Archive for the ‘Strategies for Success’ Category

Posted by: Matt Broich, Guest Blogger

Every successful ClickBank vendor knows that having a large number of affiliates promoting your product is the key to driving more sales. Unfortunately, many ClickBank vendors make mistakes when designing their Pitch Pages that hurt their ability to attract and retain valuable affiliates. The biggest mistakes vendors make when designing their websites include:

1) Accepting non-ClickBank forms of payment. Nothing upsets an affiliate more than losing a commission because the vendor accepts multiple forms of payment. Multiple forms of payment include PayPal (which ClickBank already accepts), a second non-ClickBank option for credit card processing, or a mail or phone-in payment option. ClickBank can only track affiliate HopLinks through the ClickBank order form. If an affiliate refers a customer and they end up mailing in their payment, the affiliate loses out on their hard-earned commission. Most affiliates check to see if a vendor offers multiple forms of payment before promoting their product, and might not promote the product if it does. I realize that vendors want to be customer-friendly by offering multiple forms of payment, but they may end up missing out on a lot of potential affiliate-driven sales.

2) Openly advertising the affiliate recruitment page. I often see vendors putting ‘Join Our Affiliate Program’ or ‘Webmasters Make Money’ links below the product order button or in their website navigation. This may upset some affiliates because a customer can easily view this link, learn they can sign up for ClickBank, get an ID, and receive a commission rebate. It therefore bypasses the affiliate commission. Instead, a vendor should bury their affiliate sign-up as a small text link in the footer of their sales page where it won’t be noticed as easily, and instead promote the page in their ClickBank Marketplace listing and other locations.

3) Presenting a poor design. Your website design should be optimized for the highest conversion rate possible, since affiliates want to feel confident that their efforts will regularly convert into sales. This requires: 

• Professional graphics. Vendors should present a clean, professional, fast-loading design with an attention-grabbing title. Invest in a professionally designed logo, header and footer graphics. Include a professional graphic of an e-book/software 3-D product box or, if you run a membership site, a membership “swipe card” graphic. These boxes and membership cards have been proven to drastically improve conversion rates.
• Well-written copy. Copy should be grammatically correct, conversational and free of typos.
• Minimal navigation. Sites that convert best have a single sales letter. If a vendor presents potential customers with a page full of links, it can prompt confusion or indecision. A page filled with links can overwhelm users so they don’t know where to start and may eventually leave without placing an order. A single page ’squeezes’ potential customers into either buying or not buying, without unnecessary distractions. To increase conversions, provide only one decision.  If you are a vendor who needs multiple navigational links, keep them to a minimum and be sure to make navigating your site easy.
• Multiple calls to action. Place text or graphical order links throughout your sales page. Vendors should invite people to order after a few paragraphs of sales copy. If there is only one order button at the bottom, conversion rates will be lower. Vendors shouldn’t overdo order buttons. They should be fairly aggressive, but never annoying or pushy.

4) Placing ads on site. Vendor Pitch Pages should not include third-party text or banner advertising on the sales page, such as Google AdSense or ClickBank HopAds. Affiliates aren’t going to send traffic to a vendor and risk losing that traffic to a user clicking a text ad or buying another ClickBank product through the vendor’s HopAd. 

5) Not offering upgrade products. Affiliates love vendors that offer upsell opportunities because it’s a chance to earn more money. Take two products that are comparable in every way, but one offers upsells and the other doesn’t; which one is the affiliate going to promote? When you offer attractive upsells, you will not only attract more affiliates, you’ll also attract more aggressive and active affiliates. 

Avoiding these costly mistakes can help vendors attract and maintain productive affiliates, which can have a huge impact on sales. Above all, it’s of the utmost importance to treat and respect affiliates like the valuable business partners they are.

Matt Broich is a seasoned ClickBank affiliate and vendor. He manages CBengine, a ClickBank Marketplace product finder and analysis tool that helps ClickBank affiliates find high converting products. Discover more: http://www.cbengine.com

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Marketing Coordinator

ClickBank vendor Jeff Mulligan has created a very useful video showing how he increased sales for one of his ClickBank products over 22% by using a simple technique that only takes a few minutes to put in place. There are no tricks or gimmicks here: Jeff’s technique just increases customers’ willingness to buy by increasing their level of trust and making sure they know what to expect throughout the sales process.

