If you’re like many bloggers, you have (or you’re thinking of developing) products and services to sell to your readers.
Your instinct might be to write the sort of hard sell copy you’ve seen so much of, because you will assume that’s what always works.
But will it? Maybe. Maybe not.
The trouble with hard sell is that it’s overused, it can destroy your credibility, and many bloggers just don’t feel comfortable being so aggressive.
So what do you do?
Copyblogger is about to go on our annual holiday hiatus. We’ll be taking a break from posting while we catch up, get rested, and get excited about what we’ve got in store for you in 2010.
You may be taking a little time off yourself. Or you may still be going into the office, but the last week of the year is often a time when routine tasks slow down or stop altogether.
So what’s the smartest, most productive use you could make of the next seven days?
This is the third installment of the “Third Tribe sales letter,” taking a more traditional high-pressure internet marketing sales page and showing how we can re-work it for a third tribe approach.
Today we’ll talk about what they’re really selling (always a good thing for any marketer to figure out), the call to action, and the P.S.
And we’ll talk about how you can do this exercise for yourself, taking any “high-pressure” sales material and translating it for your own audience.
I understand . . . I also get a FREE 30-Day Trial Membership to the FOUNDERS CLUB which gives me INSTANT ACCESS to 5 of your top widget-creation and widget-hacking programs. And, if I want to continue with my Founders Club membership it’s only $47 a month.
Notice that “Free 30-day trial? That’s what the marketer actually wants you to buy.
Although most of the sales letter is pitching a $47 standalone information product, that’s just bait for the hook. What they’re really after is getting you to sign up to a monthly program (called a “continuity” program in Internet marketing jargon), which turns your $47 sale into one that could be ten times as high if you enjoy the content in their program.
Usually marketers in this space assume that a customer will stay for between three and five months before quitting.
This is where a Third Triber has a huge advantage. Because you build a stronger relationship before the sale, and because you’re often much more committed to delivering an amazing product, you’ll naturally tend to see customers stick around longer. Don’t underestimate this advantage.
I’m personally ok with this strategy, as long as you’re absolutely crystal clear about the fact that they’re signing up for an ongoing relationship. But the Third Tribe way to do this is to make sure that the buyer can opt out of the monthly program if she likes. Set up your shopping cart to allow the buyer to “unclick” the monthly membership option.
Don’t try to push anyone into “forced” continuity, insisting that they try your membership offer. Let them choose for themselves, and you’ll make more sales.
(Interestingly enough, testing from the traditional internet marketing “gurus” shows that letting people opt out actually results in more sign-ups. People don’t like to feel forced into buying, so it reduces conversions and turns people off. Go figure.)
If you’re new to selling and marketing, you might wonder why so many marketers limit their offers. Why push people to buy today, when they might not be ready? Wouldn’t you make more sales by leaving your shopping cart open for buyers to buy whenever they feel like it?
In a word, No.
Even if your audience is passionately in love with what you’ve got, procrastination is your enemy. For all but the most absolutely urgent problems, if they can get around to dealing with it tomorrow, the chances are good that they won’t ever deal with it at all.
Two of the most critical tools for your sales process are the call to action and urgency. Here’s the birds-eye view.
The call to action is a simple, explicit instruction
to buy your stuff.
CLICK HERE TO GET IT NOW »
As silly as it might sound, if you don’t tell people “Buy this right now,” many of them won’t. Read the article below for a more complete discussion of how to put together a call to action for your own offers. This is one of the most frequently overlooked elements when people are just getting started with marketing, and it’s also one of the easiest to fix.
How to be a Copywriting Genius: The Brilliantly Sneaky Trick You Must Learn
Incidentally, yes, you do want to use the words “Click here” in your call to action, despite what web design or SEO pundits might tell you. Here’s why.
Urgency is your customer’s reason for acting right now,
not tomorrow or the next day
Act now! This offer will expire in just 4 days.
Take advantage of it now, while it’s still available!
Offers within a limited time frame will nearly always sell more than offers that are open-ended. Without some kind of time or scarcity pressure, inertia will tend to keep your customer doing more of what she’s doing already . . . nothing.
