It’s one too easily spoken, as any parent of a small four-year-old will tell you. It’s also detrimental to effective copywriting and sales, because it’s an absolute brick wall of resistance.

The minute a potential customer says no, you’ve either lost the sale, or you have to pull out some pretty convincing arguments to sway them back to a yes. Chances are you’re not going to make it.

It’s much harder to change a person’s mind when it’s already made up.

Here are practical tips on how to turn a potential customer’s no into yes, where you’ll learn specific resistance you’ll face and how to magically turn it into sales.

First, Address the Doubts

To believe that people are going to land on your page and immediately say, “This is exactly what I need,” is a belief best left to amateurs. (Of which you are not one, because only smart people read this blog.)

Everyone has doubts. You have them, I have them, your potential customer has them.

Now, no one enjoys having doubts, because they make us feel worried and uncertain and unsure. That’s not a good place to be, and instinctively, we know it. So we seek reassurance that erases our doubts and takes them away.

We look to be confident. When we feel confident, we feel able to make good decisions that are right for — which include, of course, saying, “Yes, this is exactly what I need.”

So address those doubts in your copywriting. Put them on the table right from the start. Show people that you know their concerns and worries, and give them the appropriate answer that provides reassurance.

This doesn’t mean raising questions that weren’t there to begin with. What it means is acknowledging potential questions and concerns and responding to them appropriately before the potential customer picks his own response.

The Best Example: Your Local Garage

Here’s an example of how you can address a potential customer’s doubts:

Let’s say your garage mechanic tells you that repairing your car will cost you $800. You can bet that you’ll have buyer resistance, and it’s highly unlikely that you’ll say, “This is exactly what I need!”

It’s far more likely you’re already trying to figure out how to get out of paying that amount.

Then your mechanic says, “I’m sure you’re wondering how necessary it is to repair these parts.” And he proceeds to tell you exactly how unsafe your car becomes if you don’t have them repaired — and if you have kids, he points out, their safety means everything.

Then your mechanic says, “Now I know you’re probably wondering whether you can wait a while. But let me explain why that’s a bad idea.” He goes on to show how much more costly repairs will be if you don’t get this fixed soon.

By now, you’re not thinking about how to get out of the repairs. You’re into thinking about where you’ll get the money to pay for it all. You’ve already started moving from no to yes.

The mechanic doesn’t really know what’s going through your mind, but what he’s doing is covering his bases. He’s presuming you might have doubts, he’s assuming which doubts you might have, and he’s addressing them before you even voice them aloud.

If he guesses wrong? No problem — call it extra bonus arguments. You know, just in case. And if he guesses right? Then you haven’t had to say a word, and you have all the answers you need.

Be that proactive in your copywriting. Assume the arguments, address them with confidence, reassure your potential customer and you’ll be turning no into yes before you know it.

How do you feel about addressing doubts in copywriting? Are you great at dismantling arguments? Do you hate forking money over to garages? And how reassured do you feel when your doubts are addressed?

The Copywriter’s World is One Filled With Battle

It’s your copy against the consumer, and his defensive shields are strong — so very strong. Each time you valiantly knock down an argument he’s presented, another flies up, as if the consumer creates them right out of thin air.

Dean Rieck once wrote, “Selling is simply offering the right product to the right people at the right time in the right way. You aren’t forcing your customer to say yes; you’re taking away his reasons to say no.”

The consumer holds all the power, the final decision, the last word. But if you’ve done your job copywriting job well and taken away all his reasons to say no, the only word he’ll have left to say is, “Yes.”

How do you take away his reasons to say no? Here are five ways to do just that:

“I Don’t Need This.”

When people tell you they don’t need something, what they’re really saying is that they don’t want something. There’s a huge difference between need and want.

Take the lowly car, for example. We don’t need more than a basic box with wheels that gets us from A to B, but we consistently buy vehicles that offer far more luxury, bells and whistles — and we pay dearly for them too.

Turn needs into wants. Tell people why they want this. Get down and dirty in desire, play up how much their life will change for the better and let them visualize how fantastic their future will be. You’ll be changing “I don’t need this” into “I want it so bad I can taste it” in no time.

“I Can’t Afford This.”

Let’s face it. When people want something — really, really want something — they find a way to make it happen. They stretch their budgets or go without for a few weeks or tighten the bootstraps until they’re straining. They’ll even go into debt, all just to get what they want.

But you need to make sure they want it, and then you need to make this purchase a priority above other wants they have. Show them the benefits of buying, and convey that the value of what you’re selling is worth the price.

Make the offer too good to pass up. Make it unmistakably clear that turning away now means losing out in the long run. And make it a priority — they can’t afford not to buy.

“Mmm… Maybe Tomorrow.”

If someone’s not feeling the need to check out your offer today, there’s been a misfire on the urgency front. You can guarantee they won’t be back, because out of sight is out of mind. Or, maybe they actually want to think over their decision to be sure it’s the right one for them (which is fine), but leave them thinking too long without following up, and the result is that they just plain forget.

Or something more important comes up. And there’s no money left for you.

Convey the need to consider the offer today. Set a deadline or create scarcity with limited offers. Give rewards for fast action with a special price or an extra-value bonus. And if you can’t do that, drive home what happens to people if they wait — prolonged pain, extended misery and longer unhappiness. Who wants that?!

“I Don’t Really Know Who You Are.”

This really means, “Why should I buy… from YOU?” And this baby is a big one these days, with all sorts of unknown people cropping up as overnight experts without the backup to prove their cocky claims. No one wants to risk wasting money on something that’s not very good or useful.

Show people you’re trustworthy by showing them the credentials, skills, background, history and testimonials they need to believe you know what you’re doing. Downplay the wing and a prayer that got you where you are today, talk up what qualifies you, even if it’s your first sale, and hush up with the expert claims.

Experts don’t need to tell people they’re experts; it shows.

The Value of No

If you don’t get the sales you hoped for and your copy converts horribly, don’t despair. There’s a positive in every negative, which means there’s a yes in every no.

There’s a learning experience in why your potential customer didn’t buy, and you can take the opportunity to climb into your prospect’s head and find out what went wrong. That lets you improve your copywriting, your offer, your business and your sales.

Which means less people say no next time.

So go ahead and find out why people didn’t buy. Send out a survey or even personal emails that say you’d like help so you can improve and offer better products or services. Their feedback is valuable to you, so ask for it. Open your mind to what people tell you, and receive the feedback with a willingness to learn from it.

Be objective, and be respectful of the person’s decision not to buy. You’re not going to change their mind; they’ve said no already, and this isn’t about pushing a sale. It’s simply about learning what didn’t work, and how to make it work better the next time.

Ask people what might have swayed their vote, too. By knowing what might have tipped the scales of sale in your favor, you’ll have a good idea of what to add to your next piece of copy — and you’ll just get better and better.

Five Ways to Turn No into Yes originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.

I have.

And for a long time I just blamed it on people being lazy. In my own case, I blamed it on being too busy with client work to get around to some of those extracurricular learning pursuits not necessary to my daily work.

But there is now new research that discounts “The Laziness Theory” and “The I’m-Too-Busy Theory.”

Turns out, it’s not that people are lazy or unwilling to take “massive action” — it’s simply that living an always-on wired life causes people to become addicted to new information.

Addicted to Information?

I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true.

Check out this article — Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price — by Matt Ritchel.

As Ritchel explains, scientists have discovered that reacting to a never-ending stream of “information bursts” causes the brain to become excited and release dopamine, which in turn causes feelings of happiness.

As Wikipedia reports, “Dopamine is commonly associated with the reward system of the brain, providing feelings of enjoyment and reinforcement to motivate a person proactively to perform certain activities.”

So let’s connect the dots…

• Whereas, responding to “information bursts” causes the brain to release dopamine;
• And, whereas, dopamine reinforces the behavior that produced it;
• Thus, replying to emails, tweets, Facebook updates, forum threads, and other forms of real-time interruptions can lead to compulsive behavior, possibly even addiction.

Yikes!

If you’re not careful, you could find yourself checking email dozens of times a day, replying to text messages the minute they arrive, logging onto Twitter multiple times an hour, checking for Facebook updates, seeing what’s popular on Digg…

…and on and on and on in a never-ending dopamine-reinforcement loop.

It’s a dangerous, time-sucking, attention-killing cycle.

Social Media: The Drug of Choice in the 21st Century

Once you’re hooked on social media — with your cell phone in your pocket and your laptop on the kitchen table — you’re little more than a human version of Pavlov’s dog:

1. Every time you hear (or see) a notification, you respond immediately…
2. Your brain rewards you with a little more dopamine…
3. And the cycle becomes a little bit stronger, a little bit harder to break.

The negative side effects of constant distraction (a.k.a. “multi-tasking”) are many.

Ritchel reports, “While many people say multitasking makes them more productive, research shows otherwise. Heavy multitaskers actually have more trouble focusing and shutting out irrelevant information, scientists say, and they experience more stress.”

Let’s not beat around the bush here. Research has plainly shown that multitaskers get less done and are more stressed out than people who focus on a single task at a time.

So I think it’s reasonable to ask: Are email and social media keeping you from success? While you’re pondering this, let me tell you…

Why People Pay Good Money for Information…

… Information They Don’t Need and Will Never Use!

Stress and decreased productivity are not the only consequences of an always-online, always-distracted lifestyle.

You may also find yourself inexplicably compelled to buy information — even information you don’t need and will never use.

This is because multitasking literally rewires your brain.

Recent tests conducted at Stanford “showed multitaskers tended to search for new information rather than accept a reward for putting older, more valuable information to work.”

Are you feeling compelled to buy yet another home study course even though you have multiple home study courses gathering dust on your shelves?

Or are you wanting to sign up for another membership site even though you already have multiple online memberships that you never use?

Well, now you know why.

The More Distracted You Are, the More Money Marketers Make

Marketers like to whine about how hard it is to sell to people who are distracted… how there’s so much competition for people’s attention that it’s hard to make a buck.

I think there’s some truth to this. But I think there’s more truth on the flip side of this argument.

