Secrets of Writing Winning Online Marketing Copy, Part 1

The Power of a Good Story

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By Sean Eric Armstrong

Many people are intimidated by the idea of writing marketing copy, fearing that they need to be literary geniuses in order to write successfully. But there's no need to be intimidated, because the basics of successful communication are easy to understand.

For years, I've been helping people use the Internet to grow their businesses using powerful and effective writing techniques. My monthly Kethyr's CAMEL Report weaves information about communications, advertising and marketing into an educational and entertaining e-letter that's been engaging readers since its inception. It's been called "inspirational, approachable, informative, humorous and addictive."

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I've prepared this special report to help you understand the basics of writing successful copy for both your online and offline marketing endeavors.

Let's start with your first mission when writing marketing copy, which is to get some type of response: to sell something, generate a lead, get a donation, or get your candidate elected.

In short, you want to move your readers to take a desired action.

But to do this effectively, you must entertain them. That is how you keep your readers' interest.

It's also how you make what you are selling — and its benefits — real to your readers, without making them feel like they're being sold or that they've "seen it all before."

Stories bring originality, creativity, and emotion to your promotions, giving you a valuable advantage over others in the marketplace.

There are many ways to tell a story, but there are five essential keys that make a story grab your target audience and get them involved — and personally invested — in your promo.

1. Create a Strong, Personal Voice

You may already be aware of the importance of knowing your prospect, but you also need to know yourself or the person you're writing for. You need to write with a clear voice. A voice that is as personal as if you were sitting right next to your prospect having a one-on-one conversation.

You need to be clear about your business personality, and aware of the phrases or expressions you use regularly. How strongly do you express your opinions? How do you speak to others?

Without a clear, distinct, personal voice, your piece will be dull. You'll lose readers before they finish the first page.

2. Get Your Mind Around the Details

There's a great scene in the movie "Reservoir Dogs," where Tim Roth's character tells a story convincing the bad guys he's one of them. The story works because of the details.

When you tell a story in your promotion, know and use the details. Is the mountain in Nepal? Or is it in the heart of the Himalayas, surrounded by a blanket of clouds at the top of the world? Did the man who climbed the mountain take several days to reach the top? Or did he scale the 11,167 feet of the southeastern slope for four days and nights, braving waist-deep snow, 30-mile-an-hour winds, frostbite, and the ever-present danger of an avalanche?

Use concrete words to describe things… strong verbs, specific nouns. The details make your story believable.

3. The All-Important Hook

The "hook" is your story's lead — the first sentence or two that grabs your prospects attention and makes him want to read more. This may be different from your promotion's lead, since you might use several different stories in different places within a single promo.

Three effective hooks are: (1) Lead off with a shocking or surprising quote from someone within the story, (2) provide some terrifying fact or figure that relates to the story, and (3) start your story in the middle, when it's most exciting, and then provide the background details.

A strong lead for a story using the details above might be, "Comatose and twice left for dead, John Mallory suddenly awakened after more than 12 hours of lying in the sub-zero temperatures. In spite of horrific frostbite on his hands and face, Mallory had one reason to get back on his feet and finish the journey he began weeks before."

The hook grabs your readers' interest, and they are compelled to keep reading to discover what happens next.

4. Build Emotional Involvement

Once you've hooked your readers, make them care about what's happening to your story's main character.

There are two quick ways to do this.

First: Create a common bond between the reader and the person in the story. You could begin, "After surviving a bitter divorce and the death of his parents, John Mallory knew he needed a fresh start." Everyone knows someone who has gone through these situations, so it immediately creates sympathy.

Second: Show your main character growing or succeeding in ways the reader can relate to. For example:

"John came to me feeling miserable. He was overweight. Felt flabby and tired all the time. His sex life was… well, disappointing.

"Using a simple goal-oriented strategy for creating a new life, after just eight short weeks John's entire outlook had changed."

John is turning his life around. He's overcoming conflict in his life. Conflict builds your reader's emotional involvement in the promo.

5. Create Suspense

In addition to creating emotional involvement, you must create suspense for your reader.

In the example above, the question is: "How did everything change for John? What is this simple goal-oriented approach to life change?" The reader isn't certain of the answer.

There are many other ways to create suspense. You can hint at answers to come later. You can promise the reader the startling conclusion to your story if he just reads on. You can also play on anything surprising or unusual in the story.

Short, personal stories sprinkled through your copy will bring the product and the benefits to life for your reader. Study successful story-based promotions, and you'll see how top copywriters use this technique all the time.

Start using it in your own copy, and see how it works for you.

While being able to write compelling personal stories is an important part of successful marketing copy, it is only the beginning, and there is much more to learn. Stayed tuned… Secrets of Writing Winning Online Marketing Copy, Part 2, will be posted soon.

In the meantime, to learn more marketing and communications techniques to grow your business, be sure to subscribe to Kethyr's CAMEL Report by visiting this link:

http://www.kethyr.com/CAMEL/subscribe.html

Quick Tip: How To Use ALL CAPS To Emphasize Copy

Capitalizing some words can be an effective way to add emphasis to your copy. But beware: Misusing capitalization can hurt your copy… to the point of losing sales. Here are two simple rules to follow:

1. Do not try to put emphasis on certain words by capitalizing only their first letters — Like This. It looks awkward and wrong. Instead, capitalize entire words — LIKE THIS.

(Of course, if a word should normally be capitalized, always do so. If you're not sure, use a spelling dictionary — not your computer's spellchecker.)

2. Do NOT put more than five or so words in a row in all caps. Long stretches of all caps are hard to read, make it look like you're "yelling" — and can reduce response to your copy.

Using capitalization correctly can help your copy sound livelier and more authoritative.

Happy Writing,

Sean Eric Armstrong