We’ll talk more in an upcoming letter about how to use urgency and scarcity without being a thug.
Virtually all sales letters have a “P.S.”
Why? Because it’s one of the most-read elements of any page.
Marketers use the P.S. to re-state the most important benefit, to stress an urgency element, to reiterate the call to action, or to pull a key emotional lever for their market.
A P.S. can be used for any important copywriting function. The only “wrong” way to use it would be to skip it altogether.
On Copyblogger’s sales pages, we sometimes use the P.S. in a tongue-in-cheek way. Because our audience is so familiar with more traditional sales pages, we’ve sometimes been a little bit “meta” in how we approach it.
For example, here’s the P.S. for our Freelance X Factor product, an online course that teaches freelance writers how to make more money and create a more enjoyable business with fewer hassles.
P.S. Is there a copywriter alive who can resist checking out the P.S.? OK, here’s the quick summary: Freelance “X” Factor is a steal at only $87 for over 4 hours of audio modules, edited and searchable transcripts, practical worksheets that guide you through the processes, tactics, and strategies we reveal, supplemental reference material that ties it all together, and 3 live Q&A calls. Go ahead and buy now or scroll back up to get the full story.
P.P.S. Oh yeah . . . it’s fully guaranteed for 30 days or your money back, no questions asked. Let’s get started.
Notice that, although we start with a bit of a wink about the nature of the P.S., we still use it! In this P.S., we re-state the offer, include two calls to action, and let the buyer know about a strong guarantee. If the reader scrolled down the sales page and read nothing but the P.S., she’d have enough information to feel confident about buying this product.
(Here’s the whole sales page, if you’d like to study it.)
The most important thing for you to take away from these three lessons is that you don’t have to throw away any effective copywriting technique just because it’s usually used in a clumsy, “hypey” way.
Your homework for the weeks ahead: keep an eye on the sales letters you see, and figure out how you would translate their techniques for your own audience, incorporating your own personality, language, and style.
(If you don’t subscribe to promotional email newsletters because you’re afraid of being sold to, you’re making a real mistake. Get a dedicated email address for them if you like, certainly use software tools to route them to subfolders or some other system so you can study them at your leisure. But do study what the more aggressive guys are doing. You can learn a lot, if you translate it to your own market without trying to use it “as-is.”)
If you got here without being subscribed to the Copyblogger newsletter, you’re missing out! This is lesson #8 in a 20-part series on how to use internet marketing with social media in a new, smarter way that lets your audience know how much you respect and value them. If you’re not already a subscriber, click here to learn more about it.
You might remember that in the last lesson, we started to dissect a traditional “yellow highlighter” sales letter — the kind used by traditional high-pressure Internet marketers.
Their kind of sales letter is designed to work like a harpoon. You get one shot at your prospect, and you either make the sale or the prospect swims away forever.
We spent a lot of time just on the headline (which was fair enough, since it’s about 5 lines long). Today we’re going to get into the body of the ad.
This kind of ad is called “direct response,” because you make an offer and then watch (and measure) to see how well prospects respond to that offer.
Jargon watch: An “offer” is what you’ve got to sell and how much you’re going to charge for it.
For higher-priced products, most copywriters are coy about the price until they’ve had a chance to sell you on how fantastic the product is. But because the price for this particular product is under $100, this sales page introduces the price early on.
Get It All For Just $47 Right Now
That “Just $47” is hyperlinked to an order form, giving the prospect the ability to buy the product right away.
I call this the “you had me at hello” offer. Sometimes people don’t need a lot of “selling” or trust-building to order from you. They may already know you by reputation, they may have been referred by someone they trust, or your opening headline and first few lines may have communicated everything they need to know.
For a big-dollar item, this technique can scare this reader off permanently. You’re going too fast, too soon.
But for something less expensive, you can bring price up fairly early in your relationship.
If your main communication vehicle is a blog, you might have a banner ad for a product at the bottom of each post (as we do on Copyblogger for the Thesis WordPress theme.)
If you’re using an email autoresponder (which you should, if you aren’t already), you can put a low-key offer into one of the early messages. Or you might promote a smaller product, like an ebook, in each message you send.
