Original Website Marketing Starts With a Swipe File
The first time I heard about swipe files I was shocked. I thought we would write copy. Swiping? Aren’t we supposed to be original?
But I’ve since learned that swipe files often help create some of the most original websites around the Internet.
A swipe file is a collection of examples of great copywriting. You might have a physical paper file or a list of bookmarks in your Internet browser.
A swipe file is not a license to plagiarize. You cannot copy someone else’s keywords or results (”earned $30K in one month”) unless they apply equally to you.
In fact, typically your best “swipes” come from copy targeted at a market that is totally different from your own, for products you would never dare to use. a If you do any writing — web content, books, sales letters– you can use swipe files 3 ways.
(1) Get ideas for headlines and bullets.
Remember the old line about “They laughed when I sat down at the piano…” You cannot swipe the line if you are selling piano lessons, like the original ad.
But let’s say you are selling fitness coaching or legitimate arthritis remedies targeted to people over 50. You might come up with a headline, “They laughed when I said, ‘I’ll walk up three flights of stairs. And then I scampered up like a teenager.’”
(2) Add spice to your style.
Nearly all copywriting masters advise their students, “Take a famous ad and copy it out, word for word.” Some say, “Don’t use a computer: write by hand.”
Of course you’ll never use the exact words you’re copying in your own work product. But you begin to appreciate how the words go together and you become unconsciously influenced by what you read.
Sometimes, when I’m getting ready to write, I’ll find samples from an over-the-top edgy copywriter. I’ll write a few paragraphs, daring to be outrageous.
Then I go back to my own copy, in my own style. The result? Just enough edge to be interesting, not enough to overpower my own writing.
(3) Get inspired.
Every so often you’re trying to write some copy…and you keep staring at a blank page. Now is a good time to read through the swipe file.
For example: Find a set of bullets in a successful ad. Now rewrite those bullets with your own product,target and benefits.
Here are 2 imaginary examples for a weight loss product:
“How to lose 20 pounds without feeling hungry,” and, “The one kind of chocolate that actually helps you lose wweight”
Now let’s say you are selling a time management product. You would modify these bullets:
“How to add 2 extra hours to your day without feeling pressured,” or, “The one kind of clock that actually helps you meet deadlines.”
Keep going with all the bullets you see, adapting them to your product or service. By the time you reach 6, you’re probably filled with inspiration.
And don’t be surprised if your copy looks nothing like the file you swiped from.
FREE 7 Best-Kept Secrets of Websites That Really Attract Clients: My Special Report gives you insider tips to convert tire-kickers to buyers and earn money while you sleep. From Cathy Goodwin, The Content Strategist, at http://www.copy-cat-copywriting.com.
Web Site Marketing Starts With The Right Kind Of Powerful Claim
Recently I was browsing through my emails when I ran across this comment:
“I want to make a really powerful claim — the kind that makes readers sit up and reach for their wallets. How about, ‘We have the secret formula to take your life to the next level.’ Or, “You’ll feel magically transformed after a single session.’”
I must admit I was not surprised. Clients often expect to see these kinds of statements in their copy, whether they write their own or ask me to do the job. But are these claims really powerful when it comes to converting lookers to buyers? Or will readers shrug off your message as pure hype?
To tell the difference, experienced copywriters will ask you for the story behind the claim. Readers will be convinced when they understand the “why” as well as the “what.” They want specifics, not generalities.
For example, a life coach can make extremely powerful claims when she refers to herself as a unique resource: someone who invested years and thousands of dollars to learn from experts and experience her own growth.
Or she could back up her claim with numbers. For example, she could point to a specific percentage of her own clients who experienced significant life changes within 90 days of starting her program.
Another powerful claim is, “You would have a hard time doing this yourself.” In a recent promotion, one marketer emphasized that she and her staff put dozens of hours into her newest information product.
Powerful copy doesn’t come from words like “magic,” “instant,” or “big.” It comes from a really compelling word: “because.”
Three takeaways on claims:
(1) Back up your claims with accurate, demonstrable facts.
If you say you’ve invested 6 months doing research, readers will expect to see results, such as dozens of links to websites, interviews with clients, and references to published articles. Proud of your training? Your bio should include names of mentors, programs and degrees.
