Copywriting Dean

Raise your hand if you’ve ever come up with a product that was a dud…

People who are just beginning their business pursuits often forget to check if there’s a market for their “hot idea” before they create the product. This can lead to a waste of time, energy and a lot of money.

While there are more thorough ways of checking if your product has an audience, here are 3 quick ways to get a general idea of the demand.

1. Spyfu.com. This site lets you analyze pay-per-click data similar to what the old Overture tools used to do. Just type in your keyword and you’ll instantly see how many people are placing ads for that keyword, how many clicks they’re getting on average, and what it costs to run an ad.

If you see a website is running ads for a few months at a $1.00 click, you can be relatively sure they’re making a profit from that market.

2. Amazon.com’s Magazine Section If you can find a magazine that’s focused on your market, chances are there’s enough people out there to support a product for this business. After all, there’s enough to support the magazine…

3. http://www.clickbank.com/marketplace.htm. The Clickbank marketplace lists tons and tons of information products. Search for your keyword and look at the results.

If you see products similar to your idea, check out the “Gravity” number. The higher the number, the better the product is selling. Compare the number to other known hot sellers and you’ll get a decent idea of how popular that market is.

Step 3 of 7 Steps To A Successful Squeeze Page is adding an animated video that starts automatically.

You can create this at SitePal, but you need to write your own audio script.

What should your audio script say? I’ll be testing different strategies in the future, but this script helped balloon the conversion rate (2x-3x higher) and is extremely easy to put together.

Here’s a winning squeeze page audio script in 6 pieces.

Piece 1: Say, “Attention!” or a similar phrase to alert the visitor. This works well for cheap traffic.
Piece 2: Read the headline of your squeeze page. (And maybe the subhead if you have one.)
Piece 3: State the “Reason Why” they should give an email address.
Piece 4: Tease them with information they’ll discover after giving their email address. (This might be simply reading the bullet points of your squeeze page.)
Piece 5: Call To Action: Specifically tell them to enter their email address in to the form now and restate the “Reason Why.”
Piece 6: Tell them what will happen if they don’t. What will they miss out on? What will they be too late for?

And that’s that. You may see an instant increase in squeeze page conversions.

Of course, then you’ll need to send them to a killer sales page. To get one, fill out an application at CopyProductions.com.

At CopyProductions.com you’ll find I can create your squeeze page, thank-you page, sales page and more. If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, fill out an application now.

Many copywriters advise that you keep a swipe file. Meaning that you keep a collection of high quality advertisements to study and get ideas from when writing your own copy.

There are ways to collect an awesome set of offline advertisments… and one way is to BUY products from successful offline mailers. But frankly I’ve never gone this route.

I primarily write copy online and I look for online copy to put in my swipe file.

In the past when I found copy I liked I’d bookmark it or add it to my favorites. This worked OK… until the site disappeared, the offer was taken down or the copy changed.

Then I tried saving the webpage with the copy to my computer. This works OK still. But it can be messy with all the extra files attached to the webpage. Especially if all I want to keep is a headline.

So now I’ve discovered my favorite method for keeping a collection of swiped ads.

Windows Vista, Windows 7 and some versions of Windows XP have a “Snipping Tool” that allows you to highlight a portion of your screen and save it as an image.

Now it’s easy and painless to save a simple headline. Take for example this quick swipe of the headline from my Copywriting Services page. (Which of course was based on a swiped headline

I’ve set up a folder on my PC’s “Desktop” called appropriately, “Swipe File.” And another folder inside there is named “Headlines.” I save all swiped headlines in here.

Then when it’s time to look at successful headlines, I can open up any image inside this folder. Windows opens the image inside of it’s photo viewer and allows me to hit “Next” over and over again browsing my swiped headlines.

Fantastic! So much cleaner than paper or saved web pages.

Of course, most of the images you are creating involve copyrighted material. So you shouldn’t be sharing or selling your swipe file with anyone.

But creating a swipe file this way for your personal use is no problem. (At least that’s what I believe. I’m no lawyer, so do your own research.)

