A recent coaching session touched upon the growing trend that some marketers have adopted to squeeze out sales from exiting traffic.

In other words, you visit a website and read the salesletter. You decide it’s not for you, so you leave. But when you try leave (either as you close your browser or simply hover your mouse outside of it), the website attempts to make a last-ditch offer.

The common practice is to offer a discount, and a recent trend is to make it through virtual sales assistant just before the prospect clicks away from the screen.

(Virtual assistant or not, it is no different than a one-time offer appearing in an exit pop-up or spawned browser window once the visitor leaves.)

Not only is the practice annoying, it can be detrimental to your sales efforts.

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Recently, a coaching client asked me about dealing with prospective clients over the phone.

This copywriter understood the importance of communicating with prospects and answering their pre-sale questions. However, like me, he preferred to avoid the telephone and asked me if his strategy was sound.

Free consultations are often a necessary step in securing clients in your early days as a copywriter before you’ve established your expertise and developed a reputation.

It’s natural that potential clients want to get a feel for your style and standards with a “getting to know you session.” Quite often, they will want to do this via a phone consultation with you.

I’m a big believer in opening the lines of communication, and I also like to pick up the phone to speak with a client when writing copy.

But before a client hires me, I prefer to remain off the phone. Why? Because the telephone can be counterproductive and even hurt your business.

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“There are many who are living far below their possibilities because they are continually handing over their individualities to others. Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself. Be true to the highest within your soul and allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle.”
 — Ralph Waldo Trine

“Take away the cause, and the effect ceases.”
 — Miguel de Cervantes

In everything you do or want to do in life, you are always governed by law and not by chance. Natural laws are principles or explanations of why things are the way they are. Principles defined by Webster are “fundamental laws or facts of nature.” Out of the many you have read or will read about in this book, there is one, however, that is the foundational principle to all success.

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Part of my job as a copywriter includes, from time to time, creating names for businesses, products, and services. Choosing a name may be the single, most important business decision you will ever make.

We are constantly bombarded with marketing messages. Limited by people’s very short attention span, your marketing message has to be effective to the degree that it must communicate its essence and create top-of-mind awareness within an extremely short amount of time.

Names are often the best tools — and sometimes the only ones — for accomplishing this efficiently.

In the game of positioning, your name has to stick firmly in the mind of the marketplace and must do so instantly. While uniqueness is an important factor, there are many other elements that can help the anchoring process — elements that help a name become memorable as well as chosen when a customer experiences a specific need or desire.

So, here are some simple rules to follow when choosing a name for your company or product.

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A fair warning: this post delves into something I’m passionate about, which is somewhat philosophical in nature. So if you’re of a certain religious persuasion and easily offended by others, then please skip over this blog post. If not, read on…

“The Secret” is taking the entire world by storm. It deals with the “Law of Attraction,” in that we attract to ourselves what we think and feel, and that our perceptions mold our reality.

As Earl Nightingale proclaimed in “The Strangest Secret,” one of the first self-help programs I’ve ever bought: “We become what we think about.”

You may have seen it talked about on Larry King, Oprah, and many other talk shows. It’s the most successful Internet launch of any product. It hit Alexa #1 soon after its launch, and propelled to the Amazon.com’s #1 best selling book and DVD within a few months.

It appeared in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Time Magazine, and even on the cover of Newsweek, which came shortly thereafter.

But is “The Secret” truly worth the buzz? Or is it just an old-world philosophy packaged in some newfangled marketing? The answer to the former is definitely “yes.” But for the latter, it’s “yes” and “no.” Let me explain…

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Are copywriters spin doctors? Maybe.

A spin doctor is a person, mostly politicians and public relations firms, who attempt to do damage control by downplaying something truly negative. They try to put a positive “spin” on something unfavorable.

But in terms of copywriting, however, there’s a difference between putting a positive spin on a negative idea, versus putting a product, a feature, or an idea in a positive light that can be perceived as negative.

Left to her own devices, a reader can come to many conclusions. Both right and wrong. Both true and false. Both real and nonexistent. Copy, in this case, has the power to steer the reader in the right direction — and therefore avoid going in the wrong one.

One such tool that enables copywriters to do this is hyperbole.

Hype is not bad and it’s often given a bad rap. The problem is not hype in and of itself. It’s when it is perceived as hype. When hype is conspicuous, that’s when the copy did a poor job, making the offer or its author appear smarmy, misleading, even scammy.

However, hyperbole is powerful because it helps to drive home some important points, and aids in the comprehension of critical or complex ideas.

So, how can you turn puffery into praise? “Hyperbole” into “hallelujah?”

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