How To Prepare For A Copywriting AssignmentBy Robert W. Bly
the link is here. Business-to-business copy persuades readers by giving them useful information about the products being advertised. The more facts you include in your copy, the better. When you have a file full of facts at your fingertips, writing good copy is easy. You simply select the most relevant facts and describe them in a clear, concise, direct fashion. But when copywriters don’t bother to dig for facts, they fall back on fancy phrases and puffed-up expressions to fill the empty space on the page. The words sound nice, but they don’t sell because the copy doesn’t inform. Here’s a four-step procedure I use to get the information I need to write persuasive, fact-filled copy for my clients. This technique should be helpful to copywriters, account executives, and ad managers alike. Step #1: Get all previously published material on the product.For an existing product, there’s a mountain of content you can send to the copywriter as background information. This material includes:
Did I hear someone say they can’t send me background material because their product is new? Nonsense. The birth of every new product is accompanied by mounds of documents you can give the copywriter. These papers include:
Internal memos
Letters of technical information
Product specifications
Engineering drawings
Business and marketing plans
Reports
Proposals
By studying this material, the copywriter should have 80 percent of the information he needs to write the copy. And he can get the other 20 percent by picking up the phone and asking questions. Steps #2-4 outline the questions he should ask about the product, the audience, and the objective of the copy. Step #2: Ask questions about the product.
What are its features and benefits? (Make a complete list, say, of Adobe Photoshop.)
Which benefit is the most important?
How is the product different from the competition’s? (Which features are exclusive? Which are better than the competition’s?)
If the product isn’t different, what attributes can be stressed that haven’t been stressed by the competition?
What technologies does the product compete against?
What are the applications of the product?
What industries can use the product?
What problems does the product solve in the marketplace?
How is the product positioned in the marketplace?
How does the product work?
How reliable is the product?
How efficient?
How economical?
Who has bought the product and what do they say about it?
What materials, sizes and models is it available in?
How quickly does the manufacturer deliver the product?
What service and support does the manufacturer offer?
Is the product guaranteed?
Step #3: Ask questions about your audience.
Who will buy the product? (What markets is it sold to?)
What is the customer’s main concern? (Price, delivery, performance, reliability, service maintenance, quality efficiency)
What is the character of the buyer?
What motivates the buyer?
How many different buying influences must the copy appeal to? Two tips on getting to know your audience: If you are writing an ad, read issues of the magazine in which the ad will appear. If you are writing direct mail, find out what mailing lists will be used and study the list descriptions.
Step #4: Determine the objective of your copy.This objective may be one or more of the following:
To generate inquiries
To generate sales
To answer inquiries
To qualify prospects
To transmit product information
To build brand recognition and preference
To build company image
Before you write copy, study the product—its features, benefits, past performance, applications, and markets. Digging for the facts will pay off, because in business-to-business advertising, specifics sell.
Bob Bly Copywriter, Consultant and Seminar Leader 31 Cheyenne Dr. Montville, NJ 07045 Phone 973-263-0562, Fax 973-263-0613 email: rwbly@bly.com
Aidan Booth & Steve Clayton I don't know what to make of this. I liked the interview that Tom Woods did with Sara Young. [that site there is her help line; maybe I could use a life line myself.] She sounded genuine, real, and sincere. And just now I started listening to the beginning of a show in which she introduces two guys, Aidan Booth and Steve Clayton. This is a decent background on Clayton. It reads
Prior to founding ‘Worth Overdoing Marketing and
Consulting’, Steven Clayton was Vice President of a $5 billion fortune 500
company in Burlington, NC. Over his twenty year career in Corporate America, he
has become an expert on technology and market all Codes banking, including affiliate marketing.
Steven Clayton is an expert in Internet Marketing.
He is the founder and President of Worth Overdoing
Marketing and Consulting. His company aggressively markets their own products
as well as others’ (affiliate marketing) and consults with local business on
search engine marketing and PPC Management.
Steven Clayton started this Internet marketing company 3
years ago, and has made massive commissions that grow each year. Steven
Clayton will manage over $1,000,000 in adwords spending this year.