In any case, you have permission to swipe any of my sales copy for your personal use in this way.

And if you’re looking for more copy to swipe, you might start here:

Productivity Engineering

Good luck hunting and swiping!

Some traffic sources convert better than others. You might get a 10% conversion rate from JV partner traffic and 1% from banner ad traffic. That’s normal, but…

…Recently I made an interesting discovery about two wildly different conversion rates from the SAME source, Twitter.

I’ve been experimenting with a Twitter traffic system with some success. I’ve been able to get hundreds of clicks in a day without too much effort.

I’m excited about that. But it’s also important to monitor the conversion rates of that traffic.

Right now there are two ways I get traffic from Twitter: 1) links within tweets themselves and 2) a link in the bio of my profile.

Both links go to the same squeeze page, but the two links have wildly different conversion rates.

When people click on the link in my bio, the conversion rate is DOUBLE that of clicks from promotional tweets.

Why? I’m always careful when making assumptions. But I can offer a guess.

My guess is similar to a post I just read on the Internet Business Box blog titled “Sales Letters vs. Blogs.”

Their theory is that people resist being sold to. Copywriters are taught this as well.

The author believes that when people are allowed to click around and control the shopping experience, they are more likely to buy. It’s an interesting experiment and I look forward to seeing how it works out.

So what’s the difference between the two conversions coming from Twitter?

Links that appear in Tweets come off as advertisements that the reader responds too. They’re being sold to and they know it.

But when a visitor clicks a link in the bio, they may feel like THEY’RE initiating the shopping experience. They may feel more in control and feel less resistance to the offer.

It’s just a guess, but I think a good one.

What do you think, is there a better explanation for the difference in conversion rates from nearly the same source?

Leave a comment if you have a theory.

Recently I discovered a traffic source that can send thousands of visitors to your site for a penny each.

It’s from a site called ClixSense. And that’s an affiliate link, because I highly recommend this service.

Penny traffic is known for being POOR QUALITY and can kill a conversion rate. But because it’s so cheap it can still be profitable.

For $12 (which included a $2 processing fee) I sent around 1000 visitors to a squeeze page. The squeeze page wasn’t too polished, although it did contain 6 of the 7 traits of a successful squeeze.

Even with a mediocre squeeze page I got 28 opt-ins. That’s 43 cents per targeted lead.

If you have a $100 product that converts at 1%, then each visitor is worth $1. If it only costs you 43 cents to get a visitor, then you’re profiting 57 cents per visitor.

If I add the 7th element of a successful squeeze page and polish it up a bit, I believe I could easily double the squeeze page’s conversion rate. That’d bring the cost per targeted lead to 20-some cents. Very nice!

I highly recommend giving ClixSense at least one shot. I ran my ad 3 times and noticed the subsequent visitor-buys got me repeat visitors that didn’t convert. In future tests I’ll be looking for a way to avoid this repeat traffic and I’ll share my results.

And a hint on setting up your campaign.

ClixSense allows you to narrow down the traffic you’ll receive in to a smaller demographic.

If your market’s customer base is heavily female or male, then make sure your ad only is displayed to that gender.

You can choose to only display your ad to premium members, meaning people who have paid money, and that’s a very good idea.

And you can also restrict the ad to English speaking countries, which can help for obvious reasons.

Give it a try and let me know how it works for you.

If you’re going to sell a product online, it’s often smart to get your visitor’s email address before sending them to the sales letter.

This gives you the benefit of emailing the visitor in the future with links to the sales letter, alternate sales letters, and maybe to someone else’s sales page through an affiliate link.

It also means more people will drop off at the squeeze page and never see the sales letter. So at times it can be more important to maximize the conversion of the squeeze page than the actual sales copy!

I’ve had squeeze pages convert at over 50% of visitors to relatively targeted visitors. (The same squeeze page will convert at around 2-5% with untargeted traffic.)

These are the 7 elements I use to get these high conversion rates.

1. Give A “Reason Why” They Should Give Their Email Address

Take a step back and look at your business from an outsider’s perspective. No one wants to give you their email address just because you exist.