This is especially important when you send customers to an order form that looks different from your main website. Although this video is specifically geared toward ClickBank vendors, there’s no reason affiliates who have their own website couldn’t try it too, by showing a screenshot of the landing page they’re sending customers to next. As Jeff states, you should always be testing. So if you’re an affiliate, give this technique a try and leave a comment to let us know if it helped your sales.

How to Boost ClickBank Sales Video

Posted by: Dave Gale, Guest Blogger

For years, article marketing has been an effective tool for affiliates to generate visits and sales from interested consumers.

Here is a brief overview of how article marketing works and how it can benefit your efforts as an affiliate.

First, you should identify a product niche that you’re knowledgeable about, and then write an article related to that topic. At the end of the article, you can add a ‘resource box.’ Typically, this is a couple of sentences about you and what you have to offer, followed by a link to your website, where you can then direct people to useful products in that niche.

The trick here is to use those sentences to entice people to click on your link. An easy way to accomplish this is to offer a free report or other freebie related to your niche market.

Next, you’ll submit that article (for free) to various article directories on the web.

The two main directories to start with are:

www.ezinearticles.com and www.goarticles.com

To find more, just do a Google search for ‘article directory’ or ‘article directories.’

Please note that one of the conditions of publishing your article in these directories is that you allow other people to republish your articles as long as they don’t change the content and leave your name and the resource box at the end of the article intact.

Don’t worry; this is a good thing, as it will lead to more traffic for you! There are two main ways this practice will get you additional traffic.

1) Getting Published

Website owners in the niche market you are writing about will come to these directories looking for suitable articles they can use as content on their websites or ezines.

If they pick your article to publish on their site, their visitors will see your website link in the resource box at the end of your article, which could generate extra traffic for you with no additional effort or expense on your part.

2) Search Engine Rankings

Article directories can rank highly in the search engine results, so your article may get a good search engine listing by being on some of these sites. This is especially the case if other websites link to your article.

To try to get a good search engine ranking, you should target specific keyword phrases you want to rank for and make sure to include them in your article. The less competitive the keyword, the better the chance your article will rank well in the search engines.

A note of caution-don’t overdo your keyword targeting by stuffing loads of keywords into the article. If you do this, many people won’t want to read your article or click on your link, and the search engines may punish you for writing “spammy” content. This completely defeats the purpose of article marketing, which is to provide useful information that gets people to take the action you want them to take.

Instead of repeating your keyword dozens of times, just get your main keyword in there a few times, and start the article title with your keyword if you can. Your best bet is to strike a balance between having your keyword in your article enough to get noticed by search engines and keeping it readable, informative, and enjoyable for actual humans. After all, it doesn’t matter how many visitors see your article if it doesn’t convince anyone to click on your link!

In addition to getting your articles ranked in the search engines, you can also increase your own website’s search engine rankings by linking to it from your articles. With each article you submit, the more links you’ll have to your site, and the better your rankings will be.

That’s article marketing in a nutshell. Give it a try, and be aware that it may take some time and effort before you start seeing results. The best article marketers put a lot of time and effort into improving their work, just like any author, but since it’s a free and simple way to generate traffic and sales, it’s well worth the time you invest!

Dave Gale is an Internet marketer specializing in information publishing. To read more of Dave’s articles, visit http://www.publishingsuccessblog.com.

Posted by: Dush Ramachandran, VP of Business Development and Marketing

Have you ever gone to the market or the grocery store early on weekend mornings, just after the fresh produce has been unpacked and stacked? Have you noticed just how full and red the tomatoes look? How crisp the lettuce leaves are? Just how desirable everything smells?

Your marketing plans are very similar. The fresher they are, the more likely they are to succeed. You probably built your site, wrote some articles, or developed your product a few years ago, based on the information you had at that time. The traffic started to build and sales came in steadily, but things have started to slow down now. You may be wondering if there’s something wrong with the way sales are being tracked. If you’re an affiliate, you may wonder why your traffic isn’t converting as well as it used to. The answer may lie in the freshness (or lack thereof) of your marketing mix.

The target market you aimed at when you first built your site or developed your product may have changed, and your message to them may need to change as well. The keywords that you used in your search advertising campaigns when you first started were probably converting well at that time, but may have become a bit stale by now. Consider re-investing in some research to determine which search terms in your space are converting well. You need to keep your marketing message and methods fresh to keep pace with the changing environment around us.

