Category Archives: Internet Advertising Tips

Copywriting Interview With Joseph Ratliff, Part II

By | Published July 28, 2011

Here’s part II of my interview with Joseph Ratliff.

What is the biggest mistake you’ve ever made in your copywriting business?

That is an excellent question Stephen, and I’ve made only one (LOL, kidding). My biggest mistake was in my early days, I was an “order taker” for my clients. They had a project, and I wrote it…turned it in and got paid.

But if you want to survive as a copywriter, you have to be more than an “order taker.” You have to find a way to help a client in more ways than writing the project they are offering. In other words…

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Copywriting Interview With Joseph Ratliff, Part I

By | Published July 27, 2011

Local marketing is all the rage lately. Strangely enough, I’ve never written copy for someone in my city. The closest was across the river in Portland, OR a handful of times.

So when I got the chance to interview Joseph Ratliff I seized it. I know he has experience working both local and global. And this would give me a chance to share valuable information with you… and pick up a few nuggets myself!

Joseph did not disappoint. Here are my first 5 questions to Joseph and his answers.

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Copywriting Continuity And The Marketer’s Folly

By | Published July 6, 2011

So get this: There’s two goldfish sitting in a tank, right?

And one goldfish turns to the other and says, “Do you know how to drive this thing?!”

Believe it or not, that joke was determined to be one of the best jokes IN THE EVER by a scientific study.

But the funny thing here, is, what makes the joke work would make a sales letter BOMB. And bomb BIG.

That’s because what makes the joke work is discontinuity. One situation doesn’t naturally flow to the next. The surprise of a goldfish being in an armored tank rather than a domestic fish tank is funny.

But it doesn’t make the sale…

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Saw Gary Vaynerchuk At Powell’s Books

By | Published March 22, 2011

Last night I showed up at Gary Vaynerchuk’s book signing at Powell’s for the third time in three years – one for each book, starting with “101 Wines.” And I can tell you, Gary is hitting full stride!

My girlfriend felt I conned her when she realized the focus wasn’t on wine this time, but rather his new book “The Thank You Economy.” She doesn’t care too much about business. Yet still she came around and liked this speech better than his “101 Wines” talk. He really is CRUSHING IT.

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Split Test Myths And Statistics

By | Published March 15, 2011

Several years back I created Easy Split Test for marketers who want to improve their sales copy.

A split test is where you send one page’s traffic to two pieces of copy and calculate which page converts best. Afterwards you stop showing the loser and begin a new test with the winner and a new slightly modified version of it.

One myth is that there must only be ONE difference between the two pieces of copy to have a valid test. That’s not true at all, and marketers have been doing the exact opposite for decades.

Businesses often enlist copywriters to write copy to challenge their control piece.

They may have copy that has been running for years and converting a solid 2%, but they want to see if that copy can be beaten. So a copywriter writes an entirely different ad for the same product to see which ad converts better.

That’s a valid split test.

The only problem that may arrive is in the conclusions you may draw from the test.

If the control ad has a red headline and the challenger has a blue headline, you could not conclude which headline color converts best from the test unless that was the ONLY difference between the two ads.

So if the the control and the challenger are completely different ads, you will not find out the answer to small questions like which order button, background or font works best. But you CAN find out which ad converts best – and that’s useful information.

Once you know which ad converts best, you can begin slightly modifying the winner and testing it against itself to find out the smaller questions – like which order button converts best.

Another mistake is thinking you need a certain number of actions before you stop a test.

That can be a good rule of thumb, especially for offline marketers who struggle using a computer, but now there are calculators that can do the complicated mathematical formulas for you.

One such complicated mathematical formula is the Chi Square test. This test can predict which version will be the winner from surprisingly low amounts of data, so it doesn’t take as long to run a test. (Which is great when you want to optimize a sales letter fast.)

Easy Split Test has the Chi Square test programmed in to it, so you’ll be notified when your test hits 95% confidence.

And you can search google for “Chi Square calculator” to discover the statistical confidence of any test you’re currently running.

Either way, the marketers who are #WINNING are split testing. Go ready spaghetti and get to work!

Also posted in Business Tips, Copywriting Tips, Multivariate Testing | View Comments

The Secret To Writing Daily Blog Posts

By | Published March 14, 2011

Just six weeks ago the idea of posting to my blog every day seemed like a daunting task. I wondered where on earth I’d get all the ideas needed to come up with a new post every day.

In true Ready Spaghetti form, however, I didn’t let that stop me from just getting started. That’s because the first thing you need to do to post to your blog everyday, is just make a post ASAP. Let the rest of it take care of itself in due time.

Another Ready Spaghetti tactic is to ask people with experience for advice.

So when Ryan Healy decided to go blog crazy and published multiple posts every day for a week, I asked him where he got all the ideas. His answer impressed me.

He said he has TOO MANY ideas to blog about – and only a fraction make it in to a post.

Wow. Six weeks ago I didn’t feel it’d ever be that way for me, but I should have known better.

It all comes down to Momentum. If you haven’t posted to your blog in a while, coming up with a new idea for a blog post can seem like a giant task.

But once you start to rock back and forth a bit…

…once you start to break free from the ground that’s held you in place the last few months/years…

…and once you get the ball rolling…

…it’s easy to come up with ideas for posts.

In fact, just as Ryan said, the challenge is writing all the ideas down as they come so you don’t lose them.

