Category Archives: copywriting

by

4 Of The Best Entrepreneurial Blogs You Can Start Reading Right Now

One of the best ways to learn anything in the internet marketing world is to get out there and take action. There is absolutely no substitute for finding out what works for your exact business model and personality than by experimenting and tweaking what you focus on based upon your results.

Having said that, the second best way to learn has to be from other companies and individuals who have been through the phase you’re at already, and have been kind enough to package their own lessons into easily consumed content for you.

Often, this comes in the form of a blog, where you can regularly get updated on whatever the topic that person or company has expertise in. For entrepreneurs, here are 4 that are especially awesome and go out of their way to deliver constant value to readers.

1. The Groove Blog

Honestly, this is one of the best transparency blogs around for entrepreneurs. Run by Groove CEO Alex Turnbull, the blog follows this customer support startup every step of the way as they journey to $500k per month in recurring revenue.

As you can imagine, there are a lot of insights to be learned from a company well on their way to hitting those ambitious numbers. The nice thing is that they share a lot of things that didn’t work as well, and provide the data to back up anything they say or recommend.

2. The Daily Egg

Crazy Egg is a product all about data, so it’s not surprising that the research that goes into posts on the Daily Egg (CE’s blog) are packed with awesome research. Plus, they have a great track record of securing some awesome guest posters, which help to flesh out the blog as an authority on a wider range of subjects.

As if all of that weren’t enough, the blog is one of Neil Patel’s projects. If you don’t know Neil, he’s one of the most prolific writers and content marketers around, and just about everything he touches is gold.

3. Swift Branding

A new player on the scene, Swift Branding is run by George Karboulonis over in Greece, and it’s got a good thing going for it right now. The blog does a great job of committing to providing as any useful resources, freebies, and guides for IM’ers as possible.

While some of the content is more general or entry level, there are some real gems as well, and George seems to have a knack for getting people to share their interesting stories with him in the form of revealing case studies.

4. Copyblogger

Finally, Copyblogger. Copyblogger has been around for a long time, and even has a now-rebranded media branch you can find at rainmaker.fm

While CB’s original focus was, no surprises here, copywriting, the team have really branched out over the last few years and broadened their topic reach without any falloff in quality.

by

Why Surveys Are The Next Big Thing In Business

Admittedly, I know this title might provoke some head scratching at first: “SURVEYS?! How are boring old surveys going to all of a sudden become some major player in business?” And I’m so glad you asked.

Feedback-based marketing is nothing new. Everyone knows, or at least repeats, the mantra that ‘the customer is always right’ and that giving your customers exactly what they want is the key to the success of your business. It was true 50 years ago, and it’s still true today. That said, the growth you’re about to see from survey/feedback based business practices is due to the fact that new technology is vastly changing the ways we can and do interact with customers.

Traditionally, surveys have suffered from one of two shortcomings. The first, was that if you wanted to survey customers on the spot, or right after they had made a purchase in a brick and mortar store, you were likely going to have to use paper surveys. While you were collecting valuable realtime feedback, the tedium and cost of paper survey supplies and data entry was more than a little speedbump in keeping customer feedback a viable adjust-as-you-go business strategy.

More recently, we’ve had programs and websites which allow the creation of online surveys. These surveys can have their data indexed and organized in realtime, saving you hours or work and pay fishing through results. The downside was that there were no easy ways to execute these types of surveys when they were most needed (i.e. at a point of sale). Instead, customers would have to be emailed a link or asked to visit a website hours or even days later. At this point, the quality and accuracy of feedback and recall declines and you won’t get as good of insights as you could have.

Now, however, companies like Responster and Customerville have jumped on the rise of tablets and mobile phones to help bring the best of both worlds together. For your business, that looks like cross-platform surveys that are made to be integrated into touch and run on any device. Now, a business that invests in setting up a cheap iPad kiosk can all of a sudden be collecting helpful feedback from a large percentage of their customers within the first day.

