Seems I’m ranting a lot these days, and a little more opinionated than the norm. Perhaps it’s my back problem, which is killing me, that’s making me more sensitive or irritable. I don’t know. But something someone recently said in my copywriters forum irritated me. And it’s not what this person said specifically, but the […]
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 […]
Throughout my research, I’m always surprised when I stumble onto websites that are professionally designed and seem to offer great products and services, but lack or fail in certain important elements. Elements that, with just a few short changes, can help multiply the results almost instantaneously. Generally, I have found that there are seven common […]
The most profitable and often overlooked free publicity generator is the news release (also called “press release”, although news release is a better term). News releases are not only great marketing tools but also far more credible and believable than advertising since they appear to come from an objective third party. While publicity is the […]
Part of my job as a copywriter includes, from time to time, creating names for businesses, products, and services. Choosing a name may be the single, most important business decision you will ever make. We are constantly bombarded with marketing messages. Limited by people’s very short attention span, your marketing message has to be effective […]
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 […]
Here’s a reprint of an answer I gave a student in another forum who asked: “Long copy? Or short copy?” 1. Long copy versus short copy has been the single greatest debate since the beginning of the printing press. But long copy always outperforms short copy. Don’t be long for the sake of being long. […]