Recently I was asked to review an ebook on (let’s say) financial success. The author claimed he had been researching the topic for 20 years, through his consulting and coaching practices. But his ebook did not make reference to a single outside source - not even via affiliate links. He reported just one interview with an “expert.”
As I advised the author, this claim will backfire. He would actually come across as more credible if he simply omitted mention of research. Alternatively, he could add some of the resources he uncovered while working with clients and researching his book.
(2) Decide what you can claim before promoting your product.
Before hiring a copywriter (or sitting down to write your own copy), submitting your book proposal, or announcing your next ebook, decide what makes your offering unique. What promises can you deliver? What evidence can you produce?
Readers can challenge your claims two ways. They shrug you off with a “been there, done that.” Or they can shake their heads in disbelief as they click away to another site.
(3) Go on a treasure hunt for truly powerful claims.
Focus on facts, outcomes, accomplishments and numbers. Wait a few days or even weeks and then review your notes with fresh eyes. You can also ask your clients how they benefited from your service. And, of course, your copywriter or marketing coach will help you discover what I call hidden treasure: powerful claims that reach your prospects’ minds and hearts.
FREE 7 Best-Kept Secrets of Websites That Really Attract Clients: My Special Report gives you insider tips to convert tire-kickers to buyers and earn money while you sleep. From Cathy Goodwin, The Content Strategist, at http://www.copy-cat-copywriting.com.
A Website Is Not Enough!
Many online entrepreneurs will tell you that traffic is the lifeblood of your online business. Whether your site is an affiliate marketing site that promotes another product, or it is actually an eCommerce site with it’s own products, if no one visits it, then you don’t sell anything!
Traffic is good, but conversion is better
While traffic is important, it’s not the complete story. If your site visitors don’t ever convert to paying customers, all the traffic in the world won’t do you any good. You can have have a retail store in a premier location in one of the top tourist destinations in the world, but if all the foot traffic walks on by without stopping, the location doesn’t help very much.
You need all the help you can get to convert your site visitors to paying customers. But is your website enough to ensure your online success? A website is not enough! You will need more than a nice banner and some great sales copy. There are some essential tools that you need to add to your website to fully leverage the your traffic and add to your profits.
Here are some key tools you need to augment your website:
Email List Management and Autoresponders
Many of your site’s visitors will not be ready to purchase when they visit your site. Marketing studies show that it can take five or more follow up messages to make a sale. With the impersonal nature of the internet, it helps to establish a relationship first. Giving away valuable content is a great way to build trust, a foundation of all relationships. How is this done? By asking them to sign up on your list you will have a way to follow up with them.
Email list management is a service or software you need to purchase in addition to web hosting. Make sure that your Email List Manager has autoresponders. Autoresponders are automated emails to your subscriber that are triggered by some event, such as a subscription to your list. They are critical to your success.
You can also cross promote other’s products to your lists. Your subscriber may have not been interested in the raincoats you were selling, but perhaps an umbrella is just what they needed.
Video and/or Audio
Adding video or audio is a great way to make a personal connection with your site visitor. The sound of your voice humanizes your site’s presence and adds another dimension to the experience of visiting your web site.
Additionally, adding audio or video helps reinforce your message with your visitor. As many studies have shown, people retain and learn information much better if they receive it in multiple different ways. Think about it, in school, did it help you learn the subject matter better, when you heard the teacher explain it in addition to reading the lesson in the textbook?
With so many websites competing for your visitor’s attention, adding a feature like audio that makes it stand out will help your sales.
Tracking and Testing Tools
How do you know that your sales copy is the best it can be? If you are selling golf clubs, what is the best header to engage your visitor’s interest? You need to tune your headers and your site so users are captivated by what you offer. A common way to do this, is called “split testing” (also known as “A/B testing”). Here is how it works, half of your site visitors see one version of your site, the other half sees another. You monitor the conversion rate of the two versions. The version that has the highest rate is what you use going forward. You can repeat the process until your conversion rate doesn’t improve any more.
If you are advertising your site using pay-per-click ads, another useful metric to track is which ad campaigns are bringing you the highest converting traffic.
