Tag: copywriting

Using “magnet words” to make your copy work harder

One  way to make a message scannable is through the careful placement of “magnet words”. These are words so laden with implied interest and benefit that they draw the reader’s eye. Here are some examples:

  • You. (Or, better yet, the reader’s name used sparingly)
  • New
  • Free
  • Save
  • Guarantee/guaranteed
  • Easy/simple/foolproof
  • Proven
  • Safe (especially for health/personal care products)
  • Best/better
  • Solution (this one is overused in b2b selling so I’m not including it in my numbering)

A few years ago “announcing” and “introducing” would have made the list, but today they seem a bit hucksterish.  Same with “improved” which in our litigious times, invites a lawsuit from the disgruntled owners of the previous non-improved version.

That’s a starter list; every copywriter has their own and probably calls them “magic words”. (Do a web search and see what you find.) Because you are a persuasive communicator you are using many of these words already. My point is that through the placement of these words you can add attention to surrounding copy that might not be interesting on its own.

Which is more likely to catch the reader’s eye: “Acme Instruments makes measurement devices for cell network technicians” or “Acme Instruments offers a proven solution for cell network technicians”? Of course it’s a solution because otherwise nobody would want it; and it better be proven or it’s worthless. But the magnet words make the copy more appealing. Add on the fact that it’s “guaranteed” and offer a “free” info kit and you’re in business.

The corollary lesson is that sometimes you DON’T want the reader to read your copy and in this case you should scrupulously avoid magnet words. A utility company served up a great example in a privacy notice about sharing their mailing list: “If this policy is acceptable, no action needs to be taken.” That’s a bit convoluted; would have been much clearer to say “If you agree with this policy, you do not need to take any action.” But wow, two magnet words are going to make sure the sentence is read and that’s exactly what this writer did not want to happen.

Excerpted from my new book, Copywriting that Gets RESULTS! Get your copy here.

How to keep readers on the hook

Nobody’s going to read your sales letter. Well, maybe that’s a bit harsh. Nobody’s going to read your sales letter exactly the way you crafted it. They’ll bounce around, clinging on words that attract them like pretty bangles and ignoring your strongest selling points, they’ll go straight to the P.S. and double back in the letter…. And if you’re luck at the end of all this they will pay some attention to your call to action.

Don’t feel bad. You are getting paid to sell, not to write creative prose. And you will be amply rewarded if you apply a few tricks from the copywriter’s quiver of reader retention arrows.

Set the hook right after the opening of the letter. I shared the opening of the Geneva letter inviting business owners to a two-day seminar. The first paragraph flattered them as the owner of a valuable business. The second paragraph suggested they may well receive an offer in a red-hot market.

Now comes the third paragraph, which frets: But what if the offer is too low, even though it may seem astronomically high to you? What must you know to negotiate the sales process? And what is the downside, should you decide not to sell in today’s sizzling market?

So now we’ve introduced a problem which might not have been relevant had we not flattered the egoistic business owner at the beginning of the letter. And we can proceed to introduce the Geneva Business Valuation Seminar as the solution with a call to action.

This is a four-page letter, which is why we can afford to wait so long for the CTA. In a shorter letter it might come in the third or second paragraph.  At this point, the DNA of our message is on the page and they have enough information to act immediately, if they wish, or to continue reading.

Guide the reader through the letter with connective words and phrases. “And” lets them know you’re about to add a selling point. Same with “Plus”. “What’s more” supersizes this, telling the reader you’ve headed to a whole new level of benefits. “That’s why” tells the reader you are about to deliver a sum-up selling argument. “But” is a qualifier—you may agree with what I just said, here’s a consideration you need to keep in mind. And yes, I realize the Queen does not begin her English sentences with prepositions. You need to make a choice between getting an A in English, or selling as hard as you possibly can.

Keep your paragraphs and sentences short to make the letter an easy read. When I started as a new copywriter, I was told to keep paragraphs under six lines. Today this seems impossibly long to me. Five lines maximum, please. Sentences should fit on one line if possible, or should be broken with a comma (often used when grammar rules say it is superfulous), em dash or ellipse to give the reader easily digestible chunks of information. And pepper that olio with the occasional one-line paragraph and one-word sentence.

