Direct Response Copywriter (and Seth Godin) on the Landing Page

I found this blog by Seth Godin about landing pages.

The blog is five years old—an eternity in the world of digital marketing. But the blog provides good advice for everyone who organizes/writes landing pages—and the advice will be salient in several years.

I’m not overly impressed with gurus and celebrities: we’re all the same ultimately. But the media needs stars and Seth Godin got to be one of the stars. I'm not sure I really learn a lot from the guy.

But I’m not jealous. I have a lot more hair and somebody recently told me I looked like I’m 34 while I'm a lot older that that. So, Seth Godin, stuff that in your pipe and smoke it!

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I'm a direct response copywriter based in Charlotte, North Carolina. I specialize in providing copy and content for the direct marketing environment for clients around the world. I increasingly specialize in sales pages and landing pages. Enter your info to the right for my free series: Seven Steps to High Converting Copy. Or contact me here.

An Advanced Copywriting Technique. Your Direct Response Copywriter on Preparation (Part 3).

I’m in the market for a couple of products right now and I’m struggling to find what I want. When I find what these products, I’ll be interested to read the copy that tries to persuade me to buy…it won’t take much. But if the copy really speaks to me, as an ambitious direct response copywriter, then I’ll be more likely to be willing to spend more for these products.

Getting someone to buy—and spend a small fortune on the product, requires a very specific and rarely-used copywriting technique.

If I’m selling something somewhat basic, like yard services, there’s no need to use this technique but if the product or service is expensive, rare, or technical, then this technique can powerful.

I call it: Getting into the Soul.

No—it’s got nothing to do with Earth, Wind, and Fire or KC and The Sunshine Band. It’s not THAT sort of soul.

‘Getting into the Soul’ requires fully understanding what’s emotionally important to the buyer. Let’s remember…many people buy for emotional reasons backed by logic. So it’s the emotion that matters first—followed by the logic. I’ll cover the logic in a later blog so let’s look at the emotion.

This requires understanding the potential customer/client and what’s really motivating them. Sometimes I can discover this by chatting with the client. Other times, I can use my business and life experience to discover what’s REALLY important emotionally.

To be a direct response copywriter, it’s VITAL to have been ‘in the battle’ for several years. I’ve been writing copy for 22 years and I’ve taken detours into magazine publishing and corporate communications. I’ve written well over 10,000 pages of printed content. I’ve written or worked on 18 books covering subjects ranging from Caddyshack to Jack Ruby’s lawyer; Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald.

All this experience (and typing) means I understand what makes human beings tick and I understand a wide range of businesses. When I published magazines, the advertisers were small businesses who provided everything from real estate services to plumbing. This experience helps me quickly understand what’s really important to a client or customer.

I think it’s difficult for someone who is new to business and life in the real world to write emotional copy. You have to have been beaten up a bit to understand people and business owners. Many of the early copywriting greats, like David Ogilvy, sold door-to-door and this helped them understand buying decisions and the psychology of rejection and acceptance. I've been a salesman, too.

Start asking these questions to start using the ‘Getting into the Soul’ technique.

• What’s really important to the prospect?
• What are their major problems?
• Are there some problems due to current events?
• What the prospect’s ultimate goal?

When I’m speaking with a new clients, I always ask, “what’s really important to you when it comes to copywriters?” I get answers based on logic and answers based on emotions.

I’ve got a major problem I’m trying to solve. It’s not an emotional problem but the solution will help me achieve a major goal—and I’m emotional about this goal. If a copywriter can get into my heart and understand my goals then give me the logic, the copywriter may persuade me to make a big investment in the product he or she is trying to sell.

The seriously good direct response copywriters know how to harness the power of emotions. And our brothers and sisters in branding certainly try to get into our emotions. BUT…the branding people fail to get us to take action; they get into our heads and then have no idea what to do. And so they ofteh fail to move the revenue meter. But a great direct response copywriter gets into our souls, then gets into our pockets and persuades the prospect to spend money. Or hand over an email address.

I wrote a couple of high-converting landing pages this past year. In both cases, I felt I fully understood the emotional state of the prospect. It can make a HUGE difference.

