Introduction :
Is it something to be regarded as a work of beauty or art? Is it clever slogans or amusing prose? Is it workmanship to be judged for an award or recognition?
It’s none of the above.
Advertising is salesmanship multiplied.
Nothing more.
And advertising copy, or copywriting, is salesmanship in print.
The purpose of a copywriter’s job is to sell.
The selling is accomplished by persuasion with the written word, much like a television commercial sells (if done properly) by persuading with visuals and audio.
As Claude Hopkins wrote in his timeless classic
'To properly understand advertising or to learn even its rudiments. One must start with the right conception, advertising is salesmanship. Its principles are the principles of salesmanship. Successes and failures in both lines are due to like causes. Thus, every advertising question should be answered by the salesman's standards'
'Let us emphasize that point. The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It is profitable or unprofitable according to its actual sales'
'It is not for general effect. It is not to keep your name before the people. It is not primarily to aid your other salesmen. Treat it as a salesman. Force it to justify itself. Compare it with other salesmen. Figure its cost and result, accept no excuses, which good salesmen do not make. Then you will not go far wrong'
'The difference is only in degree. Advertising is multiplied salesmanship. It may appeal to thousands while the salesman talks to one. It involves a corresponding cost. Some people spend $10 per word on an average advertisement. Therefore, every ad should be a super-salesman'
'A salesman's mistake may cost little. An advertiser’s mistake may cost a thousand times that much. Be more cautious, more exacting, therefore. A mediocre salesman may affect a small part of your trade. Mediocre advertising affects all of your trade'
"But I can’t emphasize enough that when using these techniques, you should always test them before rolling out a large (and expensive) campaign"
1) Focus on Them, Not You :
When a prospect reads your ad, letter, brochure, etc., the one thing he will be wondering from the start is: “what’s in it for me?”
And if your copy doesn’t tell him, it’ll land in the trash faster than he can read the headline or lead.
A lot of advertisers make this mistake. They focus on them as a company. How long they’ve been in business, who their biggest customers are, how they’ve spent ten years of research and millions of dollars on developing this product, blah, blah.
Actually, those points are important, But they should be expressed in a way that matters to your potential customer. Remember, once he’s thrown it in the garbage, the sale is lost!
When you’re writing to a friend, you’ll use the pronouns “I” and “you.” When trying to convince your friend, you might say: “Look, I know you think you’ve tried every widget out there. But you should know that...”
And it goes beyond just writing in the second person. That is, addressing your prospect as “you” within the copy. The fact of the matter is, there are many successful ads that weren’t written in the second person. Some are written from the first-person perspective, where the writer uses “I” Other times the third person is used, with “she” “he” and “them”
For example:
“As a real estate agent, you can take comfort in the fact that I’ve sold over 10,000 homes and mastered the tricks of the trade”
2) Emphasize Benefits, Not Features :
What are features? They are descriptions of what qualities a product possesses.
* The XYZ car delivers 55 miles per gallon in the city.
* Our ladder’s frame is made from a lightweight, durable steel alloy.
* Our glue is protected by a patent.
And what are benefits? They are what those features mean to your prospects.
* You’ll save money on gas and cut down on environmental pollutants when you use our energy saving high-performance hybrid car. Plus, you’ll feel the extra oomph when you’re passing cars, courtesy of the efficient electric motor, which they don’t have!
* Lightweight durable steel-alloy frame means you’ll be able to take it with you with ease, and use it in places most other ladders can’t go, while still supporting up to 800 pounds. No more backaches lugging around that heavy ladder. And it’ll last for 150 years, so you’ll never need to buy another ladder again!
I just made up those examples, but I think you understand my point.
By the way, did you notice in the list of features where I wrote “steel alloy?” But in the benefits, I wrote “steel-alloy” (with a hyphen). Not sure off-hand which one is correct, but I know which one I’d use.
