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"Issue 118 October 14th 2005" Previous edition is at http://adcopywriting.com/digest/117.htm Please forward this Newsletter to friend - Thank You!
Try Reading this in 'FULL
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Articles can be reprinted in their entirety, providing the author's resource details are kept intact. Please do NOT hit 'Reply', your email will disappear into cyberspace. My address is jr@adcopywriting.com
--------------------------- -------------------------------------- This edition was originally published a few weeks ago, but I have just discovered that, even though I re-sent it after my mailing software failed, only a few hundred were actually delivered. So this could be the third copy you have received. Lucky you:-) Sorry, but maybe you will now understand why I hate technology so much - even though it's what my whole lifestyle is built around. It's not so much the technology I hate, but the feeling of helplessness and frustration I get when it goes wrong. Especially when it makes a fool of me! 2 days ago my JoesDeals list received a garbled email from me. It was the technology bug again. And that's when my techie discovered that this newsletter had also not been fully delivered 3 weeks ago.. A few hours ago I emailed ( successfully ) my special JoesDeals Members with a fantastic deal I have put together, that's extremely time sensitive. And it's not about Internet Marketing, even though it does ALSO offer Resale Rights if you're a marketer. Next time this Digest goes out the deal will have ended, so don't miss out on it. You have to be a FREE Member before entering the Members area. Just sign up and login to the site immediately and see what's available. In a few days I will be offering another great deal on a fantastic new piece of software that EVERY marketer should own. So join up now at http://joesdeals.com -------------- I know it's been a while since my previous newsletter, but I've been involved in so many projects that I simply lose track of time. Not just hours or days, but weeks seem to fly by without me noticing. Of course some might say it's a symptom of advancing age, but I enjoy it so I have no complaints. If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't do it! My wife and I have just returned to the UK after a 3 month stay in the USA, where I have been working on a couple of projects, and travelling whenever we could. Thank heavens for Laptops and the Internet! We are returning to the US soon to spend 6 months of the year in the house we bought out there. So we'll miss the UK winters, which we're terribly upset about:-) --------------- There are 2 people who literally changed my life and had a massive influence on reshaping my Copywriting and Marketing Career. One was Ted Nicholas the Direct Marketing Giant, and I'm glad to say he is online now. The other guy is someone I'll bet you have never heard of ... Pat Quinn! Pat (Patrick) is a massively successful UK Copywriter and author in the UK. Last time I spoke to him he was living on the borders of Scotland - even though he's a Londoner! He had a massive influence on my thinking, my focus, my style, and my confidence, and I will be forever grateful to him. I would say that his no-bullshit, down to earth approach to copywriting helped me to finally find my own unique Copywriting voice. His use of humor gave me the confidence to use my own style of humor, and showed me HOW to use to best effect! And that 'voice' later helped me create the unique and outrageously successful Newbie Club, as well as helping me to earn an extremely healthy income from doing something I love - selling and writing! So I'm delighted to say that he has recently written and published a digital Copywriting book that will influence your Copywriting efforts from now on. It's called WordPower3 and has my wholehearted recommendation Read about it here - and BUY it! http://tncinfo.com/wordpower And while you're there sign up for his brilliant monthly newsletter. I LOVE it! ----------- Here's a great FREE movie to watch on your
computer. It's the third one they have created so far and it's so
wonderfully relaxing and emotive. I know you'll like it ... ----------- Louis Allport and I created a great new Copywriting product which we officially launched some months ago featuring myself and Alex Mandossian. It's a 6 hour audio and text transcript, and it's
the first in a series we are calling 'Joe Robson's Internet Marketing
Masterclass". That's Louis' title - but I like it:-) ----------- Poem by a Copywriter ... NOW... AT LAST...THE NEW AMAZING By Draper Daniels, Copywriter from way back -------
That's it, I'm gone! -------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------- Sometimes it's really difficult just to sit down 'cold' and write an article. But procrastinating makes no difference, because when you eventually return to it, that 'block' is still there. Here's a few helpful pointers ... 1. Remove your
limits Assume you are wanting to write about "how to
improve your job prospects" 9. Submit it! -------------------------- Before writing an article, have you ever felt
overwhelmed by a blank sensation, not knowing where to start? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Robson highly respected free Copywriting tutorials site is at http://adcopywriting.com See what he's been up to lately at http://joerobson.com ---------------------------------------------------
Joe Robson's 'Headline Writing Master
Course' is an astonishing library of ebooks and audios from some of the
World's Very Best Copywriters and Marketers. You won't believe how much
explosive