Over time, it will become more apparent that the businesses who take advantage of platforms that allow them to better interact with and respond to customer feedback will perform better. Whereas the marketplace used to be largely dictated by what businesses told the public they needed in the past, we now exist in a consumer controlled world. The internet was the first wave of customer empowerment, social media overhauled it altogether, ensuring that customer complaints and suggestions could be heard around the world as soon as they were thought of, and now we’ve arrived at the third era. Mark my words, feedback is going to separate businesses more and more in the next few years, because no one is going to turn away from a brand that designs their product and service offerings in direct response to something that customer suggested 3 hours ago.

by

3 Ways To Make Readers Stop And Pay Attention To Your Writing

Even in a world where live-streaming video and podcasting are gaining popularity amongst knowledge consumers at a breakneck pace, there’s still immense power in the written word. Not only is reading still the preferred medium for consumption by many, but it can also be essential in cases where streaming connections aren’t practical or when consumers want to engage deeper with their content.

Let’s face it, you are reading this right now. That has to count for something, right?

Right?!

Despite its importance, many people still have lackluster writing skills, or at least don’t ever bother into the intricacies that professional writers sweat over their perfection of day in and day out. Today, we’re going to go over three ways you can make your writing more effective by increasing reader comprehension.

Be a factbacker.

One of the things that becomes quickly apparent when you start reading through successful blogs and publications is that research efforts are never an afterthought. When writing pieces which largely consist of your own opinion or which are based primarily on your own experiences, it’s easy to just ramble and say what you want to say without too much of a basis.

One of the best ways to stand out from the crowd is to get used to infusing your writing with links to other sources that can back up what you want to say. If your goal is to say something completely new or put an unwritten spin on a topic (which is awesome, by the way!), then try and source some of the articles that got you thinking or that could help lead readers to your own conclusions. This push for credibility can really help the effectiveness of your messages.

Invent words.

What the hell is a fact-backer? I don’t know, I made it up! One of the greatest things Shakespeare and others like him did for the English language is add words to it. In fact, you’d be surprised at how many of the most common, normal-sounding words we use today were invented in the last few hundred years by a handful of creative minds.

Doing this not only makes people stop and really think about what they’re reading – you probably stop and try to figure out new words immediately when reading – but it also creates a mental association with your writing by forcing more engagement.

Get smart with formatting.

Finally, get spacey with it. Time spent reading a webpage increases with the general readability of that page, and a major contributing factor to this in the online space is how well your text is spaced out and formatted.

Unlike writing a formal article, let alone a research paper, writing for blogs and casual online properties should never exceed a couple of lines per paragraph. In fact, unlike in other forms of writing, it is perfectly acceptable for each sentence to be its own paragraph.

Beyond these three, it’s practice, practice, practice to get as good as you can at bringing concision and persuasiveness into your written words – good luck!

by

Three Emotional Triggers to Drive Sales with Words

The reasons we buy things vary greatly from person to person. For one, the need to fix a leaky roof might be the most immediate need in their life. To another, a new flat screen TV may seem like a necessary update to keep up with all that the entertainment world has to offer. While the motivations behind specific purchases do seem vastly different, many of the most important buying motivators can be boiled down to a few needs and emotions. Today, we’re going to take a look three different universal purchase motivation factors that you can use to enhance any part of your sales funnel. Traditionally, these triggers have resided solidly in the copywriting world, but keeping them in mind when creating all kinds of marketing materials, when designing your sales funnel, and more can be a great way to implement these triggers above and beyond the standard sales letter.

The Need for Shelter & Comfort: There are few things that motivate people more than an uncomfortable or uncertain living situation. A great example of this is the seemingly miracle stories of internet marketers who may have been homeless or couchsurfing when they started out, doing whatever they could on their local library’s internet to make ends meet.

If your product solves a problem within this niche, you’ve already got some of your work done for you, because you’ve essentially got automatic demand. That said, if you can work into your copy and funnel that your product can improve living conditions or comfort, you can tap into this trigger as well from other markets.

The Need For Love and Companionship: Let’s be honest, no one is surprised by this one! With the amount of ‘get your ex back!’ and ‘seduction’ products out there, it’s pretty clear that romantic prowess and success are important to most people. This issue has only been exacerbated by modern dating apps and sites (Tinder, etc.) which focus almost exclusively on looks and nothing else. Many people feel slighted, and like they won’t be able to perform well on these platforms, making this trigger even more potent than ever.

