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Tag: marketing methods

  • Seven Swiping Secrets

    Meet the guest writer

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    Today’s post is brought to you by our esteemed friend at the Copywriter’s Rountable. So without further ado, here are the words of Copywriter, John Forde…

    I guess first I should define terms…

    “A swipe file is a collection of tested and proven advertising and sales letters. Keeping a swipe file (templates) is a common practice used by advertising copywriters and creative directors as a ready reference of ideas for projects.
    “Copywriters are not the only ones who can benefit from having a swipe file. As book publishing coach Diane Eble points out, authors and publishers can benefit from creating a swipe file of best-selling titles to give them ideas for their own titles.

    “Publicists can create a swipe file of great press release headlines. Swipe files are a great jumping-off point for anybody who needs to come up with lots of ideas. Swipe files are also commonly used by Internet Marketers who need to gather a lot of resources not only about products but also about marketing methods and strategies.”
    Well, that clarifies things a little, yes? Try this, too…

    “There is nothing better or more productive a copywriter can do – and this applies to experienced copywriters as well as novices – than to read (almost to the point of memorizing) the best work of their fellow writers.” The first is just from Wikipedia, and not so much swiped but copied and pasted. The second from my old friend and mentor, as well as master copywriter, Michael Masterson.

    Okay, now it’s my turn to try my hand at an original thought…

    A swipe file defined

    A swipe file is that place where you store those dazzling promo pieces that not only worked… but that are so good they make you sick with envy. Because you wish you’d written them yourself. In other terms, it’s the stack of stuff you go through, to help jump-start your creative engine… because you know that most everything you’re looking at, in those “swiped” samples, is something that worked.

    Back in my earliest days, my swipe file filled a green milk grate. And then another. And then seven or eight more, until somebody made me get a filing cabinet. And then a second filing cabinet.

    These days, thank merciful God for the Internet. Because now my swipe file — and yes, I still keep one — is a folder on my desktop labeled “Promos to Study.” In it lands links to VSLs, PDFs of magalogs somebody else has generously scanned, black and white ad clips the ‘70s and ‘60s, even back to the 1920s (thanks to the excellent InfoMarketingBlog.com), covers and screen captures I’ve used in presentations, and more. 
    Thanks, merciful Zeus as much or more for the iPad, which I also use every morning to markup whatever promo I’ve set aside to review.

    The way it goes, most mornings, is that I load up any oft-seen sales letter that comes with a transcript. Then I “print” it to a PDF that gets stored on my iCloud account. From there, I open an app called “Goodnotes” and import the file, where it gets circled, scribbled upon, and partitioned into what seem the best bits. And yes, I do try to do that daily. More so now than before. And yes, it’s eye-opening. Every time.

    But the real reason I’m writing this… or rather, updating this old CR classic… is because I recently got a question from a CR reader about where and how to swipe from other sales letters. So I thought I would go ahead and provide some answers. And away we go, starting with… 

    Reach wide. No easy answers

    1) Reach wide – Before you can “read” the secrets buried in a swipe file, you need to fill it. And when you do, naturally you’ll want to start with the kinds of ads you expect to write most yourself. But don’t stop there. Reach way back to the classics. You’ll be surprised what Claude Hopkins and John Caples ads, Ogilvy, Schwartz and others still have to teach.

    If you’re lucky enough to have the courier typed sales letters of the ‘70s and ‘80s… or magalogs and bookalogs of the ‘90s… read them too. Almost everything we know works now, they knew then times ten. And then, yes, do keep it current with the working VSLs. Just make sure you click and get the “transcript” where it’s offered too. Print it to a PDF. Some of the copywriters today do some of the most enviably good stuff I’ve seen yet, anywhere.

    2) Don’t expect easy answers – What’s the right question to ask for any piece of copy you’re about to study? Assuming you’re only studying stuff that worked, the right opener — obviously — is “Why?” Unfortunately, it’s also the most unanswerable question. You won’t know, for sure, why anything worked. Because it will always remain a guess.

    3) Look past the copy – That is, remember that it’s not so much that the copywriter sold something well… as that there were lots of readers out there that wanted to receive the message he used to sell it. What’s the distinction?

    The twist & style

    When you look at swipes, especially the most current ones in your market, what you’re looking for first is every clue you can get about the prospect, not so much the product. If there’s a promise that you see working everywhere, it’s because it promises to fix a problem that’s keeping target readers everywhere up at night. Isolate the single biggest promise the copy makes and flip it — what problem is it solving?