I love the expression “Begin as you mean to go on.”
This isn’t just about making a small sale. It’s about communicating to your audience that you are going to provide fantastic value with content and you’re going to give them an opportunity to buy something.
Let them know early on that your relationship has a commercial side.
You might think that going for years without “pitching” anything would endear you to your audience. But in fact, it tends to just make them cranky when you finally get around to asking for the sale.
(If that’s where you are, you should still do it. Just realize that you’ll make a few of them cranky.)
If you don’t have a product of your own to offer for sale, and you don’t have the free time to create one now, find an excellent product in your topic and see if you can represent it on an affiliate basis. (Here’s a refresher on how to do that.)
Ask for a small investment early on, making sure buyers get fantastic value for their money. This lays a foundation that will pay off handsomely later.
Directly under that initial offer, the sales letter starts to introduce the benefits of buying the product.
Transform Your Widget-Creation Instantly with Lessons from the Widget-Hacking LEGENDS! The Most POWERFUL, PROVEN AND PROFITABLE Lessons in Widget Creation From the Past 100 Years.
This could, frankly, be a little stronger. This is the section of the sales letter that I’d test some variations on, if I was running it.
The words the copywriter chose to highlight (in all capital letters, a technique you should probably avoid in social media) are legends, powerful, proven, and profitable.
“Legends” is, of course, about establishing the advice in the product as something that’s stood the test of time. This is echoed by the word “proven,” and by “from the past 100 years.”
In the word “profitable” we move to what this particular customer wants, which is to make money. “Powerful” is a little bit of a junk word here, but it creates nice alliteration with proven and profitable, which I assume is why it’s there.
Persuasion for Third Tribe marketers obviously looks pretty different. But we still want, fairly early in our communication, to start hinting at the fantastic benefits of doing business with us.
It doesn’t matter what you sell or how you’re selling it; people need to know what they’ll get out of doing business with you.
The most compelling way to do this is often with a story. Talk about how someone (someone, in fact, who looks a lot like your reader) was able to realize her dreams of widget-building bliss by using certain techniques, tools, and methods.
You’re not pitching yourself as the solution at this point. Instead, just start to paint a picture of what success looks like for your reader.
Autoresponders, again, are a great tool for something like this. You can also use interviews (text, podcasts, or video) and special reports.
Remember that stories are inherently “shareable.” Get interesting success stories on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, or anywhere else people are sharing content. At the end of each one, include a low-key call to action to check out something interesting on your website or blog.
Yes! I want to transform my widgets with the most POWERFUL, PROVEN and PROFITABLE widget-hacking lessons from the last 100 years!
This is an old school sales method. As the theory goes, you get the prospect to say yes to a lot of little things, and they’ll say yes to the big stuff because of our innate psychological habit of consistency.
In other words, people are hard-wired to want to behave consistently with how they’ve behaved in the past.
In practice, most prospects over the age of 7 have seen this technique used, and it tends to make them squirm away. It feels like you’re being sold to, which is an unpleasant feeling.
Instead of getting a prospect to check an artificial box or trying to “make” them say the word yes, the Third Tribe marketer invites discussion and interaction.
Give potential customers a place to ask questions, enter a conversation with you (and with other customers), and respond to your work.
You’re using the same principle (consistency), but in a way that doesn’t feel sales-y. You’re enticing them to behave in a way that shows they trust and like you, and that trust and like can become habit-forming.
It’s probably obvious that if you want to sell something, you have to provide a clear description of exactly what the customer is going to get.
Obvious, but surprisingly easy to forget if you’re not an experienced salesperson. (I know, because I’ve done it.)
You’ve got to let people know about the features of the product, as well as all of the logical and emotional benefits they’ll enjoy after they get it.
Here’s a spot where we “Third Tribers” can benefit from studying the yellow highlighter brigade more carefully. Notice how clearly the features and benefits of the product are explained.
I understand . . . I get access to the entire Live 2-Hour Training with Sonia Simone, where she’ll hand me the MOST EFFECTIVE WIDGET HACKS OF ALL TIME.
