Copywriting Tips And Tricks

 

I’ve just completed a copywriting project for one of the most boring products I’ve ever written for—water softeners.  Now as important as water softeners are in preventing scale buildup on bathroom fixtures and destruction of household appliances, they are just not an exciting product to write about.

This means that, as the copywriter, I have to find some way of getting excited about water softeners.  It‘s downright hard to write on a subject you have little interest in.  Now you may argue that I took the job and so I had to find some way of getting excited about it.

First, because of my science background, I knew there would be no challenge in understanding and explaining to the prospect just how water softeners work.  The real challenge was to explain this in such a way the prospect would get excited about my presentation of the subject.

There is a common saying that every devil has his friend and for any product you may find naturally boring, there is an exciting element to it.  You may have to look very carefully to find it.

Now when I have to write copy for such products I start by reading as much about the product as I can get my hands on.  Therefore, along with the information the client submitted to me, I used the internet to help with my research.

In the next step I must now brainstorm a “hook” for the product that would serve as a platform from which to launch the sales copy.  In this case, I found this particular technology was “new” to the extent that it had been used in the commercial field for many years and was now just being introduced into the domestic market.  Some of the biggest companies were already using this technology, so the hook I decided on was: “Big companies were ‘secretly’ benefiting from this technology that the normal home owner can now get.”

Now every product has a story.  Even if the product is boring this doesn’t mean the story about the product has to be boring.  The late Steve Jobs marketed  the Apple products by telling a story about each product and its creation, which made the product secondary and the story primary—a type of selling the sizzle and not the steak.

But Mr. Jobs was not the first to use this marketing angle.  In the famous Schiltz beer commercial, the legendary Claude Hopkins used the story about how the beer was made in order to make the product more exciting.  To the beer stiller all beers are made the same and so this approach cannot be used to sell any one beer.  So the  Schiltz beer was made with the same basic technology used for thousands of years.  But Hopkins was able to win in this approach because no other advertiser had bothered to tell the story before.

Perhaps you have seen those TV ads by Mathew Lesko dressed in his famous question marks bright colored suits getting excited about government grants and the “free” money you can get.  These books that he sells read more like a phone directory with lists upon lists of government grants but he makes the subject exciting and Lesko makes a comfortable living from selling boring government information.

Almost any subject could be romanticized.  You can sell a shower head as, well, a shower head or as a means to spice up a couple’s life and a massage tool.

The idea of selling water in a bottle would have been laughed to scorn just thirty years ago but today bottled water is a $22 billion dollar a year industry.  The question is how do you sell a common thing such as water? If someone is a great sales person the comment is often made that “she can sell ice to Eskimos”.

The point is that ice is so readily available to Eskimos so why should they want to buy it.  Even though the debate over bottled water vs. tap water purity goes on, still 25% of all bottled water comes from the same source as tap water.  So the last bottled water you drank was very likely just glorified tap water with a price tag hiked by 1000%!

Somehow advertisers were able to convince millions of people that the water from their taps was not as exciting as that from their bottles.  Although these bottled water companies used some deceptive advertising, like showing snowcapped mountains and natural springs on their bottle labels even though the water came from deep well or municipal water supplies, the lesson is clear.  Any subject can be injected with some excitement and ultimately get more sales.

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Early in my copywriting career I would take websites with several pages and make them into one long-form sales letter. Without fail the long form sales letter (which would combine the different sections of the old web page such as “About us”, “FAQ” “Order Page” etc., into one page), would outsell the first website by hundreds if percentage points.

Even if I did a critique and not rewrite the website I would tell the client how to combine the difference section and he would see an increase in sales.
Now one of the tricks of the trade was how to incorporate the FAQ into the sales letter itself.

You see, FAQs are really prospects objections to getting your product or service. These questions are not necessarily all direct objections, but as far as I see it, if you have question before making a purchase, then it means that there was some element that I missed from the sales process. If I was clear in my sales presentation, then you would not have any questions except how can I order right away?

As I learned early on in my career as a door-to-door salesman you have to know how to answer objections and the answers must be known ahead of time. So, in other words, you cannot afford to wait until the questions are asked to answer them. That would be too late. You have to know the questions that are most likely to be asked and then have the answers ready upon request.

There are entire sales courses and books written on the subject of answering objections, but they would all tell you that objections are really a sales person’s best friend. Having an objection is an indication that the prospect is considering making a purchase. If a prospect was not interested in your product, then she would have no questions at all. So rather than seeing these objections as annoyances they must be welcomed as a rung up the ladder towards the final sale.

No wonder most selling website would have a FAQ section which they accumulate as their customers and prospects ask repeated questions.

But what if these questions can be answered in the sales letter itself? What if you considered these questions as an obstacle to the sales and so address them right in the sales letter?
This is a very effective technique indeed. So I would raise the question and then answer it right there in the copy. Another strategy is to indicate that the prospect may be wondering “X”, but here is the solution “Y”.

For example, what if I were selling a gardening widget that cut rose bushes the safest way possible. And after a few months, I find that I get a repeated question about why the widget was made from aluminum instead of steel. Now I know that this is a question that prospects are having and so in the sales letter I would write, “My gardening widget is made from the finest aluminum which makes it lighter and rust-proof for a comfortable and long-lasting rose bush cutting experience.”

This should take care of the questions about the material my tool is made from.

I always look at a sales letter as standing on an evolutionary scale because the letter can be improved, not only through split-testing, but by answering questions and concerns that customers may have. As those concerns pop up then I simply incorporate the answer into the present sales letter.

In a way a FAQ would indicate holes in your sales process where customers are voluntarily telling you how to improve your marketing. Instead of hiding the FAQ deep inside your website, bring these questions to the front page and see what this can do to your sales results.

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