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I'm a direct response copywriter based in Charlotte, North Carolina. I specialize in providing copy and content for the direct marketing environment for clients around the world. I increasingly specialize in sales pages and landing pages. Enter your info to the right for my free series: Seven Steps to High Converting Copy. Or contact me here.

Direct Response Copywriter on Landing Page Conversion

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time in the last few months reading about landing page conversion—or conversion rate optimization (CRO) as it’s also known.

A chunk of my work is rewriting the copy for landing pages and the results are usually ‘triple digit’ good. One of the easiest, fastest, and least expensive ways to improve landing page conversion is to rewrite the copy.

It’s pretty simple:

1. Hire a direct response copywriter.
2. Let them do their thing.
3. Follow some graphical direct response techniques (black type on a white background.
4. Test the new page.

You’ll soon ditch the ‘old’ version of the landing page.

There’s actually not a huge amount written about landing pages. But I purchased a book the other day about the subject. I won’t reveal the title but the author has a degree in a computer related field.

I’ve been dipping into the book looking for the copywriting bits and while there’s very little about copywriting per se, big chunks of the book are about offers, testing, addressing an audience, getting people to take the next step, etc. This, my brothers and sisters, is DIRECT RESPONSE COPYWRITING.

You can approach the whole Internet thing from two angles.

1. The technical.
2. The marketing.

The book I just bought is insanely technical.

I’m sorry…BUT…for companies, the Internet is a marketing and sales tool. The successful companies see it thus THEN start to organize the technology. The key is using proven direct response techniques and using the technology as the platform.

The book I just bought obsesses over the platform. When you obsess over direct response copywriting and direct marketing you'll get better results.

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I'm a direct response copywriter based in Charlotte, North Carolina. I specialize in providing copy and content for the direct marketing environment for clients around the world. I increasingly specialize in sales pages and landing pages. Enter your info to the right for my free series: Seven Steps to High Converting Copy. Or contact me here.

Are You Asking Too Much of Your Prospect? Your Direct Response Copywriter on Preparation (Part 2).

What are you asking your reader (prospect) to do?

In my blog, I’ve written often about my local hardware store and I’m going there again. In the hardware store, you can buy anything from a bolt for five cents to a $4,500 Weber stainless steel grill.

A customer will happily buy a bolt during a single visit but getting them to buy the grill—when they’re only there for a bolt—is a big ask. Over time, it’s possible to convert the ‘bolt buyer’ into a grill buyer but it’s going to take a number of visits and some sales oomph on the part of the sales people.

Part of the preparation for writing copy is being realistic about the leap the copy will ask the prospect to make. It’s safest to err on the side of making the gap fairly narrow…UNLESS the copy can be long.

For example. If you’re in the business seminar business and you’re asking business owners to spend $3,500 to attend a seminar then you have two options on the sales page.

1. Ask the business owner to ‘opt in’ to receive some free information—then nurture the leads. Short copy on a squeeze page should do the trick.
2. Ask the business owner to book immediately and plop down $3,500.

If it’s the latter, then the copy needs to be long and the sales page/landing page must perform A LOT of selling and include every bell and every whistle…everything from a lot of offers and values to a TON of testimonials.

Short copy would likely NOT persuade a business owner to attend a conference for $3,500. In fact, it would be a waste of time and effort.

A big part of the preparation for the direct response copywriter is presenting realistic options to the reader. I don’t expect someone to hand me vast amounts of copy after a single visit to my website—although this happily happens periodically. I think it’s realistic to ask a reader to:

1. Contact me for a quote
2. Download some free information
3. Opt in to receive a free series about copywriting
4. Go to all the social media sites
5. Watch a short video.

I’ve been working recently on a sales page for a client that asks a highly defined niche to spend $129 for a ‘system’ and it’s a steep price. If the page isn’t converting, I’ve got two options.

1. Improve the page.
2. Provide an opt in option to build a database and nurture the leads.

For the quality of the information and the benefits—it’s a good price. But am I expecting the reader to buy the $4,500 grill in just a single visit?

We’ll see...and adjust accordingly.

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I'm a direct response copywriter based in Charlotte, North Carolina. I specialize in providing copy and content for the direct marketing environment for clients around the world. I increasingly specialize in sales pages and landing pages. Enter your info to the right for my free series: Seven Steps to High Converting Copy. Or contact me here.