    4) Find the twist – More and more, we see copy make a promise or throw out a solution-demanding premise… and then up the ante with an extra “twist” to the message. That is, a kind of early “but it gets [an] even better” or “gets [an] even worse” turn in the message, just at the moment the reader was thinking “I’m kinda hooked already…”

    Of course, this is classic storytelling. Our hero struggles. And just at the moment you thought it couldn’t get any worse… or better… the drama dial clicks up another notch. Just about any sales message could benefit from a twist, both in the lead and the close. Look to your swipes to see how it’s done.

    5) Soak up the style – All writers in all genres pick up a style. Dense. Lean. Even. Excitable. Some copy drips with adjectives but works in spite of itself. Other copy undersells, yet manages — somehow — to hit hard. This is one of those things you can absorb best by just copying out a good piece of copy a few times until the secrets of style sneak into your subconscious.

    Structure & closings

    Even now, I keep a piece of the latest, greatest copy open on my screen or a second desktop (on the Mac, at least, you can move between multiple desktops). When I’m stuck, I swipe over to it and read for a little, then come back and try to trot out my message in the same mindset. Be careful here, because you’re not stealing words. At least, not mindlessly so. You’re trying to get a “feel” you can transfer back to your writing.

    6) Study the structure – This is something else that writing out a full promo — by hand — can help you do. If not that, at least try to re-outline a finished copy control. You want to see how long they took to get through the lead, where they first started laying out the benefits or naming the offer, how they packaged up the testimonials and how long they spent on proof.

    Build your own library of promo outlines and use them as templates, next time you’re getting started. This isn’t stealing. It’s just good sense.
    Also, look for the segments that seem to show up across several different samples. Just about every sales piece, for instance, is going to have testimonials and a close and some freebies with the offer.

    But do all promotions have “Imagine this outcome” sections, transcendent mission statements, a personal story, show-me-the-money examples, etc.? Probably.

    7) Collect closes – Copywriters sure do love to talk about headlines and leads. And with good reason, of course. It’s where we put flame to powder. Still, if the lead is what sparks prospect interest, the close is where we pile up the dynamite. And you’ve got to pile it up just so if you want the right result.

    Let the swiping begin!

    It’s worth pulling closes from a lot of working promos and studying just those, one next to the other. A little tweak to your guarantee, your price rationalization, your push for urgency, can make a huge difference in your results.

    Hope that helps… now get swiping!

  • Benefits of Email Marketing to Your Business

    Added benefits

    Even if you are already running a successful business, you may be surprised to learn that your business can benefit greatly by launching an effective email marketing strategy which consists of targeted campaigns, digital newsletters and discount coupons along with other specialized (or niche-based) offers associated with such a strategy. Email marketing campaigns provide several advantages including, the ability to reach a worldwide audience, a variety of promotional options, and the ability to do a great deal of marketing with very little investment dollars.

    In this article we will take a look at the various features and procedures your business can utilize in an effort to give you some insight into how email marketing can benefit your business.

    For many business owners one of the most prominent advantages of email marketing is the ability to reach worldwide audiences with minimal effort and expense; and while traditional marketing methods (TV & radio ads, print media ads) are typically targeted to a rather small geographic area, email marketing can reach worldwide audiences.

    It is possible to reach an audience of this magnitude with other marketing methods as well, but it would be much more complicated to do and would likely involve launching advertising campaigns in several countries which would require an intense coordination effort, at least a few staff members to assist you in the effort and, of course, an enormous budget.

    Immediacy is a plus

    On the other hand, an email marketing strategy would give you the ability to instantly reach targeted audiences with just a few simple mouse clicks after you have composed the message you’d like to transmit; even though creating the marketing materials for your campaigns can be significantly more involved. The simple fact is your business (you) stand to derive substantially more benefits via an email marketing strategy at a mere percentage of the cost to derive the same benefits utilizing other means.

    Another advantage of email marketing is the multiple advertising options available to those who wish to utilize this marketing strategy, keeping in mind that the most commonly used method of email marketing is to send out group emails with product information and other promotional materials. Such product information could consist of any format or medium you choose, including a digital newsletter that you could publish and distribute to interested consumers, targeted audiences or both groups, depending on the type of promotion being conducted.

    Added value

    Additionally there may be some graphics, advertising and links included in the layout of such a newsletter that could enhance the message and or product being promoted. In fact, some marketers have successfully used email marketing campaigns to create and implement email correspondence courses which are typically focused on a specific niche subject and feature a few installments that provide detailed information on a specific aspect of the niche subject.

    Finally email marketing can benefit your business because it is an extremely cost effective method of advertising in the sense that when you elect to launch an email marketing campaign you will likely invest money in hiring professionals such as writers and graphic designers to assist you in creating content as well as an appealing layout for your promotional emails. it is important to point out here, however, that this is typically not more than you would invest in hiring the same type of personnel for an offline marketing campaign. Unlike offline marketing methods there is not a great deal of expenses associated with implementing your email marketing campaign.