Even two years ago, widespread use of social media tools like Twitter to promote websites or products was virtually unknown. Today, however, it is a vital weapon in the arsenal of the savvy Internet marketer. So, for example, a marketing mix that does not include social media needs to be updated to take advantage of its popularity and reach.

Even products that were hot sellers six or nine months ago are not as hot today. When gasoline prices hit record prices last summer, the number of products that dealt with increasing fuel economy in cars skyrocketed, and their sales numbers rose to match the demand for them. Since gas prices have declined, so too has the popularity of these types of products. Today, with a global economic downturn well underway, the products that are doing well are those that enable people to weather this rough economic climate.

Constantly test and re-evaluate your product and your marketing strategy for freshness, and update any part of your mix that is becoming stale. You wouldn’t want your products or your promotions to suffer the same fate as last week’s produce, would you?

Posted by: Ashley Watson, Account Specialist

Whether you’re a ClickBank affiliate or vendor, it can be very easy to become stagnant in your marketing activities. Once you’ve found a particular niche or method of advertising that works for you, it can be very difficult to change your methods. Why would you want to fix something that isn’t broken, especially when any change could potentially lower your profits?

The important thing to keep in mind is that digital products, like any other market, fluctuate based on seasonality and trends in the outside world. Even highly successful products that pertain to a wide audience experience these sales fluctuations, so you need to take these changes into account if you’re going to maximize your profits.

What influences changes in market activity?

Many different factors contribute to the market being in a constant state of change. Some of these factors aren’t surprising, such as the state of the economy or seasonal changes. However, some things are less obvious, such as the current sports season, school semesters and breaks, and holidays. It’s important to ensure your marketing campaigns are taking these factors into account so you can get the most out of your efforts.

What can you do to maximize on current trends?

So, what can you do to capitalize on an ever-changing market? First, I would suggest taking time on a regular basis to research current events. What is going on in the world to influence sales trends or cause higher levels of interest in certain subjects?

Here are some specific examples of events that affect sales, and the types of products that are influenced by these factors.

State of the Economy: We are in a recession. Consumers are spending their money more carefully, so they look for products that offer a high return on their investment, or that save them money. Some products that sell well in a recession include alternative energy solutions, foreclosure guides, guides to making money at home, and even e-books on manifest reality.

The New Year: New Year’s resolutions are extremely popular every year, and lead to a big increase in sales for health-related products such as diet programs and fitness guides. The spike in sales is temporary, but significant.

Valentines Day: Romantic guides become very popular in the US market every February.

Sports Seasons: Some product types, such as fitness products or sports betting guides, tend to sell better during a particular sports season.

School Semesters: Products that may help you capitalize on the seasonality of the educational system include computer maintenance software, study guides, guides to teaching abroad, and guides for school applications.

Holiday Season: During the holiday season, customers are slightly less inclined to buy digital products, as they save to purchase physical goods as gifts for their loved ones. However, products that address pressing needs tend to be less affected by this trend. There are also products that deal directly with the holiday, such as recipe e-books and gift idea guides, which sell well during the holiday season.

There are billions of potential customers, all of whom are unique and who are affected by cultural and seasonal trends in different ways. By staying aware of these trends, and being proactive about changing your marketing methods to stay in tune with these changes, you can maximize your efforts and be more profitable than ever.

Posted by: Michel Fortin, Guest Blogger

Do you know the most important marketing strategy in your business?

In a world filled with marketing experts extolling the virtues of duplicating proven practices, I have a bit of a contrarian view. That’s because relying too much on copying others can actually work against you in your quest for long-term success.

Whether you are marketing your own products or services or promoting other people’s products as an affiliate, positioning is key in determining your long-term success.

By developing an intimate understanding of positioning and applying it to your writing for your own marketing materials and to those of your clients, you’ll build stronger and more persuasive campaigns.

What is Positioning?

Positioning is the process of placing your firm or product above your competition in the prospects’ mind in a way that pulls prospects to you.

Marketing pioneers Jack Trout and Al Ries wrote the definitive work on the concept, entitled: “Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind.” Even though this book was written several years ago, it is still vital in business today.

In every business or product category there are thousands of competitors fighting for the same market. The goal of positioning is to be the top choice to do business with and buy from.

Positioning is not about competing, but differentiating. To be specific, the goal is to differentiate yourself (or the product you are promoting) to the degree that you become the only viable choice in the customer’s mind.

