Every business is in sales.

But not everyone feels comfortable selling.

As someone who writes sales copy for a living, that’s worked out great for me. I get hired to craft the persuasive sales pieces that even crack entrepreneurs are sometimes afraid to touch.

But what do you do when you don’t have the luxury of getting someone else to put together your all-important sales messages?

And what about working with copywriters? Even a seasoned pro will do a better job selling your product when you’ve already worked out some of the details yourself.

Whichever situation you’re in, I have a focusing exercise that can help you generate one solid selling idea after another, even if you’ve never done it before.

(more…)

Usually, the writer’s mantra is “K.I.S.S.” (Keep It Simple Stupid.)

And most of the time, this rule works just fine.

Yet, we also know that writing – especially the kind of writing we do in sales letters and editorially – is more and more about building relationships. And aren’t relationships complex, built layer upon layer?

Well, maybe there’s a way to reconcile this insight with the rule about simplicity.

First, I’d say that yes, the relationship you build with your readers – from the first paragraph of your sales copy to the last, or through a series of articles or blog posts – does need to grow and evolve. And the process of growth and evolution is never simple.

Still, this doesn’t mean you can just jumble your ideas together. Even rich and layered relationships are united by a few very simple objectives. Maybe even one simple objective, depending on who you talk to. Even in a sales letter that drills home one distinct message, the copy also builds trust, nurtures a sense of urgency, intensifies desire, and so on.

Second, I’d say that you can never discount the power of the passion behind written ideas.

You can’t write well about something you don’t believe in. And you write better about things you believe in strongly. I say this because passion about ideas, it seems to me, is the glue between the “power of one” single-idea insight… and the context of complexity in which it can still be couched.

[Ed. Note: To get more of copywriting expert John Forde's wisdom and insights into marketing (and much more), sign up for his free e-letter, Copywriter's Roundtable, at www.copywritersroundtable.comand get a free report about 15 deadly copy mistakes and how to avoid them.

Powerful, effective writing, whether in ad copy or editorial articles, is just one part of a profitable online business. To get a complete guide to starting and growing a profitable Internet business, check out the Internet Money Club: Independent Learner Edition.]

Brevity, they say, is the soul of wit. And if that’s true, I admit… sometimes, I can be a little soulless.

See, I was taught to love what the nuns used to call “25 cent words.”

These are the words, they told us, that make you sound smart. That win you respect, jobs, and the girl of your dreams. People who use these words, they said, can walk through walls.

Boy, did they get that wrong.

When I slipped into the world of the written word as a professional, I discovered that a bigger, Latinate vocabulary doesn’t improve the accessibility of your cogitations at all. Rather, it obfuscates it. (Translation: Big words can actually make you sound dumber… simply because you’re tripping over yourself to get your message across.)

Which is why I was thankful when longtime copywriting buddy David Deutsch sent me a copy of “Short Words Are Words of Might” by Gelett Burgess. It’s a 16-page essay that originally appeared in Your Life magazine in 1938.

Here’s a juicy quote that reveals the core idea:

“Short words, you see, come from down deep in us – from our hearts or guts – not from the brain. For they deal for the most part with things that move and sway us, that make us act. … That, I think, is why short words tend to make our thoughts more live and true.”

Or to say it even more briefly, short words have power. That’s true in all kinds of writing, including sales copy. “Never put a policeman in an automobile,” said someone much smarter than yours truly, “when a cop in a car will do.”

[Ed. Note: To get more of copywriting expert John Forde's wisdom and insights into marketing (and much more), sign up for his free e-letter, Copywriter's Roundtable, at www.copywritersroundtable.com. Or send an e-mail to signup@jackforde.com and get a free report about 15 deadly copy mistakes and how to avoid them.

Effective copy is just one element of a successful online business. For a soup-to-nuts guide to starting your own Internet business, check out the Internet Money Club: Independent Learner Edition.
Find out more here.]

Copywriters are hired guns. We usually don’t create the products we sell, we just get hired to sell them. So how, pray tell, are you supposed to write copy that sells a product that… well… stinks?