Here’s my theory: The more distracted you are, the more money marketers make.

That’s because the more caught up you become in the distraction-dopamine cycle, the more likely it is you’ll continue to reinforce those positive feelings by seeking out new information.

And the more you seek out new information, the easier it will be for marketers to sell you “secrets” you think you don’t yet possess.

Which means: Not only does multitasking rob you of your productivity, it robs your bank account, too!

Now you know why all the gurus want you to follow them on email, Twitter, and Facebook.

They want you to be distracted.

Because the more distracted and confused you are, the easier it will be for them to get your credit card number — and sell you yet another overpriced course you’ll never use.

With that in mind, don’t you think it’s time to reconsider your use of social media?

Tips for Breaking Information Addiction

(And Taking Back Your Life)

In spite of the risks, I don’t necessarily recommend swearing off cell phones and social media. So here are a few suggestions for getting value out of social technology without letting it rule your life:

• Limit your connections. Connect only with people you really want to connect with. Don’t follow just to be followed.
• Tether social media profiles together so you can control multiple profiles from a single control panel or with a single RSS feed.
• Spend no more than 30 minutes a day on social media. Set aside a specific time to update your profiles and reply to people.
• Turn your cell phone off to block unplanned interruptions. Being accessible all the time should not be a badge of honor.
• Use a tool like RescueTime.com to block distracting web sites during periods of focus time.
• Be cautious about spending money on new information, especially if you have information you’ve paid for that you haven’t used yet.

As we sail deeper into the uncharted waters of the 21st Century, I believe one of the keys to success will increasingly become a person’s ability to block out distractions and focus on completing one task at a time.

Ultimately, self-control and constant vigilance win the day.

Why People Are Addicted to Info-Products originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.

So when my copy of @JoelComm‘s Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time arrived in the mail, I figured here was another case of early adopter Joel waving from the deck to hapless gangplank standers by.

What could Joel have to say that I hadn’t already heard since actively joining Twitter late last year? And what can he say to anyone who hasn’t been tweeting at least that long to help them “dominate their market”?

Quite a bit, it turns out.

Ever since Comm’s The Adsense Code came out, he’s demonstrated a nerdish knack for understanding how the tools of the marketing trade work, and how to tweak them for better profitability.

He’s also got a gift for explaining those things to folks who are running businesses and just want the results, please.

That’s not to say Twitter Power is page upon page of marketing power secrets. The first two chapters are fairly pedestrian. A nice overview of Social Media — the kind of stuff you might hear on a Katie Couric puff-piece.

But once I got into the meat of the book, I remembered why Adsense Code sold so many copies.

Really, if you’re just starting on Twitter, or even a few weeks in, Chapter Three provides a serviceable checklist for registering, what to put into you bio, and some basics about choosing your Twitter name that you want to pay attention to.

Take Joel’s suggestions and avoid having to start over because “@tweetinfool1″ wasn’t the best choice for credibility and brand management.

Some of the soundest advice comes when he compares Twitter to Adsense. And this isn’t a case of “if you’re a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”

Twitter isn’t Adsense of course. But knowing how to make the most out of a few pixels of computer screen and how to get the biggest bang for your 140 characters isn’t that different.

Joel also provides useful tips on “The Art of the Tweet” and interesting insights into the difference between Twitter’s unique strengths and how they compare to other Social Media sites like FaceBook and MySpace.

The real payoff comes in the last five chapters — especially the sections on Brand Building, Driving Behavior, and Building Solutions on the Twitter Platform (written by @kenburge Joel’s business partner and president of Infomedia).

I’m sure right now there are dozens, if not hundreds of smart marketers who are figuring out ways to use and extend Ken’s and Joel’s suggestions. No doubt they’ll exploit the hell out of whatever strategies they come up with, then sell them in an e-book in a couple of years.

If you don’t want to wait that long, it may be a good idea to get Joel’s book — especially if you’ve only been on Twitter for a few weeks or months. It’s a quick read and Joel provides a nicely thought out 30-day plan to get up, get running and get results sooner rather than later.

Of course, with a technology as new as Twitter, any book is likely to have old information as soon as it hits the shelves. For instance, Joel speaks admiringly of users who have over 1,000 followers. By today’s standards, that’s pretty unremarkable, but his strategies are sound.

And more savvy Twitter users can still benefit from Twitter Power as well. Joel’s put much of the same care into testing and refining his Twitter presence and usage as he did with Adsense. That kind of attention to results is well worth the price of the book.

(By the way, you can follow me at @andycatsimanes and Michel at @michelfortin.)

Is Joel Comm’s “Twitter Power” Just For The Birds? originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.

For instance our friend Alex Mandossian preaches to anyone with ears to hear that, “Nothing is true or false, but testing makes it so.”

(Hope I got that right, Alex.)

That’s so important. Because while copy always has been and always will be indispensable in selling — especially on the web — any copywriter who thinks words alone are enough is doing his clients a huge disservice.

At Success Doctor we’re passionate about copy, but we also recognize words have limitations. When you tune your copywriter’s radar into markets that value testing, you’ll quickly discover — it’s the most competitive markets that place the greatest premium on testing over “gut” feeling.

Of course, the pharmaceutical market is one of the most competitive there is.

That’s right, “Big Pharma.”

Love ‘em or hate ‘em you can bet with the kind of money they spend on R&D and the billions of consumer dollars they’re chasing, Big Pharma takes no prisoners when it comes to testing.

So when I saw an article touting the results of an experiment that showed how a simple format change led to dramatic changes in judgments about prescription medications, I sat up and took notice.

(Ok, I was geeked, but that’s what working with Michel does to you. Like I said, he’s a fanatic about testing and it’s bound to rub off after awhile, you know?)

The randomized, controlled trial reported in MM&M Online measured differences in choice and perception of benefits and side effects when consumers were presented with the same information about two different medications used to treat the same condition. (The study featured real drugs, but disguised the names to avoid bias.)

Both ads contained the same sales copy and graphics with just one difference.

One format was the familiar excruciatingly small print with two crowded columns of 8-pt. type containing all the “information” drug companies typically stuff onto a single page to keep the FDA at bay.

The other was a simple table or “fact box” of less than 400 words that clearly laid out “fundamental information consumers need to make informed decisions: data on how well the drug works” including potential benefits and harms.

So what happened?

In each test, consumers presented with fact boxes were able to make better, more accurate assessments of the potential risks, benefits and effectiveness of the competing drugs than consumers who were shown ads with the more standard “squint-type” ads.

Clearly a case of less is more. By cutting the amount of “informational” copy down to 1/4 of the standard ad, buyers were able to make better sense of the information.

The takeaway for direct response becomes clear when we remember this important point…

A confused mind never buys.

Remember that the next time you’re presenting information — especially if you’re selling something technical, like software, or health supplements.

Because when all’s said and done, your prospect doesn’t usually care about the geek stuff, they just want to know what your product or service will do for them.

If you want your prospects to choose a particular action, you must do everything you can to give them a clear perception of what that means.

That means using copy in the form of stories, testimonials, headlines, post scripts and subheads to persuade. But it also means presenting information clearly in an appropriate format, or part of what Michel calls “copy designing.”

The next time you look at a salesletter or offline ad, take a moment and ask why it’s formatted the way it is. Does the overall design lead to confusion or clarity?

Then apply what you’ve seen to your next project and watch how your results improve.

Random Drug Experiments Lead To Better Copy originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.

Such careful attention is a good thing. Making a sale is a fragile process. Sometimes a single word can make or break your promotion.

Let me give you a real example.

I once wrote dozens of Google AdWords ads for the homeschooling company I used to work for. In one test, I used the phrase “no sweat” in the body of the ad and pitted it against the phrase “no problem.” Every word was the same in each ad.

Which Ad Won?

In a market dominated by 30- and 40-something moms, the word “sweat” was a big turn-off. And so the ad that used the word “problem” instead received more than three times as many clicks. All from a single word that didn’t even appear in the headline.

Had I not conducted the test, I would have never known the outcome.

Here’s why I bother to share this with you in the first place:

Testing trumps perfectionism every time.

You can spend hours polishing copy. You can put in every ounce of effort you possibly can. You can be a perfectionist with a capitol “P.” And you’ll still never get the results that are possible with split-testing.

The 80/20 Rule

With the recent popularity of The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss, you’ve probably heard about the 80/20 Rule.

The concept was developed by an Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto over 100 years ago.

But it was not until Rich Koch began publishing books about it in the 1990s that the concept really gained traction with business owners and independent professionals.

The 80/20 Rule is simple. It says 20% of inputs create 80% of outputs. Conversely, 80% of inputs create only 20% of outputs. For instance:

• In a house that is carpeted, 20% of the carpet will get 80% of the wear.
• On a blog, 20% of the blog posts will get 80% of the “reads.”
• In a business, 20% of the customers will produce 80% of the revenue.

In anything you apply the 80/20 Rule to, you will find both great leverage and great waste.

How to Write Copy the 80/20 Way

Step #1: Write sales copy that is “good enough.”

Let’s assume for a moment that it takes you 20 hours of writing time to write a really strong sales letter. So 20 hours are 100% of the time you invest to write it.

Using the 80/20 Rule, we could say that it takes only four hours to get the letter 80% done. At the 80% level of completion, we might say that the letter is “good enough.” It is not a masterpiece, but it is at a point where it could be used.

Step #2: Split-test the elements that have the greatest impact.

Rather than relying on your own instincts and assumptions to complete the letter (and wasting an enormous amount of time and energy in the process), the next step is to split-test your “good enough” letter.

A split-test is like surveying your market. You give them a multiple choice survey with options a, b, and c. Then they tell you — by voting with their dollars — which “answer” is right.

Test the elements that have the greatest impact on conversion first (headline, opening paragraph, etc). All it takes is little bit of brain power to set everything up. After the test is running, your market will tell you exactly what it wants to hear.

This process, which relies heavily on the 80/20 Rule, is much faster, easier, and often more effective than the traditional method of writing copy (which is to simply write your “best” copy and let it ride).