Here, Clayton has a downloading course. What?! My problem is that I don't get all goo-goo eyed by new people or the latest, new-fangled thing. I don't despise it either. What these guys focus on is affiliate marketing. Here is the rest of Clayton. Affiliate marketing is selling other people's stuff. It's being a salesman for that company. Using telemarketing to make the sales. Go out and find things that other people want us to sell. Internet marketing is the way we sell something. Using internet marketing to do affiliate marketing because it's the easiest thing to do, the most suitable or fitting venue for affiliate marketing. They're really two different things. What is internet, paid search, SEO, email marketing, article marketing all to capture the searchers online, selling them affiliate marketing, a store that's on Main Street. Stock other people's stuff. Attract people in off the street, get them to come in the store, and sell them your stuff. Your store is your website, People that come in off the street are the online searchers. Get paid a commission on every sale you make. Start up one hundred of these businesses. It's hands-off. Here is a sample--home theater. Content on dvd player. Website is your store. Virtual. 24/7. You recommend a TV, an advertisement, a banner. Your site points to a vendor that sells that TV. A customer visits the store because they saw your banner on your site, . . . When a buyer clicks on a banner at your site and buys a product being advertised on your site, you earn a commission. You sold them something online. Big whoop. Each project has a sales funnel, and there are 3 components to each project--you need traffic [you need people coming to your site], a website, and something to sell, in other words, an offer. Traffic goes into your funnel, into your website, and sales comes out of it. You need all 3 but you don't have to start with any one in particular. What the hell does that mean? Maybe start with an OFFER that you're really interested or a great TRAFFIC technique that you really like. Or you have an idea or a WEBSITE design you think will really work. Not important where you start--only that you have all 3 ingredients and that they all work together. That you get enough traffic coming in, that the website sells something well enough that the OFFER pays you well enough that you're earning good money. Top of the FUNNEL is a great website that appears on top of a web search about the product, say, a television. Great CONTENT on a site that makes people want to buy something [ecommerce]. And then the sale is made when the customer clicks on your link, through a direct link or a banner or something. That's a successful project, a successful sales funnel. That is it in a nutshell. Every dollar made online follows this pattern.
Let's see what he has to say about this . . . . 1. Overview of internet marketing. 2. Understanding the sales funnel. 3. Learn the top 4 ways to get visitors. 4. Focus training on SEO and article marketing. How to write a decent article, get it posted online, and the have it drive traffic to your site as well. 5. Get your site ranked for the search terms you want. 6. Learn how to build a Blogspot blog. Really? Blogspot? This shocks me since it is wordpress that really has all of the things that he lists built in. How to use SEO and articles to drive traffic to it. 7. Learn how to pick something to sell. Carve out your spot on the internet. Here is his website. That FreeMiningMoneyOnline doesn't seem to live any longer. From Sara's podcast, Clayton says you need the following: 1. The Right Product. a. this part sounds like the hard part. More intuitive, more efficient? b. Internet marketing rocks. 1/3 of profits come from selling physical products online. One weakness is buying material up front. It means chasing cash flow problem. Without needing to buy inventory up front. I'm listening. c. Talking about products that are already selling online. Doesn't have time to invent something. Where there's already a market for these. And Facebook friendly. FB is the absolute best place to be getting traffic. We want good margins. If we buy for $2, we want to sell it for $10 or more. d. We want a hungry audience. e. How do we sell physical products without needing to hold an inventory? 2. A Platform that Converts. a. Platform needs to do 2 very important things: i. Convert visitors into buyers. That's what most people track. ii. Of those 10 people, the website needs to make sure that those 10 people are buying as much as we can possibly get out of them. Left off at the 20-minute mark. Tracking, optimizing to get best results. Have to build websites fast. Can't afford to have 20-page. Mostly image based websites--images from mfg's supply of the product you're selling. We've sent millions of visitors that have sent websites that work. Best place to place the website. $100,000 a year in 60 days. iii. We're in the golden age of marketing. We can achieve what has previously been unattainable. Lots of it, cheap, and high quality. Maybe 15 years when Everetts first started. What has changed? Why all of a sudden is all this magic happening? Because Facebook became a public company. Holy Grail of traffic through Facebook. 1 in 5 people in the world are on Facebook? That is incredible--that's 20% of the global population. So he spent $136 on traffic sent to the website. That traffic converted into buyers who spent $1250.42. That's not a bad turn around. Was is Facebook doing that makes this happen? Leveraging their strengths. You can segment the audience you're trying to reach. You can test out that audience, and pick the ones that are making you the most money. It's like giving FB $1 with them giving you $8 back. It's very simple, paint-by-numbers easy. Test this against this. 1. Divide your audience by gender. Laser target the better paying group. Women convert $2.25 per visitor; men convert $0.67 per visitor. So target women. $1.71/visitor versus $2.84/visitor. Spend $1, make $2. Segment by age, 35-54 year olds don't buy as much. All age groups rocked. 