Here’s the simple answer: You don’t.

What to do if a good client brings you something mediocre to sell?

You have a choice. Either work with the client to make the bad product better (I’m doing that right now with a newsletter that’s decent but needs to “bump it up” another 10 percent before it meets customer needs)… or bag the project altogether… and let your client know why, albeit with diplomacy.

Never berate the client. But don’t be a pushover or a sucker either.

If you want to stay on the project you must suggest possible ways to sell even better, in a consultant’s even tones and with the understanding that re-working the product might involve re-working your deal… or offer to take a kill fee and maybe even to share your research with the next copywriter who comes along.

The bottom line is that half-finished products and ideas CAN be sold without compromising your own integrity, but only if you’re willing to work with the client to make them whole. This is especially true in the information industry, where products can often be improved on the fly.

[Ed. Note: To get more of copywriting expert John Forde's wisdom and insights into marketing (and much more), sign up for his free e-letter, Copywriter's Roundtable, at www.copywritersroundtable.com. Or send an e-mail to signup@jackforde.com. Get a free report about 15 deadly copy mistakes and how to avoid them when you sign up today.

Creating a quality product and writing the copy to sell it are just two aspects of doing business. For a full rundown on starting and running a profitable, work-at-home Internet business, check out ETR's 5 Days in July business-building event. You'll discover how to set up a website, choose a product, and much more - and you WILL walk away with your own Internet business. Learn more here.]

Comment on this article

Years ago, National Lampoon ran a cover showing an adorable – but worried – puppy with a revolver held to its head. The headline next to the image read something like, “If you don’t buy this magazine, the puppy gets it.”

Depending on how you feel about puppies, that qualifies as an “urgency” pitch. Of course, there are other ways to create urgency.

“Crazy Eddie” yelling on late-night TV about his loony low prices… fire sales and special-edition offers… expiring coupons.

The list goes on. And on. And on.

It’s no accident. Creating urgency is part and parcel of many a winning ad campaign. Maybe that’s why Linda, one of my Copywriter’s Roundtable subscribers, wrote me asking what on earth was going on.

The urgency plea, she says, is both everywhere and far too often just plain baloney. Sales end up lasting longer, last-minute prices seem to last forever, and so on. What gives?

I took a minute to write Linda a reply. Then figured it was good enough to share with you, too. See if you agree.

Yes and yes, I told her.

Linda’s right on two fronts.

First, lots of ads do whatever they can to pound the urgency button. Reason being, all marketing is more or less at war with the onslaught of “other” ads – each of which competes for space in the customer’s mind – and, more important, with the overwhelming forces of inertia.

The customer who reads an ad that encourages him to put it down for later consideration is generally a customer lost in the long run. Put more simply, those who don’t “act now” tend not to act at all.

For a brilliant explanation of how this works, beyond the obvious, check out the much-recommended book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Dr. Robert Cialdini. Especially what he has to say about the pulling power of scarcity. People really do want to snap up the “last” of anything, rather than miss out.

That said, the other thing Linda is right about is that when every single ad is saying you’re going to miss out, the message starts to get diluted. Everyone starts to sound the same. And in selling, sounding the same as everybody else is slow poison to your business.

When that happens, what happens next?

The clever sellers will come up with other ways to express urgency, other than “limited supply” pitches.

They’ll have deadlines before price increases, limited-time offers on extras thrown into a deal, special bonuses limited to the first few respondents, etc.

Among the group of info publishers I work closely with, one of the most powerful innovations of the last two years – literally worth hundreds of millions of dollars in sales (and counting) – has been to create online “countdown” offers with time deadlines tracked right down to the hour and minute on which the deal is available.

I keep thinking they’ll stop working. Yet they keep working, just the same.

But to really work, the limits need to be real. Even if they’re created just to increase the urgency, they have to be enforced. Otherwise, the customers get wise to the ruse. Not only does the seller sacrifice trust in his claims, he also sacrifices the power of the technique.

