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Secrets of Writing Winning Online Marketing Copy, Part 2 Discovering A "Winning Tone" A Kethyr's CAMEL Report Exclusive (Sign up FREE today!) 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". Sign up for Kethyr's CAMEL Report e-letter today. We will not share your email address with anyone else, period. I've prepared this special report to help you understand the basics of writing successful copy for both your online and offline marketing endeavors. Over the past couple of years, I've developed 11 rules for discovering the right voice and tone to use to convince your prospect to buy a product or contribute to a cause. All are important — but the first two are crucial. None of my other nine rules will make a difference without them. First and foremost… 1. Care About Your Reader This is by far the most important secret to writing good, strong compelling copy. Understand what keeps your prospect up at night — and what he thinks about when he wakes up in the morning — and be ready to address those concerns in honest and sincere ways. Understand his worries, needs, and fears. When you have the reader's welfare in mind, you'll write a much more sincere promotion. And sincerity is a very powerful voice. You can't be obvious about it. You can't directly say to him, "Listen, I know you're not doing that well in the market and I want to help you." Your sincerity has to come through in the way you talk to him… the words you choose to use. Let's say you're selling a stock trading service designed to uncover "home-run" profits. You could say: "The market's tough on everyone these days. The Dow is down 3% — the NASDAQ's down 6%. It's pretty tough for anyone to make money out there — let alone someone who's on the outside of Wall Street looking in." "But there are a handful of investors getting wealthy — even in this sideways market. They're doing it using the very same trading techniques the pros use. I'd like you to know about them… so you too can enjoy the profit spoils many Wall Street insiders help themselves to every day." This copy addresses a big concern for most investors: It's tough to make money when the market's not performing. It's empathetic when it says that the market's tough on everyone — suggesting they're not alone and it's not their fault. You've got them thinking, "This guy knows me. He's on my side." And then you invite him into this special group of people who are having success… which in itself makes him feel unique and special. The "caring" is there. Much better than saying: "You can make a lot of money using a trading strategy I'll show you in this letter." Be sure to follow the "caring" language throughout the letter. When talking about the guarantee, for instance, don't just say, "You're guaranteed to like it or your money back." Instead, you say something like… "I'm sure you'll be thrilled with the number of home-run gains you earn with XYZ. But I don't want you stuck with something that's not for you. So if for any reason you're not absolutely thrilled with any aspect of XYZ, just let me know and I'll see that every penny you've spent is returned to you." A little trick I use to ensure I write with a "caring" voice is to think of someone I know who I'd like to see successfully turn their dreams in to reality. Which brings me to my next big secret… 2. Believe In The Product or Service Being Offered No product is perfect, of course. But most have enough good benefits that you can wrap your head around — benefits that you know will be great for the reader you care so much about. How do you get "excited" about a product? Well, if it's your product, hopefully you're already excietd about it. If you're writing about somone else's product, learn "all that is good" to know about it. Read all the marketing information you can get your hands on. Talk to the editor, product manager, or marketing person. Put aside skepticism. Negative thoughts about a product will only sabotage your efforts to sell it. Say you're selling an investment advisory that has a few losing picks associated with it. You can ignore them — but if you do, you're doing your prospect (the guy you care so much about) a great disservice. So what do you do? Be honest! Tell him about the losing picks… then turn that into a positive. Here's one way to do it. After talking about the successful trades, say: "You know, I've just given you seven instances where XYZ has made a lot of money for subscribers. Is every pick on the money? Of course not. I'd be insulting you if I suggested it was. But here's the thing. I've shown you examples of winners returning 120%, 240% — even 560%. But our losers rarely exceed 25%… thanks to our super-strict stop-loss strategy that severely limits the amount of money you could ever lose." Knowing your product, believing in it, and being able to turn negatives into positives is crucial to producing good copy — and ensuring that you're able to talk to your prospect in a good, caring, confident voice. Here are two more of the 11 strategies I use to make my tone natural… and convincing. 3. Use short, simple sentences One of the biggest problems new writers have is breaking the habit of "writing" to their prospects. When you "write" to someone, there's a tendency to use fancy words and construct long sentences that concentrate too much on being grammatically correct. You need to write the way people speak to one another. No one — except perhaps intellectual academics and pretentious people (not that I'm suggesting the two are the same) — speak in paragraph-long sentences. The average "spoken" sentence is about 7-12 words — as long as you can keep a breath of air in your lungs. A good, conversational tone is the best "voice" you can adopt for marketing copy. It puts the reader at ease. He's not intimidated or bogged down in the words. It shows you're a regular person… someone he can relate to… someone he can trust. It tends to quicken the pace of your letter, thus making the letter easier to read. Plus, what could be easier for you than writing short, simple sentences! It's really just a matter of breaking the "writing" habit. Here's a sample from a promo that I came across online for an investment advisory service. One sentence reads: "This simple yet highly effective strategy enables even highly cautious investors to take advantage of momentum stocks that can grow 262%, 439%, even 992% in a matter of months, and to do so while buffering any inherent risks by keeping most of your money protected in U.S. Government securities." Okay, not a terrible sentence. But there's a lot going on there. Here's how I'd write it: "It's a strategy that's ideal for cautious investors. It lets you take advantage of momentum stocks that can grow 262%, 439%, even 992% in a matter of months. And here's the kicker. You make these gains while the bulk of your money sits safely in protected U.S. Government securities." Breaking up this sentence not only makes it easier to read, it does a better job of driving home three very important points: 1) the investment's great for cautious investors, 2) you can still make big gains, and 3) you don't have to risk all of your money to get them. Also, it's much more conversational. The "leanness" of the sentences is much closer to the way someone might express these ideas to you in person. 4. Be aware of tempo Have you ever been reading something — and then a page or two in you realize your mind is wandering and you can't remember what you've just read? Chances are, what you were reading didn't have the tempo or the pace to keep your attention. This happens when a lot of similar sentences are strung together… sentences of similar length and tempo. An example: "Ed Jones is a trader with 15 years of experience, including 10 on the floor of the Chicago Futures Exchange. His knowledge of commodity futures is unsurpassed in the industry, and his track record is one that speaks for itself. Just in the last 15 months, he's rattled off 25 winners, including three that produced gains of over 500%. Now he wants to share his knowledge with you, through a new trading service he's making available to a small group of investors." My hunch is that if you were to read a whole letter with this tempo, you'd drift off. Make an effort to mix up your sentence lengths. Throw in some conversational transitions (more on these in a future article) and figures of speech. Follow a longer sentence with a short one. Make your copy "punchy." This is how people speak. They'll make a statement and follow it up with a qualifier: "We went to that new restaurant out on Route 4 last night. It was great. I had the veal chops — and they were so tender. Great wine selection too. You guys should go…" You can carry the same idea over into copy. For instance… "This is an opportunity that can turn a small $5,000 investment into $20,000 over the next 18 months. It could happen sooner. Just one little spike in oil prices and you could go to bed that night a whole lot richer. Best of all, it's not the only way to get rich from this inevitable trend. There are dozens more. And I'll be telling you about a handful of them in a moment or two…"
Bottom line: Finding the right voice and tone is essential for connecting with your prospects, establishing a relationship with your readers, and convincing them to buy your product. Writing with a "winning tone" is an important part of successful copywriting. But there is much more to learn. Stayed tuned… Secrets of Writing Winning Online Marketing Copy, Part 3, 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 Happy Writing, Sean Eric Armstrong |