Many companies try to outperform their competitiors by offering discounts and lowering their prices. Positioning, on the other hand, eliminates the need for price-based promotions and focuses on creating a consumer mentality where you are considered the most desirable option, no matter what the cost.

Pretty powerful stuff!

Of course, understanding what positioning is does nothing in and of itself. You need to learn and apply the tools of positioning in order to gain any benefit at all. It’s the application of these strategies that will put you in the favorable position of being that top-of-mind choice within your target market.

Vive la Difference?

Loosely translated from French, the phrase “Vive la Difference” simply means “celebrate the difference.” The first step towards the effective use of positioning within your marketing is to define how you are different from your competition.

Without differentiation, there can be no hope of achieving a strong positioning edge. As I often say in my work: don’t duplicate, differentiate. Be different so that you gain, and maintain, a top position in the mind of your market.

It’s quite common to receive marketing advice telling you to research your competition, but without care, this can be a deadly practice. It’s all well and good to know what your competitors are doing; after all, no business exists within a vacuum. You should absolutely keep tabs on and know what your competition is doing.

What you must avoid, however, is the trap of assuming that in order to be successful you should be replicating what the leaders are doing.

All this accomplishes is the creation of a series of copycats that remind the consumer who the leader is, and reinforces the message that they should buy from the leader. When you engage in such practices, you’re effectively paying for the advertising edge of your competition.

In other words, copy what others do and you’ll only remind people of them and not you.

The only way to avoid becoming a victim of copycat syndrome is to develop your core identity based on how you are different from your competition, and create a unique identity on which to hang your promotional hat.

Anything else is bound to come across as less than genuine in the minds of your target market and certainly won’t help you rise above the crowd.

Determining Your Positioning

Determining your positioning can seem like a daunting task, especially in a highly competitive market. Fortunately, it often isn’t as difficult as it initially seems.

For one thing, most businesses don’t spend much time at all developing their competitive edge through positioning. This means that as someone aware of positioning, it’s usually fairly easy to spot an opportunity.

For another, even if a strong, marketing savvy competitor exists, as a copywriter or marketer you likely already have the creativity you need to make the breakthrough you are looking for.

Before you begin brainstorming ways to help your audience come to a favorable impression, it’s important to note that differentiation need not be drastic. This is where your research skills and any experience you have within the industry is priceless.

In some cases there may be no difference at all other than the fact that no one else in the industry is actually stating it. For example, several years ago there was a car campaign that used the statement that seven out of 10 drivers who test-drove their car, bought one.

What the campaign didn’t say is that the statistic was true for everyone else in the industry, too. It was just that no one else had used this little-known fact before in their promotional efforts.

The best part is, it would be impossible for anyone else to successfully come in after the fact and not sound like a “me too” copycat. If they do they will only remind your market of you.

This brings about another factor that is essential to positioning. In order to gain the most traction from your efforts, you must be first. Or, at least, be perceived to be the first in some way, shape or form.

The difference you choose to exploit needs to work towards the building of a perception of originality. Granted, differentiation is only the beginning. Being different than or superior to the competition is one thing, but to consistently maintain that position is another story altogether. But that is a story for another day.

Until next time, practice unveiling the differences that can set you apart from the competition to develop a strong foundation and create top-of-mind-awareness. As a result, you will have a stronger marketing edge in your copywriting efforts.

Michel Fortin is a marketer, copywriter, and author of many books and courses. For more information about Michel, including how to get your hands on several free ebooks, visit his blog at http://www.michelfortin.com.

In spite of all the great tools that have been developed in recent years to help Internet-based entrepreneurs connect with each other and increase their productivity, there is still a lot of value in old-fashioned, face-to-face meetings. In-person discussions with other entrepreneurs can help you get your questions answered, find new partners for joint ventures, or teach you powerful new techniques for growing your business. Many successful ClickBank publishers and affiliates have already discovered the value that comes from starting or joining these kinds of groups.

One of the best ways to meet and interact with other like-minded entrepreneurs is through the Web site Meetup.com. No matter where you are in the world, you can create or join a group in your city and start meeting and working with other ClickBank publishers and affiliates. Starting your own Meetup group costs as little as $12/month, which could pay for itself if you make just one extra sale a month through ClickBank. Joining an existing group is free!

