Categories
Books

The 10 Commandments of Power Positioning

In 1992, I wrote power positioning as a way to help attract clients in my early career as a marketing consultant without the need for cold-calling or selling.

Categories
Copywriting

How to Target Your Perfect Customer

The most important part of your copy is not your headline, not your offer, and certainly not your benefits. The most important part is your customer. Sounds obvious, right? But I’ve critiqued some pretty good copy. Very well-written and compelling, too. But if the conversion rate is low (hence, the reason why I was hired […]

Categories
Copywriting

Risk-Reversal’s Role Reversal

The greater portion of my career has been in copywriting, selling, and direct marketing. And one of the common denominators I’ve found in any successful piece of sales copy is the power of risk reversal. That is, taking a larger risk from the sale than the purchaser of your product. Risk reversal is a powerful […]

Categories
Copywriting

To Up Sales, Up Words With Upwords!

I first taught this technique in 1998. While there have been tons of improvements since then, today I still see copy on so many websites, sales letters, or emails using a language that only the person who wrote them understands. The bottom line is, most marketers and copywriters still seem to ignore the most important […]

Categories
Copywriting

Legitimate Scarcity Tactics With Digital Products

Scarcity is an effective tactic often used in copywriting to create a sense of urgency in an effort to convince the undecided reader to make a purchasing decision. After all, people procrastinate, and they do for a variety of reasons. It’s simply human nature. So the goal of applying scarcity is to prevent prospects from […]

Categories
Interviews

Gary Halbert Interview #2

In 2005, I interviewed Gary Halbert and John Carlton. In this second call with Gary Halbert before he passed away, he offers more timeless copywriting tips.

Categories
Copywriting

Use Scarcity To Sell, Not Scare

Takeaway selling, for the uninitiated, is a way to limit the supply of a product or service in some way to increase scarcity of an offer. Because it’s a proven fact that scarcity sells. It’s that ageless law of supply and demand. The less the supply is, the greater the demand will be. People don’t […]