To prove that the concept of 80/20 copywriting works, I’ve been trying it out with my own copy projects. Most recently, I applied it to a sales letter that sells a report about how to get copywriting clients.

The results?

That letter is converting at 5.97% even though I only spent about three hours to write the letter, code it, and set up the split-test.

Less Effort, Better Results

Writing copy the 80/20 way is about getting maximum results with minimum effort. It’s about doing more with less.

Don’t waste hours trying to create the “perfect” sales letter. Rather, write a letter that’s good enough. Then split-test it to success. Let the software do all the heavy lifting for you.

If you write all your own copy, give this approach a fair shot. I believe you’ll be pleased with the outcome.

If you would like to go even further, grab a copy of Richard Koch’s The 80/20 Principle. See how many things in your life you can improve — in addition to copywriting — by applying the 80/20 Rule.

Copywriting the 80/20 Way originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.

So instead of being well-fed and content, they often go hungry. Why is this?

I believe it comes down to three fundamental deficiencies. I observed these in myself when I was getting started a few years ago. I have continued to observe them in other copywriters who are launching new freelance careers.

Deficiency #1: Confidence

Most copywriters and aspiring copywriters have no real-world experience. If they have experience, it often consists of a few spec assignments that were critiqued, but never tested.

As a result, most copywriters are unsure of themselves. They don’t know whether their copy is good or not. They don’t know if they are even worth hiring. Which makes it exceedingly difficult to attract clients.

How do you build confidence quickly and without risk?

The simplest answer is to practice writing sales copy. Hand-copy classic letters that have been proven to work. This will ingrain the DNA of sales copy into your brain.

Another easy way to build confidence is to measure the results of your copy. See for yourself if it works. Discover how well it works.

Google offers Website Optimizer for free to folks who have AdWords accounts. There are also quite a few A/B split-testers available for free.

A split-testing program will do two things for you. First, it will measure results for you. Second, it will help you improve your copy. It does this by comparing the results from two different versions of your copy.

Once you see real statistics about how your copy performs, you will not only have results you can use in your advertising, but you will also have greater confidence than ever before.

This confidence will be apparent to prospects. In most cases, it will translate into more business.

Deficiency #2: Sales Experience

It was the young John E. Kennedy who proclaimed in 1904 that advertising was “salesmanship in print.” His definition stuck. Copywriters understand the “print” part; they often overlook the “salesmanship” part.

Fact: Most successful copywriters have face-to-face sales experience in their past. They knocked on doors. They did sales presentations. They worked the showroom floor.

This real-world sales experience then translated easily into print. They had little difficulty making the transition between speaking an effective sales pitch and writing one.

On the other hand, people who love to write, but who have never had sales experience, are at a disadvantage. That’s because they do not know how to persuade people to buy.

If this describes you, then I suggest you get some sales experience. Find a part-time job where you can learn the ropes.

The possibilities are endless.

You could get a gig with CUTCO Knives (the same company where Zig Ziglar made his name). You could take a job at a car dealership. You could even help do some local fund raising.

I have personally sold snowboards, knocked on doors to raise money, and called leads to book them for financial presentations. All of this experience has served to strengthen my ability to write copy.

If your schedule prohibits you from taking a part-time sales job, then you can study sales books instead. One of my favorites is Frank Bettger’s How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling.

Deficiency #3: Marketing Know-How

To be a successful copywriter, you have to develop your copywriting skill, build confidence in your copywriting (so you can attract clients), and have marketing know-how.

This last piece is critical.

You see, if you don’t understand the marketing process, you can’t advise your client on his project. You can’t provide guidance. But by understanding marketing, you can offer suggestions for improving the sales process and capturing more customers.

The ability to demonstrate marketing knowledge is powerful. Potential clients will respond by hiring you over less savvy copywriters.

Not only that, by helping your client improve his marketing, you increase the chances that your copy will work.

What better way to learn marketing than read up on the subject and apply it to your own marketing process? After all, copywriters must market themselves to get clients.

Develop your marketing system now and it will feed you for years to come.

Any freelance copywriter who aspires to success will do well to address each of these three areas. Turn these common deficiencies into strengths as quickly as possible.

By doing so, you will not go hungry. Rather, you will find yourself among the minority of copywriters who earn a full-time income from freelance copywriting.

Why Freelance Copywriters Go Hungry originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.

In the next few minutes, I’m going to share with you a proven strategy to…

Out-Market, Out-Sell And Out-Profit…

… Just about anyone in your industry or business category.

Here’s a true story: Way back around 1907 a certain company (Powellton) sold coal. There was nothing distinctive about this company. They did business like all the others.

They decided to create a new customer base in the makers of stoves and ranges. But the competition was fierce. And competing on price was a losing battle.

They were in the running with six other coal companies for a new account. The customer bought a carload of coal from each of the candidates.

The customer did an analysis on each of the six carloads of coal. After the results came in, the customer awarded the contract — without hesitation — to… Powellton.

Why?

After all, there really was nothing different about them compared to the other coal companies. Not on the surface anyway.

The only obvious reason Powellton got the account was because there was something unusual about their coal. Something they didn’t even know. There was.

When the customer did the analysis on Powellton coal here’s what they discovered: The coke in their coal had a very high carbon content. And low ash.

These characteristics gave Powellton coke a heating power that would melt a huge amount of iron. In addition, the structure of Powellton coke supported a huge amount of weight.

Powellton’s competitors had good coke. Theirs could melt eight or nine tons of iron to one ton of coke. On the other hand, Powellton coke melted as high as fifteen tons of iron to one ton of coke.

It cost the customer 80 to 90 cents to melt a ton of iron with ordinary coke. Using Powellton coke only cost them 47 cents per ton.

Therein lies the “rub”.

Somewhere within every commodity product lingers a distinctive benefit to the customer. Find the benefit and you’ll position your product beyond the reach of the competition.

The key to finding such an advantage is…

Research

Once Powellton discovered their true advantage they owned the stoves and ranges market. The funny thing is, Powellton stumbled across their competitive advantage by sheer accident.

Here’s another true story: Let’s go back again to the turn of the 20th century. Thomas Beck was sales manager of Proctor and Gamble. They made Ivory soap.

Listen to this: Soap was, at that time, sold to laundries by the barrel of so many pounds of weight. Barrels of soap were considered to be pretty much the same. Sales were made almost entirely on price.

Thomas Beck decided to have Ivory soap flakes analyzed. He compared those results with analysis made of competing soap brands.

What he discovered floored him.

Competing brands of soap contained about 15 percent water to only 5 percent water for Ivory soap. Which meant that laundries buying competing brands of soap were paying more for water. The same water they could get from the faucet.

Once again, with a little research…

A Distinctive Competitive Advantage…

… Was discovered in a cut-throat commodity industry.

That discovery helped to make Ivory soap a household name. We still use it today. More than one hundred years later.

Now, let me share with you a practical application of what you just learned.

Before you sit down to write an ad for your product… before you pick up the phone to make sales calls… and before you send salespeople out into the street… do a little research.

Follow these steps…

1. List all of the advantages and benefits your product delivers. The obvious ones.
2. Get ALL of the competing products and find out what their features and benefits are as compared to your product.
3. Determine what one single benefit of your product stands out above all the other products in your category. (I guarantee you there is at least one.)
4. Create a marketing and sales promotion around that benefit.
5. Let everyone know about it.

You don’t have to get slaughtered by the competition. Odds are your product has some inherent advantage the competition’s product does not have. Find that advantage through some simple research. Then, advertise that distinctive advantage and prosper.

Slaughter The Competition Without Mercy originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.

Over the years I have read everything that I can get my hands on about copywriting, and I’ve even made some substantial improvements. But just recently I found a much better (read: easier!) way to write sales copy.

It’s a backwards fill-in-the-blanks strategy, but it works.

Here’s my strategy: I sell the “product” first. THEN write the copy. I use the word product very loosely by the way — that could mean services, physical products, ebooks, software, you name it.

Let me explain.

I don’t have a problem getting excited about my product. I can write up a quick note to my subscribers or my blog readers and explain the details, and fortunately that excitement and/or sincerity shows through well enough to get conversions on a blank web page with a single order button.

My most recent project was handled that way, with very little explanatory text, and the order page showed a 47% conversion rate. That’s the power of a pre-sell at work, of course.

Translating my excitement from a personable note to professional sales copy is where I start to have problems. And I can only imagine I am not alone.

Writing good sales copy is incredibly important, though. While the pre-sell method may work beautifully, you risk a high refund rate if you don’t properly explain your product upfront.

If you struggle with writing your own sales copy, try this simple 5-step, fill-in-the-blanks system that I am currently using myself:

Step One — Put your product out there and do a true market test. If you already have a mailing list, offer it to your subscribers first.

But if you don’t, you can: conduct a fire sale, do a joint venture, put your product on eBay, post a special offer (WSO) on the Warrior Forum, place an ad on Craigslist.org, or any other method of selling online outside of your own website.

I will generally give a copy of my product to close friends and family members as well, which is particularly effective as they are my worst critics.

Step Two — Compile the feedback, the questions and the testimonials into one file for easy reference. Trust me — there will be plenty. With zero sales copy you will get a lot of questions and some very constructive feedback.

Step Three — Dig through your “swipe files” and find a sales letter that you particularly like. Perhaps a similar product that you purchased online yourself recently. It helps if the product, the target market, and the price point are all similar.

Use this example to create a basic outline of page elements. This includes the introductory text, the headline, the basic flow of the page, the placement of order buttons, the signature and the P.S.

Step Four — Flesh out your outline with product details. You can perfect it later — for now you just want to jot down the basics.

Step Five — Open your feedback file and add the testimonials to your sales letter. Next, go over each question and each response and create one paragraph of sales copy to address each point.

For example, the question “Does this come with ___?” will prompt a paragraph about what your product includes.

If you are staring at a blank page and attempting to write your own kick-butt sales copy, I encourage you to try these five steps for yourself.

You’ll have a high-converting sales letter written in no time that addresses all of the points you may have never thought of on your own!