As a marketer, I would second-guess those businesses that don’t make good on their “last chance” offers. And not only for the reasons cited above.

For instance, I know that with the marketers I work with, legal teams actually scan the offers and make sure that if there’s a deadline mentioned, the offer gets pulled the minute the deadline passes.

And if there’s a “limited low price” offered, the legal eagles make sure it never gets offered again. Price hikes are made to happen. Limited bonuses get retired according to the restrictions printed on the reply card.

This keeps the marketers honest.

But it also preserves the power of the technique for the rest of us, when we want to try it elsewhere to the same audience.

Long story short…

As a consumer, you – like Linda – are right to question the “urgency” pitch. But both good and bad marketers use it. And, likely, will use it forever.

Likewise, if you find yourself on the marketing side of the fence, it’s something you don’t want to rule out too quickly.

[Ed. Note: Copywriting is just one skill you can master to help your business grow. Learn the ins and outs of copywriting, marketing, search engine optimization, and more from some of the best experts in the business (including John Forde, Bob Bly, and Charlie Byrne) with a membership in ETR's Internet Money Club. Learn the details here.

And to get John's wisdom and insights into copywriting (and much more), sign up for his free e-letter, Copywriter's Roundtable, at copywritersroundtable.com. Or send an e-mail to signup@jackforde.com. Get a free report about 15 deadly copy mistakes and how to avoid them when you sign up today.]

Comment on this article

Eight times, Ben Franklin crossed the Atlantic.

France, Spain, England, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany – he hit them all. And his fame reached even further. His ideas were talked about in Sweden, Russia, China, and North Africa, all during his lifetime.

It was Ben who discovered the Gulf Stream. He also invented swim fins, the odometer, and bifocals. And it was Ben who came up with Daylight Savings Time, as a joke for a Paris newspaper. (He never realized it would catch on.)

But for all his accomplishments, there’s one thread that’s common to all of them. The man could write like a dream.

His writing is what helped pass on his legacy as a founding father. It’s what made him one of the most persuasive diplomats in U.S. history. And it’s one of the main reasons we remember so much of what he did today.

“Either write something worth reading or do things worth the writing,” he once said. Well put. And he did both. Which is why I’m evoking the spirit of Ben Franklin in today’s article, so he can teach us what he learned.

See, before Ben became one of America’s best-known and most influential writers, he wasn’t much of a writer at all.

Or at least that’s what his father thought.

At one point, he scolded Ben for what he felt was the low quality of writing in letters written to a friend. The letters, he told Ben, “lacked eloquence.”

So Ben set out to make a change. He invented a precise system for teaching himself to write better, which you can find outlined in his famous autobiography.

Here’s how it works…

1. Role-Model Reading

Before Ben wrote, he read. Often and a lot. He’d pick out a piece of writing he admired and actually wanted to imitate, and study it, front to back. He made notes on the outline and structure of paragraphs. He memorized phrases. He noted the general themes in the piece. That taught him the style used by the authors he admired.

You can do this just by digging into the magazines and books you already like to read. Not reading them the way you once did, flipping the pages. But really reading. Study them for structure. How do they start? What’s common between one article or chapter and the next? And what’s not? Spend at least 30 minutes a day doing this. You’ll be shocked at how much better your writing will become.

2. Flattering by Imitation

This was one of Ben’s favorite tricks. I’m predicting it’s the one you’ll talk about one day when you’re teaching someone else how to write. It’s simple. Just take one of those pieces of writing you admire and copy it. Literally. By hand. Word for word. You’ll pick up nuances you didn’t notice when you were reading it. And, except for a sore elbow, it’ll give you a painless education.

Of course, Ben took this exercise even further: “I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, try’d to compleat the papers again.”

That is, he not only studied the original and copied it, he actually tried to reproduce its key themes from memory… in his own words.

Where he made mistakes, he’d fix them. But sometimes he found that just by rethinking the original ideas, he found ways to improve upon them. And this happened more and more often as he wrote.

