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.

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I often get made fun of for this, but one of my favorite movies of all time is “Signs,” directed by M. Night Shya­malan. Why do I like it so much?

Prob­a­bly because it shares many char­ac­ter­is­tics with Alfred Hitch­cock films. (Hitch­cock is my favorite direc­tor of all time.) But it’s also a bit funny, a bit scary, a bit emo­tional, and very sus­pense­ful. The premise is an alien inva­sion, but the plot is really about a min­is­ter regain­ing his faith.

Talk about some­thing for everyone!

That brings up a good ques­tion. How do you adver­tise a film that has some­thing for every­one? Do you try to appeal to every­one? Or do you choose the most prof­itable seg­ment of the market?

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Video is said to be Web 2.0’s killer app. But is it video itself? Not really. It’s inter­ac­tiv­ity. Video engages all the senses. Ample split-​​tests show that the more you engage the user’s senses, the greater the response.

When I used to teach pro­fes­sional sell­ing in col­lege, we used a text­book called “Per­sonal Sell­ing: An Inter­ac­tive Approach,” by Ronald Marks, Ph.D.

In it, Dr. Marks makes the case that using audio­vi­sual aids in face-​​to-​​face sales pre­sen­ta­tions can increase a person’s sales effec­tive­ness. (And remem­ber, this book was writ­ten in the 80s, before lap­tops became popular.)

That’s not break­ing news, I admit. But here’s what I’ve found fas­ci­nat­ing. The author states that multimedia-​​generated sales pre­sen­ta­tions — with a mix of text, graph­ics, pho­tos, ani­ma­tion and sound — cap­ture atten­tion and arouse inter­est more effec­tively since they appeal to all the senses.

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