I understand . . . I also get access to the Video and Audio Recordings of the entire training, as well as the Word-for-Word PDF transcript so I can go through the training materials as often as I like.
I understand . . . I also get a FREE 30-Day Trial Membership to the FOUNDERS CLUB which gives me INSTANT ACCESS to 5 of your top widget-creation and widget-hacking programs. And, if I want to continue with my Founders Club membership it’s only $47 a month.
Everything is spelled out — exactly what you get, and a few benefits like “so I can go through the training materials as often as I like.”
There are also a few good verbs used. So I’m not just going to give you the widget hacks, I’m going to hand them to you. The implication there is that you’re not going to have to do any work at all to get them, this transition will be effortless.
For this particular market, “easy payoff with no work” is an important sales point. Rather than making a claim (which might attract a bit too much FTC attention), the verb hints at the point without directly making a promise of results.
If you’re going to model anything from this sales letter, this section is decent. This is perfectly good copy (if a little on the hypey side) for a landing page or anywhere else you’re spelling out an offer.
In the next lesson we’ll take a look at what this sales letter is really selling. (It’s not the relatively inexpensive Widget Hacks product.)
We’ll also look at the close of the sales letter. Just like with face-to-face selling, that “close” is one of the most important parts of the sale. It moves the prospect over the threshold to becoming a buyer. And no matter what color highlighter we’re using, that’s the goal.
If you got here without being subscribed to the Copyblogger newsletter, you’re missing out! This is lesson #7 in a 20-part series on how to use internet marketing with social media in a new, smarter way that lets your audience know how much you respect and value them. If you’re not already a subscriber, click here to learn more about it.
Whether it’s a cover letter for your resume, a sales pitch to a client, a blog post, a Twitter tweet, or an internal business proposal, all of us need to write in a way that draws the reader closer to us.
We need writing that’s compelling, interesting, and unique. We need writing that’s magnetic.
Some think that magnetic writing is all about talent. But a few simple techniques can make any piece of writing more compelling.
Today I’m going to try something new.
I’m going to take one of the traditional marketing guru’s sales letters. This one is fairly brief, but I’ll still split it over several lessons, because there’s a lot here to cover.
Then I’m going to translate that into how we’d do it in the “Third Tribe.”
(If you’re not sure what that is, here’s the background.)
In other words, we’ll take the same persuasion techniques that the high-pressure guys use, but we’ll creatively adapt them to a social media audience that hates hype and hates salespeople (or at least they think they do).
Ready to roll?
Please don’t misunderstand me. This is not a bad sales letter. In fact, this is a very skilled sales letter. It does what it sets out to do (and we’ll look more closely at the goals in a later lesson).
In certain business cases, it’s possible you would want to run a letter very much like this one. As long as your product is good and you’re always being 100% honest with your audience, there’s nothing inherently bad about it.
But right now, with the audience and community you have today, if you spring a letter like this on them, they’re going to run screaming for the exits.
When you use social media to build a village of customers, you can’t then run up with a “harpoon” style sales letter and try to shoot them in the head with it. It just isn’t going to work.
(If you haven’t read the article on The Harpoon or the Net: What’s the Right Copy Approach for Your Prospects?, go do that now and then come back. The whole thing will make much more sense to you if you do.)
Here’s the original headline from the sales page. I changed the actual product type to “Widget Creation” because it doesn’t actually matter at all what you’re selling. This is about the underlying architecture of a more typical “harpoon” piece versus creating a content net.
“Here’s YOUR CHANCE To INSTANTLY Tap Into The
Greatest Minds Of Widget-Creating History And Swipe
Their Most Powerful, Game-Changing
WIDGET-HACKING SECRETS To
Experience Your Own Monumental Widget-Creation BREAKTHROUGH!”
First and foremost, it’s grabbing our attention. If we’re into making widgets, this headline will probably at least slow us down and catch our interest.
If, that is, we don’t instantly click away because it’s so clearly and obviously an ad. (Because remember, both in and outside of social media, no one likes to be sold, no matter how much they may love to buy.)