Think about how you can suggest that your product, training, course, etc., whatever it is, can help people to increase their romantic value. Many products that don’t even directly sell dating advice can still have strong tie-ins. For example, products on public speaking can be marketed as products that help boost confidence in most any social situations, not just speeches, which can translate into a more confident dater.

Financial Success: People love to make money. Money makes the world go ’round. Whatever other cliches you want to drop here. Whether they admit it or not, most people have a large monetary motivation, and helping someone get ahead in this way is a major conversionary selling point. Again, this motivator is not only tied to products geared toward ‘making money’, but it can also be used with educational products that increase earning potential, lifestyle products that increased perceived wealth, and more.

The bottom line: Any time you’re creating communications, you should be putting yourself in your customers’ shoes and hitting them where it, um, ‘motivates’ most.

If you can work these emotional triggers into your product’s hook then you’re in good shape!

by

Trimming the Fat – Copy Tips for Saying More With Less

Copywriting doesn’t always get the credit it deserves. From the billions of dollars in sales each day that hinge on a well-formatted sales letter, to a polished TV commercial script, to the catchy jingle or slogan you just can’t get out of your head, effective professional, persuasive writing, “copywriting,” does a lot for us as marketers.

It’s unfortunate then that copy is often neglected as a luxury expense or an unnecessary cog in many marketers’ or business owners’ sales funnels. The reason, inevitably, is cost. Good copywriters know that their words will have a direct effect on your conversion rates, and thus the money you make, and leverage that knowledge for a nice payday. It then goes to follow that many marketers begin crafting their own copy. To be honest, even if you don’t have the polish and practice of a professional, someone who is a good writer in general can learn to produce decent copy to keep them growing and selling until they can afford a dedicated copywriter. The key word there, however, is “learn.”

Amateur copy is almost always identifiable by a lack of brevity; people often write too much and get too wordy, losing their vital, important, life-changing points amongst superfluous, unnecessary adjectives and ineffective anecdotes. See what I did there? That sentence could have been a lot shorter! Today, we’ll take a look at how you can catch yourself and self-edit copy to stay effective and to the point.

1) Cut out very. The concept of “cutting out very” is probably referenced in proper copywriting books somewhere, but here’s my take on it. The tendency in sales writing is to be, well, selly. The way to do this however is with proper punctuation and, more importantly, by getting inside your audience’s head and telling them what they want to hear. Unfortunately, amateur writers usually use “filler” words. The word ‘very’ is one prominent example, because it is a false enhancer that is rarely needed. Don’t say “It’s very good,” say “it’s the best.” Another example is the use of very before the word ‘unique’, which is redundant. Something is either unique or it isn’t, it’s not “very unique.”

2) Boil it down to exactly what someone needs to know. One of the biggest things you can do to make your copywriting effective is to put yourself in the shoes of the person you’re writing to. This gets you out of salesman mode and helps you think about what someone with the problem you’re offering a solution for actually wants to hear. Sometimes, doing this can help us see that what we’re put down is over the top, too selly or spammy, or even just flat out unhelpful!

3) Proofread 80 times. And I’m not just talking about any usual proofread. Sure, you’re going to be checking your spelling and grammar and making sure everything lines up, but a copywriting proofread should see you putting on another hat as well, the “could this possibly sound any better?!” hat. Read each sentence and look for words that could be dropped, phrases that could be made more appropriate for your customers, etc.

Of course, just like every facet of IM, there’s always more to learn on the copywriting front, but this should get you headed in the right direction until you can hire a personal Don Draper of your own.

by

How to Get Your Emails Opened

Email marketing is still as relevant today as it was 10 year ago, but, like most things, approaches have had to be evolved in order to remain effective. No place is this more true that with opening rates, in which marketers evaluate how often their email communications are opened and read.

Every email you send that doesn’t get read is a missed opportunity, and subject line tricks and formulas that may have worked a few years ago might not carry the same weight today. Much of this is due to the problem of volume inundation. The average email account today is spammed with anywhere between tens and hundreds of junk communications per day, on top of a varying volume of legitimate/wanted ones.

Along with this inundation, comes the fact that people have become desensitized to sensational headlines. Things that may have piqued interest in 2010 now just scream “scam!” or “yeah right, I don’t believe THAT!” to the average consumer.

