How to Use Bullets to Vastly Improve Your Marketing Copy
Archives: Daily Issues
Issue #2504
- WEALTHY: 2 companies to remove from your portfolio (Charles Delvalle)
- HEALTHY: What’s killing your weight-loss efforts? (Craig Ballantyne)
- WISE: William Bernbach on creativity
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Creating high-quality ammunition for your marketing artillery (Bob Bly)
- The question Seth Godin wants you to ask about the Internet
- It’s Good to Know… keyboard and mouse shortcuts
- Add “malversation” to your vocabulary
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The Global Financial Panic of 2008
Behind the closed doors of a private meeting room at the exclusive Four Seasons restaurant in New York City, economic history was recently made.
By private invitation, 13 of the most respected financial advisers in the world came to New York City for a secret, economic summit.
Why? You already know why. The economy is teetering on the brink. The dollar is falling. Consumer confidence is at an all-time low. Gas prices are obscene. Food prices are going through the roof. And they’ve even begun to ration rice at some major food marts. This is scary stuff.
The agenda was simple: What are solutions that people can use now to protect them from the financial challenges? The response: an outpouring of financial secrets, advice and investment recommendations like nothing ever experienced.
The Next Wave of Bankruptcies
Banks have lost over $680 billion because of the huge wave of foreclosures that has hit the market over the past two years. And losses are beginning to ratchet up somewhere else, too: consumer credit card charge-offs.
Charge-offs are debts that a company deems “uncollectible.” According to Moody’s Investor Services, credit card charge-offs increased by 48 percent in August alone. And Moody’s expects them to continue increasing into late next year.
6.82 percent of all credit card debt has now been written off. With unemployment rising and the economy falling into even more dire straits, the credit card charge-off rate is sure to skyrocket. Which means that banks that have relied heavily on income from credit cards – like Capital One (COF) and American Express (AXP) – are sure to see bigger losses.
[Ed. Note: Keep away from companies that depend on credit cards. But keep an eye on companies that have issued a "red flag" alert. This could be your key to future profits. Find out what a "red flag" is and how it can make you money right here.]
“Properly practiced creativity can lift your claims out of the swamp of sameness and make them accepted, believed, persuasive, urgent.”
William Bernbach
The Easiest Way to Create Great Bullets
By Bob Bly
Most ETR readers know that a successful copywriting technique is to use lots of “bullets” in marketing copy – short sales points presented in bulleted lists.
But did you ever sit down to work on copy, only to find it difficult to pull out of the product the salient sales points needed to create strong bullets?
If you’re a marketer, there’s an easy way to avoid this problem… and come up with kick-butt bullets that generate more orders and sales from every promotion you mail or e-mail. And it starts way before a single word of copy is written. In fact, for maximum results, this should be done during the creation of the actual product itself.
I’m talking about building bullets into your product. By that, I mean coming up with a list of features that you think would really convince your prospects to buy the product. Or writing a list of bullets you’d love to be able to use in your marketing copy. And then, as you’re developing that list of features or bullets, you design them into the product.
Let’s say you hire a writer to create a how-to e-book on growing a backyard vegetable garden.
One of the things you think your prospective customers will be interested in is a section on growing bigger tomatoes. So you make a list of specific steps that can be taken to make tomatoes grow big and juicy.
Let’s say the list has five steps on it. You give the list to your writer so he can put a few paragraphs on each one in the e-book.
Now, when you (or a copywriter you hire) write the sales copy for the e-book, you know it can include a bullet that says “5 ways to grow tomatoes so big, you can make a dinner out of them.”
I had a client, an industrial manufacturer, that used this technique with great success.
The company manufactured spectrophotometers, instruments used to measure color. Their competitors had come out with a new generation of spectrophotometers, and my client was late to the game. But they used this to their advantage.
They carefully studied the other brands, made a list of their flaws, and designed their new spectrophotometer to provide superior performance in every area where their competitors were weak.
In their product launch, they showed a picture of their new instrument. Call-outs highlighted every feature that made the device superior to what their competitors were selling.
The launch was their most successful ever, because the bullets for their sales copy had been carefully built into the product – and clearly distinguished that product as superior in many ways to all others in the field.
Freelance copywriters rarely have any control over the product that’s being sold, but marketers often do. If you are an information marketer, in particular, it’s easy to design products with great sales bullets built in.
Just write a list of irresistible bullets, make that your table of contents, and then create an info product that covers those points.
And make sure all of those points really are covered. Info product buyers often compare the product to the promotion. If they can’t find content reflecting the bullets that persuaded them to buy, they will complain or ask for a refund.
My mentor, the great copywriter Milt Pierce, tells the story of when he was hired to write a direct-mail package on a book about decorating by a famous author in that field.
He brought in his marketing copy. The publisher and author read it. When they were finished, the publisher said to Milt, “This is incredibly strong promotional copy. The only problem is… that’s not what’s in the book.”
Milt replied: “It should be.” And, according to him, the author and publisher agreed to rewrite the book so it accurately reflected the sales copy he’d written.
When the promotion mailed, it worked like gangbusters… and the book sold like hotcakes.
The old-time mail-order guru Melvin Powers did it a better way: When he wanted to publish a new book, he would write and run the ad first.
Of course, he wrote the strongest ad possible.
If the ad got a strong response, he then quickly wrote and printed a book that delivered all the content promised. If the ad bombed, he never wrote the book and just refunded the money to those few people who had ordered.
