How To Create Crystal Clear Copywriting...Even If You Can't Write Your Way Out Of A Paper Bag Now

Recently, one of my newsletter subscribers asked an important copywriting question.

He asked:

"I'm learning how to write copy and struggle with writing fluidly and clearly. What should I do?"

My answer:

First of all, realize "writing" is, at most, 20% of the battle.

It's not nearly as important as good positioning, list selection, or creating "can't refuse" offers.

But it's still 20% and, to get the biggest "bang for your buck", you should make your writing as clear and easy-to-read as possible.

Here are a couple suggestions:

First of all... write, write, write, write... WRITE!

If you want to be a good writer you have to write a lot. Period.

There's no getting around it.

When I was starting out, I created a newsletter and used it as an opportunity to share what I was learning while forcing myself to keep writing each week.

I also mindlessly copied (by hand) Gary Halbert ads and newsletters over and over and over -- which gave me a power education in writing powerful transition sentences, building strong paragraphs, and the best ways to lay out the sequence of information in a sales letter.

Another thing I did was write a LOT of articles.

I've written close to 500 articles (give or take) over the past couple years -- both for myself and my clients. Since then my writing seems to have gotten a thousand times better.

Yours will, too.

Plus, not only will banging out articles make you a much better writer... but it'll send your credibility through the roof.

So writing all the time is the first step to clear writing.

The second step is to read your copy out loud at least ten times.

Why ten times?

Because each time you read your copy out loud you'll notice little "snags" and "bumps" you didn't notice before.

You'll also generate more ideas, too.

In fact, chances are your ad will be (at least) ten times stronger by your tenth time through -- even if you thought it was "done" before reading it out loud the first time.

And that's all there is to it.

If you want to create 100% clear and easy-to-read ads... simply write a lot and read your ads out loud ten times (minimum).

Do those two things and you'll never worry about how good your "writing" is again.

A Direct Response Copywriter Can Make You More Money

Direct marketing is one of the top advertising methods used due to its success rate. This form of marketing is written to speak to your prospects as individuals rather than faceless customers to instantly build rapport, compel them to do business with you, or inform them about your unique services.

Businesses and marketers are aware of the advantages and opportunities of direct marketing due to its success rate. Direct mail is the top method of advertising used by marketers (you've seen the letters).

A good copywriter can ignite your customer's desire for your product through persuasive, powerful copy that will prompt them to act now.

The Results are Measurable:

Direct marketing is a measurable way to know if your advertising is working. Through your promotion, we'll ask your customers to do something and track the responses. Some examples are to: buy now, subscribe to your newsletter, look at this, attend a seminar, email your office, etc.

It is commonplace for businesses to simply "test" different direct marketing packages and use the one that gets the best results.

Who is a Copywriter?:

Simply put, a direct marketing or direct response copywriter is highly trained to write persuasive direct marketing materials.

A good copywriter is a strong writer and excellent researcher. The written words of your promotional package are the end product of in-depth research of your business or service, your competition and your prospect audience.

3 Keys to Get Started With Copywriting for the Web

The importance of the content of your web site cannot be underestimated. One of the primary reasons why online users are accessing web sites, is for them to get information. When you copywrite for your site, remember that your main objectives are: to educate your readers and persuade them to patronize your products and services. In order to do this, you must be an effective writer who knows how to persuade prospective clients using well-written articles.

The most effective copywriters have firm grasp of the topic they write about and they have the ability to perfectly blend good writing with excellent marketing. Here are some copywriting tips that can surely help you:

1. Be creative. Think out of the box! Come up with fresh ideas that will attract the attention of your readers. You can also use different writing styles to stand out from the rest.

2. Identify a niche. Focus on your target market. Think about them when you write your piece. Identify their needs and properly address them by highlighting the features of the products or services you offer. Let them feel that you know where they are coming from and that you have the best solution that they are looking for.

3. Identify your competition. Search for other web sites offering similar products or services. Analyze their content and identify their weak points, these can be your web site's strength. Stand out from the rest by offering online users what your competitors can't.

Copywriting Tips - 5 Words You Should Never Use

In the world of copywriting, there are words that you should never use. Not because somebody said so, but because studies have been made to determine what words set people off in the wrong way. These are words that will drastically kill your sales. In this article we're going to examine five of these words and explain why you shouldn't use them, as well as give you some substitutes for them.

The first, and probably most deadliest word you should never use in your copywriting is the word "buy." The reason for this is because when people hear the word buy they immediately think of spending money, and people don't like spending money. So this word will immediately turn them off on your sales copy. Instead, you want to use the word "claim" because there is no connection with spending money.

