Get MORE Than Your Money’s Worth From Your Copywriter
Although I’m generally known as a copywriter, I recently put every aspect of a new client’s company under the microscope for him.
My client’s business was growing nicely, but not anywhere near as quickly as it should have been. Response to his new customer promotions was lackluster … he had no presence on the Internet … and promos being sent to his customer file were weak (to say the least).
At the end of each day of working with him, I was completely spent. My head hurt, my body ached, and I collapsed unconscious into the bed.
I loved every minute of it.
Just a few of the high points of what we accomplished …
We gave our new client powerful tools to maximize the lifetime value of each of his customers.
We devoured his mail list histories … promotion planning forms and procedures … response reports … and his customer records. And we pinpointed new data that he needs to collect and crunch about each customer, each transaction, each product, and each promotion.
We showed him how to attract tens of thousands of additional new customers each year.
We gave him processes and procedures that will allow him to confidently roll out winning test panels to as many as 10 times more names, six to eight weeks sooner than he does now … and add as many as five or six successful new customer acquisition mailings to his annual schedule.
We showed him how to consistently create blockbuster products with fewer misfires.
We identified the key qualities that his best-selling products share, and gave him five new product ideas that are surefire blockbusters-in-the-making.
We showed him how to multiply the number of sales he’ll make to new customers in their first 60 days with him.
We gave him a simple strategy to instantly bond with his new customers and sell them at least five times more product in the 60 days following the initial sale.
We ramped up the selling power of his existing promotion packages.
We dissected his biggest winners and worst losers. We showed him which losers should be abandoned … which should be re-tested with new headline, offer, and/or copy improvements … and we gave him a raft of test ideas to make his winners stronger.
We handed him a huge new market.
We gave him a complete Web strategy and showed him, step by step, how the two e-zines and two e-commerce websites we’re developing for him will bring in tens of thousands of new customers.
We gave him a dozen hot new product ideas.
Including how to add a dozen or more red-hot products to his catalog and new website – and how to use his new relationship with the manufacturers and retailers of those products to attract thousands more new customers each year.
We gave him a 90-day plan for quadrupling his new-to-file customers.
We identified the eight new customer-acquisition packages that would produce the greatest number of new customers in the shortest amount of time.
My fee for all of this: $0
It was the best money I never earned.
My guess is that the tools, strategies, new products, and new promotions we’ll be using will more than double the size of my client’s active customer file in the next 12 months.
I’m also predicting that each new customer will spend an absolute minimum of five times more money with him in their first 60 days on his file.
I’ll bet dollars to donuts that the combination of these hot new products, more efficient marketing strategies, and more powerful sales copy will have him at $200 million in two years – a 1,000% increase – and at $300 million in three.
And once the new customers come pouring in as a result of our hard work and conservative predictions, our small 10% royalty on these increased sales will no doubt generate millions for my company!
So if you’re a business owner or marketing exec, why not …
1. Get closer to your best copywriters.
Look for opportunities to meet face to face with and bond with writers who give you winners. Fly them in. Fly out to see them. Invite them to the company picnic. Send them the company newsletter. Have the prez send a balloon bouquet with every new control. A strong personal relationship transcends everything – including money – in keeping your writers motivated.
2. Think outside the box.
Why not identify the one, two, or even three writers who consistently produce winners for you and lock them up? Consider offering incentives with retainer deals or a small override on back-end sales made to the new customers they produce for you. Sweeten the pot, and you’ll get the best more often than your competitors will.
And why not ask your superstar writers to mentor and/or copy-chief a junior writer on a few projects? You’ll get more packages per year – and maybe even a great new writer!
3. Encourage your copywriters to give you more.
Challenge your writers to get more involved in the marketing process. Offer rewards to those who find ways to improve your offer, premiums, or guarantee.
4. Engage writers to write back-to-back packages for the same product.
The one time a writer is most immersed in your product is when he’s just finished writing a promotion for it. A second package right away requires no learning curve whatsoever – and he’s got tons of ideas he couldn’t use in the package he just finished.
Try it. It works like a charm!
5. If a great writer makes an offer to focus exclusively on your company’s products, jump on it!
Are all of these ideas unorthodox? Yes. But aren’t all breakthrough ideas? And if they work for me and my clients … why wouldn’t they work for you?
[Ed. Note: Clayton Makepeace offers help in reaping maximum profits through the Internet, direct mail, and print advertising every week in his e-zine
The Total Package. Learn 177 of his surprising secrets that have doubled his clients’ profits in a year and quadrupled them in 36 months in his newly published e-book “Double Your Profits in 12 Months or Less!” Learn more.
“Believe one who has proved it. Believe an expert.”– Virgil