Some of the ways a ClickBank Meetup group could benefit you include:

• Finding new products or niches to promote as an affiliate
• Getting feedback on your ClickBank product prior to release, or getting advice on improving an existing product
• Brainstorming ideas for new products
• Meeting people who can teach you new skills or assist you in areas that aren’t your strength (for example, if you’re a great copywriter but don’t know anything about Web design, you might meet someone with the opposite skill set who would love to work with you on a new product)
• Discussing the latest and greatest techniques for promoting products inexpensively

These are just some of the many ways that working directly with other people can help you grow or strengthen your online business. If you’re interested in starting an affiliate marketing Meetup group in your area, click here to get started. Since you have to choose from a list of pre-defined topics for your group, we suggest “Entrepreneur,” “Network Marketing,” or “Internet Professionals.”

If you organize or are a member of a Meetup group that discusses ClickBank, fill out the form below and give us a link to your group on Meetup. We’ll list existing groups so that other people in your area can join up and grow the network of ClickBank publishers and affiliates helping each other succeed!

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By: Scott Tousignant, Guest Blogger

Product review pages have always been a great way to promote Clickbank products. Affiliates’ conversion rates will often increase significantly when they drive traffic to a review page first, rather than sending traffic directly to the vendor’s sales page. But times are changing, and the Internet is becoming more dynamic and interactive. If you are not keeping up with these changes, you will surely be leaving money on the table.

With the emergence of social media, standard product review pages have begun losing their effectiveness. The public is demanding more than just a brief summary and a 5 star rating system to help them make purchasing decisions. They want proof, and they want it in real time.

In 2008, I witnessed some great product reviews coming from real people documenting their fat loss journey on YouTube. This created a greater connection between the affiliate and the prospective customer. It built trust and credibility. Best of all, many of these videos became viral and spread like wildfire across social networking communities like YouTube.

In 2009, live video has become much easier to use and is rapidly gaining popularity. Because of these improved technologies, there has never been a greater time to be a Clickbank product vendor or affiliate. Social media and live video allow us to overcome much of the skepticism that prospects might experience when they come across a standard sales page or product review page. When they see someone put their name and face to a review, they’re more inclined to believe what that person has to say.

When it comes to live video, www.ustream.tv has been the #1 choice for me, due to its ease of use and quality in deliverability. Not only do your viewers get to watch you live, they can also chat with you live at the same time. This provides a great opportunity to help your prospects overcome any skepticism they may have about the product or program. It also builds your reputation as an affiliate or product owner who cares about their customers and followers.

How to Create the Ultimate Product Review Using Ustream

• Weekly Progress Report – Choose a Clickbank product that you will put to use for a four to twelve week time period. For your first Ustream broadcast, let your audience know your goals and expectations from the program. Inform them that you are documenting your journey live so you can hold yourself accountable to using the product to its fullest potential, and to provide the viewer with the best possible product review.Set a day and time when you will broadcast your progress each week. It’s important to train your viewers on when to expect your program to air. Treat it like your own television program. Consistency is the key to a successful Ustream channel.Share your progress and answer your viewers’ questions in the chat box with each show that you produce. I recommend that you keep the length of your weekly progress report show to around 10 or 15 minutes. Captivate your audience, deliver great content, and tell them to tune in next week. When your show has ended, I recommend that you take advantage of the Ustream function that allows you to immediately upload the video to YouTube.
• Maximize The Chat Box – Before you end your show, I recommend that you copy the discussion in the chat box and paste it in a text document. Take the most frequently asked questions and type in the answers that you provided for them during the live video. You can then turn the text into a .pdf file and use it as a free report to distribute to your readers. Be sure to include your affiliate link for the product within the report, as well as links to your review page.Additionally, I suggest that you send a copy of the report to the product creator. Let them know that in your efforts to promote their program, you have discovered the most common questions that their potential customers have in regards to their program, and that you took the time to answer these questions for them. Inform the product owner that they are free to distribute the FAQ report any way that they wish.
• Live Video Interview With The Product Owner – Teleseminars and phone interviews have been a great way to promote Clickbank products as an affiliate, and now live video takes the effectiveness of the interview to an entirely new level. Ustream allows you to take the embedded code of your video and paste it on any page that you wish.
  As a product owner, you may want to consider pasting the Ustream video at the top of your sales page when you are doing your live broadcast. As you are answering your viewers’ questions, you can refer them to parts of your sales copy directly below your video. For example, if one of the viewers asks, “Will your product work for me when I have a limited amount of time?” you can point that person to one of your testimonials from a person who said, “Even though I had a limited amount of time I was able to get incredible results from your product.”