There must be a reason why.

Most people use a freebie as their reason why. I’ve given away ebooks, videos and software free with great success.

But some freebies are better than others! Ryan Deiss stresses testing your freebie to see which leads to the most new customers. (And that’s CUSTOMERS, not simply subscribers.)

I suspect I’m giving away an ebook right now that’s hurting sales. Either because it’s too long, takes away from the sales process or some other reason. So I’ll be testing it against another squeeze page offer.

And that offer may not be a freebie at all!

One of my favorite squeeze pages converted at more than 50% and didn’t give anything away. It simply built curiousity and suspense in a few sentences, then asked for your name and email to discover the resolution.

PERFECT!

Curiousity is a GREAT tool for squeeze pages.

I’ll analyze this type of squeeze page on the blog in the future.

2. A Great Headline

I don’t use much copy on the squeeze page at all. For me, the headline carries the weight. I’ve added more copy only to see my testing software determine it wasn’t helping sales.

A great headline will satisfy Michael Masterson’s 4 U’s. That means writing something that’s…

Urgent
Ultra-Specific
Unique
Useful

Add a strong dose of curiousity to the 4 U’s and you’ll have a strong headline to take center stage.

3. Get An Animated Video That Starts Automatically

An animated “talking head” video (see http://www.sitepal.com/) that starts automatically can do amazing things for your conversion rate.

ESPECIALLY for low-quality traffic. I’ve seen conversion rates jump from barely recordable to 2-5% just by adding an animated “talking head” video.

Ryan Deiss found an “animated” video actually outperformed live-action videos!

SitePal is fairly easy to set up, so I highly recommed giving it a try. (They have a free trial.)

4. Keep Your Opt-In Form Above The Fold

In the past I’ve noticed that adding several blank lines before your headline can increase conversion. But I’ve noticed the exact opposite for squeeze pages.

I’m assuming the reason for that is it can push your opt-in form down the page so the visitor can’t see it without scrolling. That’s called “below the fold.”

From memory, all of my highest converting squeeze pages had the opt-in form “above the fold” so the visitor didn’t have to scroll.

5. Put A Box Around The Opt-In Form

A great way to draw attention to your opt-in form is to put it inside of a colored table. The code below won against no table at all. Just insert your opt-in form code between the two lines.

<table cellpadding=10 bgcolor=#EEEEEE> <tr> <td>
</td> </tr> </table>

6. Use Arrows To Draw Attention To Your Opt-In Form.

Another way to draw attention to your opt-in form that has won in tests is to point at the opt-in form with red arrows.

You can usually find graphics like these at stock photography websites.

7. Ask For An Email Address Only

Yup, simply asking for an email address beats asking for name and email. My test results show this, and so do to tests by numerous other marketers.

And that’s that, 7 steps to a successful squeeze page.

From there, of course, you need a successful sales letter and email follow-up campaign.

If you’d like a stellar squeeze page, sales letter and email sequence you can fill out an application here.

There’s an inevitable question most business owners face when setting up a new product site…

Should you make the main page a squeeze page or send them directly to the sales letter.

A squeeze page captures the visitor’s email so you can send follow up emails to try and make the sale more than once. With a sales page only, you often get just one chance.

So arguments can be made for both sides, but there’s an easy way to test how it will effect initial sales. Set up a split test.

Instead of making the squeeze page or the sales page the root index page (i.e. the home page of your domain), set up a split test with either Easy Split Test, Muvar, or Google Analytics.

Version A of your test can redirect the visitor to the squeeze page.

For the testing programs above, you’ll need to use the Meta Refresh redirect. Just change the URL below to your squeeze page’s URL and then insert this code in to the HEAD section of your HTML page.

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://www.example.com/squeeze.htm">

Version B will redirect to the sales page using similar Meta Refresh code.

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://www.example.com/salespage.htm">

The “Thank You” page code goes on the product thank you page just like normal. And as the sales come in you’ll get to see if your squeeze page and follow up emails are helping or hurting sales.