Help out your art director by making layout suggestions in your draft. Indented paragraphs, centered subheads, important words and phrases should be bold-faced or underlined in the body copy. Tell your designer that you’re not doing art direction; rather, you’re making suggestions as to where emphasis should be placed. Then, cross-check the first round of comps to see that you haven’t been completely ignored; Quark and InDesign ignore underlining when a Word doc is imported and your designer may not bother to go back and add it back. (Or at least I’m told this is what happens; the designer may be trying to sabotage my copy by taking out the formatting, but that seems less likely.)

What you are doing with all these efforts is to make the letter scannable. A reader who does not have the patience (or the ability) to read beginning to end can hop from emphasis point to emphasis point like a pebble skipping across a pond, and still understand what you have to sell and what you want them to do about it.

Excerpted from my new book, Copywriting that Gets RESULTS! Get your copy here.

How to open a sales letter or email

The first paragraph is the most important element of any selling message. If you don’t hook your reader here they will abandon you. (Which is why it’s not a good idea to keep key selling points in reserve, thinking you will reveal them if you go along.) Just like the subject line or outer envelope teaser, these words are worth the investment of a disproportionate amount of your time.

It’s never wrong to open with a strong statement of your offer (I want to let you know about an unusual sale on first quality goods that don’t normally get discounted, but are now 50% off for a limited time) or an explanation why you are writing (because I believe you are among the top 5% of salespeople, I want to share an opportunity that most people would not even understand). But that’s not good enough.

You ALSO need to provide verbal chum for the slow-moving fish who initially are not attracted by your offer, or do not think it applies to them, but can be lured into the net with the right conversational gambit. Let’s talk about a few ways to do this.

Problem/solution open: works with many technology products because technology consumers nearly always have some problem to solve. If you’re looking to maximize the potential of the XYZ platform, then you’ll want to read a new collection of case histories from industry leaders who have done just that.

Picture yourself here: paint an evocative word image of the benefits to be gained as a result of the offer in the letter, tied to the reader personally. My control letter for Online Trading Academy, which educates people to trade stocks and other investments online, does this: “Imagine, for a moment, what investing would be like if you knew you could not fail. Never again would you sell a winning position too soon—or hold onto a loser for longer than you should…”

Flattery: you are writing the recipient precisely because they are a perceptive member of your target audience, and they can justify your confidence in them by acting appropriately. Nice if you can pull it off. The variations on Emily Soell’s classic intro for Vanity Fair belong in this category: “Dear Friend, If the list on which I found your name is any indication, this is not the first – nor will it be the last – subscription letter you receive… [goes on to explain it is a very special list of perceptive readers].”

News: this is the default opening in fundraising and politics, where there is generally an urgent need that your reader is enlisted in helping to relieve. May also work for business to business or personal-interest consumer marketing IF you are confident from your audience research that the reader will be as excited about the news as you are.

Emotion: My control letter for Met Life’s long term care insurance prospecting starts with a paragraph I jotted down in a meeting with the sales team: “Every one of us would like to live well in our later years and leave some money for the next generation. Is that too much to ask?” It fits the combination of fear for the future and indignation at the status quo that the reader is feeling. As with the news approach, this only works if you have a true mind meld with your reader.

Entertainment/escape: Many of the most successful publications promotions start with a “free sample” of the content. People will subscribe to be inspired or entertained or to be lifted out of their quotidian existence, so why not start right now? The Great American Recipes letter does this: “Remember when good food meant the best times you ever had with family and friends? I’m talking about lazy summer evenings serving home-made ice cream on the screen porch….”

An opener that does several of these things simultaneously is the introduction of my four page letter for Geneva, a M&A consultant whose business model was to invite business owners to a two-day paid (not free) workshop on how to value their business:

We’re in the midst of the hottest Mergers & Acquisition market in 100 years and you, as the owner of a middle-market business, have the most desirable property of them all… That’s why, like many of the people who attend our Business Valuation Seminar, you may have already received an offer—and for more than you ever dreamed your business could be worth. And even if you haven’t yet been approached about selling, you probably will be soon.