The second word you never want to use in your sales copy is the word "learn." The reason for this is because learning is hard. Learning makes people think about what they used to do in school that they hated so much. Instead of using the word learn, use the word "discover." This will make it appear as if the information magically entered their brain. This is a much better word.

The third word you never want to use is the word "tell." Nobody likes to be told anything. Instead what you want to do is use the word "reveal." For example, you might say something like, "I will reveal to you the secrets of making money online." This is much better than "I will tell you how to make money online." So never use the word tell. Instead, use the word reveal.

The fourth word you never want to use is the word "things." This is one of those very general words that really doesn't reveal anything to the person reading the copy. Instead, you want to use words like "tips," "tricks," and "techniques." These words are much more colorful and descriptive and will work a whole lot better in your sales copy.

The fifth word you never want to use in your sales copy is the word "stuff." This is another one of those words that amateurs use when that say things like "When you learn this stuff..." Absolutely horrible. Instead, you want to use the words "insider secrets" or "secrets." So the sentence you would use would be something like "When I reveal to you these insider secrets..." and so on.

By staying away from these 5 words, you will greatly improve your sales copy.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

5 Ways to Avoid Hype in Your Copy

Copy is salesmanship in print, but does it have to be a greasy used-car salesman? The answer is, "No!" Follow these 5 tips and watch your prospects' trust level rise.

1. Make it believable. Face it – we are just smarter nowadays than we were several decades ago. In fact, we're jaded. We've seen it all. Bought the miracle pills (and felt stupid for believing the charlatans). We all know it's impossible to lose 25 pounds over night. So why even go there? Once you lose credibility, you've lost your prospect's attention too. Respect your prospect with honesty and you have a much better chance of doing business together. (Psst. A great way to build trust is to actually reveal a flaw in your product. We all know nothing is perfect – so show us where it's not and we believe in you.)

2. Easy on the adjectives. Great copy is "verb-heavy," not laden with adjectives. In fact ad man great, Leo Burnet (of Green Giant ad fame, among others) wanted to discover why 62 of his ads failed. So he had his staff separate out the parts of speech. Here's what he found - of the 12,758 words in the 62 failed ads, 24.1% were verbs. His conclusion - if the failed ads had more verbs, they probably would have done better. Take my advice. If you haven't already, go to Amazon and buy Richard Bayan's copywriting thesaurus, Words that Sell. And keep it by your desk when writing.

3. Write in your prospect's language. Make sure you understand their particular jargon. For example, in general chiropractors have a bit of a rivalry with medical doctors. But chiropractors are "real" doctors. If you slip up and say otherwise, you have alienated them. But you would only know that by deeply studying your target market. An excellent resource to learn more about various inner languages is at http://www.thewordsthatsell.com. They have special reports on markets from real estate agents to radiologists to attorneys.

4. Write to one person with the "tarketing" technique. To really sound sincere and empathetic, do what I call "tarketing". That's taking your target market's demographics down so far that you're actually referring to just one person. (See, a target market is a mob or plural while a "tarket" is ONE PERSON or singular.) Corporations take this approach all the time. For example, Volvo's tarket is a 35 year old mother of two. (Does that mean men don't buy Volvo's? Of course not!) When you use the tarketing technique, not only is your writing more concise, but your reader connects with you on a very deep level. After all, you're talking directly to him or her. (The most comprehensive guide to prewriting research I've ever seen is my workbook, "Red Hot Copy to Woo Your Target Market". www.red-hot-copy.com/copy3.html)

5. Think from the prospect's point of view. You have to do your due diligence if you want to avoid the hype. This is where summoning up a little creativity goes a long way. Once you've got your tarketing technique in place, really drill it down. Get deep inside your prospect's head and ask yourself some of these questions:

· What magazines does he or she read?

· What restaurants does he or she go to?

· Does your prospect take vacations?

· Who did your prospect vote for for president?

· How would your prospect describe his or her life if they ran into a childhood friend they haven't seen for 10 years?

Are you beginning to see just how deep you can start to go? These questions are a nick on the surface. I go on for pages in my workbook, but you get the idea.

The best way to avoid hype is to genuinely connect with your prospect through prewriting research AND respect. You'll be rewarded with customer loyalty and many more sales.

Killer Website Promotion Copywriting That Makes People Buy Like Crazy

A friend of mine once said that there are only 2 most valuable assets to massive online profits. The first one is list and the second one is website promotion copywriting. I have to agree with him. If you grasp these 2 assets, then you certainly have the most powerful ingredients to internet riches.