If putting all these tools together for your website seems like more than you want to take on, then have someone else put them together for you. You can hire someone or find a vendor that offers these tools in an all in one package. The most successful internet marketers focus on their business, leaving the technical details to others. You would be wise to follow their lead.
Kathy Alice has been in the technology industry for 20 years. She helps business owners and marketers bridge the technical gap. She loves finding innovative solutions to achieve business success. http://www.websitesinminutes.com
How to Create a Successful Sales Path
To understand how to best promote your products to your prospects, you need to first grasp the basics of a customer path. Having a short path limits real estate, but a well-developed path takes full advantage of the virtual possibilities.
The first step is to invite prospects to travel your path by giving them something for free, like a report or a newsletter. The only price they pay to travel down the path with you is their name and email address. After they give you their contact information, you take them to a page that thanks them for joining you. This Thank You page is real estate, but it’s a DEAD END if all you do is thank your prospects.
What if your prospect wants more? What if he’s curious about who you are and what you have to offer? What if he’s hungry for information and ready to buy something from you right now?
He can’t. So he’ll go somewhere else to satisfy his appetite. Unless you extend your path by showing him a One Time Offer for, say, $97. This OTO is something he will only see once, then that product will never be available to him at that price again. Now he has two choices to make: buy or don’t buy. Which means you can use upsells and downsells to create a four-way path for him based on that one decision.
If he buys, you offer him an upsell. The upsell should be the original OTO plus a little extra value at a higher price. Generally, you want to add enough value to justify adding about half the cost of the original offer. If the OTO is $97, your upsell price would be $147.
Your prospect then has another decision to make: buy the upsell or not. Purchasing the upsell puts him on the path of your “elite” customers, and not purchasing it places him on your “gold” path. But what if he chose not to buy your OTO? Rather than creating another dead end, you offer him a downsell.
The downsell should be as close to the original offer as possible–minus a little value–at about half the cost of the original offer. You could take away some key bonuses or provide a digital download of the print workbook you were selling to justify the lower $47 price. Purchasing the downsell puts him on your “silver” path. Passing on the offer simply keeps him on your list as a targeted prospect.
Do you see how your Dead End became a four-pronged street? All those streets are prime marketing real estate. Marketing along each street keeps your customers in a constant state of motion on your various paths. Your offers and those of your JV partners help your prospects find their way to the silver paths, then the gold paths and eventually the elite streets.
Purchasing progressively higher ticket items is the link your customers use to get from path to path. And those high-ticket items are called your Back End and your secret to creating wealth.
Glen Hopkins is a Best-Selling Author, Speaker and Consultant. He teaches struggling entrepreneurs how to turn their Online businesses into thriving money machines. Get his List Building Report and Web Traffic CD for FREE at http://www.GlenHopkins.name
3 Important Features You Need On Your Web Site
Website features are what your customers see exactly when they visit your site. Of all these important features, I’m going to describe 3 of them in this article.
1. Just don’t focus on the home page, keywords and titles.
The first step to sales when customers visit your site to see the products they were looking for. Of course, search engine optimization and better rankings can’t keep your customer on your site or make them buy. The customer having visited your site, now ensure that he gets interested in your products or services and stays around.
Motivate him to buy the product by providing clear and unambiguous information. Thus if you happen to sell more than one product or service, provide all necessary information about this, may be by keeping the information at a different page. By providing suitable and easily visible links, the customer can navigate to these pages and get the details.
2. Understanding Your Target Customer
If you design a website you think will attract clients, but you don’t really know who your customers are and what they want to buy, it is unlikely you make much money. Website business is an extension or replacement for a standard storefront. You can send email to your existing clients and ask them to complete a survey or even while they are browsing on your website.
Ask them about their choices. Why do they like your products? Do you discount prices or offer coupons? Are your prices consistently lower than others? Is your shipping price cheaper? Do you respond faster to client questions? Are your product descriptions better? Your return policies and guarantees better than your competitor’s? To know your customer you can check credit card records or ask your customer to complete a simple contact form with name, address, age, gender, etc. when they purchase a product.
3. Does your website give enough contact information?
When you sell from a website, your customer can buy your products 24 hrs a day and also your customers may be from other states that are thousands of miles away. Always provide contact information, preferably on every page of your website, complete with mailing address, telephone number and an email address that reaches you.