These are just a few ideas on how to harness the power of Ustream when it comes to promoting Clickbank products. The possibilities for using live video are limitless. This post was meant to get your creative juices flowing and give you a way to stand out amongst the crowd. If you have a creative way to put a twist on what I have just shared, please take a moment to share it in a comment. Here’s your chance to take the spotlight!

Scott Tousignant of www.socialmediaprofitcoach.com climbed out of the depths of bankruptcy and grew his online business by harnessing the power of social media. Connect with Scott by following him at www.Twitter.com/FatLossQuickie

Posted by: Michel Fortin, Guest Blogger

For Part 1 of this series, click here. For Part 2, click here.

6. Messages

I spoke about meta-messages in an earlier point. Words are not messages. They are symbols used to convey them. As such, words mean different things to different people. The words you choose can literally change the meaning behind the message (this is what’s often called the “meta-message”).

For example, words can emphasize, support, or even contradict the message. People may read your copy and understand the basic message. But with certain words, they can make assumptions — assumptions that might be counterproductive to the sale. So the words you choose are important, as they may impact the reader in different ways. Here are at least three techniques I use:

A) Repetitious Words

As the old adage goes, “Repetition is the parent of learning.” Like the earlier point on emphasis, repetition aids comprehension, especially of complex or important ideas. However, the key here is not to repeat the same words over and over, but to use different examples to illustrate your point.

To that end, paraphrase, or substitute certain words with synonyms, and add new pieces of information each time the idea is repeated. For instance, in order to drive the message “privacy policies promote purchases” home, that message can be repeated with the following:

• “Privacy statements increase sales,”
• “Confidentiality is a key to online success,”
• And “respecting visitors’ privacy is profitable.”

B) Emotional Words

Again, words are not messages in themselves. They have different meanings to each of us and can be interpreted differently. While many words can be used to communicate a single message, the words you choose can dramatically alter its emotional impact. In copywriting, it is not so much the message that’s important, but the meaning behind it. For instance, look at these differences:

• “Cost” versus “investment;”
• “Beautiful teeth” versus “beautiful smiles;”
• “Skinny” versus “slim” or “slender;”
• “Products” or “services” versus “solutions;”
• “Cost-effective” versus “return on investment;”
• And “house” versus “home.”

C) Positive Words

Avoid using negative words. Say what it is, not what it isn’t. Dr. Maxwell Maltz, author of the bestseller “Psycho-Cybernetics,” states that the brain is a goal-seeking organ — it needs a goal in order to function. For example, if I told you not to think of a white carnation, you will have hard time since your brain needs a goal — it will naturally picture what it is supposed to avoid because the mind can not function when blank.

But on the other hand, if I told you to think of a pink carnation, you will then think of a pink carnation and not a white one — I gave your mind a goal. Similarly, stating what something isn’t can be counterproductive since you are directing the mind, albeit in the opposite way. If you were told that dental work is painless, for instance, your mind would still focus on the word “pain” in the word “pain-less.” Here are some other examples:

• Instead of saying “inexpensive,” say “economical;”
• Instead of saying “this procedure is “painless” or “pain-free,” say “there’s no discomfort with this procedure” or “it’s relatively comfortable;”
• And instead of saying “this software is error-free,” “bug-free,” or “foolproof,” say “this software is stable.”

7. Urgency

Add urgency or scarcity to your copy. Use a technique called “takeaway selling.” As Jim Rohn once said, “Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value.” Procrastination is the biggest killer of sales — particularly online, where the chances of a prospect staying or returning to a Web site (in order to think about buying) are scarce in today’s click-happy world.

Takeaway selling is in fact based on the concept of supply and demand. As the saying goes, “You don’t know how much you want something until it’s about to be taken away.” Look at it this way: if you give a chance for your prospects to procrastinate, they will.

So add a deadline or some kind of constraint, such as a time-sensitive or quantity-bound offer. Such limitations implore at some unconscious level, “You’d better read this and take action now!” Put an actual end-date or a specific, limited quantity to your offer. But always make sure to back up your limitation with a logical, genuine, and easily justifiable reason in order to avoid appearing misleading or disingenuous.

Don’t just stick with limiting orders or time, either. Think about the offer. Perhaps your offer contains certain bonuses or a pricetag that, in its current combination, must be limited — especially if the bonuses come from third parties over which you have no control. The product (especially if it’s a digital one, which is often perceived as limitless) may not be limited. But the offer, in its current state, certainly can be.

