Social Network - Midas's blog

Posted: June 29, 2009 - 0 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

The headline is probably the most difficult (and the most important) part of your sales copy.

At this point, your reader has no commitment to your sales piece. They haven’t dedicated any time to reading about your product, and it is very likely that you won’t get them to either if your headline is not spot-on.

In the popular sales writing acronym AIDCA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Conviction, and Action), the headline facilitates the first A, Attention.

Your headline plays the role of grabbing your reader’s attention in less than 5 seconds. Write a headline that fails to do this and you lose your reader. It really is that ruthless.

In fact, the headline becomes even more important when we place it in the online environment where people can move on at the click of a button. There is no great physical action required of them to disregard your sales piece. Unlike a physical direct mailing where they are burdened with the effort of screwing it up and throwing it in the bin, all they need to do is click. Just one click. Gone.

So how do you write a headline that grabs the reader’s attention in such a short period of time? Use benefits.

Find the most prominent benefit of your product through the eyes of your target market profile and present this in your headline.

Often, people try to induce curiosity in their headline at the expense of mentioning the major benefit of their product.

There is, in fact, solid evidence that mentioning your product’s main benefit in the headline is the most effective way to grab your readers’ attention.

When a big US advertising agency tested three headlines, one mentioning a benefit, one delivering news, and the other arousing curiosity, they found that the benefits headline outperformed the other two.

In fact, when they took this a step further and began to test a combination of these three elements in their headlines they found that the headline with ALL THREE elements performed the best.

Although this may be hard to achieve, it is what you should strive for in your headline.

Stuck for ideas?

Try starting with ‘how’ or ‘now’. For example:

How you can save money on your energy bills WITHOUT cutting back on your electricity or gas usage
Now, lose at least 10lbs in under 1 month without doing one bit of exercise

Try to use ‘power’ words in your headline like:

Love
Cash
Die
Hate
Sex
Huge
Chop
Fizz
Crash
Win
Lose

One of the most successful headlines in the life insurance industry was:

“Cash if you die, cash if you don’t”

This was largely because they used three power words out of the eight words in the headline.

Understand the benefits of your product

Posted: June 22, 2009 - 0 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

It’s time to sieve through your product to find the true benefits that will be of real interest to your target market profile.

Ask yourself:

· What are your product’s main features and benefits?

· What is its USP (Unique Selling Point)?

· What and who are you competing against?

· How is it used and by whom?

· What problems does it solve?

· How does it work in detail?

· Do you have any testimonials about it? If so, from whom?

· How do you deliver it?

· What after-sales service do you offer?

· What guarantees do you give?

· What are you trying to get the reader to do?

Don your theologian’s gown and start to look at how the 7 deadly sins of human nature could help to sell your product:

· Vanity: One of the simplest and most effective ways of getting your reader to believe you and do as you say is to flatter them. Make them feel important. Compliment their intelligence. Then suggest that someone of their stature should really buy your product.

· Envy: Nobody likes to feel left out. Bring it to your reader’s attention how other people are benefiting from your product. They will soon be following the crowd. Testimonials are a great way to add credibility to any claim of people benefiting from your product.

· Gluttony: If your product makes the reader happy or content when they consume it, you have a real selling point. Push this feeling of contentment forward in your copy; make them aware of how you can help them to satisfy their cravings.

· Lust: A little similar to gluttony. If you can convince your reader that your product satisfies a craving of theirs, you’re on to a winner.

· Anger: People become frustrated and angry for a whole host of reasons. Find out what makes them blow their top and give them an exit route from it. I had a problem with a car some years ago. It was a lemon (a defective car that has numerous defects), of course, I didn’t know this when I made the purchase. My next purchase was influenced by reading the reliability rating of a popular German car manufacturer. It offered an exit route from the unreliability I had put up with for the past year or so.

· Greed: This is an immensely strong selling point. People always want more. More clothes. More cars. More holidays. More money. More respect. Offer them more, and you will have their ear.

· Sloth: Generally speaking, humans are an inherently lazy species. Play to this. Offer them something that will save them time or energy and they will open their wallets.

These are the raw fundamentals of human nature. They give you immense potential to operate your target market’s deep, unconscious emotional triggers. After all, purchase decisions are made on emotional grounds before the reader begins to rationalise buying your product.

Ignore these 7 sins at your peril. But be subtle when presenting them in your sales copy. You won’t make many sales by telling your reader that they are lazy, greedy and vain.

Now that you thoroughly understand your target market and how your product’s benefits match your target market’s needs and demands, you are in a strong position to start putting pen to paper, as it were.

Understand your reader

Posted: June 16, 2009 - 0 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

Without good research forming the foundations of your copy, you are doomed to fail. We cannot stress how important it is, before pen touches paper (or finger touches keyboard), that you completely and fully understand your target market and their needs, motivations, and desires.

Writing sales copy without first understanding who you are writing to is tantamount to selling a luxury sports car to multi-millionaires on the merit that it will get them from point A to point B.

You will fail to hit the true selling point of your product and fail to communicate it to your target audience in a way that convinces and compels them to purchase.

What’s more, we would like to take this opportunity to dispel the rumour that good sales copy can sell anything. It can’t.

You must ensure that your product offers ‘real’ value to your target market before you move any further. If it does? Great, let’s move on. If it doesn’t? Go back to the drawing board. Don’t waste your time trying to sell a product with no real value.

For your research, you might like to ask yourself the following questions about your target market:

· What sex are they?

· What age are they?

· How do they see themselves?

· How do others perceive them?

· Where are they at in their life right now?

· Where would they rather be right now?

· What do they want more of (or less of) in their lives?

· What are their values?

· Are they ‘head or heart’ people?

