Still Bought!
What got me to buy? Scarcity!
The Greatest Selling Tool of All Time: Scarcity!
Guess what, I turn 25 years old today.
And the reason people give you birthday presents or even celebrate birthdays is for one reason.
If You Know That Reason...
... Then you can apply it to your e-mails, sales letters, products, everything, and it will increase response better than any 1-click upsell, forced continuity, free CD offer, 100% commission, or whatever goofy marketing fad is going around today.
The real reason you send people thank you cards, celebrate birthdays, buy one time offers... the reason it's 20 times easier to get a girlfriend when you're already dating some other chick is because of scarcity.
Scarcity is probably the ultimate reason you bought your house or car. You had to make a bid now before someone else did.
Here's a Funny Story...
Lance and I recently ran a webinar course with 15 students who paid $497 each to get in. Part of the weekly challenges were to run your own webinars.
These were small webinars we only promoted the afternoon before. The average one had 17 attendees.
But the webinar with the biggest turnout (from Andy Erickson) had 62 people register and 35 people show up. Why?
What Sales Tactics Should You Apply Immediately?
If you already sell products on the internet, and you experience some decent conversions, there are a few simple tactics you can apply to double or sometimes triple your sales.
In this business, increasing your conversion rate even from 1.0% to 1.1% can mean you can bid higher on keywords for more traffic, raise your prices for more profits, or outsource more product creation, article marketing, and video marketing. Anything you can apply that takes less an hour of work, one-time, that nets you can extra $1000 or $2000 per month, has to be worthwhile.
Tell Them If It’s Not Private Label Rights
Check out this cool e-mail I received from Sherm Cohen, who was a student in Product University 1.0 and the storyboarder for Spongebob Squarepants...
Subject: Thanks for the info in the footer!
Hey Robert...I just bought your 100 Time saving tips...I just wanted you to know that I would not have bought if I hadn't read THIS in your footer info:
"The report you are about to download is completely and originally created by Robert Plank... It's not a PLR product or resale rights product. There's NOTHING remotely like it available anywhere else, online or offline"
I've gotten burned in the past on buying resell products from people I trust, so that info was very helpful.
Hope you're doing well...--Sherm
Just having that little blurb at the bottom made who knows how many extra sales? I will tell you right now that there is a huge stigma with selling resale rights products. I'm not ashamed to admit that a while ago, one guy from the Warrior Forum bought into a membership site of mine filled with nothing but Private Label Rights content and one guy hated it so much, he canceled within an hour and posted on a bunch of review sites (Traffic Bad Boys).
With another membership site (IM Productivity Secrets) Lance and I hosted a bunch of webinars and made the recordings available within the private blog. In between webinar replays, we posted PLR content we had made into video... and one guy quit, telling us if we had only posted the webinar replays, he would have stayed! But the extra PLR content we threw in there to help members pass the time drove people away. Continue Reading »
Writing a Sales Letter is Hard?
Product creation myth number two is that: writing sales copy is hard.
You know what I'm going to say in response to that, right?
"FALSE!!!"
Just like you, I let sales copy be yet one more excuse not to launch a product. I didn't have 20 thousand dollars or even a thousand dollars lying around to pay someone to make my site sell, so what was I to do?
My mentor at the time just said... list some bullet points. And that really is all you have to do. Choose ten things about your prdouct that people would really like. What does it teach them that no one else does? What skill do people walk away with? How soon do they see results and how dramatic are those results?
Think of ten great things about your product that say great things about it, that don't actually give the chapter titles away. Then take the strongest bullet point in that list, move it to the top, make it larger, and now you have your headline. Continue Reading »