I get ideas while writing copy, while surfing the web, while checking out Twitter or the news… even while cooking dinner!

Ideas for blog posts come all the time.

If I’m at my computer, I just quickly log in to wordpress and click to “Add New” post. I give the post a title that will remind me of the idea and then save it as a draft.

Then when it’s time to write some more blog posts, I just log in and start working on one of the saved drafts.

Now writing a new blog post everyday seems easy!

So that’s the secret. Just get started. Maybe ask people for advice (but I just gave you some), and then work to build momentum.

Once the ball is rolling, it’s all down hill from there.

Also posted in Business Tips, Productivity & Success | View Comments

The Most Important Letter You’ll Ever Read

By | Published March 10, 2011

“The Most Important Letter You’ll Ever Read.” Ya right.

Ever read that line in a sales letter? I think it has it’s place. And this isn’t it…

“If you’ve ever wanted to go birdwatching in your backyard, then this is the most important letter you’ll ever read.”

Could anyone possibly believe that birdwatching is the most pressing issue a person has experienced in their ENTIRE life.

Nope, it’s unbelievable. And in copywriting, every time you make a claim you need to back it up. This claim is indefensible here, and even laughable.

In fact, I laughed out loud yesterday watching a TV commercial use the line for a product equally trivial.

As it turns out, “the most important letter you’ll ever read” is often a sign of lazy copywriting. And I know that from my own experience.

The only time to use that line is when it may be true – like for life insurance or identity theft protection. With products like those, it’s not too hard to back up the claim.

Another alternative is to change the line, like Ryan Healy did for the Copywriting Code:

“…then this may be the most profitable letter you ever read.”

Ryan then goes on to back up this claim throughout the letter. That’s doing things right.

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Are You An Action-Taker?

By | Published March 7, 2011

A few years back I was at Ryan Deiss’ Ultimate List Building Bootcamp, which was amazing.

It was the first time I saw Keith Baxter speak and he had me writing notes at warp speed. It was a great presentation on traffic generation and link building.

One technique in particular stuck out to me. So that night in my hotel room I bought the software he recommended and put the the process to work.

It only took me an hour or so, but I took action nonetheless.

The next day I saw Keith talking to a small crowd that had gathered around him. I approached and when it fell silent I told Keith I put his plan in to action.

He looked right at me and said, “Good job. I bet you’re one of the only ones who will take action.”

And he was probably right.

Taking action is rare. That’s why the Ready Spaghetti challenge focuses on doing rather than learning.

I’m going to put several steps in to action.

Some of them may not work. Some of them will. And I’ll learn from it.

But I’ll do the learning AFTER I take action. I’ll learn from experience, the best kind of learning.

It’s not too late to join March’s Ready Spaghetti Challenge. If you’re thinking about it, why not join us now and leave a comment?

Also posted in Business Tips, Copywriting Tips, Productivity & Success, Ready Spaghetti | View Comments

A Story Of Two Ranked Videos

By | Published March 2, 2011

I’ve been brainstorming how to get my video on the front page of a google search result. And of course one way to do it is to reverse-engineer videos that have already made it.

If you search google for “Magic Trick” two videos come up before any page results.

Both videos have “Magic Trick” in the title.

Both videos are old: 2007 and 2006.

Both videos have more than 8 million views.

And both videos have thousands of likes and dislikes, and thousands of comments.

That would be hard to beat! So I’ll be going after keywords that are a bit less competitive.

But I also noticed something about these two “Magic Trick” videos that are less obvious. They have hundreds of links pointing to them!

So I’m guessing when Andy Wilson told me that getting videos linked is similar to getting pages linked, he was right. Get links pointing to your videos.

Andy had some more tips for me as well. The first one will help you get to that 8 million views mark :)

1) You can have your video appear as a related video to popular videos in the same category by making sure your tags are the same. This means if you track down youtube copywriting videos with high views you can make sure your video has the same tags, etc and essentially “piggyback” off of them.

And here is Andy’s favorite SEO tool, which you may have heard of.

Market Samurai

There’s the link to the tool. I’ve been with it since the earlier stages of development and the support and team behind the operation are top notch.

There are oodles of training videos and Ed Dale devotes nearly 1/3rd of his 30 day challenge (now called “the challenge”) to using Market Samurai and its applications.

If you’re looking to dabble in SEO you should check it out. It’s pretty easy and straight forward to use. The competition and research modules are worth the whatever price by themselves.

Also posted in Business Tips, Copywriting Tips, Ready Spaghetti, Traffic | View Comments

Booming Businesses In A Struggling Economy

By | Published February 28, 2011

Guess which business is a money tree in this struggling economy?

The Dollar Tree. Their profits were up 20% last quarter. And their largest growing demographic is income earners of $100,000+.

People are changing their spending habits. They’re looking for bargains. They’re saving.

All of their shopping decisions are being looked at through a new lens.

And that includes your offer. So here’s what you can take away from this…

1) Test your prices. Both higher and lower, but make sure you test your prices. The prices that worked 3-4 years ago could be a thing of the past for years to come.

2) Make sure to hire a copywriter that knows how to paint your product as a no-brainer purchase in a recession. It takes more than it used to – and your biggest competitor isn’t another product, it’s buying nothing at all.

Also posted in Business Tips, Copywriting Tips | View Comments

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