This will give you a basic answer to the question of having a squeeze page.

Of course, after the squeeze page you need an amazing sales page to close the deal.

But there is one flaw to the above test. Can you spot it? If you have a guess or know the answer, leave it as a comment!

Want 139 new links pointing to your site, for free?

Then link to my blog from your blog’s sidebar or blog roll. Between my WP control panel and stats programs I’ll be sure to see the link, and I’ll reciprocate by putting you in my blog’s sidebar.

This site has 139 pages listed in Google, and that number is going up. If I put you in my sidebar, Google will soon see 139 links to your site.

Sounds like a good deal to me. If you like the content on this blog, or just like me, add me to your sidebar immediately before you forget!

Another way to get links…

Comment! I’ve changed my blog theme so that comments are now displayed on the front page. That means anyone who comes to my blog can see a link to your site from the front page!

Note: My blog doesn’t use “do-follow” until you’ve left 5 comments, so you may not get the link love from the search engines until you become a regular.

Ever visited a long copy sales page and noticed how LONG it was?

If so, there’s a good chance it was the poor quality of copy that tipped you off and not the length. Long copy can be a BREEZE to read when skillfully written.

And poorly written copy can feel like a waterless hike through the Sahara desert when read top to bottom.

Two methods for making long copy unbearable are…

1) Irrelevant, boring and/or misplaced content .

2) Clunky words, sentences and tempo.

Many posts at CopywritingDean.com cover mistake #1. So this post will cover mistake #2.

Keep Your Paragraphs SHORT

Big blocks of text are not reader-friendly. So remember to use the “enter” key often. I rarely use more than 3 sentences in a paragraph, despite my English teacher’s best efforts.

Keep Your Sentences SHORT

Avoid run-on sentences like the Black Death. There’s no easier way to confuse a reader than to lose him in a long, grammatically incorrect sentence.

That said, a long grammatically CORRECT sentence isn’t much better. A sentence that’s too long can force the reader to juggle too many ideas at once. Use frequent punctuation to give them a break.

You should also delete unnecessary words or phrases. Examples would be…

“Who Is,”
“Perhaps,”
“That,”
“Just,”
“Absolutely,”
“The Fact That,”
“Quite,”
“Actually,”
“Completely,”
“Totally,”
“Really,”
“Who Is,”
“Which Was,”
“Very,”

Keep Your Words Short

Using big words is an easy way to lose readership. Try sticking to words with 2-3 syllables at most. And if you do use a big word that’s uncommon, make sure it’s phonetic.

And yes, it is funny that phonetic isn’t spelled phonetically.

Vary Your Sentence Structure

If each sentence has the same structure your reader is going to get bored quick. An easy way to fix this is to switch between short, medium and long sentences often.

Got Any More? Leave A Reply

If you have any more simple tips for writing like a copywriter, please share by leaving a reply.

Thanks in advance!

Stephen Dean

I think I’ve discovered what makes my favorite marketers my favorites.

Two of my loves as a kid were business and computers. (And here I am!)

I got started early on Computers. And my first experience wasn’t with Windows, it was with DOS and the BASIC programming language. It taught me the “basics” of programming.

One of the building blocks of programming is “If/Then” statements. And I think “If/Then” statements are the reason my favorite marketers tend to be programmers. (Two of which are James Brausch and Robert Plank.)

Running a business can be a huge endeavor. But a simple “If/Then” approach simplifies the process.

IF creating a new product increases revenue, THEN create a new product.
IF browsing Internet Marketing forums does not increase sales, THEN do not browse Internet Marketing forums.
IF testing your sales copy increases sales, THEN test your sales copy.
IF writing a blog post a day equals more sales than redesigning your websites, THEN write a blog post a day.

It’s a very analytical approach to taking on a large creative task. A task that often deteriorates in to unprofitable actions or activities if you don’t take an analytical approach.

Try applying this approach to your business. Here’s a sentence, plug in your activity…

IF (activity) increases (objective: sales, opt-ins, referrals, etc.), THEN do (activity).

Does your next activity pass the If/Then Test?