People may need to contact you about sales, general information or technical problems on your site. Also have your email forwarded to another email address if you do not check your website mailbox often. When customer wants to buy online provide enough options like credit card, PayPal or other online payment service.
Jo Han Mok is the author of the #1 international business bestseller, The E-Code.
He shares his amazing blueprint for creating million dollar internet businesses
at: http://www.InternetMillionaireBlueprints.com
Increasing Online Sales By Increasing Trust
Have you ever received an email that just didn’t sit right with you? Have you ever visited a website that made you wonder who was really behind it?
Or have you been to a website and made a purchase without even really thinking about fraud and transaction problems?
All of these elements stem from one element on your website - trust.
Whether you try to build it or not, you will have a certain amount of trust with every single one of your visitors. Those who don’t know you at all will judge you almost certainly by the way your website looks and “feels” to them.
It is extremely important that you develop trust with these people right away or you will definitely lose the sale, no matter how good the deal is.
Here is an easy way to build trust with those who have never met you before: Add credibility from other 3rd parties who already have trust.
Have you ever seen images of BBB Online, Verisign, or HackerSafe on other websites before (such as Yahoo! Shopping)?
These are called seals and are primarily used to build trust on your website. These three have one thing in common - they come from well known companies who have already built trust with many Internet users.
For example, HackerSafe (which I use in my shopping cart) allows people to see that your website can’t easily be hacked, which means that your customer’s private credit card information will not be stolen. This is a major concern with online shoppers, and could be one of the many reasons you are losing sales.
Over 800 companies have done split testing with and without the HackerSafe seal and have found an average 14% increase in sales. That’s huge!
To demonstrate how big a difference this could make on your sales, imagine right now that you are getting on average $5,000 a month in sales (obviously you may be doing more or less than this, but this is just an example). What if you increased those sales by an average of 14%? That means you would be making an extra $5000 x 14% = $700 per month, or $8400 per year.
Actually, that is not accurate, because all of those new customers that you would be acquiring would go on to purchase other products from you again and again, but we’ll leave the number this low to make our point.
What if the following year saw your business grow to $10,000 per month? Then you would be making an extra $1,400 per month.
Right now my business does on average $50,000 per month in online sales, which means if I could increase my sales by 14% I would see an extra $7,000 per month.
(In fact, I do use HackerSafe and have seen around a 10% increase in sales and opt-ins, not quite as high as the average, but hey, it’s still more sales!)
So where can you use these seals on your website?
Here are just a few areas where these seals can increase your profits:
1. On your squeeze pages.
Since a large portion of the traffic that hits your squeeze page consists of first time prospects, it is important to establish more credibility right away.
2. On your sales pages.
That extra trust seal can help you close a sale that otherwise would never have happened.
3. In your order process.
This is where you need something to tell your customer that they are safe, such as Verisign or HackerSafe.
4. In your advertisements.
If you have print ads, or if you use banner ads, adding in these seals will greatly increase the number of clicks as you will look professional just like websites such as Yahoo! Shopping.
In the end, you can have these seals anywhere on your website and you will see an increase in your trust and therefore in your profits.
Matthew Glanfield helps people start their own online Internet marketing businesses. Get answers to your questions by visiting his blog at http://www.bboinstitute.com
Order Form Secrets to Help You Sell More
When you get to the end of your sales letter, you might be tempted to think that the hard part is over, that the selling is done.
But that’s not the case considering the foundation of your entire letter is the form that comes at the end. If you just throw something together here, you’ll lose the sale you’ve worked so hard to gain.
And just because your order device comes at the end doesn’t mean it’s the last thing your prospect reads. As a matter of fact, it’s often the first. He’s read your headline and is interested in what you have to say. So to see if reading your sales letter is worth his time, he scrolls down to the end to read your offer.
Since he’s reading your order device first, you better be sure to include the essential elements of your sales message:
-The Big Promise: the major benefit your product provides presented in an urgent statement to get the prospect to act now.
-The Benefits: ways your product or service will improve your prospect’s life.
-The Offer: everything your prospect will get in return for giving you money.