Here’s why: you are not writing to impress your English teacher or win any awards. The only award you’re after is your copy beating the control (control being the best-selling copy so far), so take some liberty in grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. You want it to be read and acted upon, not read and admired!
The point is to address the benefits of the product, not its features, And when you do that, you’re focusing on your reader and his interests, his desires. The trick is to highlight those specific benefits (and word them correctly) that push your reader’s emotional hot buttons.
3) Push Their Emotional Hot Buttons :
This is where research really pays off because in order to push those buttons, you need to first know what they are.
Listen to this story first, and I’ll tell you what I mean: Once upon a time, a young man walked into a Chevrolet dealer’s showroom to check out a Chevy Camaro. He had the money, and he was ready to make a buying decision. But he couldn’t decide if he wanted to buy the Camaro or the Ford Mustang up the road at the Ford dealer.
A salesman approached him and soon discovered the man’s dilemma.
“Tell me what you like best about the Camaro,” said the salesman.
“It’s a fast car. I like it for its speed.”
After some more discussion, the salesman learned the man had just started dating a cute college cheerleader, So what did the salesman do?
Simple, He changed his pitch accordingly, to push the hot buttons he knew would help advance the sale. He told the man about how impressed his new girlfriend would be when he came home with this car! He placed the mental image in the man’s mind of he and his girlfriend cruising to the beach in the Camaro. How all of his friends will be envious when they see him riding around with a beautiful girl in a beautiful car.
And suddenly the man saw it. He got it, And the salesman recognized this and piled it on even more. Before you know it, the man wrote a nice fat check to the Chevy dealership, because he was sold!
The salesman found those hot buttons and pushed them like never before, until the man realized he wanted the Camaro more than he wanted his money.
I know what you’re thinking…the man said he liked the car because it was fast, didn’t he?
Yes, he did but, subconsciously, what he really desired was a car that would impress his girlfriend, his friends, and in his mind, make them love him more! In his mind. He equated speed with thrill not because he wanted an endless supply of speeding tickets, but because he thought that thrill would make him more attractive, more likeable
So you just push their, emotional hot buttons
4) The Unique Selling Proposition (USP) :
Also known as the unique selling position, the USP is often one of the most oft-misunderstood elements of a good sales letter. It’s what separates your product or service from your competitors. Let’s take a quick look at some unique selling propositions for a product itself:
* The Lowest Price – If you’ve got the corner marketed on budget prices, flaunt it. Walmart has made this USP famous lately, but it’s not new to them. In fact, selling for cheaper has been around as long as capitalism itself. Personally, I’m not crazy about price wars, because someone can always come along and sell for cheaper. Then it’s time for a new strategy
* Superior Quality – If it outperforms your competitor’s product or is made with higher quality materials, it’s a good bet that you could use this fact to your advantage. For example, compare Breyer Ice Cream to their competitor’s from the packaging to the wholesome superior ingredients, the quality is evident. It may cost a little more than their competitor’s ice cream, but for their market, it sells.
* Superior Service – If you offer superior service over your competitor, people will buy from you instead. This is especially true with certain markets that are all about service: long-distance, Internet service providers, cable television, etc.
* Exclusive Rights – My favorite! If you can legitimately claim that your product is protected by a patent or copyright, licensing agreement, etc., then you have a winner for exclusive rights. If you have a patent, even the President of the US must buy it from you
Ok, what if your product or service is no different than your competitor’s? I would disagree, because there are always differences. The trick is to turn them into a positive advantage for you. You want to put your “best foot forward.”
5) The Headline :
If you’re going to make a single change to boost your response rate the most, focus on your headline
Why? Because five times as many people read your headline than your copy. Quite simply, a headline is... an ad for your ad. People won’t stop their busy lives to read your copy unless you give them a good reason to do so, So a good headline promises some news and a benefit.
Pick up a recent issue, and you’ll see what I mean ok, now how could you adapt some of those headlines to your own product or service?