News, flattery, a bit of picture-yourself-here sets the reader up nicely for the presentation of my client’s seminar as the solution to the problem.

One final tip, after you’ve completed your best effort at an opening paragraph, take it out. That’s what I said. Editors often advise writers to cut the first paragraph of their work because it’s an unnecessary wind-up before the real pitch and the same may be true of your letter. If your copy falls flat with the first paragraph removed, then you know you have a winner for an opening.

This article mentions several examples which can be found in my new book, Copywriting that Gets RESULTS! Get your copy here.

Should you offer a money-back guarantee?

A money-back guarantee is essential to any web or direct marketing offer. It takes care of an enormous concern on the part of the buyer: I can’t see this product before I order… so, what if I get it and I don’t like it?

That’s the simple and unequivocal answer to a question you may be asked by your clients: “Do I need a guarantee?” Yes, of course you do. The next question is how generous is your guarantee, and how scrupulous will you be in honoring it?

One of my early bosses was a master of deception… I don’t think he would mind me referring to him as such because it was a point of pride to him that he could persuade people to buy products at much more than their true value. He tried to show me how to insert wiggle room in the guarantee so it would never need to be honored. But even as a naïve young marketer I knew this was not a good idea.

The people who intend to take advantage of you will find a way to do so. They’ll claim the product was damaged or simply never arrived. They’ll protest their credit card bill.  Defending yourself against them is futile and by trying to do so with a miserly or weasel-worded guarantee you’ll cause yourself far more damage among the majority of honest customers who will now be less confident about ordering from you.

At one point in my career, I wrote a lot of promos for investment newsletters. The standard guarantee was “a prompt prorata refund of your subscription cost for all unmailed issues”. What hokum.  The cost of the physical issues was negligible and the real product was intellectual property; if the reader no longer values that product why force them to pay for it?

We were able to change the standard wording to something like, “100% refund of your entire subscription price even if you cancel on the very last issue” and guess what? Refunds did not go through the roof because most subscribers do not make a mental note that okay, I can game the publisher a year from now and get my money back. Rather they make a decision about whether or not the product is for them based on their first experiences with it. A generous guarantee simply removes the roadblocks in this decision process.

My favorite guarantee is still Lands Ends’ “Guaranteed. Period.” It’s gutsy that the uncompromising language has been maintained since Lands End was acquired by Sears, but when you think about it this guarantee simply puts in writing what most retailers would offer their customers. If you don’t like it and you take the trouble to bring it back to the store, we are going to give your money back regardless of whether we think it’s justified because we don’t want an angry customer roaming the corridors.

So, copywriters, always include a guarantee—and tell the art director to put it on a fancy safety-paper background to make it look valuable. Maybe your client will protest that “we don’t actually have a return policy” to which your answer is “you should, and you do now.”

Excerpted from my new book, Copywriting that Gets RESULTS! Get your copy here.

Copywriting 101: Saratoga Chips

A local company is marketing a boutique potato chip in Saratoga Springs, NY, where that salty snack was invented in 1853. The chips are made with high quality potatoes and taste delicious. They are charmingly packaged in a replica of the “takeaway” box from the 1870s. The company is well regarded and family owned. And as a bonus, they are one of the largest clients of Saratoga Bridges, a not-for-profit that finds meaningful work for mentally disabled adults.

Okay, copywriters. Think you can create some kind of a marketing campaign from that?

Oh, there’s one thing I haven’t mentioned. For whatever reason, Saratoga Chips has chosen to sell at a per-ounce price about the same as Lays. I’m not in love with that decision because price competition is the mark of a commoditized product and this is anything but. In fact, there’s a huge potential audience of tourists who come for the track, the spa and the waters who would love to take something back to friends and family in Jersey or Florida.

