Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
February 22, 2010
Issue #58
In this issue:
- Why persuasion is the most valuable skill you could ever acquire …
- How to seduce prospects without ever explicitly naming a single benefit …
- How acknowledging and validating your prospect’s core beliefs and values gives you an almost unfair advantage in sales copy …
- How to use rhetoric to bypass prospects’ brains entirely – making it virtually impossible for them to refuse the impulse to order NOW …
- And MUCH MORE!
Dear Business-Builder,
Whether you’re a business owner or entrepreneur, marketing pro or copywriter, this issue is going to be extremely valuable to you.
We’re continuing last week’s ramblings on persuasion: Without a doubt, the most valuable skill any human being could possibly develop – and I am not talking about just in copywriting or sales either.
Persuasion makes the world go around:
- Persuasion is at the heart of every government system you can name. In democracies, politicians gain power by persuading perpetually gullible citizens to vote for them. Once elected, the peoples’ representatives debate each new bill before it becomes law, each side attempting to persuade the other.
Even in monarchies and dictatorships, domestic tranquility – and in many cases, the very survival of the regime – is assured as the masses are persuaded that the monarch was divinely appointed … that the dictator is the nation’s destiny … or at the very least, to abide by the law of the land (often at the point of a gun).
- The world’s legal systems operate almost entirely on persuasion. Trials are little more than contests between two sets of attorneys to determine which will better persuade the judge or jury of its point of view.
As the OJ Simpson and Michael Jackson trials graphically demonstrated to many, the guilt or innocence of the accused can be irrelevant: If you have the most persuasive lawyer, you win: You can get away with the sickest behavior imaginable – even murder. On the other hand, if your lawyer is less than persuasive, you can be as innocent as a lamb and as pure as the driven snow – and still wind up on Death Row.
- Every religious movement owes its existence to its abilities to persuade converts that its holy script – and therefore its precepts and doctrines – is authentic, accurate and reliable (and by extension, that contradictory ones are frauds).
- In our personal lives, many (if not most) of our marriages and life partnerships are rooted in persuasion. Whether by passive seduction or aggressive pursuit, one of us persuaded the other to commit to an exclusive long-term relationship.
- Raising children is a Herculean two-way exercise in the art of persuasion. Parents use every persuasion strategy at their command to produce desired behaviors and discourage undesirable ones – and kids are past masters at figuring out what needs to be said or done to persuade Mom and Dad to give them their way.
- And of course, persuasion is an essential component in every business success story. Every day, banks and investors are persuaded to bankroll new businesses … quality employees are persuaded to join their teams … workers are persuaded to perform in productive ways …
… New customers are persuaded to make their first purchases … existing customers are persuaded to make new purchases … unions and vendors are persuaded to accept companies’ terms … and executives persuade other businesses to enter into alliances and joint ventures and to concede to mergers and acquisitions.
Heck: One of the greatest business empires of all time began with a simple act of persuasion. Microsoft was born when Bill Gates persuaded IBM to pay him a royalty on every copy of MS-DOS software installed on its machines!
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Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
February 11, 2010
Issue #863
How Business Owners and Marketing Execs
Can Make Good Sales Copy Great …
… And How "B" Copywriters
Can Become "A" Writers
In Four, Easy Lessons
Dear Business-Builder,
Just before I turned in for the evening, I got an e-mail from Adam, asking “What can a “B” writer do to become an “A” writer?
Immediately, my brain went into overdrive. I tossed, turned, counted sheep, tried to clear my mind – but the question kept pestering me. Finally, I surrendered, uttered an expletive, climbed out of bed and trudged down to my office.
The answer of course, is obvious: Produce bigger winners, more often.
But how, precisely do you do that?
Specifically, what do “A” writers do those “B” writers don’t?
And if you’re a business owner or marketing exec, how can you know great copy when you see it? How can you get “B” writers to give you “A” copy?
My answer to Adam – and to you: Just make sure each project accomplishes four, crucial things:
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Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
November 6, 2009
Issue #796
In this issue:
- The five most effective techniques to boost credibility – and the one mistake to avoid …
- The single-most important thing you MUST have right – or you may as well toss your promotion in the trash …
- How this powerful format transforms colder prospects into eager buyers …
- The quickest, easiest way to breathe butt-kicking, response-rocketing life into a dying control …
- The two troubling trends in financial marketing that you need to avoid like the plague …
- How to succeed big as a copywriter – with these two important attributes …
- And much MORE!
AWAI: In your opinion, what’s the most important part of a financial promotion? You may have just stated it … it needs to be alive with emotion. Are there any other elements critical to its success?
Clayton: I think anyone who has done any testing at all would agree that the headline and deck copy and the first few paragraphs of the main sales copy have a greater impact on response than any other part of a sales promotion. On countless occasions, I’ve taken a package that was pulling at, say, 120% of cost, tested new headline and deck copy and pushed response up to 150% or 170% of cost.
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Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
April 23, 2009
Issue #166
How Those Lowly Dots & Doodles,
Scrawls & Squiggles
Can Ramp Up Your Response
Dear Business-Builder,
If you’ve been reading The Total Package for any significant amount of time, you’re keenly aware of three of the most important Copywriting Commandments we teach:
- Write to prospects using the language they use every day: Using the same colloquial words, phrases, sentence structure, jargon and figures of speech your prospect uses helps you communicate faster. And because it also helps him see you as a “regular guy” just like he is, it also boosts the credibility of your sales message.
- Never make your prospect work to understand your meaning: Having to read a sentence or paragraph twice to figure out what it says is work. Every confusing chunk of copy costs you readership and response points.
- Always make sure your sales copy triggers your prospect’s most actionable emotions: In direct response, a delayed sale is a lost sale. The last thing you want your prospect to do is “think” about your offer or to “shop” your price. Since the vast majority of purchases are made to satisfy an emotional need, your sales copy must trigger the actionable emotions required to move your prospect to immediate action.
Now, we’ve written reams on the strategy and tactics of writing colloquially … making copy clear and precise … and on techniques for triggering prospects’ emotions. But for years, not a whisper on how the punctuation you use can help you accomplish all that.
And that’s a shame — because I’d be willing to bet that I could take a strong control and cut response by 50% or more just by balling up the punctuation.
And if that’s true, the converse is also true: Improving the use of punctuation in your sales copy could help you keep prospects reading, better activate their motivating emotions and ultimately, put extra dollars into your pocket.
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Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
April 2, 2009
Issue #37
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How to turn a leisurely visit
to your local bookstore
into the most profitable
three hours of your entire year
Dear Business-Builder,
Good morning, Sunshine! And how was your weekend?
What’s that you say? You’re well-rested … brimming with energy and optimism … and eager to begin making this your best week ever?
Cool beans.
But please – for mercy’s sake – go put some clothes on. We’re going to the bookstore: One of the few places we copywriters and marketing folk probably should NOT work in our underwear!
I know – you assumed this issue would be just another one where I was going to preach about dominant emotion or benefits or some such stuff like that.
But frankly, I don’t feel like it today. Unlike some people I could name, I did not have the luxury of swilling beer and watching Survivor reruns all weekend.
In fact, I spent two full days sweating over every word on seven headline test panels. And I’m so close to this damn copywriting tree, all I can smell is bark.
I need to take a giant step back and get a good, long look at the salesmanship forest.
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