5-Step Backward Copywriting Shortcut

I 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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