    By comparison

    For example, consider the creation of a television commercial where you will have to pay fees and purchase advertising space to allow your advertising to reach the public. By comparison, when you transmit your advertising via email, there is virtually no cost associated with this transmission, except the costs associated with maintaining an Internet connection and retaining employees to send these emails but these costs are minimal and can be considered part of normal operating costs which are often mere percentage points of achieving similar goals via traditional methods.




  • How To Best Select An Affiliate Program


    Web marketing’s broad appeal

    Marketing products and services (‘products’) via the Internet is unquestionably easier, and exponentially more rewarding, than traditional marketing methods, based primarily on a worldwide market of prospective customers in the millions getting online every day and creating an enormous potential for a merchant to sell his products and generate huge income.

    However, merchandisers are not the only ones who can benefit from online marketing, because Web marketing has grown into a booming industry that provides great opportunity for individuals as well as corporate and organizational marketing entities. In affiliate marketing, the affiliate marketer need not have his/her own products to sell. On the contrary, all s/he needs to do is refer people to a merchant’s business site (often described as product pages) for them to buy products and, as a result of such purchases, earn a commission.

    The key to affiliate marketing success is the affiliate’s ability to choose a good affiliate program and to utilize excellent marketing techniques in promoting or selling the products to consumers. Why good and not the best affiliate program? Because there is no “best affiliate marketing program,” as one program might make one affiliate marketer a millionaire and the other, a frustrated marketer. In other words, it can be a success of one and a failure of another.

    Your affiliate marketing niche

    Can affiliate marketing work for you? What’s your niche? – Among the many Affiliate Marketing programs on the Web there certainly is a good affiliate marketing program to start with; and implementing it in the best and most effective way would depend on you. But before you think of how you are going to make it a best and most financially rewarding program, you must first think of how you are going to choose a good affiliate program from the thousands of such opportunities being offered on the Internet today. Try to look into the following tips and suggestions on how to best select an affiliate program that’s right for you.

    Let’s begin with information, which is what you will need in order to make the right choice. It is helpful when you have already focused your search in a specific area of interest, which might also be the theme of your website (if you already have one). In this way, you would be able to direct your attention towards a program that really matches your needs, wants and resources. It would be easier for you to eliminate options that are not suited to your own criteria for a good affiliate marketing program.

    You can join affiliate forums and learn some tips and get suggestions from experienced affiliate marketers, but be wise enough to weigh their ideas before you buy them.

    The Internet Affiliate marketing program networks are also good places to look for choices, since this is where merchants and affiliate marketers like you meet; and merchants advertise their affiliate programs to interested affiliates who sign up with the networks for free. Third party affiliate program networks are helpful because they provide you with access to a large number of advertisers (merchandisers) simultaneously. You can easily track and compare their sales records, performances, benefits, credibility and products.

    Choose the right affiliate program

    So now you have choices, and the next question is, which among those options is the right one? Here are some things to consider in deciding which program(s) to take up with and which one(s) to reject. First is the quality of the products, because as an affiliate marketer your goal is not only to induce your website visitors to click the product link; but more importantly, to promote the products so they would be interested in buying it.

    If customers are not convinced on going to the merchant’s business site, then you obviously don’t earn. So it is important to make sure that the products you endorse are worthwhile, or in the business vernacular, saleable. Question yourself about each product: If I were the customer, would I buy it? Would I recommend it to my family or good friend? If you can’t convince yourself or your family and friends to buy it, then you should move on to your next option.

    Another criteria for choosing a good affiliate program is the merchandiser’s credibility (history, customer support, timely affiliate payments, etc.). Take a serious look at their past and present sales data, the track record of affiliate marketing systems and their partners’ experiences with them. While the success or failure of any program ultimately depends on your efforts, the merchant’s credibility is still a very important criteria in selecting a program.

    Diligence & patience

    Exercise diligence & patience in choosing a program – The sales records don’t only show how good affiliates are, but they speak about the products’ reliability, market availability and the company or the merchandisers’ reputation as well. Moreover, you should look into and carefully study the company’s compensation plan. Your purpose for joining the program is, after all to earn, so make sure you’ll be paid fairly and in a timely manner for all your efforts.

    If you do not have much time to passionately promote affiliate products by creating banners, graphics and articles, then it might be a good idea to choose affiliate programs that assist you in creating these marketing tools for your web site. It would be great if the company provides training on how to effectively market products online; but remember that affiliate marketing is a partnership, so make sure your partner is able to support you as you help him promote his/her products.

    On a sheet of paper or on your favorite editor, write down all the advantages and disadvantages of each program you are considering so you can clearly see the difference among your options. Then later compare the advantages of each program with your own checklist. Just make sure to take time to gather all the info you need to choose the right program. Remember an informed choice is the best choice!