Copywriting Tips And Tricks

There’s a way to sell houses, cars, food, furniture, professional services and clothing.  Even though there are similarities in selling all of these stuff, there are also important differences that a copywriter must recognize.

It’s often said that a house will sell itself.  This may sound like an insult to all the hard-working real estate agents, but the point is that a house hunter either likes the house and location or he doesn’t.  There may not be much a real estate agent can do but to show the house and then step out of the way to let the prospect fall in love with the property.

Maybe the same can be said of a car.  You test drive a car and fall in love with the feel, handling and looks—including the looks you think you’ll get from others while driving it.

Selling professional services on the other hand takes a lot of persuasion and convincing the prospect that you are capable of doing what you claim you can do.

I’ve seen so many sales letters online that try to sell everything with the same structure and outline.  This is a mistake.  What must be included and addressed in selling an ebook is different when selling software.

Like selling a house you may say that software will sell itself.  If you give away a trial version of the software with a simple manual or explanation about what it can do, then the prospect will convince himself that this tool is for him.

Second in effectiveness to giving away trial version is to demonstrate what the software does right in the sales letter.  Not only will the demonstration show what the software is capable of but it will also show how easy or difficult it is to use.

Now when writing a sales letter to sell a piece of software, as the copywriter, I want to answer the three BIG QUESTIONS:

1. What can this tool help you to accomplish easier than you’re presently doing it?
2.  How easy is it to use?
3.  How can you get it?

So there is a special way to sell software. You have to first tell what PROBLEM the software solves and the frustration prospects are currently having with these problems so you get the reader’s sympathy and attention.

Then you must introduce and DEMONSTRATE how to use the software emphasizing all its FEATURES attached to the BENEFITS and how EASY it is to use.  Your beta testers should have had questions (FAQ) which are really OBJECTIONS so you must answer those objections in your copy.

You then show the results that users are getting from using the software and invite the prospect to join the party.
Also if this software is not the first  of its kind on the market, then it’s best to COMPARE the software to the leading competitor.  If it’s new then you will not have to educate the prospect on what it does.  Comparing provides an easy shortcut to educating the prospect since he would already be familiar with your competitor’s product.

In summary, you generally don’t need a lot of persuasion to sell software if you can let the software do the selling.  And people are better at convincing themselves that they need your software than you will ever be.  They start using the software and get addicted and just must have it—hopefully.

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I learned a long time ago that if you have too small a refund rate this must mean that you are underselling your product. I’ve seen a ton of discussion on marketing forums about how online vendors, especially of digital download products, hate refunds. I can’t say that I love to know that a customer can get back their money and I cannot get back my ebook either, but it’s a cost of doing business online. Or is it?

Are there any ways that you can use your refund rate in order to make more money?

Let’s return to the idea that if your refund is too small then you must be underselling your product. This simply means that you must ‘oversell’ your products to the extent that even people who may not need your product will be convinced that they need it. The idea is akin to making a pie crust—there will be some dough left over from the trimmings to get that perfect circular shape. If you use too little dough then your circle will not be complete.

To use another analogy, the only way you can be sure that your cup is full is if it is overflowing.

It’s the same with selling online—if you are not persuasive enough then you will lose some sales that could have been in your pocket. But if you do a really good job then some people would buy who would then ask for a refund. So it turns out that it’s better to have a modestly high refund rate than to have a very low refund rate—at least that’s how the theory goes.
Now the question is how can you use this refund rate to make more sales? Well, you simply state in your marketing message that your refund rate for this product is, say 7%. What this does is that assures your prospects that you do live up to refund requests and then you can ‘boast’ that 93% of your customers find value in your product.

This makes your product exclusive to the point that you can further say that your product is not for everyone—of course those who asks for a refund were those who your product was not for.

You can build exclusivity into your product by simply stating that your product is not for everyone—which of course will be true for just about any product.
So instead of being embarrassed about your refund rate and buying into the myth that a 0% refund rate is a great thing, use your refund rate to build confidence in more prospects and make more sales.

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Filed under: Online Copywriting | 2 Comments »