5-Step Backward Copywriting Shortcut originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.

After a day of school and play, we were all busting with news, feelings, opinions and plans.

What a clever dad. His unwritten rules prevented chaos. They also gave Lesley, the comparatively shy one, her chance to talk.

• Rule 1: Take turns.
• Rule 2: Don’t be mean.
• Rule 3: Listen to others.
• Rule 4: Don’t hog more than your share of the time available.

Unrolling The Conversation Online

You can see where I’m going with this…

All copywriting is part of a conversation, especially on a blog. Even if you never get a single response, you are still speaking to readers. Smart copywriters are always, always aware of the effect they’re having on readers.

Strangely, Dad’s 4 simple rules for talking to my daughters work rather well on a corporate or marketing blog.

Rule 1: Take turns.

That’s what Michel is doing right here and now, inviting more guest contributors while he’s extra busy. Guest contributions are also a great idea for other reasons: a change of voice, new perspectives, alternative ideas, a sense of community.

Try it too when you are suffering from Blog Guilt. (“Oh no, I forgot to write a blog entry!”)

Rule 2: Don’t be mean.

Strong opinions are great. But if the overall tone of a marketing blog is mean-spirited and negative, many readers will be turned off. Aim for a positive, upbeat general tone. That means your occasional negative posting will be all the more powerful, and provoke debate.

Rule 3: Listen to others.

That’s one of the glories of the blog: other people can post comments. The big bonus: you can listen! Getting feedback is one of the prime goals of many marketing and corporate blogs.

For example, they learn what customers really think about a product. Then they can choose whether to incorporate some of those ideas when redeveloping.

But how do you get more than the standard 1% of your readers actively involved?

Try actually inviting them. Make it clear that you don’t know it all, or you may be wrong, or you need more information. Or take an unpopular stance. Or pick a topic that’s hot this very minute on the Web 2.0 circuit. Then ask for feedback because you really need it, not as a gimmick.

Reading other blogs — and quoting them — is also listening to others.

Other people are a primary source for your blog content. Bloggers self-sealed in a world of their own are rare. A non-listening blogger is barely a blogger at all.

Rule 4: Don’t hog more than your share of the time available.

Time is a big issue for blog-readers. They’re certainly not twiddling their thumbs, waiting for your next posting. Heaps are fiendishly busy at work, and yours is certainly not the only blog they read. (My friend Mary checks over 100 RSS feeds daily.)

Blog entries can be any length: long is fine, provided there’s no burble. However, to save your readers time, write a headline that’s concentrated, interesting, and long enough to be unique. Then get to the point in the first sentence.

That’s only courteous. Readers can instantly recognise whether they have already read the post, and whether they want to.

Where did you first learn about communication?

I could say that everything I know about communication, I learned around the family dinner table.

I know you’re into lifelong learning, or you wouldn’t be reading this. But I wonder whether you also acquired some fundamental rules of communication early in life… And if so, what were those rules?

And where did you learn them?

The Blog as Dinner Table Conversation originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.

Here are the 7 Keys to Making a Fortune Using Radio Advertising.

Key 1: Use Direct Response Copy

Most radio ads use ineffective copy — they try to be funny, cute, or clever.

Don’t use these tactics, because they almost never work. Instead, use a direct response ad. A good basic template for such an ad looks like this:

1. Attention-grabbing headline.
2. Associate the listener to the main benefit of your product or service.
3. Describe the offer in vivid language.
4. Re-associate the listener to the benefit.
5. Make a direct call to action (repeat at least three times).

I recommend the call to action, whenever possible, be either a website address or a telephone number.

Once you have convinced the prospect to take one of those two actions, you can place them into your marketing system to make the sale.

Let’s look at two example ads.

First, the “wrong way”…

Wrong Way (i.e., the “Usual” Way)

“Craft Master Jewelers is proud to announce our 20th annual Valentine Sale! Come browse the enormous selection of the finest diamond and gold jewelry available anywhere. Come on in to our store at 1313 Mockingbird Lane, and see for yourself as our friendly courteous staff helps you make the right decision about what jewelry to buy. We have tennis bracelets, solitaires, and even custom pieces available. We have over 75 years experience and are eager to serve you. Call us at 555-1212, visit our website at Craft Master Jewelers dot com, or stop by the store at 1313 Mockingbird Lane today.”

The problems with the ad copy above:

• It uses a lot of cliché language that listeners will instantly “tune out.”
• The ad is not about the listener, it’s about the advertiser: for example, it uses phrases like “our store”, “our staff”, “we have”, etc.
• Too many options: tennis bracelets, solitaires, custom pieces, etc.
• Too many conflicting calls to action: call the phone number, check out the web address, visit the street address.

Now let’s look at an ad for the same company, but this time done using a different approach…

Right Way: “Direct Response” Style

“Attention — men who still haven’t bought that Valentine’s gift. It’s not too late to make her glow with love for you. Imagine… a jewelry craftsperson asks you a few simple questions, and then creates the perfect gift of diamonds or gold. All without the frustrating shopping experience, in a minimum of time, and at the price you choose. Enjoy her surprise and delight… call Craft Master Jewelers now at 555-1212… 555-1212 Don’t disappoint her — delight her instead. 555-1212.”

What’s right about the second ad?

• The focus is entirely where it should be; on the harried, busy, clueless man who hasn’t bought his wife or sweetheart a Valentine’s gift.
• The headline speaks directly to the intended target: specifically, “men who still haven’t bought that Valentine’s gift.”
• The body copy talks about benefits that are important to the men who are most likely to buy jewelry: their concern over budgets, time efficiency, and the fact that they hate shopping,
• The single call to action (in this case, the phone number) is direct, simple, and repeated three times.

Key 2: Any Station Works, If You Buy Enough Ads

While it certainly doesn’t hurt to be on top-rated stations, it’s not necessary. The top-rated station is usually has the most expensive ad rates.

You don’t have to be on the #1 station — there’s no reason you can’t advertise on any of the stations in the Top 10 (as determined by the Arbitron Ratings company — find them at www.Arbitron.com).

When it comes to negotiating rates, here’s a handy trick: listen to the station and make note of what businesses advertise on that station. Then simply call those businesses and ask how much they’re paying. While many will not share their rates, some will.

It might sound simple, but this is a seldom-used tactic can get you the best deals with very little effort.

Key 3: Make Each Ad Contain Only One Most Wanted Result

Many radio advertisers will try to do too many things in a single commercial: get a mention in for their street address, their phone number, their website, and their “special of the week”, and more.

That’s confusing for the listener.

You must decide in advance: what is the purpose for your ad? What is the Most Wanted Result you need to get from your ad?

You need to choose: you can ask consumers to visit a website, or to call a phone number, or to visit your physical store… but if you try and ask for all those results in a single ad, you’ll likely get none of them.

There can be only one Most Wanted Result for each ad you run.

Key 4: Don’t Let the Radio People Write Your Copy

Here’s a dirty little secret of the radio business: over 95% of the ads are written by the salesperson or by a DJ! In fact, the majority of stations do not employ full-time copywriters.

Do you really want a salesperson or DJ writing your copy?

(The answer is, “NO”.)

Even if the radio station (or ad agency) has a full-time writer, chances are the writer will be more interested in writing “cute” or “award-winning” copy, which almost never equals “sales-making” copy.

Don’t let the radio people write your copy. Write it yourself, or hire a copywriter who is well-versed in writing direct response-style radio copy.

Key 5: Never Work With Children or Comedians

For some reason, many radio advertisers feel compelled to try making their commercials “cute” or “funny”. It almost never works.

Using a cute kid voice almost always means the listener will focus only on how cute the voice is… and they will be distracted from listening to the ad’s intended message.

Using humor in your ads is a bad idea because: it’s hard to be funny. It’s even harder to be funny in a way that creates a benefit picture in the listener’s mind.

Bottom line: when you decide to eliminate the cute and the funny ads, your ad might sound a bit “boring”, but will be much more likely to bring you the customers, leads, and profits you desire.

Key 6: Buy Everything But “Drive Time”

Radio sales people love to sell commercials in what’s called “drive-time” (i.e., the hours each day most people are driving to and from work, usually 6am to 10am, and 3pm to 7pm).

That’s because (a) they’re easy to sell, and (b) drive-time spots are the most expensive spots on the radio station — so the commissions for the salesperson are bigger.

When your budget is tight — or when you are testing a new commercial to see how effective it is (the response it gets) — I suggest a different strategy.

Buy commercials every hour outside of morning and afternoon drive times (morning drive is the single most expensive advertising real estate on almost every radio station; afternoon drive is next).

You can normally get these commercials at a great discount. In fact, ask for the commercials from midnight-6am as a “free bonus” for buying the others.

Quite often you’ll get them free — or at least for dirt cheap rates.

If you have a bit more money, or if you tested your ad and it seems to be working well, try buying one commercial in each drive time (morning and afternoon), at the same time every day (so the same people hear the same ad day in and day out).

If that works, you can expand your buying into other drive time hours.

Key 7: Use This Secret Tactic Ignite Your Ad Response

The most popular time-slot on most radio stations is the morning show, which is usually on the air Monday-Friday, 6am-10am.

These are the hours during which the station almost always has its biggest audience.

Listeners tend to be most loyal to a station’s morning personalities and DJs.

If you can get interviewed on the morning show in a favorable light, it can put the rest of your advertising on steroids. If the audience thinks the morning show likes you and your product, it’s as if you’ve been endorsed by the show. This can be an enormous boost for your sales.

You can often make a morning show interview a condition of your advertising contract. One caution: make sure you are not being “forced” on the morning show’s host(s).

Being interviewed in a sarcastic or unfavorable light can be worse than no interview at all.

Win the host(s) over to your cause, make them like you, and you’ll enjoy the halo effect of a true endorsement by the radio personality.

What to Do Now

You now know more than 93% of business owners about the right way to advertise on the radio. Put the power of what you know into action!

Radio can build your business quickly, increasing sales and profits literally overnight.

Put these 7 Keys to work for in your radio advertising campaigns, and start enjoying increased sales and profits.