[Ed. Note: Now's your chance to pick the brain of copywriting master and experienced info-marketer Bob Bly in person. Bob is coming out of his self-imposed speaking retirement to present at ETR's 2008 Info-Marketing Bootcamp. He - along with 11 other business-building and marketing experts - will reveal a proven technique that can help you make at least $100,000 in 2009. Bootcamp begins this coming Sunday, so time is running out to sign up. Do it today.
For expert insights into the world of direct marketing, be sure to sign up for Bob's free monthly newsletter, The Direct Response Letter. Do it today and get $116 in free bonuses.]
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This new program, called Instant Internet Income, is easy, fast, and flat-out WORKS. Just follow the step-by-step plan for making money online.
One note: It’s guaranteed to do exactly what I say. Click here to learn more and get started today!
Reader Feedback: “Bob’s article definitely has set my male ego flying.”
“Bob Bly’s article, ‘The Cut-Off Age for Getting Into a New Career or Business,’ is engaging. I’m now sixty-one and starting over. I retired at forty-eight, moved to the Northeast Georgia Mountains with high intentions of relaxing, but also of finding work that would push my excite button. I found that job, but the company went out of business. So I began to look for another opportunity.
“In 2005, I discovered that AWAI (American Writers & Artists Inc.) could offer me what I was looking for, and I signed up for their ‘Six-Figure Copywriting‘ program. But I got sidetracked.
“In January of 2008, I was hospitalized for four months and am now receiving home health care. This all resulted in me thinking that I’m too darn old and worn out to continue working at anything.
“But something won’t allow me to stop. I need to work and keep busy. So I’m back preparing for the new adventure I signed up for three years ago.
“Bob’s article definitely has set my male ego flying. He said ‘It’s NEVER too late to start your own business. Now’s the perfect opportunity to get your online business up and running,’ and I’m totally in agreement. Don’t stop dreaming, don’t give up or give in to life’s thumps.
“I might add that Robert Cox’s ‘30 Days to Success‘ has helped me prioritize my days to get everything out of what life continues to offer.”
Mike C.
[Ed. Note: Want to get your name and opinions published in ETR? Let us know how reading ETR has helped you - maybe even changed your life. Send your comments to ReaderFeedback@gmail.com. Include your name and hometown... and we may print your e-mail in a future issue.]
Worth Quoting: Seth Godin on Working With – Not Against – the Internet
“The Net is different.
“It wasn’t invented by businesspeople, and it doesn’t exist to help your company make money.
“It’s entirely possible it could be used that way, but it doesn’t owe you anything. The question to ask isn’t, ‘but how does this help me?’ as if you have some sort of say in the matter. You don’t get a vote on whether Google succeeds or whether your customers erect spam filters.
“The question to ask is, ‘how are people (the people I need to reach, interact with, and tell stories to) going to use this new power and how can I help them achieve their goals?’”
(Source: Seth Godin’s blog)
5 Ways to Beat Binge Eating
It happens to almost everyone. You get home from work, tired, hungry, and stressed, and you eat a nice dinner. But even though you are full, you go back to the fridge at 8:00. Then at 8:30. And then again at 9:00. You might even hit the fridge – or, worse, the freezer for ice cream – at 10:30.
Nighttime eating. Binge eating. Whatever you call it, it’s killing your progress. So here are my top 5 tips for overcoming it.
1. Brush your teeth after every meal.
2. Keep the binge food as far away and as inconveniently located as possible. If you have kids and keep some treats for them in the house, put them where you have to work to get to them. Maybe on the top shelf.
3. Go for a quick walk or do a mini-workout of bodyweight exercises when you feel the urge to snack.
4. Eat fruit, not junk, when you just can’t keep yourself from eating.
5. Try to avoid the environments where binges happen. These include sitting in front of the TV, hanging out with friends who like to order in pizza, going to the movies when you’re hungry, going out for a drink (if that turns into wings and nachos), and watching football all day Sunday.
[Ed. Note: Extending your life and living out your years in tip-top health is really a matter of making simple lifestyle choices - like keeping your late-night snacking under control. For more easy-to-implement ideas about how to live longer and feel better, click here.
In addition to curbing your binge eating, you can burn fat by following Craig's Turbulence Training exercise program.]
It’s Good to Know: Keyboard and Mouse Shortcuts
If you spend a lot of time using a computer, here are some shortcuts to make frequent tasks a snap, so you can concentrate on work instead of the intricate details of your software.
• It can take forever to minimize each program and document individually and get back to your desktop screen. Instead, press the “Windows” key and “D” at the same time.
• Don’t bother with drop-down menus to enlarge or shrink a document or Web page. Press “Control” and then turn your mouse’s click wheel to do the same thing instantly.
• You might know that when filling in forms online you can use “Tab” to move the cursor to the next box. But you can also move backward by holding “Shift” and then pressing “Tab.”
(Source: The New York Times)
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Word to the Wise: Malversation
“Malversation” (mal-vur-SAY-shun) is misconduct in public office.
Example (as used in The (London) Times): “Aniano Desierto, the government ombudsman, said that the preliminary investigation would take 60 days and involve six charges: plunder, malversation (misuse of funds), violations of the anti-graft law, perjury, bribery, and possession of unexplained wealth.”
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2008
Great tips. Funny, you didn’t use bullets in an article about bullets.