Saratoga Chips Advertising
Saratoga Chips Advertising

Unfortunately, the marketing department of Saratoga Chips is not you nor I. Avoiding history, warmth and local color, their copywriter came up with the Walmart-style headline: “Buy local… why pay more for the national brands?” Doing the copywriter one better, the art director mistrusted the visual appeal of the product and the antique box and subjugated them to a fake newspaper page (“Crum Cruncher” refers to George Crum, the inventor of the chip, but of course the reader doesn’t know this) superimposed on a fake wood background as if, I guess, the fake newspaper has been plopped down on a fake table.

Purely on the basis of missed opportunity, Saratoga Chips is hereby fast-tracked into the Badvertising Hall of Shame.

Goodbye, Groupon?

You, a freelance creative, buy a plane ticket to go and see a client. You rebill the ticket at cost and your client pays you back. So, if you need to state a number when you’re applying for a credit line or some such, should you include the value of that ticket in your revenues?

Of course not. That pass through expense has nothing to do with your business; it’s just money that appears on your balance sheet on its way from one place to another. Or to quote the wonderful though wonky Grumpy Old Accountants website, “SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin 101 on Revenue Recognition, Question 10 specifically, is congruent with EITF 99-19.  The SEC stated that firms should report revenues on a net basis if they did not take title to the products, did not have the risk and rewards of ownership, and acted as an agent or broker.”

Groupon did not get the memo. They have been booking the full value of their coupon sales as revenue, not accounting for the fact that a large percentage of what they are collecting is going to go into the pockets of retailers and they are just a conduit. As a result, yesterday Groupon had to restate its revenues and reduce them by 50%, while incidentally announcing their recently hired CEO is on her way back to Google.

So much for that IPO. And perhaps much of that money that Groupon collected on the premise that its copywriters are worth $6 billion will have to be returned, since it was based on the misstated revenues. As I mentioned in that earlier post, retailers like the results that they get with Groupon but resent the charges which are higher than with other social couponing sites. It would be a lot of fun to be a LivingSocial or BlackBoardEats rep calling on your prospects next week, would it not?

I hope Groupon does not go down in flames because I think the quality of its creative expression (along with excellent, rock-solid marketing) has been the decider. You may have noticed that the Groupon “Voice” now extends no further than the opening sentence or two of most offers; after that it is straightforward, though good, marketing copy. But this is offset by the wonderful temporary insanity of the “Groupon Says” feature at the bottom of the offer page.

Google copywriters: if you guys get laid off, give otisregrets a call and let’s talk about some mutual opportunities.

Copywriter slugfest at DMA2011… coming soon!

DMA2011, the annual conference of the Direct Marketing Association, starts in Boston the first weekend in October… that’s soon! I am on a panel with colleagues Nancy Wahl, Alan Rosenspan and Carol Worthington Levy at 3 pm Monday afternoon, October 4. The topic is “Mundane, Inane and Boring Creative” and evidently we are going to try and outdo one another by seeing who can put the audience to sleep fastest with campaigns that never should have seen the light of day or, if they did, succeeded in spite of themselves.

I just got a preview of my fellow panelists’ slide decks and there is some pretty outrageous stuff there. At the end of the hour the audience will be invited to vote on who was the most mundane, inane or boring and the winner will be doused in the chill waters of Boston Harbor just outside the convention center. It’s an experience not to be missed!

If you haven’t yet registered for the DMA, you can still do so here. Try entering “friends and family” code AN614 which will hopefully give you a discount on your conference price. See you there.

“But all I need is a brochure.”

There’s been a nice thread on LinkedIn recently called “The (surprisingly) best time to quote your price.” Apart from that copywriter-ish tease, the discussion has been about whether you should immediately provide an estimate when you speak with a client, or wait till you’ve discussed the project and put forth a few ideas to demonstrate your expertise.

Copywriter Michael Gorga mentioned a red flag to watch for: the prospective client who says “but I just need a brochure [or site map, response form, landing page, fill in the blanks].” As if all your research and prep can be dispensed with because the client just needs this one specific element.