2. FB allows you to target very specific groups of people. "The person who sees my ads must like American Airlines AND Lonely Planet Travel Guide. Making it easier and better and better to earn money. Can leverage overlapping audiences. 3. Further refinement by excluding other groups. 530,000 laser target customers. Is this better than App Sumo or Google AdWords? 4. Other metric is money earned per visitor. Tests are initially $1, and go up from there. 100 people came in and made $200 in sales, and our profit was 50%, making $100. So that's a $1 profit for each visitor on spending $100 on an advertising program. 5. Focus on 3 Vital Levers: a. Cost per click. b. Conversion rate. c. Earnings per sale. Visitor value . . . of those visitors, how many buy. Of those people who buy, how much did I earn per sale. 1. The Right Product. 2. A Platform that Converts--image heavy, e-commerce content. 3. Reliable Targeted Traffic. Not everyone is doing this and people are lazy. With Google we had it and then it went away. Google didn't have an opportunity to do the things that Facebook does, like a collaborative venture. Google doesn't know anything about the people who are on Google. Facebook knows everything. This is not going away; it is only going to get better. WORLDWIDE ONLINE SHOPPING TREND? e-commerce is going through the roof. Internet is here to stay. No ceiling in sight. $5.6 billion per day!!! TRADITIONAL BUSINESS MODEL It's an up front cost. 1. Place your order. 2. It goes to the supplier. 3. Supplier sends inventory. 4. You sell on Amazon, website, or brick-and-mortar. Amazon pays you 15 to 30 days after a sale. AFFILIATE BUSINESS MODEL 1. Customer goes to your website. 2. Customer places an order. 3. You get paid. 4. You pay the supplier AFTER you've received money from the buyer. 5. Supplier sends product to customer. 100% hands off!!! 6. No cash up front!!! Maximize visitor value. What does that mean and how do you achieve it? Manufacturers don't want to build it until the customer wants it and pays for it, but they do; they're forced to. That is the traditional business model. Retailers don't want to buy anything before the customer wants it. Raw materials producers don't want to mine any minerals before the manufacturers want it and are prepared to pay for it. Just-in Time Supply Chain changes all of this. "Just-in-time and lean production. Just-In-Time (JIT) is a very simple idea but one that is essential in modern supply chain management. JIT sets out to cut costs by reducing the amount of goods and materials a firm holds in stock." This is the future of commerce and industry in the world. No doubt about it. From Zero to $1,688 per day in 26 days. WHAT ABOUT PRODUCTS? 1. Products selected from a database that has a million products. 2. Full spectrum of products within a retail niche: a. baby transport. b. watches. c. jewelry. d. clothing e. toys. f. hobbies. g. games. Customize the database for your brand. They offer this site as an example, called OutPostCity.com. So what does that website earn? $2064.44 in one day. Half of that is 100% pure profit. That's a $600,000 website. Simple websites, but generating lots of cash. It's built using wordpress. there are others, like Shopify, but WordPress is better. He'll explain why. 1. Run a simple Facebook ad. Target the hyper targeted group. 2. Visitor lands on website. 3. Some people buy. 4. When order is placed, you instantly get money in your PayPal account. 5. Once you have the money, you tell the supplier to send the product directly to the buyer. You never touch the produce and you don't pay in advance. 6. Who pays for shipping? Either your customer or your supplier. You build it into your price. That's what concerns me. 7. What special software does this guy use? 8. If you max out in one niche, then just launch a new site--either in that same niche or in another niche. 9. Use PayPal to take payments. 10. Piggyback on a major trend. Most online sellers have no idea. You can swoop in and clean up. Build a big business very quickly starting right now. 2 PATHS . . . . PATH #1: Go it alone. Doable. Bumps in the road, hard knocks, trial and error. It may take you longer, much longer. Took him 24 months to earn his first $100,000, while working a 9-hour day job and getting up at 4am. Trial and error. PATH #2: 8-12 weeks for his students to make $100,000. Brent made $75,000 in 53 days. John made $126,000 in 30 days.
> Affiliate marketing
> Kindle
> Selling on Amazon
> Real Estate
> Info Products
> AdSense
> Multi-Level Marketing
> CPA
> Brick-and-mortar
> 9-to-5 Job
No barriers to entry? What the heck does he mean? There is always some cost to pay.
Test Beds? Allow you to test profitability. You can see if it works on Day 1. 7 STEP PROCESS 1. Choose a product. Baseball cap, coins, gadgets. 2. Test profitability. 3. Engage your demographic. 4. Activate your shopping cart. 5. Initiate traffic machine. 6. Optimize conversions. 7. Rinse & Repeat. 5 KEY TOOLS FOR ULTIMATE SUCCESS 1. 100K Code. Blueprint on how to go from zero to $100k in 60 days. Secret recipe that shows you how to build. Cashflow, Automation, Expansion. $3,000. 2. 100K Command Center. Build, install, populate. Scans and identifies best product opportunities, track metrics and fulfillment, captivating images in seconds. $3,000 3. 100K Case Study. Step-by-step, showing you how to build up $100000 website. 12-week program, weekly checkpoints, over-the-shoulder mentoring: $2500. 4. 100K Converter. Prospect hound. OTO Coder, ShareForce, Social Checker, Re-Engager. $2,000. 5. 100K Coaching. Technical support. $100K Coaching. Stamp of Approval, Technical Support, Market Analysis (they give you a niche). $10,000. Total: $20,500.
Scale List: Access to 50 product ideas. I thought that was covered in the . . . . They'll save you time and money. You don't have to do the hard work of finding the products. BETA Society, you get priority access pass. Facebook Lead Machine. $70,000 development costs. Nice.
b. You've got to sweat the details. 3. Reliable, Targeted Traffic. A lot of it, cheap, and high quality, meaning it converts. Clayton claims that you can build a $100,000/year business in 2 months with 1 simple website. Yeah, right.