-The Guarantee: the reason your prospect has nothing to risk or lose by trying your product.
-Purchase Options: show both the sale price and the regular price to show what a great deal the prospect is getting and how much he is saving by buying now.
-Payment Options: what forms of payment you accept (Paypal, credit cards, phone orders, etc.).
It only takes a few lines to summarize these points in your order device. Just remember to make ordering as easy as possible. One of the most important things to do is ask your prospect to respond right away. Without asking and implying a sense of urgency in the process, the prospect may think he can leave your site and come back some other time and not miss out on anything. And the chances that he will come back are slim to none.
After establishing a sense of urgency, it’s time to ask your prospect to make a buying decision. You reinforce this decision by restating the main benefits and showing the prospect all the ways his life will be better once he commits to purchasing your product.
Once you revisit the emotional aspects of your sales message, you need to once again tap into the rational decision to buy by reintroducing your guarantee and reminding your prospect he is not risking his money. If he doesn’t like what he gets, he can get his money back. To maximize effectiveness, design the order form to be simple, easy-to-read and easy to follow.
Glen Hopkins specializes in teaching struggling entrepreneurs how to turn their small Online businesses into thriving money machines all while working less and earning more. To get more information including Free Reports, Videos and CDs visit: http://www.GlenHopkins.name
Ten Reasons Why You Must Track Lifetime Value
Attracting new customers costs more than retaining customers or bringing a past customer back into your lifecycle. So once you have your customers, you can’t afford to let them leave without doing everything in your power to increase their lifetime with you.
Knowing your average lifetime value does 10 great things for your business:
1. It allows you to determine your customer acquisition cost. By knowing exactly how much each customer is worth to you, you can afford to lose a little on the front end to gain on the back end.
2. You realize that your customers represent a stream of revenue rather than a one-time purchase, so you can develop a marketing plan tailored to those who have shown an interest in buying from you. This prevents you from the endless struggle of having to acquire new customers in order to succeed. Work on keeping your current customers happy while you acquire new customers.
3. You have a better understanding of who to target so your marketing dollars give you a greater return on investment.
4. You can develop a marketing budget aimed at retaining customers and know how much you can spend to remain profitable.
5. You can more accurately figure your return on investment for each marketing campaign.
6. You can determine how profitable each customer is to you, not just averages across the board.
7. Before you spend money on an ad, you can calculate whether or not it will be profitable in the long run even if it does cost a bit in the short term.
8. You can set different budgets as you target different segments.
9. You can track recency, friction and latency so you know when a customer is about to not be a customer anymore. The best times to sell to a customer is when they are buying a lot from you or not buying at all. Create different campaigns for each scenario.
10. This helps you see the true value of a customer even if they are just buying from you for the first time. Don’t think of them as worth just that first $19 sale. As long as you do your job right, they should remain with you and be worth much more than that original sale.
Once you have your lifetime value, you can focus on increasing the lifetime, increasing the amount of money your customers spend on each purchase (it should be getting progressively higher as they move through your “funnel”) and decreasing the latency period.
Decreasing the latency period is important because your most recent customers are the customers who are most valuable to you. The best way to keep your customers recent is to have a variety of products to offer and keep your offers in front of your customers at all times.
So when you drive traffic to your site, you should be doing so with the lifetime value in mind. Each customer who buys from you is worth more to you than the price of that first sale.
But that first sale is critical. If you don’t know how to convert your traffic, your lifetime value won’t be hard to figure out because it will be nonexistent.
Glen Hopkins specializes in teaching struggling entrepreneurs how to turn their small Online businesses into thriving money machines all while working less and earning more. To get more information including Free Reports, Videos and CDs visit: http://www.GlenHopkins.name
How to Easliy Craft Headlines that Sell
Is the purpose of your headline to sell your product? Promise your prospect a brighter future? Satisfy his deepest desires?
No, no and no!
Your headline exists for one purpose and one purpose only: get your prospect to read your copy. That’s it. All you want your headline to do is grab attention and keep the reader reading.
Sounds simple enough, but capturing that attention is becoming increasingly difficult to do in the online marketplace. Readers are exposed to an over-abundance of advertising copy. So if the headline sounds too outrageous to be true (Lose Ten Pounds in Ten Minutes!), they’ll glance over it and look for someone else to solve their problems.