Again, you can do the same thing. Take a few short magazine articles. Study them until you’ve soaked up the core ideas. Then, on a blank sheet of paper, try to write out the same ideas from memory, but in your own words. You’ll be surprised by what you remember. You’ll be even more surprised by the new ideas that pop into your head as you write.

3. Organizing a Mental Toolbox

The real power of a good solid piece of writing is the part you DON’T see – the underlying outline.

Ben saw that too.

He found, in his early rewrites of others’ works, that his thoughts got jumbled and confused. So he took his paragraphs and copied them on separate pieces of paper. Then he reassembled them in an order closer to the original outline.

You can take an outline from an article you like and use that to build a new article, even one about a completely unrelated idea. It’s amazing how facts and details come together when you have a structure to hang them on.

I do this all the time.

When I’m researching, my notes come at random. The more I research, the more the framework takes shape. When I understand the idea I’m writing about, I stop to sketch out the outline.

I actually have a program on my Mac that helps me do this – a feature in the Mac version of Microsoft Office called “Notebook Layout.” It looks exactly like a school notebook with tabbed pages. I type in my notes as they come. When I’m done, I drag and drop the tabs to reorganize the pieces according to my outline.

Having an outline in advance lets you focus on gathering up ideas and details freely, because you know you have a tool to help you sort them out and put everything into place.

If you don’t have a program to help you do this, try using a handwritten outline and index cards.

Ben Franklin put his writing self-improvement system to good use. In his lifetime, he wrote thousands of articles, letters, and persuasive pitches for his ideas. Some helped sell Franklin stoves. Others helped sell the leaders of Europe on supporting young America.

Mastering the printed word was the key to his success. It could be yours too. 

[Ed. Note: Copywriting is just one skill you can master to help your business grow. Learn the ins and outs of copywriting, marketing, search engine optimization, and more from some of the best experts in the business (including John Forde, Bob Bly, and Charlie Byrne) with a membership in ETR's Internet Money Club. Learn the details here.

And to get John's wisdom and insights into copywriting (and much more), sign up for his free e-letter, Copywriter's Roundtable, at copywritersroundtable.com. Or send an e-mail to signup@jackforde.com. Get a free report about 15 deadly copy mistakes and how to avoid them when you sign up today.]

Comment on this article

“Brain-writing” is not my term. But we’re going to make it our own by revising it a little to make it more productive…

You brainstorm to get ideas when you have none. Ideally, you do so in a group. So you can feed off each other. So you can legitimize sitting around drinking coffee. So you can get others to do all the hard thinking for you.

In all those respects, group brainstorming is a good thing. But what do you do when you’re writing sales copy in isolation?

Brain-writing is a way to kick ideas around… jumpstart your engines… and get into that “zone” of creativity that you hope to get into in a group session.

In fiction circles, there’s something similar called “free-writing. USUALLY, it simply means setting a timer, putting pen to page, and letting the ideas pour. Whatever it is, you write it down. You don’t stop until your pen runs out of ink or your elbow balloons like a grapefruit.

But there are two problems with free-writing when you apply it to writing sales copy:

• First, pens come with a lot of ink these days. Even the dime-store ballpoints could keep you scribbling well past deadline.

• Second, sometimes it’s the very prospect of a blank page… the sight of a blinking cursor… and the notion of all that cerebral “freedom”… that’s got you stymied in the first place.

There is a more efficient way to get started.

If you were about to make bricks, would you begin without clay? If you were getting ready to make glass, would you begin without sand? If you wanted to make punch, would you leave out the hooch?

Of course not. So why is it writers of any kind so often try to start conjuring up ideas out of thin air?

For all the reasons to get “blocked,” this is the easiest of them to resolve.

Before you begin your solo brainstorming session (or a group one, for that matter), get yourself a hefty stack of “stuff” about the product you’re going to write about. Aim for height. An inch is too little. A foot is too high. Somewhere in the middle ought to do it.

Next to this, put a fresh stack of index cards… a legal pad… and/or a computer.