Profit From Radio Advertising With These 7 Keys originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.

Probably because it shares many characteristics with Alfred Hitchcock films. (Hitchcock is my favorite director of all time.) But it’s also a bit funny, a bit scary, a bit emotional, and very suspenseful. The premise is an alien invasion, but the plot is really about a minister regaining his faith.

Talk about something for everyone!

That brings up a good question. How do you advertise a film that has something for everyone? Do you try to appeal to everyone? Or do you choose the most profitable segment of the market?

As an online copywriter, I often face similar questions for the products I write for. Some products appeal to many different groups of people, in very different ways.

Take web video, for example.

People from all walks of life could use help putting video on the web. From small business owners to corporate types… from eBay sellers to Internet marketers… and from moms who want to show off their kids to kids who want to show off their antics…

… The market for people who want to put video on the web is wide open.

So if your goal is to generate the most sales, who do you direct your copy to? Who is the perfect customer to picture in your mind as you craft the copy?

There are a few ways to answer this question.

If you have an existing site and you’re rewriting the copy, the smartest thing to do is consider where your traffic is coming from. Any basic web stats program should be able to list sites that are sending you traffic (StatCounter.com is one of many, for instance).

A quick analysis of these referring sites is a simple way to discover which market segment is most likely to be your best bet for profitability.

If you’re getting a vast majority of your traffic from say, webmaster forums, you might tweak your copy to address the “techie.”

However, just because you’re getting more traffic from the “webmaster forums,” doesn’t mean this traffic is your most profitable. More advanced tracking programs (like Muvar) can track the number of sales from different traffic sources.

This way, you may discover that “techies” are a majority of your traffic, but a minority of your customers.

Could you tailor your sales message better for the “techies” and see an increase in sales? Maybe. But you may have much better luck going after the traffic that is already converting higher.

But what if you’re writing copy for a brand new site, with no traffic to analyze? Then how do you choose the most profitable market segment to target?

The most obvious choice would be to choose the largest group. But that’s not always the case. You might also consider which segment is easiest to advertise to.

One way to find out which market segment is easiest to reach would be to see how many of them are on the web looking for your product. A basic keyword search can tell you quite a bit.

If you use a program like Adword Analyzer or a web based solution like WordTracker, just type in your root keyword to find out what other keyword suggestions come up.

For example, if you type in “magic tricks” into Wordtracker, you’ll find the most popular related searches are “easy magic tricks” and “simple magic tricks” among others.

So even if your “magic trick” product might be advanced enough for a professional magician, it might be smarter to write your copy for complete beginners… simply because there are more of them searching for magic tricks than there are professionals.

Another consideration when choosing a market segment could be how competitive your market place is. If the largest market segment is being bombarded by several different companies, why not carve out a niche for yourself and cater to a smaller segment?

Also, don’t rule out creating more than one website, aimed at different segments of your market, selling the same product. Maybe a sales letter for complete beginners on one site, and a sales letter for professional magicians on another site will work the best!

Regardless, finding and targeting a profitable market segment in a calculated way is the key to maximizing profits and return on investment.

A product that appeals to the general public isn’t an excuse to write “general” copy. And skipping this step could be a costly mistake.

Target Marketing Boosts Profits originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.

And when it comes to guys who keep their ear to the ground and their eyes on the numbers (and test results), no one has my greater respect than those two guys.

Yes, attention spans are dwindling. Yes, it’s becoming more and more an audio-visual world on the Web.

But let’s look at the whole question from a consumer’s point of view.

Consumers have no time — right? Consumers are impatient — right?

Consumers want to get to the bottom line and make their purchase and move on to watch the Simpsons or have a beer or sneak off into the bedroom with their honey or grab the potato chips out of the cupboard so they can watch six hours of TV, right?

All stereotypes. Some may be true.

But I can’t believe I’m the only discerning consumer in the world when it comes to certain purchases, and in fact I have some pretty solid proof that I’m not.

Discerning consumers need specific information.

And specific information requires copy long enough to give it to consumers — all of it.

This weekend I had an experience as a consumer that drove the point home, big-time.

I’m a second-time buyer of video equipment. The first camera I bought was nice, but it was the size and weight of a brick and difficult to stow away into a suitcase.

My needs for a new one were very specific. It must:

1. Be small
2. Be light
3. Use mini-DV cassettes
4. Have a jack for an external microphone
5. Be able to mount on a tripod.

That sounds reasonable, but there don’t seem to be too many models in production today — at any price — that have all of those characteristics.

I finally found one (the Sony DCR-HC96) after several hours of jockeying back and forth between three Web sites and Google searches.

I ended up reading a 140-page manual online, supplemented by several dozen user comments on amazon.com, to get the information I needed.

Long copy? Web 2.0? You bet. The 140-page manual for this product is longer than any sales letter I’ve ever seen (even Michel’s for Traffic Secrets!). But I couldn’t have gotten a key point I was looking for without reading a couple of the more detailed Amazon comments.

Just in case you think I’m alone in my need for specificity, I found several Amazon comments from owners who had spent 10 times the effort and time researching mini DV camcorders, including several trips to stores.

One, who had purchased another model, admitted to having broken down in tears when it didn’t perform as promised.

What does this have to do with long copy?

Simply this.

If Sony and its vendors had imaginatively anticipated what I (and probably several thousand other finicky consumers) were looking for and had arranged user-experience and feature/benefit information in an easy-to-access way (and no one ever said long copy has to be the typical scroll down a single page that we’re all so used to in the info-marketing field)…

… Then Sony would be selling a LOT more of this camera.

Now the chances of Sony or any other Global 1000-type corporation even considering the question are more remote than Donald Trump deciding to go for the shaved-head look.

OK, fine.

But for the rest of us who are writing copy, think about this lesson very carefully.

Long copy is by no means dead, or an impediment to sales.

Brain-dumped sales presentations may have gone the way of the eight-track tape, but don’t kid yourself that people making purchase decisions don’t need and want the necessary information (especially experienced buyers who are coming back for an improvement on what they already have) to go ahead and order.

People do.

Give them what they want. You’ll get a higher response rate.

By the way — you might be wondering why I went through all the misery I described to get the info I needed to buy.

It was because I have a client, or a series of clients, so massive and lucrative that it was worth the effort. Clients that dropped out of the sky totally unexpectedly. Who will need a setup exactly like the one I cobbled together through all this detective work.

Don’t count on your customer being as motivated as I was to find the information that wasn’t readily available. Normally I wouldn’t have been.

Expend the extra effort and your market will spend the extra money.

I’m sure of it.

Long Copy: A Consumer’s Perspective originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.

Right this minute, we’re staring down the barrel of a full blown Conversion Crisis. It used to be “Johnny can’t read,” now it’s “Johnny can’t convert.” It’s an epidemic.

I’m not telling you this to start a riot in the virtual streets. (Or to make fun of any Johnny.) It just is what it is. And knowing the reason why will help you weather the hurricane that is the Conversion Crisis.

Before I dive in, I want to make a public announcement…

I want to take a moment and thank Michel Fortin for inviting me as a guest blogger. Michel was one of the earliest influences in my copywriting career.

I learned so much from his blog, his Copy Doctor site and a live event along with Gary Halbert, John Carlton and Mark Joyner. So I want to publicly thank him for helping me become a million-dollar online copywriter.

Okay, now back to the business of blogging…

I’ve identified four powerful forces that form the root of the Conversion Crisis (I call them “The Four Horsemen“), and I want to share one of these with you in this posting.

As the Internet grows as a marketing medium, it’s rapidly creating “Instant Marketers” and spitting them out when they fail to hit the money-zone. Why?

That’s the $20,000 question. It boils down to two fundamental issues. People either have problems with:

• A. Generating Traffic
• B. Getting Acceptable Conversion

If you’ve been online for a while, you’ve got a basic understanding about how to get relevant traffic to your website. And, I’m not a traffic expert, so I’ll focus on problem “B” because that’s what the conversion crisis is all about.

If you’re like the hordes of people contacting me on an almost daily basis, desperate about turning their traffic into sales, then pay close attention to what I’m about to tell you.

One of the biggest forces driving the “Four Horsemen” is Market Saturation.

What does that mean?

Well, for starters it means more competition.

I’m not telling you you should be afraid of competition. In fact, quite the contrary. If you’re niche marketing, that’s one of the things you want to look for. Because if you’re seeking your “thirsty crowd,” competition is a great sign that there is money to be made.

The problem with Market Saturation is the fact that there’s just more marketing out there. And the more marketing there is, the more marketing “noise” clutters the eyeballs and ears of your market.

And the problem with more marketing noise is our prospects become increasingly numb to our messages — because most of them, after a while, simply sound the same. By nature, human beings compare almost everything. You’ve got to stand out from “me too!” crowd before you can even get someone’s attention, much less sell them.

The only way to come out on top in this environment is to out-strategize, out-convert and out-sell your competitors and drive them into the dirt. Then, natural selection takes over.

You know this is true. Picture how you make decisions right now about who to learn from, and who you avoid. You’re looking for the signal amidst all of the noise. You want VALUE. That’s why you come to Michel’s blog in the first place, right? Because he delivers it in spades.

More value means more traction.

The Internet is the fastest growing medium in history. No other mass media has grown as fast as it did. Newspapers, Radio, and Television all took decades to penetrate the mass market, while the Internet took less than one.

According to a PBS report in 2006, Robert X. Cringely reported Ad sales, viewership and readership for traditional media — e.g., television, magazines and newspaper — are all trending down. (And recent studies show that Internet growth is slowing down, too.)

But what struck me is when Cringely said, “Television, radio, telephones, even electricity grew to about 70 percent market penetration and stalled until a generation shift made ubiquity possible. Each of these industries literally had to wait until their non-users died.”

Where is Internet penetration now in the US?

According to the CIA World Factbook (2006), roughly 63% of Americans are connected to the Web. And in the last year, it’s still managed to grow. That clearly proves we are near that magical 70% figure… and the market is now officially saturated. (You can see more evidence in my special report.)