Benefit-driven headlines can be effective when done without going overboard, but you can also use your headline to appeal to your reader’s emotion. By claiming nothing about your product, he doesn’t have to be skeptical. You allow him to keep reading because you identified with his core emotion. You acknowledged a hidden fear, an unspoken dream, a dominant frustration. You showed him you understand him and you feel what he feels. It’s like you’re living inside his head!
Once you get the reader into the body of your copy, that’s where to explain who you are, what your product is, who it has helped in the past and most importantly, what’s so great about it that will make your reader want to buy it.
No matter how much the market changes, how much competition you are dealing with or what is going on in your industry, people are emotional. By understanding what emotions drive your target market, you put yourself in a great position to talk with them and help them.
The goal is to stop the reader from doing what he is doing and get him to read your copy while trusting your words. If you do that, you increase your ability to convert your readers into customers.
Here are some sample headlines that work well:
-”Have You Ever Wished You Could (blank)?”
-”If (blank), Then (blank).”
-Looking for a (blank) that will (blank)?
-How to make (blank) in less than 30 days.
-Have you noticed how many people (blank)?
-Are you prepared to (blank) by (blank)?
-Discover a little-known secret that (blank).
Using quotes in your headline immediately establishes credibility, so use quotes whenever you can. Also, asking a question draws the reader in. Open-ended questions are best. If it’s a yes or no type question, he can immediately answer it in his mind. That kills the curiosity a good headline should create.
Key words and phrases play a major part in crafting great headlines as well: Discover, You, How To, Announcing and New. These are trigger words that grab attention. You can’t convert your traffic unless you grab the attention of your prospects, so choose your words carefully.
Glen Hopkins specializes in teaching struggling entrepreneurs how to turn their small Online businesses into thriving money machines all while working less and earning more. To get more information including Free Reports, Videos and CDs visit: http://www.GlenHopkins.name
How to Generate Sales with Squeeze Pages
The first rule of Internet marketing is simple: capture information! You want a name and email address for your visitors so you can follow-up with them. If you take your visitors straight to a sales page, the chances of converting those visitors into customers is extremely low. They are naturally skeptical of any sales messages they are exposed to and are therefore more likely to give you their name and email address on their first visit to you than they are to give you money.
So your first goal is to capture information, then ask your customers to buy from you. The way you capture information is with a squeeze page. A squeeze page is a basic web page that teases your visitors with the promise of receiving valuable information for free. All they have to do in exchange for that information is give you their name and email address.
They are raising their hand to say they are interested in what you have to offer. Once you get their attention, it’s your job to convert them from subscribers to paying customers.
What do you need on a squeeze page to make it effective?
–An intriguing headline.
–Just enough information to capture interest.
–A subscription box: “For more information, please enter your name and email address.”
–An ethical bribe such as a free report.
–A short description of how they will benefit from subscribing to your newsletter.
The subscription box should fit “above the fold” on your computer. In other words, visitors should not have to scroll down to find the box to subscribe. You only have a matter of seconds to grab their attention. If they have to do any work to find out what to do to get this information you’re advertising, they’ll move on to the next page.
Also, the only option on your squeeze page should be to subscribe to your newsletter. No links to other sites. No links to other pages within your site. No link to your “contact me” page. Give them only one option, and they will have only one choice: subscription!
If you are worried about losing potential customers by not taking them directly to your sales messages, don’t. You want customers who are going to be with you for a while and people whom you can groom into hyper-responsive customers.
If a visitor isn’t even willing to stick with you long enough to provide you with her name and email address, do you think she’ll want to stay with your business for years to come? No!
Visitors who leave squeeze pages without taking action are not high potential lifetime value customers. Let them go and concentrate on converting those who do subscribe.
Once they fill in their contact information, they become a subscriber to your list. Now you have a chance to convert them with your email marketing campaign and on your redirect page that you take them to once they subscribe.
Glen Hopkins specializes in teaching struggling entrepreneurs how to turn their small Online businesses into thriving money machines all while working less and earning more. To get more information including Free Reports, Videos and CDs visit: http://www.GlenHopkins.name