Today, mar­keters are scram­bling to find ways to increase cash­flow. Some will try to find new prod­ucts to sell. Oth­ers will try to drive more traf­fic to their exist­ing sales pages.

How­ever, one area most peo­ple tend to over­look is the abil­ity to increase their cur­rent sales by upselling their cus­tomers the moment they checkout.

But I’m not refer­ring to one-​​time offers or addi­tional prod­ucts offered in the same sales fun­nel. I’m talk­ing about offer­ing cus­tomers the abil­ity to upgrade their purchases.

I pre­fer “upgrade” rather than “upsell” because the lat­ter has received a bad rap of late due to a few overzeal­ous or unscrupu­lous marketers.

Sell­ing “upgrades” is an area that can become prof­itable for many busi­nesses in increas­ing their exist­ing sales. It’s by sell­ing extended ser­vices or ben­e­fits pack­ages before or at the time of check­out, also known as the “extended warranty.”

There are numer­ous ways to sell extended war­ranties (or what I pre­fer to call “extended ben­e­fits”). These silent profit cen­ters exist in almost any busi­ness, which can increase the size of a customer’s pur­chase by 50%, 100%, even 200% or more.

Very often, the sale of these extended ben­e­fits have higher profit mar­gins, too.

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I’m back from New Zealand. We had a chance to eat at The Orbit, a rotat­ing restau­rant at the top of the Sky Tower with our friend and copy­writ­ing whiz Alan For­rest Smith.

Now that I’m back, I have a some­thing for you.

You’ve prob­a­bly read my last blog post about this seem­ing “intu­itive skill” some mar­keters seem to have when find­ing red-​​hot niches online — or con­firm­ing if yours is viable and prof­itable, and how to sell more. It’s the first and most impor­tant step in Suc­cess Chef.

It took my wife Sylvie Fortin over nine long months to put together. You get close to five hours of stream­ing lessons with tons of resources. And it’s get­ting rave reviews!

Well, I finally had time to write some copy and put up a rough web page that explains it in much greater detail. I’m still work­ing on it. I’ve added a com­plete course descrip­tion, a list of what’s included, and an extra bonus not men­tioned before.

So please check it out and let us know what you think!

Click here for a course descrip­tion and more.

The other day I was asked a ques­tion I hear all too often: “How do I dis­tin­guish myself from other copywriters?”

To find the answer, look to one of the most effec­tive and fre­quently used copy­writ­ing and mar­ket­ing tools. It’s your “Unique Sell­ing Propo­si­tion,” or USP.

(I pre­fer to call it a “Unique Sell­ing Posi­tion.” If you’ve read my book, “Power Posi­tion­ing,” then you’d know that I’m a big fan of posi­tion­ing rather than prospecting.)

Your USP is also your “hook.”

Time and time again, I’ve told many aspir­ing copy­writ­ers and mar­keters that a USP is what dis­tin­guishes you from the pack. It increases per­ceived value, exper­tise, and cred­i­bil­ity — with­out need­ing to state it outright.

But since I hear this ques­tion often, par­tic­u­larly from copy­writ­ers just enter­ing the field, I sense that it’s because peo­ple need a lit­tle help in defin­ing their USP.

So to help you, here’s a tip.

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Scarcity is an effec­tive tac­tic often used in copy­writ­ing to cre­ate a sense of urgency in an effort to con­vince the unde­cided reader to make a pur­chas­ing decision.

After all, peo­ple pro­cras­ti­nate, and they do for a vari­ety of rea­sons. It’s sim­ply human nature. So the goal of apply­ing scarcity is to pre­vent prospects from pro­cras­ti­nat­ing.

As online con­sumers become wise to these direct-​​response copy­writ­ing tac­tics, one ques­tion often arises:

“What about dig­i­tal prod­uct down­loads, like ebooks and soft­ware? How can you cre­ate a sense of urgency for some­thing that, in itself, is lim­it­less or per­ceived as such?”

Here’s how to use scarcity sell­ing effec­tively with dig­i­tal products:

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Copy is all about words. Or is it?

Copy is about using words to describe the ben­e­fits of your offer. About using words to paint vivid men­tal imagery. About using words to stir the senses, press all the “hot but­tons” and push the reader to take some kind of action.

But is it really ALL about words? I mean, just words? No.

Some copy­writ­ers claim that graph­ics, for­mat­ting and pho­tographs should NOT be added to a saleslet­ter because they dis­tract. They can take the reader’s focus away from the message.

I agree. But not entirely. Here’s why…

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Take­away sell­ing, for the unini­ti­ated, is a way to limit the sup­ply of a prod­uct or ser­vice in some way to increase scarcity of an offer. Because it’s a proven fact that scarcity sells.

It’s that age­less law of sup­ply and demand. The less the sup­ply is, the greater the demand will be.

Peo­ple don’t know how much they want some­thing until it’s about to be taken away from them. As Jim Rohn once said, “With­out a sense of urgency, desire loses its value.”

Why? Because pro­cras­ti­na­tion is the biggest killer of sales — par­tic­u­larly online where the chances of a prospect stay­ing on or return­ing to a web­site (in order to think about buy­ing), in today’s click-​​happy world, are just as scarce.

It’s like walk­ing into a depart­ment store and you see a shirt you’re inter­ested in. Since there’s none in your size, you ask the sales clerrk if one is avail­able. The clerk goes into the back­room and emerges a few moments later, say­ing, “I found one in your size…

“… But it’s the only one we have left in stock.”

Now, how much more do you want that shirt?

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