Does that mean we should all pack up out virtual bags and look for the next big thing? No, I think not.

But it does mean that marketers who want to “make the cut” need to beef up their conversion skills — or suffer the consequences. And the fallout will be severe for those who fail to heed the warning.

How do you conquer the Conversion Crisis?

Well, a great start to insulating your online business is to get scientific. No, I’m not talking slide rules and pocket protectors, I’m talking testing.

In fact, I have personally seen mediocre copywriters and marketers achieve phenomenal conversion rates by simply implementing aggressive testing practices.

And I’m firmly convinced that anyone with the desire can do it, too. Only then will you rule the roost in your market.

I was in Investment sales for over a decade, and we had an old saying:

“The Market Is Always Right.”

When I got into direct response copywriting, I never imagined that truism would carry over into this world. (Oh boy, does it ever.)

And the greatest thing about the the direct response biz is the fact that we can actually ask our market what would make them buy. We do it through testing… and it always gives us the correct answer…

… that is, if we allow it to.

Now I realize that many of us are walking around in the “yeah, I already know that” trance. Heck, I’ve been guilty of that myself. So, don’t let this revelation (if you want to call it that) land on you that way.

Do something about it.

Because chances are, either you’re not testing at all or, if you are, you may be testing the wrong things the wrong way.

It’s never been easier (or cheaper) with some of the testing tools available for free (like Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer, for instance).

And the dirty little secret online is that many of the gurus who always tell you to “test, test, test” don’t do it themselves. (I know this because they want me to create their ads.) I shudder to think how much money they were leaving on the table before I made them test.

So, get hip to testing, let the market tell you what works, and side-step the Conversion Crisis — before it’s too late. For more on this, I encourage you to download my free white paper, “Conversion Crisis,” by clicking here.

Why Can’t Johnny Get Conversion? originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.

The real estate office manager marched to his secretary’s desk. He rubbed his face in frustration. I stopped making cold calls to spy on their conversation.

In muffled tones, he told her to write a “house ad” for a new listing. He wasn’t sure what to write. So he told her to come up with something. Anything.

Back then I sold real estate for a living. I just started learning how to write ads that work. But I couldn’t believe what just transpired.

The office manager abdicated his most important responsibility — writing ads to bring in new leads — to his… secretary.

Ever feel like this guy?

Most online and offline business people do. Faced with a blank page or computer screen they shut down. Otherwise articulate people cower in fear when it comes to creating ads.

They squirm in their seats. Guzzle down cups of coffee. Read the paper. And, worst of all, pawn the job off to someone… anyone… else.

Look, when it comes to crafting advertising winners, nothing is more important than…

Knowing What To Say

Yet, the biggest problem advertisers wrestle with is, well, knowing what to say in their promotions. You see, your prospects respond to what you write.

How you write takes the back seat. Because regardless of how eloquently you say it, you first must say the right things…

… Things proven to elicit response.

Here are a few secrets to discovering what to say. Once you know these secrets, your confidence levels will soar. You’ll never again stare in bewilderment at a blank page or computer screen. Nor will you ever guess what to write in your promotions.

Step One: Stop Guessing

First, you should know, nothing murders response rates more than guessing. And there’s no need to guess anyway.

What you do instead is this: Gather about you three or four ads targeting your market. Try to find ads that sell the same or similar products. Try to find ads specific to the media you’ll use. Try to find ads that keep running over and over again.

These are proven winners.

Step Two: Make A Benefit List

Armed with these proven promotions, it’s time to take the next step.

Make a list of all the benefits contained in each ad. If you find three relevant ads, then you’ll write three separate benefit lists. Then circle all the benefits appearing in each ad.

Guess what? These benefit lists you create reveal the market’s hot buttons. The benefits that show up in each ad over and over again are the benefits you highlight in your ad.

Step Three: Model Successful Ads

Take one of the ads you like and use it as a template. Insert the most pertinent benefits — based on the research you just did — into your ad.

Now, you’ll rely on a proven successful model to craft your own ad. Doing so puts the odds in your favor. In fact, by following this simple three-part formula, you can create ads that are up to three times more effective than anything you could dream up on your own.

In conclusion, once you know what to say in your ads, generating the type of response you want is easy. And the easiest way to know what to say in your ads is to model successful ones.

Otherwise, you’re guessing and hoping to find the right sales appeal. Follow the three steps above and you’ll be way ahead of most business owners who write their own advertising.

Three-Step Shortcut to Writing Successful Ads originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.

Or, worse yet, have you ever felt the need to rationalize a purchasing decision to save yourself from this conflict?

This very thing happened to me just a few days ago. However, this time it was the vendor who initiated the remorse. (The result was the loss of a four-figure sale!)

Read on to find out their grave mistake… and the marketing lesson behind it.

Having lived in Arizona for the past 33 years, I have endured many, many hot summers. My personal motto is, in Arizona, “It’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity” (for living in the desert in the first place, that is!).

Nevertheless, all joking aside, I’ve never owned a swimming pool, and I elected to have one built this summer for the first time. With temperatures boiling at 116 degrees last week, I knew I made the right decision.

When I originally chose the pattern last April for my new pool, I selected a tile and grout that, to me, looked absolutely fantastic. It was classy, and didn’t have that “hotel pool” look to it, which I wanted to desperately avoid.

Fast forward to this week, and the very day before the tile company was scheduled to install the tile.

I received a call from the pool company, and I was shocked as to what they asked me:

“Hello, Mr. Bernstein? This is Joe Blow (not his real name, of course) from (company name). We were calling to find out if you were sure of your tile selection for your pool.”

I said, “Am I sure? Absolutely. I spent over an hour picking it out myself.”

The conversation could have ended there and the installation carried on as scheduled.

But it didn’t.

What happened next was perplexing. You see, just when I thought the conversation was over, they then felt a need to explain:

“It’s just that we’ve never had anyone pick out the combination of tile and grout that you did.”

To fill you in, here’s what happened: I chose a marbled cobalt tile with charcoal grout. Usually, the common grout color with this tile is white.

The core reason for my choice was to make sure that the emphasis was on the tile, not the grout. And I wanted to make sure that the cobalt “popped” out or at least blended in, since too much contrast would have caused the white grout to become the center of attention.

(Remember, I didn’t want that “hotel pool” look!)

The bottom line is that the tile company put so much doubt in my mind that, even though I was originally happy with my choice, I told them to postpone the installation until I had a chance to think about it.

Let me repeat those words: “a chance to think about it”.

(I wouldn’t mind that they questioned my color selection if, and only if, they felt I made an error. That would be just good customer service. But I made it abundantly clear that I was happy with my selection.)

Well, the next morning, I went into the pool dealership, looked at the tile again, and confirmed my original choice.

However, in the process I also discovered another tile that I liked even better… one that was manufactured by a different company!

So on the same day of what would have been the pool’s installation, I changed my decision.

And the original company lost a four-figure sale — all because they created doubt in my mind by questioning my buying decision, particularly AFTER I made it.

Now, what has all this got to do with us marketers and copywriters?

Whether through a showroom (like the pool company) or our marketing abilities, we spend a lot of energy and time showing people the benefits and beauty of our products, and assisting them in making a buying decision that makes them comfortable.

So why on earth, then, would we ever want to jeopardize a sale by introducing buyer’s remorse, especially directly to the client?

Believe me, it’s more common than you think.

For example, have you tried buying your own product just to test it? Have you looked at your order page and “thank you” page copy? Heck, do you have a “thank you” page at all?

More importantly, do you praise your customers and educate them on how to use your product after they buy? (This is often called a stick letter, also known as product consumption education.)

The moral is this: when your client purchases something from you, especially when it’s a high-ticket item, praise them on their decision. Support them. Even educate them on how to consume your product.

For example, if you sell software, then show them how to use it. If it’s an automobile, show them how to care for it. Product consumption education not only reduces buyer’s remorse, it also reduces refunds and returns.

And do ask questions to make sure they’ve made the right decision… while they’re making it. It shows that you care, and builds trust and credibility.

But never, ever, ask them if they’ve made the correct decision! (Particularly after the decision is made, let alone on the eve of the delivery!)

After all, your job as a marketer or copywriter is to remove doubt, not create it. Otherwise, you will be the one who suffers from a case of seller’s remorse.

Don’t Let Your Sales Drown in Doubt originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.

I could simply write about it and tell you what’s going on. I certainly couldn’t write about the issue specifically because, fortunately, it doesn’t affect my family.

But I recently discovered that this issue hits very close to home for one of my coaching students, Mila Sidman. Mila is also a great writer. So rather than writing a blog post myself on a topic I know little about, I decided to ask her to write today’s blog post as a guest blogger, instead.

You’ll soon realize why…

The latest statistics show that 1 out of 150 children have autism (up from 1 out of 10,000 just two decades ago).

I believe there are many more that have mild cases of autism and remain undiagnosed. Often times, they go through life being labeled as “strange” and in school they may be seen as troublemakers or “bad.”

For families living with autistic children there is a daily struggle to do even the simplest of tasks. Getting ready for school in the mornings or going out to dinner can be an ordeal.

And raising other “normal” children in a household with an autistic child means siblings often get pushed to the side or have to just deal with it, as the autistic child needs so much extra help and attention.

I know of these experiences all too well.

My 9 year-old-son has Asperger’s Syndrome also known as high-functioning autism.

Ever since he was a baby, I knew there was something different about my son. The toddler years in our house were filled with turmoil, many everyday things like going to the supermarket or park would send my son into an extreme crying or screaming fit. At times he would hide and just rock and cry.

I felt helpless as a mother and thought I must be doing something wrong because I couldn’t comfort my child.

Around the age of 5 or 6 things got much worst.

School can be a scary place for an autistic child. Some of his teachers were loving and understanding, but others weren’t. I’ll never forget one substitute teacher saying to me, “Your child acts like he’s possessed, something needs to be done to stop him or he will grow up to be a monster.”

You see my son started screaming because he couldn’t take the sensory stimulation from an experiment they were doing in class (he can’t deal with loud noises).

