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 […]
A member of my coaching program asked a question about the legality of using a pseudonym or alias when writing marketing communications. In other words, can he use a pen name? Stated differently, is it legal to write the copy in the voice of a fictitious character? Or telling the story of, say, a fictitious […]
What’s the single, most important element in copywriting? Let me say it another way. You’ve done your research. You found a starving market. Your product fills a need. And your sales copy shines with benefits. If everything is so perfect, then why is your product still not selling? Is it the price? The offer? The […]
The other day, one of my readers asked me the following question, which I found rather interesting: “Why should the author of a product be included in their sales copy?” Seems like a pretty redundant question, right? Especially to any veteran copywriter or marketer worth their salt. But the question didn’t stop there. The reader […]
When writing direct response copy, a few things can maximize the responsiveness of your message. The first and most important element that can turn any website, salesletter, or advertisement into an action-generating mechanism is, without question, the headline. But lately, I’m seeing more and more headlines that are limp, bloated, or simply dead wrong. A […]
In a recent critique for a coaching client, the issue of “gap analysis” arose. Gap Analysis is something I learned in sales, and it was heavily taught by sales trainers like Brian Tracy, such as in his course “The Psychology of Selling.” Gap Analysis is an immensely powerful selling technique. It’s also an important feature […]
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 […]
Writing copy usually involves two major things: figuring out what to say and then how to say it. The second part is usually the easiest because figuring out what to say is often a whole lot harder than how to say it. It requires a lot of research, creativity, time, and, of course, “sales detective […]