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5-Step Backward Copywriting Shortcut

5-Step Backward Copywriting Shortcut

5-step copywriting processI am not a copy­writer. I make my fair share of sales online, but I have to assume that most peo­ple buy from me because they know me and like me. Either that or they really want what I am offer­ing, and just roll their eyes and hunt for the order but­ton. Because my copy skills stink — and they stink bad.

Over the years I have read every­thing that I can get my hands on about copy­writ­ing, and I’ve even made some sub­stan­tial improve­ments. But just recently I found a much bet­ter (read: eas­ier!) way to write sales copy.

It’s a back­wards fill-​​in-​​the-​​blanks strat­egy, but it works.

Here’s my strat­egy: I sell the “prod­uct” first. THEN write the copy. I use the word prod­uct very loosely by the way — that could mean ser­vices, phys­i­cal prod­ucts, ebooks, soft­ware, you name it.

Let me explain.

I don’t have a prob­lem get­ting excited about my prod­uct. I can write up a quick note to my sub­scribers or my blog read­ers and explain the details, and for­tu­nately that excite­ment and/​or sin­cer­ity shows through well enough to get con­ver­sions on a blank web page with a sin­gle order button.

My most recent project was han­dled that way, with very lit­tle explana­tory text, and the order page showed a 47% con­ver­sion rate. That’s the power of a pre-​​sell at work, of course.

Trans­lat­ing my excite­ment from a per­son­able note to pro­fes­sional sales copy is where I start to have prob­lems. And I can only imag­ine I am not alone.

Writ­ing good sales copy is incred­i­bly impor­tant, though. While the pre-​​sell method may work beau­ti­fully, you risk a high refund rate if you don’t prop­erly explain your prod­uct upfront.

If you strug­gle with writ­ing your own sales copy, try this sim­ple 5-​​step, fill-​​in-​​the-​​blanks sys­tem that I am cur­rently using myself:

Step One — Put your prod­uct out there and do a true mar­ket test. If you already have a mail­ing list, offer it to your sub­scribers first.

But if you don’t, you can: con­duct a fire sale, do a joint ven­ture, put your prod­uct on eBay, post a spe­cial offer (WSO) on the War­rior Forum, place an ad on Craigslist​.org, or any other method of sell­ing online out­side of your own website.

I will gen­er­ally give a copy of my prod­uct to close friends and fam­ily mem­bers as well, which is par­tic­u­larly effec­tive as they are my worst crit­ics. ;)

Step Two — Com­pile the feed­back, the ques­tions and the tes­ti­mo­ni­als into one file for easy ref­er­ence. Trust me — there will be plenty. With zero sales copy you will get a lot of ques­tions and some very con­struc­tive feedback.

Step Three — Dig through your “swipe files” and find a sales let­ter that you par­tic­u­larly like. Per­haps a sim­i­lar prod­uct that you pur­chased online your­self recently. It helps if the prod­uct, the tar­get mar­ket, and the price point are all similar.

Use this exam­ple to cre­ate a basic out­line of page ele­ments. This includes the intro­duc­tory text, the head­line, the basic flow of the page, the place­ment of order but­tons, the sig­na­ture and the P.S.

Step Four — Flesh out your out­line with prod­uct details. You can per­fect it later — for now you just want to jot down the basics.

Step Five — Open your feed­back file and add the tes­ti­mo­ni­als to your sales let­ter. Next, go over each ques­tion and each response and cre­ate one para­graph of sales copy to address each point.

For exam­ple, the ques­tion “Does this come with _​_​_​?” will prompt a para­graph about what your prod­uct includes.

If you are star­ing at a blank page and attempt­ing to write your own kick-​​butt sales copy, I encour­age you to try these five steps for yourself.

You’ll have a high-​​converting sales let­ter writ­ten in no time that addresses all of the points you may have never thought of on your own!

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This post was written on Friday, August 10th, 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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  • There are valuable information in this article which will help in promoting my online services and coming products, thanx!
  • I'm glad you enjoyed it, Maher! You have to imagine that if one person, or two or three, ask a question about your product - then there are bound to be many others who dont find that answer in your sales copy and just dont place an order.

    By using feedback & questions to write your copy (or add to it), you can address points you may not have thought to originally!

    Best,
    Lynn Terry
  • Wonderful tips, Lynn!

    I tend to address frequent questions in the FAQs section.. didn't think about addressing them in my sales copy, will give it a shot.

    I think this techniques will raise my conversion at least 1% up :)
  • Thank you for sharing your approach to composing successful sales copy, Lynn. You make it sound logical and simple. I think pre-selling would be the hardest part, though. I like writing sales copy although it takes me a long time. I surely will try some of your methods to see if they speed up my writing and improve conversion, too.

    Siriol
  • Pre-selling is more about building excitement and anticipation. If you really love the product, its easy to talk about it. And I tend to talk as if I'm telling a close friend all about it, with more of a personal tone.

    If you would like to see an example, here is a post from my blog that I published just this week: http://www.clicknewz.com/956/ .

    Best,
    Lynn Terry
  • Lynn,

    Great article. I'm going to save it to refer back to. I'll be incorporating some of the ideas that you have given here.

    Thanks!

    Dan
  • Yes, to First collect 'Feedback' does sound like a good strategy, especially if you can generate Testimonials to your Sales Letter aswell. That's exactly what I have my weblog for, as a 'Play Ground' and 'Feedback-Loop' to develope Thoughts and Ideas as a Source of Inspiration and to be able to collect Feedback even before you have created the product.

    There are a lot of Writers that use this technique to create their Novel, using the Feedback while they are writing it.

    All the Best,
    HPvD.
  • Another Great Article Lynn!!
  • Great article Lynn.

    Love the 5 step methodology, makes it simple to follow.

    Keep up the great work.

    Gary
    Crazy Web Guy
  • Cooool. These are some good guidelines. I think the most important point is that you are excited about your products. So many people plug a product which they don't believe in. This is the problem
  • Wonderful article. Thanks for all the content, as well as providing my readers with another point of view!!
  • Lynn that was a great post and a great strategy for those folks not looking forward to facing the blank white web page!
  • The swipe files is a great tip. Its hard for me to find good copy written ads that i can emulate in my product field because it seems nobody has really hit the self esteem nitch hard. So thats what im trying to do. My copy writing skills are not so great either but i have had a few opt in (a few meaning below 10 in the past month) I don't think thats any good but im still going :-)

    Any advice for my home page and sales page would be very much appriciated. Thanks,

    Nicholas

    http://www.nicholasfinnegan.com/index.html
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