At the age of 7 we had to pull him out of the public school system because he was having night terrors about going to school and was being bullied by his peers. He would cry and scream all the way to school and back. I had to drag him out of the car and leave him in a terrible state. One day, I couldn’t face it anymore and didn’t send him back.

It was a struggle but I knew I needed to find another solution.

My son turns 10 in a few days and he’s slowly learning to deal with many of his symptoms. He can now control his ‘stimming’ to a certain extent. Autistic children tend to stim and flap their arms and hands at certain times.

He’s also a very kind child and has learned to play the piano. He loves computers and enjoys playing with his younger brother and sister.

I do worry about the future. What will it be like when he’s a teenager? Children tend to become less accepting as they age and peer pressure kicks in. How will he cope when he has to live on his own? Will he ever go to university or get a good job? Will he ever get married and have children of his own?

And if all that isn’t enough to worry about, parents of autistic children have other battles to fight. To get the right education and treatment for their child, they have to jump through what seems like an endless array of hoops and red tape.

Most insurance companies don’t cover important therapies autistic children need such as occupational or speech therapy. In our case, we have to pay out of pocket for ALL expenses.

We have speech therapy costs, occupational therapy, and school costs. The public education system isn’t geared to give autistic children the help and support they need, so the choices are find a specialist private school or let your child pay the price in other ways.

Where other families are saving for college or family vacations and retirement, all our money goes to get our son the extra help he needs… thousands and thousands of dollars just so that he can have a somewhat normal life and not fall through the cracks.

And we’re lucky.

I can sit at my computer and work till 2 or 3 in the morning to make a little extra money, but many other parents don’t have a way of paying for these things and unfortunately their children don’t get the help they need. What will happen to these kids in the future?

When I heard Dr. Mike Woo-Ming has put on an event to help autistic children and their families, I was very touched. Dr. Mike himself has a 7 year-old-son who has Asperger’s syndrome.

Through hard work and a strong will to make a difference and ‘do something’ to change things, he’s brought over 50 top marketers together for a good cause.

That cause is Marketers on a Mission.

These marketers have donated some of their best-selling courses and materials for this cause. The internet marketing community never seizes to amaze me; this is such a generous and giving group. And this latest event cements just how much people care.

By donating to this cause, you’ll be helping many families who are struggling daily to help their children lead a normal life. All proceeds 100% go to the Pioneer Learning Center, a school specifically that helps children on the autism spectrum including Asperger’s, ADD, and other social integration disorders.

Please open your heart and help. You’ll feel good, make a big difference to a child’s life, and get some very valuable educational marketing materials in the process. Go there now…

Click here to visit MarketersOnaMission.org.

Thank you, Mila, for such a great article. I equally ask you to do the same. Go check out the website and find out how you can be a part of this worthy cause.

1 Out Of 150 Children Suffer From This originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.

Spring is in the air again. I can tell by the way my grass is turning yellow with dandelions, and my hayfever is acting up.

Coincidence? You decide …

As the air warms in my backyard and the birds begin to once squabble at my wife’s bird feeder over the remnants of last year’s seeds, I’m at once overcome with the excitement of a brand new year — because spring always feels more like the beginning of a new year than New Years day, doesn’t it — and at the same time struck by an odd sense of deja-vu.

Spring is the great conundrum, ladies and gentlemen. It’s the time when we try new things, while still relying on the things we know work. It’s when we hedge our bets by incorporating what we do successfully with what we’re willing to try.

And it’s a time when our comfort in the things we know gives us the courage to try the things we don’t.

And it’s perfectly natural. Take my dog for instance. Amber will be 15 years old this fall, and she has relied on an old tattered Bombay chair for daytime rest for as far back as I can remember. It’s in that chair that she’s acquired the nickname, “Roadkill,” but that’s another story.

Anyway, that old tattered Bombay is her anchor, the center to her universe, and the home base she needs to have the confidence to explore the rest of her world.

No matter where she goes or what she gets into, that old Bombay is always there for her when she returns. It’s her safety net, it’s what she knows, and it’s what works for her.

I once removed that old chair, and the poor old girl wandered restlessly through the house for a full 48 hours without sleep before I relented, and decided that the ratty old thing — the chair, not the dog — was really not all that ugly after all.

So the Bombay returned to the family room, and the dog returned to normal. But here’s the thing: with spring has come a whole new sense of discovery in the old mutt.

Just yesterday, I saw her venture for the first time onto the ledge of our bay window to catch a snooze in the sun. She’s never done that before. And after an hour or so of snoring blissfully in a position best described as “awkward,” she woke up, got back into her familiar chair, and promptly returned to doing her impression of a well-oiled chainsaw.

The point here is that everyone feels a little more daring in the spring. Everyone feels more willing — if not flat-out compelled — to try new things.

But you’re most comfortable responding to this newfound curiosity and courage when you have the unshakeable knowledge that you can always fall back on what has always worked.

And that knowledge is your safety net.

Your own personal Bombay chair.

This month, in honor of this odd dichotomy of spring, my suggestion to you is to get a refresher on what makes great copy — and maybe just as importantly, what doesn’t.

Scroll through some of Michel’s articles lingering in the archive. We’re sure you’ve probably heard a lot of the ideas in them before.

But if you’re planning any new campaigns — and you should be, shouldn’t you? — then now is the ideal time to review your websites, your marketing, your sales copy, and your general strategies to make sure you’ve got the basics covered.

It’s also a perfect time to review some of the tenets of good copy, so that you apply those tried and true ideas to your new explorations. Think of it as a spring cleaning for your own personal Bombay chair.

You may now join Amber in the sun on window sill.

The Benefits Of A Good Chair originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.

Essentially, it’s about appealing to different buyer personalities with your copy. Some people are driver types. Others are more analytical. Some are expressive and colorful. Others prefer the warm-fuzzy type of copy. Either way, your copy should chiefly appeal to the predominant personality of your market.

So before I go any further, you better read this article. (There are also many great lessons about copywriting used — and some hidden in the article itself. About storytelling, about the power of metaphor, and about human behavior. I suggest you read it, then read it again. Look for them. It’s that powerful.) Take it away, Joe!

So I’m clearing out some space on my shelves to make a little room for hiding presents (or as my wife, Heather, likes to call it, “Thinning out the collection of crap”) when my mind starts to wander.

Now, this is not an unusual thing, because I’m a sentimentalist (a.k.a. “packrat”). So, as I sort through the boxes and bags, I drift, I remember the good times, I think about stuff, and I generally get a bit of a rosy haze going.

Ah, the good times we had…

I’m shaken from my bliss by the crash. It seems the box I had been balancing precariously on my knee while reaching for some sort of mounted singing rubber fish (where the heck did that come from? And can I regift it?) has forsaken its resistance to the gravitational pull of my floor, and has instead decided to meet the challenge head-on.

It was a noble idea, but the box loses.

Startled from my daydream, I look down to discover that finally, and bit disturbingly, some of my university text books have hit the top of the delete pile. Meaning, of course, that I need to find a reason to save them from this almost Stalinist purge. And fast.

I bend down and start picking them up, flipping through them as I do…

Here, a well-worn copy of Psychology Today (well, maybe not today, exactly, but it was au courant a scant 25 years ago)…

There a less-used copy of Today’s Isms (a political diatribe no less weighty — not to mention out of date — than its psychology contemporary)…

And finally an exceptionally well-preserved 3^rd Edition Abnormal Psychology.

Ah, at last, a book that is completely relevant today. I mean, have you been to the malls? Man, if that’s not aberrant behavior, I just don’t know what is. I’d love to tell you about the nightmares I’ve been having lately in which the overhead speakers just keep droning “An associate to Aisle 3 please, associate to Aisle 3…”

Okay, Joe, shake it off…

Anyway, thumbing through these tomes, I come across a section on Freud’s Id, Ego, and Superego. And it occurs to me that a few issues back, I gave you the Pop Psychology 101 version of Freud’s theory.

Did you miss it? I’ll recap…

Freud said that the human being has but one steering wheel. Unfortunately, there are 3 crazed maniacs all clutching at each other to wrestle control of it for their very own. They are (in order of appearance):

• The Id, who simply says “I want it,” when he sees something that gets him excited.
• The Ego, who, being more practical, says “But you can’t get to it,” when the exciting thing is out of reach.
• And then the Superego, who says “And besides, it wouldn’t be nice to just take it.”

Now, I realize I used a genderalization there, and that wasn’t intentional. But thinking about it, I always kind of thought the Id was the classic impulsive male, the Ego, his more level-headed girlfriend, and the Superego — well, the jury is still out on that one.

Although I can’t help but picture Sister Mary Louise from my kindergarten year. Don’t ask why. You know, my knuckles hurt even typing that name.

Again, don’t ask why.

And anyway, none of that is all that important. What is important is this: The Id, the Ego, and the Superego, they all have very specific motivations and hot buttons. And they all pretty much hate each other.

So it should come as no surprise that they also tend to be shocked or offended at what each of the others find attractive.

An interesting love triangle, no? Now there’s a made-for-TV movie!

Look, I’m not a Freudian by any stretch, and his vision of 3 separate heads fighting over the steering wheel just makes me think of the final scene in Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers (if you’ve read it, you know exactly what I mean; If you haven’t, go borrow it from the library, and never look at D-cell batteries the same way again!) But it’s interesting to me all the same.

I mean, think about it. What gets the Id going? Shiny things! Get his heart pumping, and he reaches for his wallet. Get the adrenaline flowing and he’s reaching for the bonuses. Get the sweat pouring, and he’s buying the deluxe, 22-part, members-only, super-duper-never-to-be-repeated Diamond Package!

In other words, dear friends and faithful readers, for the Id, the hard sale sells!

What do the others think of that? Let’s ask, shall we?

• Ego: “Well, that’s all well and good, but do we really need it? And what’ll it do for me? Will it even fit in my garage?”
• Superego: “How crude and morally repugnant that you should speak to me that way. Now don’t ever call here again.”

Hmmm.

Well, I did mention that they weren’t each other’s best friends, didn’t I?