But in this article, I don't want to talk about how to build your list and profit from it, but I'd like to talk a bit about website promotion copywriting. Most online marketers overlook this area and prefer to pay someone to have the writing job done, although they have to spend big bucks on it.

I see so many marketers learn about list building intensively (that's why "how to build your list" info products are always hot), but on the other hand I am quite surprised that only a few are eager to learn about website promotion copywriting.

Ok, enough babbling and let's go to our subject.

3 Fundamentals Of A Hypnotic Website Promotion Copywriting

Every time you see a killer web copy, then I can assure you that it is built upon these 3 fundamentals. That's why every time you craft your website promotion copywriting, you have to put all these into account.

Keep these 3 fundamentals in mind:

1. The Audience


2. The Offer


3. The Copy

AOC. Audience-Offer-Copy.

Repeat the magic words again and again until they are implanted in your subconscious.

The Audience

Does your target market know you well and trust you? The style you apply when creating a website promotion copywriting that targets long-time Newsletter subscribers and creating the one that targets non-subscribers will not be the same.

Your relationship with the audience (your target market) determines the kind of web copy you should create and also affects the numbers of sales you make.

To make it more understandable, let's say you have a product and you create one sales letter for the product. To generate sales, you try anything possible to draw traffic to the sales letter. Besides pulling fresh traffic, of course you also push your list subscribers to the sales page and make Joint Venture projects with a couple of authorities in the field and split the profits.

The result is obvious. From years of experience, I can tell that the highest sales conversion rates will come from your JV partners and the second will be from your list.

Same sales letter, same website promotion copywriting, but different results. Why? Because your relationship with your target market influence the actions taken place. When a JV partner recommends your product to their loyal customers, they will read your copy with a trusting state of mind. The more credible your JV partner is, the more spike you will see in your sales graphic.

The Offer

The most vital concept for each offer you make is always to fulfill what your target market want, not what they need. Find out what they want and fulfill the demand.

People buy what they want and they always try to find a good excuse for their purchase so people around them would think that it's really a necessity.

I am sure you see a lot of people buy SUV cars but they rarely go off-road! They don't buy those cars because they need the cars to reach remote places, but they just buy the cars because they want to. Why do they want to buy SUV cars? Well, big chance they are hunger for those cars because they want to be accepted in their dream community.

Now to find out what your target market want, don't guess. Do some research and ask them. You will be surprised at how their answers often do not go along with your perception. Next, you can decide what to include in your offer, based on the information you attain.

The Copy

After knowing your audience (what they want) and finally you come up with a unique offer, the next thing to do is crafting the copy itself. Here is where you struggle to produce a persuasive headline, employ some powerful phrases, create a flowing hypnotic sales letter body that lead visitors to take action and close your letter with sales or with subscription to your list.

The soul of website promotion copywriting is helping visitors make the right decisions, whether to buy your product or join your list. It's about persuasion, because people buy with their emotions. Logic only validates these emotions and at the end, emotions drive the sales or subscriptions.

If you can control the emotional reasons your customers use to validate their decisions, then you can exploit those emotional hot buttons not only in your website, but in every promotional effort you carry out. So, if you want to master the skill of compelling website promotion copywriting, it's very crucial for you to discover those emotional buttons.

The Open Secret of Copywriting - It is Not What you Think

"I prefer to teach with images, parables and metaphors that plant in the mind the seeds of shot making." –Harvey Penisk

Human interest stories by-pass the resistance of the mind and goes straight to heart where unconscious decisions are made. Telling stories is a hypnotic copywriting secret. It can shatter buying resistance and persuade the prospect to take you and your offer seriously.
--Uzo Onukwugha

Do you know the greatest advertising man in history?
In fact history is "His story." The story is about a young man who grew up in the city of Nazareth in the Region of Galilee. At the time, this young boy followed the family tradition and learned the trade of his step father. He became a carpenter and practiced this skill until he was 30.

At 30, he decided to change careers. He left the carpenter's workshop and became an itinerant teacher. He used the power of His words to sell his message of the kingdom. He called his stories parables. He told stories and followers flocked to him because he was firm and persuasive and his stories made sense and gave people faith and hope.

The locals that he called became his followers. They founded the most popular religion in history named after the Master himself. Jesus Christ was the man and the religion is Christianity.

The Master himself is a master story teller. And all great copywriters are great at story telling. Examples include Robert Collier, Ted Nicholas, Joe Sugarman, Joe Vitale, and Yanik Silver. Just to give you a short list.

Why is story telling the most powerful copywriting secret in history of direct advertising and marketing?