When people ask me to quote price, I always tell them I am going to do 10-15 hours of prep before I can even begin to give them a deliverable. And that’s the truth. Someone who would generate copy without a fundamental understanding of the product, the market and the competitive environment is not a copywriter, but a typist.

Michael Gorga had another red flag: the client who has never worked with a copywriter before, and would write it themselves except they’re ” too busy”. If they don’t understand the value you provide, they’re unlikely to pay your rate.

The complete thread is available here. It’s within the “Claude C. Hopkins Copywriter” group, so you may need to join the group to see it.

Six shortcuts for copywriting research

What do you do when you get an assignment in an entirely new area, for a product you’ve never written about? Here are a few seat-of-the-pants research strategies to wrap your mind around the project.

1. Read what your audience reads. Is the campaign running on audience-specific websites? Or mailing to subscription lists? Reading the pubs can give you clues about what interests your prospects and what level of writing they’re used to seeing. One timesaving tip for magazines: look at the publisher’s column in the front of the book. These are usually fairly vapid puff pieces which appeal to what the publisher or editor thinks the audience wants to read. You can do better writing than this, and you will, but looking at the topics in the publisher’s column gives you quick insights.

2. Study the competition. The web offers a wealth of free competitive research for copywriters. Find out who your client considers major competitors and also do searches using their keywords to see who else comes up, then study the way those competitors are marketing themselves. As a bonus, you may find links to research and stats you can repurpose for your own client. (But be sure to follow the links to their source, rather than quoting a competitor directly. The stats may be erroneous or proprietary and besides, plagiarism is never okay.)

3. Read the product manual or documentation. Some manuals are overly technical or poorly written, but every now and then you’ll find that a good technical writer has done the groundwork of testing a product and finding the best way to assemble and use it for quick satisfaction. That’s a boon for you.

4. Talk to the product manager. In a technology company, the product manager is the link between engineering and sales. They know how the product works and they are able to explain it in a way that makes sense to a non-technical audience. They also know how the hot buttons that appeal to their target audience in demos and at trade shows.

5. Talk to the sales team… maybe. Some salespeople focus on “people skills” and pride themselves on being able to close on the strength of their personality, not product benefits. You’ll come away with a string of generalities that aren’t convincing when you set them down in writing. But if you ask them what are the most common concerns or objections they hear on a sales call and how they respond, even non-technical salespeople may reveal strategy points that the internal marketing people don’t know about.

6. Talk to customers. This is a tricky one. Somebody who actually uses the product can be a great source of insight as well as potential quotes or even copy platforms. However, your client may not be comfortable putting you in front of a customer directly. And the customer may expect that there’s something in it for them—they’ll get their name in print with a testimonial (perhaps a terrible one they have prewritten for you) or maybe some free samples. So be careful. Tell them at the outset that you’ll try not to take much of their time and thank them profusely, letting them know by implication that thanks are all they’re getting from you.

Excerpted from my new book, Copywriting that Gets RESULTS! Get your copy here.

Who are you writing to? The marginal prospect.

After I had been working as a copywriter for several years, and long after I stopped trying to get my big break in the film business, I realized why I had never sold a screenplay: I didn’t try hard enough. (Well, the quality of the work may have had something to do with it too…) I’d be so full of myself at the end of my final draft that I’d just drop it off at the desk of an agent or reviewer and wait for the adoring comments and contracts which somehow never materialized.

Many mediocre copywriters have the same problem with their work. They don’t realize that telling a story isn’t enough. They need to sell it, by continually staying on form with benefits to tie into features and urgent appeals to act now and avoid missing out. And, they need to reach deep into themselves to continually entertain or move the reader so they can keep them on the hook.

Here, as elsewhere, the 80/20 rule applies. 40% of your audience (if you’re lucky) may be predisposed toward your product or service and don’t really need to be sold. Another 40% will never buy no matter how persuasive you may be. The final 20% is your audience: the marginal prospect who may buy, but only if you persuade them. Keep that marginal buyer in your sights and you will be less likely to become either discouraged or complacent.

This post is excerpted from my new book, Copywriting that Gets RESULTS!