-------------------------------- Online copywriting has the same goals as print content, but there at least seven distinct points of departure between writing copy online and for print. Online copywriting and print copywriting are very different. You hear that all the time. But that's an observation as unhelpful as it is obvious. What are the real similarities and differences between writing for the web and writing for print? Similarities between Online Copywriting and Print CopywritingDespite their differences, copywriting for print and online copywriting share some essential similarities, which are just as important to understand as the differences:
Differences between Online Copywriting and Print Copywriting1) Most web and email newsletter content has to appear more informational than promotional.Subtly promotional content usually does better than out-and-out sales copy. Site visitors and newsletter readers who aren't ready for a sales pitch--usually, that's most of them--may still be open to informational content that presents a problem and shows how it can be solved using the product or service being sold on the website. As for readers who are ready for a sales pitch, they don't need to be told twice on two different web pages. Aim for one sales page per offering, unless you are testing out different sales pages, or unless you only make the link to one of the sales pages prominent, with the rest of the pages serving as landing pages for search engine traffic. Purely informational content with no clear promotional angle should make up at least a few of your pages. The credibility of a website depends on solid information. Natural links will come more readily to pure information, too. A sales or lead-capture paragraph or two in the sidebar of every promotional or purely informational page will also help you get responses from your library of informational content. 2) Web content must be easy to scan as well as read word-for-word."Scannable" means that the key ideas of content are clear at a glance, and statements make sense when read out of context. Scanning for main ideas is preferred over reading word-for-word among a large majority of web users. Nearly all of the fully literate users scan. Even if inclined to read a page word-for-word, highly literate users will scan the page first to make sure it will repay their investment of reading time. As for less-literate visitors who cannot parse words quickly enough to scan, scannable content will usually be easier to read word-for-word since it tends to be simpler. 3) With web content, quantity is almost as important as quality.If you try to make every page a killer sales letter or literary masterpiece, you will end up with 10 pages instead of 100 (or 100 instead of 1000, depending on your budget). Fewer pages mean fewer visitors, both new visitors and repeat visitors. Besides, since most literate users will only scan the page, your investment in literary merit or sales tactics is largely unappreciated. 4) Syndication and content distribution add new considerations.Thanks to syndication and content distribution (e.g., RSS and Creative Commons), web content is its own promotional vehicle. Other websites, RSS feeds, and email newsletters will reprint good content without asking anything in return. Unlike with traditional advertising and promotion, you do not need to buy space to send out your web content message. Unlike with public relations, you do not need to filter your message through reporters, either. You do, however, have to write for publishers and gate-keepers as well as end-readers when syndicating or distributing content. Informational value becomes more important since something that is too promotional will not take wing. Other syndication-specific issues include syndication-friendly keywords, titles, page length, tone, style, and formatting. 5) Less-literate and less-fluent readership requires simpler writing.Less-literate people constitute up to half of the population of the wealthy countries, and somewhat more in many of the less wealthy countries. Less fluent non-native speakers of English are also a huge part of the online audience. An eighth-grade reading level is as literate as the essential pages of your site should get, unless they are aimed at an audience that is necessarily literate (as is this page). 6) International readership requires more universal terms of expression.Cultural, legal, or local references and nuances, as well as anything written for effect, will make less sense to people outside your country or even your region. North Americans writing for dramatic emphasis and Britons writing for pointed understatement will write right past each other. Complaints about sky-rocketing housing costs will resonate among North Americans from Montreal to Miami to San Diego, but less so among North Americans from Ottawa to San Antonio to Cheyenne. Try to write in terms anyone would understand: birth, death, family, thirst, hunger, love, sadness, the sun, the moon, buzzing insects and singing birds. 7) Building trust is more important on the web.At the very least, print takes enough money and effort to buy the paper and ink. Anyone at all can build a web page with little effort. Besides, the web is filled with misinformation. Make sure your web pages look trustworthy with solid facts and convincing logic, and no grammar or spelling errors. In conclusion, Nobel-prize-winning literature may make bad web content, but that doesn't mean there aren't standards. Follow the standards for good online copywriting, or your visitors may go to another site. ---------------------------------------------------------- About the author -----------------------------------------
"Confessions Of A Website Copywriter" The First 'Complete Guide' to Creating Website Sales Letters That Sell Like Nothing You've Seen Before! "Reveals
More Than MYWS"...