Your headline should create a sense of urgency. It should be as specific as possible (i.e, say $1,007,274,23 instead of “a million dollars”)
The headline appearance is also very important. Make sure the type used is bold and large, and different from the type used in the copy. Generally, longer headlines tend to out pull shorter ones, even when targeting more “conservative” prospects.
On each page, click on the individual products in order to view the ads and headlines.
It should go without saying that when you use other successful headlines, you adapt them to your own product or service. Never copy a headline (or any other written copyrighted piece of work for that matter) word for word. Copywriters and ad agencies are notoriously famous for suing for plagiarism, And rightfully so
6) The More You Tell, The More You Sell :
The debate on using long copy versus short copy never seems to end. The person who says he would never read all that copy is making a big mistaking in copywriting: he is going with his gut reaction instead of relying on test results. He is thinking that he himself is the prospect. He’s not, We’re never our own prospects.
If I’m selling an expensive set of golf clubs and send my long copy to a person whose plays golf occasionally, or always wanted to try golf, I am sending my sales pitch to the wrong prospect. It is not targeted effectively, And so if a person who receives my long copy doesn’t read past the 300th word, they weren’t qualified for my offer in the first place.
It wouldn’t have mattered whether they read up to the 100th word or 10,000th word. They still wouldn’t have made a purchase.
However, if I sent my long copy to an avid die-hard golfer, who just recently purchased other expensive golf products through the mail, painting an irresistible offer, telling him how my clubs will knock 10 strokes off his game, he’ll likely read every word. And if I’ve targeted my message correctly, he will buy.
Remember, if your prospect is 3000 miles away, it’s not easy for him to ask you a question. You must anticipate and answer all of his questions and overcome all objections in your copy if you are to be successful.
And make sure you don’t throw everything you can think of under the sun in there. You only need to include as much information as you need to make the sale, and not one word more.
Does that mean every prospect must read every word of your copy before he will order your product? Of course not.
Some will read every word and then go back and reread it again. Some will read the headline and lead, then skim much of the body and land on the close. Some will scan the entire body, then go back and read it. All of those prospects may end up purchasing the offer, but they also all may have different styles of reading and skimming.
7) The Structure of AIDA's :
There’s a well-known structure in successful sales letters, described by the acronym AIDA
AIDA stands for:
* Attention
* Interest
* Desire
* Action
First, you capture your prospect’s attention. This is done with your headline and lead. If your ad fails to capture your prospect’s attention, it fails completely. Your prospect doesn’t read your stellar copy, and doesn’t order your product or service.
Then you want to build a strong interest in your prospect. You want him to keep reading, because if he reads, he just might buy.
Next, you channel a desire having a targeted market for this is key, because you’re not trying to create a desire where one did not already exist.
Finally, you present a call to action. You want him to pick up the telephone, return the reply card, attend the sales presentation, order your product, whatever. You need to ask for the sale (or response, if that’s the goal) You don’t want to beat around the bush at this point. If your letter and AIDA structure is sound and persuasive, here’s where you present the terms of your offer and urge the prospect to act now.
8) Increase the Urgency of your thing :
When you limit the supply of a product or service in some way (i.e, takeaway selling), basic economics dictates that the demand will rise. In other words, people will generally respond better to an offer if they believe the offer is about to become unavailable or restricted in some way.
And of course, the opposite is also true. If a prospect knows your product will be around whenever he needs it, there’s no need for him to act now.
There are basically three types of takeaways
* Limiting the quantity
* Limiting the time
* Limiting the offer
Conclusion :
Great copy is made, not born. It is derived from proven test results designed to do one thing and do it well: sell
Effective advertising doesn't always use "grammatically correct" English. It uses short sentences, fragments. Like this.
It convinces you to buy, and buy now
It talks about benefits, not features. It sells on emotion and reinforces the decision to buy with logic.
It paints a compelling picture and irresistible offer that forces your prospect to act and act now! And if it doesn't, then you drop that ad like a hot potato and go with one that does.
Goodbye
You must be logged in to post a comment.