What all of this means, in a nutshell, is that you’ve got to get creative in order to get opens these days. At the very least, you’ll need to invest in some longterm strategic thinking.

In fact, your plan for improving open rates should be occurring long before an actual email is sent or a subject line is read. The largest factor in any open is going to be the sender, so you need to make sure you have established trust with whoever you are mailing.

One of the first steps to this, and something I cannot stress enough, is using confirmed – also called “double” opt in. It forces people to see your name twice, and gets the recognition process started. The people you lose because they couldn’t be bothered to confirm their subscription were probably not great prospects to begin with.

Next, make your opt-in incentive excellent. I mean award-winning. Make it actually useful and give them something they’re not finding somewhere else. Most marketers in any given niche are giving away half-solutions or useless “5 steps” PDF’s – be the one person in your area who isn’t.

Next, and this is probably a step where the most dropoff in open rates occurs despite not getting much attention, is that you ensure that the quality of your email followups can compete with that of your first email/incentive. Especially your second and third email, really overdeliver and give people information they can’t live without. Really prove you’ve done your homework and have the answers they’re looking for.

I cannot stress this enough. People get hung up on writing the perfect subject line when the reality is that you could have the worst headlines in the game and still pull off stellar open rates if you’re a trusted sender whose advice is valued. By the same token, you could find your traditionally excellent subject line methods scoring low on open percentage because no one remembers who you are or thought that it became too obvious early on that you were more interested in selling to them than helping them.

Once you have this trust established, feel free to go crazy with your subject line split testing, but know that this step – the one email marketers spend probably the most time on – is insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

by

Copywriting Toolbox: The ‘Foot in the Door’ Technique

Most marketers are serious do-it-yourselfers. They’re learning constantly about all kinds of different facets of marketing and trying to put what they learn into practice all with just one pair of hands. Most internet marketing guides will tell you to begin outsourcing and managing as early as possible, to help grow your business at the fastest rate possible, but this kind of management role isn’t always feasible if you aren’t entering into your entrepreneurship journey with some startup capital.

Oftentimes, you’ll have to make something work all on your own, and copywriting is no different. There’s a reason that there’s an entire industry dedicated to having someone else write your web copy, sales letters, email series, and more – but that doesn’t mean you can’t do a bang-up job yourself with a little bit of know-how. Today, we’re going to go over the “foot in the door” copywriting technique; it’s a classic copywriting move that can help you to increase responsiveness by easing into your propositions (purchases, sign ups, referrals, or whatever constitutes a successful conversion for your business).

The foot in the door principle is based upon the fact that people are naturally resistant to taking large steps out of the blue. This is, for example, why telephone salespeople have to work through such a large volume of number registries to keep sales at an acceptable level. That said, this resistance tends to lessen when the ‘ask’ becomes less and less of a hassle or monetary obligation for someone. Obviously, you would be more likely to try a new type of shampoo if it cost $5 per bottle than if it were $15.

Those studying (anecdotally) copywriting psychology posited that perhaps these smaller actions could be used to build trust, and thus, over time, increase the chances that someone would agree to a larger ask. As luck would have it, for you, they were right.

The first time I learned of the technique, it was written something like this: If someone came to your door and asked you to put a large political yard sign out endorsing a certain candidate, you would likely be resistant (even if it came from a party you identified with). But let’s say, instead, campaigners ask you to take just an “I support [candidate name]!” button. You’ll never wear it, but the ask is small and you agree; there doesn’t seem to be any harm in doing so. Let’s say that a week or two later, the same people come by and this time they are asking about the yard sign. You may have said no before, but you already agreed with them once, and the button spurred you into doing a bit of research on the candidate, and now maybe you’re more open to a public endorsement. Without a doubt, the second strategy will end up with more lawn signs in more yards.

No matter what your business is, you can use this same technique. In your own business, think of how you can get someone to agree to something small before you ask them for something big. In sales letters, you’ll notice that copywriters often pose questions with seemingly obvious answers.

“Do you want to cure your acne this week?”

“Do you agree that acne creates an unattractive, juvenile appearance?”