--------------------------------------- In 1961, Rosser Reeves published his classic book Reality in Advertising in which he introduced the notion of the Unique Selling Proposition, or USP. Today the book is out of print and difficult to get. As a result, most practicing direct marketers don’t know the original definition of a USP. Their lack of knowledge often produces USPs that are weak and ineffective. According to Reeves, there are three requirements for a USP (and I am quoting, in the italics, from Reality in Advertising directly): 1. Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Each must say, “Buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit.” Your headline must contain a benefit – a promise to the reader. 2. The proposition must be one that the
competition either cannot, or does not, offer. 3. The proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass millions, i.e., pull over new customers to your product. The differentiation cannot be trivial. It must be a difference that is very important to the reader. Why do so many advertisements fail? One reason is that the marketer has not formulated a strong USP for his product and built his advertising upon it. Formulating a USP isn’t difficult, but it does take some thinking; and many people don’t like to think. But when you start creating direct mail and advertising without first thinking about what your USP is, your marketing is weak because there is nothing in it to compel the reader to respond. It looks and sounds like everyone else, and what it says isn’t important to the reader. In general advertising for packaged goods, marketers achieve differentiation by building a strong brand at a cost of millions or even billions of dollars. Coca Cola has an advantage because of its brand. If you want a cola, you can get it from a dozen soda makers. But if you want a Coke, you can only get it from Coca Cola. Intel has achieved a similar brand dominance, at an extraordinary cost, with its Pentium line of semiconductors. Most direct marketers are too small, and have too strong a need to generate an immediate positive ROI from their marketing, to engage in this kind of expensive brand building. So we use other means to achieve the differentiation in our USP. One popular method is to differentiate your product or service from the competition based on a feature that your product or service has and they don’t. The common error here is building the USP around a feature that, while different, is unimportant to the prospect, and therefore unlikely to move him to try your product or service. For example, in the pump industry, it is common for pump manufacturers to attempt to win customers by advertising a unique design feature. Unfortunately, these design twists often result in no real performance improvement, no real advantage that the customer cares about. Realizing that they could not differentiate based on a concrete design principle, Blackmer pump took a different tact: to create a USP based upon application of the product. Their trade ads showed a Yellow Pages ripped out of an industrial buying guide, full of listings for pump manufacturers, including Blackmer. Their company name was circled in pen. The headline of the ad read, “There are only certain times you should call Blackmer for a pump. Know when?” Body copy explained (and I am paraphrasing here), “In many applications, Blackmer performs no better or worse than any pumps, and so we are not a particularly advantageous choice.” But, the ad went on, for certain applications (viscous fluids, fluids containing abrasives, slurries, and a few other situations) Blackmer was proven to outperform all other pumps, and were the logical brand of choice. Blackmer closed the ad by offering a free technical manual proving the claim. My old friend, Jim Alexander, of Alexander Marketing in Grand Rapid, Michigan, created this campaign and tells me it worked extremely well. The easiest situation in which to create a strong USP is when your product has a unique feature – one that competitors lack – that delivers a strong benefit. This must be an advantage the customer really cares about. Not one that, though a difference, is trivial. But what if such a proprietary advantage does not exist? What if your product is basically the same as the competition, with no special features? Reeves has the answer here too. He said the uniqueness can either stem from a strong brand (already discussed as an option 95% of marketers can’t use) or from “a claim not otherwise made in that particular form of advertising” – that is, other products may have this feature too, but advertisers haven’t told consumers about it. An example from packaged goods advertising: “M&Ms melt in your mouth, not in your hand.” Once M&M established this claim as their USP, what could the competition do? Run an ad that said, “We also melt in your mouth, not in your hand!”? In his book Scientific Advertising, Claude Hopkins gives an example of a USP that has become a classic story. The short version: An ad man walking through his beer client’s brewery was fascinated by a machine that blasted steam into beer bottles to sanitize them. “Don’t use that in advertising,” the brewer told the ad man. “It is nothing unique; every brewer does the same.” “Maybe,” the ad man replied, “but I had never heard of it before, and neither has any of the beer-drinking public.” He then created a successful ad campaign for a beer advertised as “so pure the bottles are washed in live steam.” One more point: As direct marketers, we – unlike most general advertisers today – are compelled to create advertising that generates net revenues in excess of its cost. Reeves believed all advertising had to do this. He defined advertising as “the art of getting a USP into the heads of the most people at the lowest possible cost.” If I were to modify his definition, I would change it to “getting a USP into the heads of the people most likely to buy the product, at the lowest possible advertising cost.” But who am I to quibble with the master? -------------------------------- Bob Bly's best work on Headline Writing is contained in the colossal Copywriting course from Joe Robson at http://headlinecourse.com ---------------------------------- "Top Quality Resources" "How To Make A Bundle With Reprint Rights?" Some great discounts and free deals here ... http://joesdeals.com My tip the other week in one of my other
newsletters encouraged hundreds to subscribe to the free Affiliate
Training Course, and nearly 200 to subsequently join the site for just
ONE dollar! A definite 5 star rating from me whether your a Newbie or a
Pro
http://tncinfo.com/affiliate-classroom _____________________ Is this really the Bible of Copywriting for the Web?
_____________________ -------------------------------- "Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it." ----------- William James --------------------------------- --------------------------------- © 2005 Joe Robson. All rights reserved 3 Ashleigh Avenue |
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