The psychology of stories is bedded in human nature. Stories go beyond the natural to penetrate the human spirit where unconscious buying decisions are made. Humans love to hear human interest stories that relate to their problems, dreams, yearnings and aspirations. When you make the connection, you make the sale.

People love stories. Tabloid journalism sells like crazy. Kids love bed time stories. Africans tell their children moonlight stories. Story telling is the earliest form of oral tradition.

Effective communication involves painting clear vivid pictures with words in the mind of your target audience. Stories illustrate principles, demonstrate facts, and illustrate examples without being technical. Stories are remembered long after facts and figures are forgotten. There is an old copywriting maxim that says stories sell; facts tell. I prefer to sell than to tell.

Great stories work wonders because it is entertaining, it engages the mind, captures attention and perplexes the heart all at the same time. It creates curiosity and the phenomenon of anticipation. Stories let you see and feel the seller's benefits as reality.

Remember though that your story must be true, appropriate, and compelling. Honesty is still the best business policy that must be incorporated in your copywriting otherwise you lose credibility.

Master story tellers are great natural sellers and natural copywriters even if they don't know it. Just add the rules of good copywriting to the mix and you are good to go.

Most leading motivational speakers like Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar and Bryan Tracy were all good salesmen that had their own story line before they became successful.

Jim Rohn is America's foremost business philosopher. Jim is Tony Robbins. Jim's story was that of a farm boy from rural Idaho. He dropped out of school and took a minimum wage job as a factory worker to support himself and his family. Jim's turning point came when he met a man named Mr. Schaeffer. Mr. Schaeffer asked Jim why he was not rich and Jim complained about how little he was paid.

It was then that Mr. Schaeffer reminded Jim that the company was paying Jim how much he was worth at that time. Mr. Schaeffer explained to Jim that there were other people who worth more and were receiving much higher pay from the same company. Mr. Schaeffer advised Jim to go to work on himself just like he worked on his job.

"Success if not what you chase; it is what you attract by the person you become," said Mr. Schaeffer. "It is not the storm because the storm comes to everybody; it is the set of the sail of your thinking." In other words, Jim, work on yourself, become an attractive person and you'll have all the success you are looking for.

Jim tells this story repeatedly wherever he goes and in any info-product that comes out of Jim Rohn international. The philosophy behind this story empowered Jim's life. And with this mindset (Jim calls it his philosophy), Jim has sold millions of products which made him a multi-millionaire while he was in his early thirties.

There are countless other successful copywriters and marketers that have used the story of their lives to sell a lot of products. Joe Vitale's story was spirituality and hypnosis. Yanik Silver's turning point was attending Dan Kennedy's copywriting seminar with his life savings. Tony Robbins turning point came with an encounter with NLP (neuro-linguistic programming). Ted Nicholas life changed when he discovered the power of words. The examples are endless.

So what is your life story? Every life is a story. You may have multiple stories about your life's journey. Go to your memory bank and pull out one if you don't have a journal (story of your life's journey). Choose a specific encounter for a specific product. The story behind your product may be your unique selling proposition. Choose appropriate that match your product and target market; but don't lie. It is not what you say; but how you say it will give it a twist and carve out your groove.

Good story does not negate good copywriting elements and principles. First, you must have a good product and an irresistible offer. Then you still have to work on Compelling headlines, good organization, coherence, layout and formatting chunks of information, use of bullets, visual appeal, call to action and deadlines.

5 Killer Headline Templates You Can Copy And Paste

Writing a killer headline doesn't have to be difficult if you follow these proven templates which have stood the test of time:

1) How To _______

This is the classic 'How To' headline. This always works because people are always looking for some sort of how to information that can help improve their lives, save time, save money, or make money. Whenever you are stuck for headline ideas, using a 'how to' headline always works.

2) Imagine________

The 'imagine' headline works well because it makes the reader form pictures in his mind. It makes the reader envision the benefits he will get if he purchases your product. This makes your offer very appealing indeed.

3) Secrets Of _______

People always want to know secrets. If you have some information which very little people know about, this is a headline that can work very well. The word 'secrets' is a power word that again draws up imaginations.

4) Who Else Wants To ________?

This headline is a powerful one. By asking 'who else wants to', you are implying that someone has already done what your product promised to do. Also, people like to follow the crowd so they would want to know what they could be missing out on.

5) Announcing _______

This gives your offer added importance. The word 'announcing' implies that there is something so important that you are 'announcing' it. It implies that you have benefits to offer a large group of people. It also gives your offer 'newness'.

These 5 headline templates are among the most effective of all time. Use them wisely.