The purpose of these questions is to bait readers into mentally agreeing and nodding along; if they’ve already agreed with you on one thing, they’re more likely to agree with you on the next thing as well. In your own businesses, think about how you can use this technique to ‘soften’ any ask you have – you might just be surprised at how dramatically conversion rates change when correctly implementing it.

by

Making it Hard to Say No Gets More Yeses in Marketing

The last thing we want to hear from our leads is one simple word: No. No is the death of a sale, the end of a funnel, the loss of a lead. So while it might seem pretty obvious that you want to give your leads more chances to say yes, some internet marketers don’t follow through with this. For example, think about the classic website that you land on after a Google search. You read through the content and at the bottom, there’s a link that you can click to learn more, or in reality, make a purchase.

But why is the only option to say “yes” all the way at the bottom? What this essentially means is that every other spot on the page is a chance to say “no.” That’s bad marketing. You never want more chances to opt-out than to opt-in. So what’s the solution? Make it harder to say no by giving more chances to say yes!

 

Increased Calls to Action

First up is the obvious: increase the number of CTAs you have on your site and in your copy. Now, this doesn’t mean simply put links at the top, bottom and middle of your content, get creative with it. Opt-ins and other calls to action can be placed all over your site, in the banner, on the side scroll, in a pop-up. The more chances you give your leads to say yes, the more likely it is that they will. If you make them search for a CTA, chances are you’ve already lost the sale by that point.

Remember, the three tenets of every good website are that the viewer should get there and immediately know:

1. Where they are
2. What they can do there
3. Where and why to do it

The third tenet is the one to be concerned with here, if they don’t know where to click or why, your page has failed. Which brings us directly to our next point, the why.

 

Increased Rewards

Back in the simpler days of online marketing, having one reward would be enough. Give me your email and I’ll send you a free eBook. Sign up for this newsletter and you’ll get 15% off your next purchase. But with so many different avenues of traffic, it only makes sense that you should have multiple levels of rewards. Yes, get the free eBook by joining my mailing list but also get 15% off by liking me on Facebook and get a free website health report by entering your website URL here.

The more points of contact you wish to produce and maintain with your leads, the more rewards you should offer to increase the viability of those contacts. Remember, most people are fairly savvy about what happens when they give a like on Facebook or a follow on Twitter, as savvy as they are about the spam that occurs when they give out their email address. Prove to them that there is value attached to each of these channels by giving them actual value for connecting.

 

Make the Choice Clear

One of the most effective CTAs out there right now include a combination of a pop-up, a reward and making it very difficult to say no. You’ve likely already seen it on QuickSprout or WordStream, when you’re surfing the site, a seemingly random pop-up occurs with a question that has a very pointed answer. You then have the option to say yes or no, with no being a fairly ridiculous choice so that you have to mentally admit that’s your intention.

For instance, a website about money investment might have a pop-up that says, “Do You Want to Learn How to Invest Like a Pro?” The two choices would be:

Yes, I want to retire early

OR

No, I’m fine living paycheck to paycheck

Which would you choose?

by

Two Blunt Ways to Get More Clicks through Your Headline

Content marketing is bigger than ever so that means tons of articles and blogs are going up and being shared each and every day. With social media being such a large part of the virality equation, we all know the importance of a good headline. But with click-baiting reaching its slow, but inevitable death and so many other articles and blogs out there on similar topics, what’s to set your headline apart from the rest of the pack?

Now, we all know about the fundamentals of good headline writing, catchy, tells the “get,” puts the keywords or phrase in the beginning, makes the viewer want to click and read more, but hasn’t anything changed since we learned these rules? Absolutely.

 

Writing Headlines for a Weary Audience

The main thing that has changed is not the way we create content itself, but rather, the way our audience perceives it. That is to say, they’ve been there, clicked that. Your article likely won’t be ground-breaking (though it might be, in that case, I’d like to read you instead of the other way around!), but that doesn’t mean it can’t sound some horns and trumpets on the way in.

Here are two great methods for bluntly writing headlines that will bypass the red warning lights headlines like these can sometimes give off:

1. Here’s Why You’ll Use This Headline. I like to call this the “here’s why” blunt approach. Here’s why you’re going to buy my product. Here’s why you don’t need your cell phone anymore. Here’s why your dog is killing you. Whatever it is that you have to tell them, boom! It’s right there in their face now and there’s no denying it. What this does is it generates curiosity while literally telling them what they are going to learn if they click on your headline and read your article. It’s pure subtle genius and that’s why you’re going to start using it.