So what makes the Ego reach for the Visa (or the Master Card when the Visa’s maxed out)? Just the facts, ma’am. Ego doesn’t want to hear hype and hyperbole. Ego wants to know the practical truth. Show ego a fundamentally important piece to her future plans and she gets interested. An excellent potential return with minimal risk, and she’ll buy you dinner. A good cost-benefit analysis, and you’ll be staying for breakfast.

And the others?

• Id: “Screw that, where are the shiny things?”
• Superego: “Getting warmer, but will it help me sleep at night?”

As an aside, is anyone else out there wondering just where the heck these ideas come from? If you figure it out, let me know…

And finally, how do you get after the Superego?

Dust off the halo, sprout some wings and sing like an angel. Helping the environment? Okay, here’s a quarter. Helping the poor and underprivileged? There’s an extra dollar. Saving mankind from himself (and that ghastly Id character) and… Well, will you take a check?

The others, of course, have a different take:

• Id: “No! NO! NO! SHINY THINGS!!!”
• Ego: “Yeah, yeah. But will it slice, dice, and julienne in just a fraction of the time?”

Yes, it’s a weird little world that I live in.

But I’m kind of heading into a point here, and that point is this:

You gotta know who you’re talking to if you want your copy to sell.

Seems simple, but we all too often completely miss it, because we are distracted by this other interesting fact: If you hit your target audience square in the chin, scoring a first-round knockout, at least one group who is not your target audience will despise you for it.

Or, more precisely, they will hate the way you’ve done your job.

Because no one really hates writers. We’re the good guys, right?

Anyway, in this article, Mike talks quite a bit about the target audience dynamic, and shows you why it’s not only good, but may actually be something to shoot for, to get hate mail about your copy.

Because chances are, if someone hates it enough to write a letter, there are a thousand others who love it enough to write a check.

Hey! Looks like maybe those books are going to survive another purge after all! Now I guess I’d better go through Heather’s stuff if I’m gonna find more room for presents…

Freud on the Rebound originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.

Life’s too hectic. Go on, tell me I’m wrong. Well, maybe that’s not so for you, but for me, there’s just so much going on, such as:

Writing and editing web sites, technical manuals, tutorials… Car repairs, some done in my driveway, and some done by others, but always under my watchful eye (remind me one day to tell you about my Talon and the plans I have to get back into Autocross with it)… Household maintenance (thankfully the lawnmower died, buying me an extra hour!)… Hockey season (I coach and referee)… And of course, the band in which I’m the bass player and lead singer.

So it was quite a surprise when…

… For the first time in quite a while, I found the time not only to read a book for pleasure, but to actually finish it.

The book was Wizard and Glass, by Stephen King, the fourth novel in the Dark Tower Trilogy (yeah, yeah, I know…) and perhaps the weakest of the bunch in my humble opinion.

For those of you who aren’t following this particular series of books, I’ll give you the short version: A gunslinger sets out to find the Dark Tower, a sort of hub that binds several parallel universes together. It seems the Tower is in major need of repair — plumbing, I suspect, although that’s not entirely clear — and the parallel worlds are beginning to feel the effects.

Anyway, the gunslinger meets and adventures with several characters along the way. By the second book, his posse (which you knew he would eventually have to have) is formed, and together, they carry on, following The Beam, a hidden structure that ties the worlds together through the Dark Tower.

So with that background in mind, I bring you into my living room just last night. The lamp above my favorite reading chair is lit, and my dog Amber is curled up between my knees on the ottoman.

The ottoman, as an aside, is the only piece of furniture on which she is allowed other than her own chair, and then, only by my own graces — Heather, my wife, scowls at me when she sees her curled up in my knees like that, but I’m an old softie and Amber keeps my knees warm.

I had just finished the fourth book, and felt oddly unsettled. I couldn’t quite figure out what was wrong, but I had the distinct feeling I’d somehow been robbed. But my wallet and watch were still intact, so…

And then it hit me.

It was the book. I had waited years for this installment of the Dark Tower (there were five years between Book 3 and Book 4, and I hadn’t seen Book 4 until this summer) and I had read it with a voracious appetite for the trail of The Beam first started way back in Book 1. But when all was said and done, I felt like I got nothing to feed my cravings.

Here’s the deal: The book is largely a retrospective. It starts out in the gunslinger’s “Today,” and then reaches back — way back — into his past, before returning to his “Today.” About 100 pages of current events on either end of the book sandwiching close to 500 pages of the gunslinger in his youth playing with characters that, so far, don’t figure into his travels on The Beam.

I hate it when authors do that, I really do.

But the issue wasn’t so much the 500 pages — it was a very well-told story with an interesting plot — but the fact that those 500 pages contributed very little to the gunslinger’s current situation. It was a great story, but had little bearing on the adventure.

Those 500 pages were, in a word, irrelevant.

What the King of Horror had done, basically, was the old bait and switch. I wanted more of the adventure that I had been following, and instead, I got another adventure sandwiched between snippets of what I considered important to that book.

And I felt a little cheated.

“So what,” you may ask, “has that got to do with writing copy?”

Well, judging by that ageless debate going on in the world of copywriting, just about everything.

There’s a thread in my forum in which the battle rages over long copy versus short copy. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the different approaches taken by different people to copywriting:

On one side the argument is that only bad products require long copy, so long copy is a scam (badly oversimplified, that synopsis, but it serves well-enough).

On the other side of the argument is the idea that well-written long copy sells better than well-written short copy (again, oversimplified, but you get the idea).

In Michel’s article, found here, Mike explores the two sides to the debate, and weighs in with his thoughts on the matter. We think you’ll find the article more than just informative: We hope it’ll prompt you to really consider the value of the words you’re putting on that screen before you decide: Is more really more or is less actually more?

Or something like that.

Because long copy is often appropriate, and does sell better — when done right. But short copy is also sometimes the right tool for the job.

As for me, as your intrepid editor, it’s not for me to cast my runes into the ring and tell you what I think, because you’re the writers, and no one knows better than you what the current project really requires.

But I will tell you this: While reading that middle 500 pages of the latest Dark Tower novel, I seriously considered not finishing the book. Several times. Because the information felt irrelevant to the story. If that were a long copy ad and I had no reason to trust the author, that would have been a sale lost.

Just something to think about.

And now, Mr. King, let us return to The Beam, shall we?

Stephen King And The Long Copy Debate originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.

There’s an old saying: “Depending on the circumstances, any tool that comes to hand becomes a hammer.”

Now, let’s start with a basic premise: When you write copy, you build knowledge, trust, and sales, and language is your hammer. Some might take that a step further and say that the point of your writing is to “nail” your prospects, but I don’t think I want to go down that road today.

Instead, I want to talk a bit about your main tool of the trade, your proverbial hammer…

… Language.

As some of you know, I come from a corporate background, largely technical documentation and B2B marketing copy. In that world, writing is a very formal affair.

In my years as a corporate denizen, I’ve worked with several very talented people, professional writers who understood that they had to write differently for technical white papers than for tutorials, and that the way they spoke was vastly different from the way they wrote under almost all circumstances.

That’s why it always amazes me when I get phone calls like this…

I got a call the other day from someone I used to work with. Seems someone I know knows someone she knows, and as a result of that small-world phenomenon, she discovered what I was doing these days.

So, in response to either morbid curiosity or pure boredom, she came to read some of the copy I’ve written over the last little while.

And then my old colleague, a militant, self-styled keeper of the sacred trust of the English language, called me up out of the blue to — well, the phrase that comes to mind immediately is “rip me a new one.”

“How can you write like that? You’ve butchered and bastardized the language at every turn! You’ve dangled participles! You’ve used contractions! You’ve sliced and diced sentences! And the Harvard commas — WHERE ARE THE HARVARD COMMAS?!?!”

Now, don’t get me wrong, this is a very educated lady — she has an MA in English — and she generally knows what she’s talking about. But that didn’t stop me, because such things seldom do. I had been challenged, a gauntlet thrown down, my credibility called into question, and my reputation sullied.

My testosterone demanded — and formulated — a swift response. And for once, much to my surprise, it actually had the right answer:

“Maybe. And that copy sold 240-odd products at $60 a piece in less than 24 hours. How much did your last writing assignment sell?”

“It’s not the same thing!”

“My point.”

In fact, my point exactly.

You all know that there are dozens of ways to speak English — “dialects,” if you will — and each one serves a pretty specific purpose. This is what I like to call Venue Appropriate Language, “VAL” for short.

Val is your very best friend, not to mention one of the most important tools of our trade.

And if you don’t do it with Val, you’re just not doing it right.

Think about it.

When you write letters to people you don’t know, you are a lot stiffer, a lot more formal than when you write to friends. When you promote yourself for marketing jobs, you’re a lot more playful than when you promote yourself as a technical editor. And sales letters selling financial products are more language-conscious than letters written to sell information products.

Why? Because whether you’re trying to win the hearts or minds of your audience, you need the right language to drive your message home. Because what you say is about informing and persuading, but how you say it is about painting a picture that the client’s buying motivator can recognize.

We sometimes use formal language to paint a picture of button- down logic. Sometimes we use warmer, less direct language to help the heart feel joy or need. And sometimes we write in a familiar, friendly way to help the reader feel comfort or hope.

Michel Fortin’s latest article deals with the concept of using effective (as opposed to correct) language, and represents another little refresher that ties into last month’s back-to-basics theme. Reacquaint yourself with Val, who is your supreme ruler.

If you don’t make it with Val, you just might not make it at all.

So I guess the two things I’d like you to take away from this are these:

1. Be very conscious of who you’re writing to — the heart or the mind, the family or the individual, and so on — and make sure you use the right dialect, and …
2. Before you follow in the steps of some of my old colleagues and jump all over the way someone has written, put yourself in their prospect’s shoes and ask yourself: What do I feel when I read this? And what do I see?

Remember that it’s more important to have the right language in your copy than it is to have the correct English. Because, while anything that comes to hand can be a hammer, there still is nothing like the right tool for the job.

Tool belts, everyone.

The Importance of Doing It With VAL originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.