To answer these questions you may want to look for information in:

· Database reports

· Market research surveys

· Focus group results and evaluations and

· Other secondary research sources

Or even better, perform some of your own primary research.

If you’re selling an e-book on how to build muscle and lose fat, visit your local gym or leisure centre. Ask people what motivates them to aspire to a more muscular physique. Is it to attract the opposite sex? Is it to gain a better sense of well-being? Is it to gain a feeling of power and superiority?

Nail their true motivations and you nail the reader.

For instance, if you find that the predominant reason for men working towards a more defined, muscular physique is to attract women, you can centre your copy on the fact that your e-book will help them to achieve this.

In this case, sell them the ability to attract women, not the ability to build muscle.

You should now have a profile of your average target customer. Draw a picture of how you perceive him or her to look like if it helps you to further develop your mental impression of this person. Pin it up on the wall as you start to write your copy.

Do whatever you like. Just keep them in mind at all times throughout writing your sales copy.

This is the sort of person that is going to be buying your product, understand them inside-out.

Now that you have a clear idea about your target market, it’s time to turn to your product and its features and benefits.

For more advice and information on how to write your own compelling sales copy, visit www.midascopy.com/tutorial.pdf

Optimise your direct mail

Posted: June 8, 2009 - 2 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

‘Direct mail is ineffective’. It’s 15 times more expensive than e-mail marketing and response rates are negligible. This is a claim that is all too often echoed within companies in the UK.

Direct mail is what you make it. Response is governed by the level of energy and thought channelled into the campaign. The old 1% response rate has long been dead, not to mention completely inappropriate in most cases.

Whilst we provide you with the compelling, result oriented copy and design that is essential to a successful campaign, by following the tips below you will have every element of your campaign working for a better response.

Provide a cover letter. Without one you risk appearing impersonal and hitting your recipient cold, resulting in a poor response. Ask us to prepare one for you.

Make seductive offers. Offer discounts, free trials, guarantees or vouchers. Incentives can rapidly improve response rates without necessarily costing the earth. Limited period offers can also help to reduce the response interval.

Bulk-up your package. Include promotional pens, coasters, rulers, notepads and other gifts in your campaign. It will not only increase the chance of your envelope being opened but it will also allow you to place your company name on an item that your prospective customer sees every day.

Include testimonials. People don’t like feeling left out of something good. If other people have benefited from your product or service, display how and build an aura of envy around your reader.

Provide a keepsake. Letters and leaflets will often get thrown away immediately after they are read. Slip a business card in your DM package to provide them with a reminder of your company and your offer.

Package your campaign uniquely. Using unorthodox techniques can encourage interest and ensure that you attract the reader’s attention. These techniques can be applied to the package both externally and internally. Hand-writing the address on the envelope can also give it a personal dimension.

Accurately target your market. Fail to do this and you will render your campaign ineffective. If any of these tips were to rank number one in importance, this would be it. If you have an existing customer database then you could achieve a 30-40% higher response rate than if you were to use a cold data source.

Set targets. Calculate a break-even point for the campaign and set this as your minimum response target. Do not use a percentage. Percentage targets can be completely unfitting with the product/service that you are offering. A company selling £65,000 machinery may only receive one order from a 10,000 letter mailing (0.0001%) but the campaign will still be profitable.

Test first. Don’t embark on a costly campaign before initially testing it on a small scale. If you receive 50 responses from a mailing of 1,000 letters, you can almost be certain that you will receive 500 responses from a mailing of 10,000 letters. If your test shows that you won’t reach your break-even level in the full campaign then adjust the promotional material or market sample accordingly.

Choose the right time to send. This is particularly relevant for seasonal products/services. Choosing the right time to send can mean the difference between a highly profitable campaign and a highly costly campaign.

Use complimentary promotion. Press, radio, websites, E-mail and television can all help to boost response levels. Approaching potential customers through more than one medium of promotion can help increase brand/company visibility and boost the credibility of your direct mail campaign. Following up a campaign with telemarketing can heighten response rates by a staggering 1,000%.

Track everything. Doing so allows you to evaluate the success of your campaign and pinpoint any problems with it. Analyse response rates and any resulting sales. If you follow up your campaign with telemarketing, use this as an opportunity to gather a little research from your target markets for use in future campaigns.

Repeat, repeat, repeat. If your direct mailing was a success, repeat it to those that didn’t reply. You can expect a response rate of around 50% of that achieved in the first mailing.

Get in touch to see how we can help you to get the most out of your direct mail campaign.

Get your poster noticed

Posted: June 4, 2009 - 0 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

You have an attention grabbing, response provoking poster. What next?

Suitable placement and positioning is prerequisite for a successful poster campaign. Get this wrong and you will seriously hinder your response rates and negate the effectiveness of your copy and design.

Below are some tips to ensure that you make the most of your poster.

Don’t fly-post. This can carry a hefty fine and has the potential to damage your reputation. Always obtain permission to display your posters.

Identify your core consumer. Like TV, posters deliver to the mass audience with an added opportunity for some discreet targeting. Take this opportunity to tune your posters to your target audience and position them in areas where target market concentration is high.

Catch them at the right moment. A poster advertising a drinks offer would provoke a superior response when placed above a urinal than if it was placed near a games machine. Position your posters where people are more likely to dedicate time to them.

Be unorthodox. Unorthodox practice tends to attract the most attention. Experiment with different page formats, poster sizes and try placing them at unusual angles. Make your posters scream for attention in every way possible.

Test first. Create a prototype for your poster and position it amongst your target audience then record how many responses you receive. If you receive 1 response over 3 days from 1 poster, you can expect around 100 replies from a 10 poster campaign lasting 30 days.

Midas

View All Entries