This is where the “brain-writing” comes in. Start reading. Start taking notes.

The process remains “free” in the sense that you shouldn’t try to organize ideas at this point. Record them as they come. You’ll sort later.

However, contrary to popular creativity myths, discipline has a role. For instance: You’ll need to keep yourself from focusing too long on any one aspect of your research. You’ll need to force yourself to write full-fledged ad copy, rather than just recording notes. And you’ll need to make sure, always, that the central promise of your ad is the magnet pulling you through the muck of ideas you’ll produce.

You should have at least six kinds of things in your “brain-writing” stack before you begin:

1. Competitors’ ads. If you write direct mail, you know there’s no excuse for not being seeded on competing lists. Keep a box of other people’s promos by your desk.

2. Samples of the competitors’ products. You can probably get comped for competitors’ newsletters, as a professional courtesy. But, at least once in a while, go through the subscription process anonymously. You might learn something from the way they do business.

3. Printouts of relevant websites. Yes, printouts. If you’d rather, you can make handwritten notes while scrolling a screen. But avoid the temptation to bookmark links, save pages, or copy and paste text into word documents. No matter what you think… the only way to really absorb ideas is to re-interpret them for your own notes.

4. Relevant magazines and newspapers. Big media has the budget to gather persuasive stats and anecdotes. Again, copy the information in your own hand. Don’t just clip and count on coming back to it later. BUT, make sure you note every source – both for legal reasons and because you’ll get extra credibility with your readers when you cite respected sources.

5. History and non-fiction best-sellers. Sometimes, nothing can be more valuable than going down to your local bookstore to see what your prospective customers are reading. It’s an excellent way to put your thumb on the popular zeitgeist. Restrict yourself, however, to buying two books… tops. If you’re under any kind of deadline, you won’t have time for more than that.

6. Your product manager’s “best of.” Any good product manager will give you the following items when you start a copywriting project: product-related e-mails, raw testimonials, third-party reviews and endorsements, product-related news clippings, free “giveaways” that come with the offer, notes from past brainstorming meetings, past control packages, tapes or transcripts of conversations with customers, customer service letters, interviews with core people connected with the product, and phone numbers of people you can call to talk to about the product.

This is, of course, just a partial list. You could add more. But even with only the above, you should be drowning in new ideas before day’s end. (At which point, you’ll have a different problem – more ideas than you can spend in one piece! Every copywriter should be so lucky, right? Save the leftovers for the test mailing.) 

The beauty of this simple approach is that you don’t need a soul around to help you make it pay off. In fact, isolation makes it easier.

Tip: At some point, you’ll make it to the bottom of the stack or you’ll feel in your gut that you’ve got all the key points somehow covered. At that moment, stop and get up. Put on your coat. Go shoot some hoops, take a walk, knit an afghan.

While you take that break, your subconscious mind will be mulling over everything you’ve come across. Absorbing. Sorting. Editing.

The next morning, put the pile of stuff in a box and get it out of your sight. Everything happens now inside your pile of notes. Re-read all the material. Twice.

Take the points that stand out and re-write them on a fresh page. Some things will stand out. Others will strike you as complete garbage. Distill and polish. Narrow. If you need to accelerate the process, mail or e-mail the notes to a trusted (and patient) friend to read.

If you try this technique and you’re STILL stuck for ideas, you might consider buying yourself a push broom. Or running for public office.

[Ed. Note: Copywriting is just one skill you can master to help your business grow. Learn the ins and outs of copywriting, marketing, search engine optimization, and more from some of the best experts in the business (including John Forde, Bob Bly, and Charlie Byrne) at ETR's 2008 Info Marketing Bootcamp. Find out how to reserve your spot right here.

And to get John's wisdom and insights into copywriting (and much more), sign up for his free e-letter, Copywriter's Roundtable at copywritersroundtable.com or send an email to signup@jackforde.com. Get a free report about 15 deadly copy mistakes and how to avoid them when you sign up today.]

Comment on this article