2. The Best Headline Tip Ever: Telling Them What it Is. Okay, so we’ve all fallen victim to writing “the best” headlines, that is to say, headlines with the phrase, “the best” in them. Of course! People Google “The Best so and so” all the time, we want to rank for that. Are you selling the best so and so of all time? Probably not. Do you have the best tip in the world for making money online? If you did, you wouldn’t be sharing it. Look, nobody really expects the best when they click on a headline, but they also know that if a headline is vague like that, chances are it’s just some lazy marketer trying to get some traffic. Not anymore! Behold, The Best Way to Use “The Best” in Your Headlines, Tell Them! Essentially, what you want to do is tell the reader what it is you are calling the best before they click. For example: “The Best Hot Dog Ever, Ball Park Franks.” Or, “The Best Online Marketing System: Bill Gates Finally Weighs In.”

 

Delivering the Goods

After you’ve come up with this killer headline for your content, it’s time to deliver on the promised goods. Don’t disconnect your headline from your content or you will never get another click from that reader again. When a reader clicks on your headline, they have an expectation and you have a duty to deliver on that, if you don’t, you will break their trust and no matter how great your product or service is, you won’t make one sale from that content.

by

Three Enormously Bad Landing Page Copy Techniques

Do you have a landing page that is under-performing or not converting at all? If so, consider the fact that many landing pages out there follow three extremely flawed approaches for content creation. If your landing page falls into one of these three categories, it’s likely that any promotions, ads or other monetary boosters you try will fail as well, sinking more of your hard-earned money into a failing endeavor. Similarly, it’s unlikely that changing the design or aesthetics of your landing page will help.

 

Three Bad Landing Page Copy Strategies

So what are these three horribly horrible approaches to creating landing page copy?

1. Guessing at What Your Lead Wants to Read. This is how many landing pages are done: simply trying out random messages that might or might not have worked on other landing pages, to see the results. Unfortunately, this takes a lot of time and ultimately, costs you a lot of money in sales. Sure, guessing right the first time can be extremely easy and lucrative, but what are the odds you’ll guess right? Do you really know what you consumer wants to read, or are you too close to the sales aspect of the product to listen to the true consumer needs? Remember, guesswork is costly and most of the time, flat out wrong. If this is how you created your landing page, it’s time to reevaluate your under-performing copy.

2. Looking to the Competition. Okay, so every online marketer looks at what their competition does in order to keep their finger on pulse of the industry, but some of us use the competition as our basis for research. Figuring that the competition has done their marketing homework, we “borrow” from their landing pages and rewrite copy in the same vein as their copy. We figure, “They must know what they’re doing, so I’ll just do the same, we have the same demographic, after all.” But what if they are just guessing? Or what if they are dead wrong? You just anchored yourself to your competition’s success and furthermore, there’s now nothing to truly differentiate your two landing pages. Why should customers go to you instead?

3. Cliché Ad Copy. Finally, many marketers will turn to tired, old, boring and used cliché messages that they think sound good, they don’t. These messages don’t scream, “Buy me now!” They scream, “Help! I was written by a lazy marketer who might also be extremely corny!” Your message and copy need to mean something. If you aren’t the best-selling product, don’t call yourself that. Empty copy leaves prospects guessing. Be specific in the problems your product solves, it’ll be that much more impressive.

 

What’s the Right Way to Approach Landing Page Copy?

Now that you know the wrong way to approach writing copy for your landing page, what’s the best way? A little technique called Voice of Customer, or VOC. VOC is a marketing technique that relies on knowing your customer demographic in order to create viable copy that speaks directly to them in a language they prefer. VOC writing relies heavily on your understanding of your prospect’s problems and pain points, in other words, what do they need solved and what problems do they have with the solution you’re presenting.

When you know this, you can market the product or service in a manner that speaks directly to the lead, thereby eliminating friction. When you know their wants and needs, you can prioritize them accordingly, deconstructing each bit of friction with every line of copy on your landing page. This brings greater satisfaction to the lead as they read down the landing page and ultimately, all but guarantees the sale.