Also, urgency can be applied to current events, situations, or circumstances. For instance, not taking action soon may cause the reader to aggravate their current problem that your product solves. The longer they wait to buy, the more they lose out.

The Bottom Line

Look at your copy and read it carefully with a discerning eye. Does it violate any of the above laws — in other words, is it easy to scan, does it grab people’s attention, and above all, does it excite them about your products or services? And more importantly, do people truly understand the meaning behind the message in the way you anticipated? Or do they interpret the message differently?

If you can, have someone else read it and tell you what they understood — you might be surprised!

Craft a message that jumps out at people and compels them to respond — or, at the very least, to read further — using the seven elements above. Finally, remember that you should tweak and test your copy regularly, and the above pointers are great places to start. Because you never know: one little change can potentially send your conversation ratio through the roof.

—————–

Michel Fortin is a marketer, copywriter, and author of many books and courses. For more information about Michel, including how to get your hands on several free ebooks, visit his blog and sign up free to get tested conversion strategies and response-boosting tips by email, along with blog updates, news, and more! Go now to http://www.michelfortin.com.

Posted by: Michel Fortin, Guest Blogger

For Part 1 of this series, click here.

3. Bullets

Insert bulleted lists within your marketing copy. If at any point you list more than three items, use bullets! Bullets are short, captivating, and pleasing to the eye. They give the reader a visual break, especially with the long copy salesletter style. Most importantly, they reinforce the offer, help deliver straight-to-the-point benefits, and are clustered for greater impact.

An effective way to incorporate bullets is when they follow the words “you get” or “reasons why.” This grants the reader the ability to know exactly, item by item, what they are getting out of responding to your offer. For example, use bullets after the words “with this [product], you get” or “here are the reasons why you should buy [this product].”

Again, people scan. If you scan up and down a salesletter, you will naturally stop at anything that’s visually out of place. Along with pictures, graphics, and boxes, bullets are indented and keyword- or keyphrase-driven. So bulleted lists provide eye gravity, help to stop scanners, and force them back into the copy.

4. Postscripts

Postscripts (or “P.S.’s”) at the end of a sales copy are great tools for a number of reasons. While they can surely be used to restate or summarize the offer, postscripts can also emphasize the critical points mentioned earlier in the copy and especially in the headline — such as the element of scarcity — that can give that final “push” prospects need to go ahead.

An extra bonus not offered in the copy as a last-ditch effort to close the sale, a link to the order page with emphasis on the fast approaching deadline, or an alternative (such as a downsell to an alternative, perhaps lower-priced alternative) are all elements that can be used very effectively with postscripts.

Don’t limit your copy to a single “P.S.” Add a “P.P.S.” or more. And don’t just stick with plain body copy. Like bullets and headers, they are some of the elements people read first before they read the entire copy. They really work! For example, add FAQs (frequently asked questions) in the postscript section. You could also include testimonials, case studies, or a video.

5. Emphasis

In speech, we use tone, pitch, rhythm, and inflection (i.e., emphasis on certain syllables, words, or expressions) to stress the message being conveyed, its meaning, or certain key points we wish to drive home. On the Web, however, there are no verbal cues like these. People can’t grasp the context and meta-message (i.e., the message behind the message) of what is written.

Fortunately, HTML is an effective tool to address this problem. Since most people will scan a Web site, through text formatting we can accentuate certain words or phrases that we want the reader to read and understand — words to which we want the reader to pay greater attention and grasp an underlying or implied meaning.

Things like bold lettering, italics, underlines, colors, font sizes, tables, borders (borders and framing text help to increase readership by about 20%), and so on can make a message and particularly critical points of the copy more impacting and forceful.

Emphasis also aids comprehension, especially of complex and critical ideas, and can be used to drive home important points. Like speech, it can make the message more seductive and meaningful. Take, for instance, “I love you” versus “I *LOVE* you!” The latter is more appealing, more invigorating, and more significant. The emphasis implies, “I really, really do love you!”

Check back for Part 3 of this series on Thursday!

Michel Fortin is a marketer, copywriter, and author of many books and courses. For more information about Michel, including how to get your hands on several free ebooks, visit his blog and sign up free to get tested conversion strategies and response-boosting tips by email, along with blog updates, news, and more! Go now to http://www.michelfortin.com.