This style works quite well for prospects who are in a hurry and who are looking for something to immediately solve a pressing problem — in this case, that they’re not happy with how they’re creating their widgets.
It doesn’t work well for those who are in more of a “browsing” mood, and who are looking for information.
So how do we do this in the Third Tribe?
Attention in social media comes as a result of knowing your stuff and having something valuable to contribute.
(It can also come from making a damned fool of yourself, but that’s tricky to monetize.)
You definitely do not need to be the most towering expert in your field. But you do have to know enough to make yourself consistently useful to your readers.
Assuming you’ve got something valuable to say, you then need to say it in a way that will command attention.
Strong headlines are just as important to your blog post or special report as they are to a sales letter like this one. But they can’t, as this one does, look like an ad.
So when you’re looking to capture attention with your content, take some serious care and time with your headline. Remember, the work of the headline is to get that first line of your content read. If you use an image, make it a good one that creates some emotional resonance for your reader. Then follow up with a digestible and insanely useful bit of content (what I’ve called cookie content) to keep the reader interested in what you have to say next.
Virtually any social media tool can be used to capture and hold attention. Whether it’s a blog post, Twitter, Facebook, Digg, a Squidoo lens, YouTube — make sure those elements (headline, image, cookie content value) are firing on all cylinders.
This headline also makes a couple of promises.
First, this solution is going to be quick. (This is conveyed, of course, by the use of the word INSTANTLY, but also with the use of the verb “swipe,” suggesting that instead of painstakingly building your own widget-creation system, you’re just going to steal one that already works well.) The word BREAKTHROUGH also suggests immediate massive improvement, not just a modest incremental change.
Second, this solution is going to create something of an “insider’s club.” There’s a sense of a secret confederation here, a group who have the inside dope.
You get that from “Tap into the greatest minds” (suggesting a sort of Vulcan mind-meld with the legends of widget creation) and the use of the word “secrets” (one of the most powerful words in copywriting).
It’s also hinted at with the words YOUR CHANCE (note how prominently they’re highlighted), suggesting that you’re finally going to get a chance to crack into this elite club.
Because this is all being taken in by the prospect in about a second, there’s no subtlety. Anything important is called out visually so you don’t miss it. That’s why they’re using red to call out certain words, as well as all caps and the unnecessary quotation marks.
Harpoon copywriters can’t afford to be fussy about design. Their message has to be understood in the blink of an eye.
In a more content-driven sales system, you don’t use a single letter like this one to deliver your entire sales message.
Instead, you’d figure out the most important promises you’re making, and you create content that addresses each one.
One of the best tools for this is an email autoresponder sequence like the one you’re reading now. You could also do a series of blog posts.
All of the content that delivers these “sales promises” also has to keep delivering solid “cookie content” value. If it smells like advertising, people won’t consume it
So you’ve got to stay under the radar. But you can easily create valuable content that also communicates big promises like:
Great persuasive content tells stories or uses metaphors that show (not just tell) these promises.
The first thing you need to think about is what kind of “big promise” you can make to your audience.
What pressing problem do you solve?
What pain do you remove?
What value do you add?
What pleasure do you create?
What freedom do you permit?
What connection do you allow?
You might have one answer or several. It’s fine to have several “big promises,” but you need at least one juicy one.
Then, think about how that might be translated into content. You might tell stories about people who have attained this promise. Or maybe you’ll give away some simple tools that allow the person to experience some of that promise immediately, today.
(For example, if your big promise is being able to become a master auto mechanic, your content might have quick ideas about small tweaks a beginning mechanic can make to immediately produce much better results.)
Also think about the best way to present that content. It could be a blog series, an email autoresponder sequence, or a PDF special report. Use whatever tool you think will work best for your particular audience.
And speaking of series, I’m going to continue this series-within-a-series in the next lesson, as we dive into the body of our traditional sales letter.
Looking forward to seeing you then!
If you got here without being subscribed to the Copyblogger newsletter, you’re missing out! This is lesson #6 in a 20-part series on how to use internet marketing with social media in a new, smarter way that lets your audience know how much you respect and value them. If you’re not already a subscriber, click here to learn more about it.
