Copywriting

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Guarantee Blindness

Guarantee blindness

Nowadays guarantees are essential to good results, but only the best guarantees are really noticed.

Do you offer a “30-day money-back” or “100% satisfaction” guarantee?

As great as those sound, they’re just not as effective as they used to be.

People don’t notice standard guarantees anymore. They’ve got guarantee blindness.

One of the most important things a good copywriter does is make your prospects believe—beyond a doubt—that they’re going to get incredible results.

But whether you hire a copywriter or you write your own sales pages, you should understand how guarantee blindness affects your sales; otherwise, you can only hope the copywriter knows how to form a great guarantee.

Strong guarantees are almost sure to create more sales than refunds, so offering them makes sense (as long as your product is as good as it’s supposed to be).

But to get really great results, you need to make the guarantee shine so brightly that even the blind will see it.

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White House Landing Page – Video Critique

White House Landing PageThe White House landing page is the page you see when you visit their site (for the first time). They use a so-called welcome gate to direct new visitors to the landing page.

The goal is to get people to join their emailing list.

And to be honest, the page is quite okay. But it could be better and here are some ways they could increase their conversion.

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Landing Page Video Tutorial – How to Build Opt In Landing Pages

Landing Page Video TutorialLanding pages are the most effective way to get visitors to take a specific action.

Opt in landing pages try to get people to opt in to an emailing list. And if done well, they can do that very, very effectively.

But most opt in landing pages are so poorly written and designed that their conversion is minimal.

What’s your opt in landing page’s conversion? Is it 70%? Is it 50%? Is it even 25%?

Would you be willing to do some changes to double your conversion? Or to get even 10 more percents of visitors to opt in.

Here’s a video tutorial that explains the most common mistakes and shows you how to increase your conversion.

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3 Copywriting Questions for Business Success

Louis Vuitton Handbag

Do you buy this Louis Vuitton handbag for its functionality (carry things around with you)? photo: Thomas Ogilvie

You don’t need to be a copywriter to run a business.

Actually, you only need to be a copywriter if you run a copywriting business.

But it can teach you three things you must know to run a successful business.

Copywriters can (and usually should) do the actual writing for you. But knowing these basics will give you a better understanding of your business and how to make it successful.

So, here are the core questions of effective copywriting.

And there’s a five-minute “exercise” at the end that puts all of this together and makes a real difference to your success, I promise :)

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3 Strategies for Email Marketing and How to Succeed with Each

3 Strategies to Email Marketing

The three strategies to email marketing can all work well, if your copy is good. photo: Glen Edelson

Email marketing has the highest response rate out of any marketing method.

Does that mean spamming works? Well, someone has to buy something from spammers, otherwise they’d become extinct.

But there’s spamming, and then there’s quality direct email marketing.

The latter is one of the best strategies to market B-2-B products and services, but B-2-C businesses can learn a lot from it too.

It might not be right for you. Maybe content email marketing works better for your business, but understanding the principles behind the other two email strategies will make a huge difference to your success.

So, here are the three strategies to email marketing, how to figure out which is best for your business, and how to succeed with each.

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How to Seduce a Goldfish

People have the attention-span of a goldfish. And that affects your marketing.

People have the attention span of a goldfish. And that affects your marketing.

Have you ever knocked on the side of a fish tank and felt betrayed by the goldfishes that ignored you?

You push your face against the side, yell at them—loudly enough to wake up a fossil—or serve their favorite purple treats that smell like chicken poo, and they’re still more fascinated by the water around them than you.

Does your website or marketing efforts remind you of that fish tank? No matter what you do, no one notices.

It could be that people have the attention span of a goldfish.

Depending on the goldfish, it’s somewhere between three and 10 seconds.

That’s how long you have to turn apathy into solid interest or risk losing your visitors and prospects to other sites and businesses.

Understanding what makes people excited about your message is the key to effective writing and marketing.

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101 Headline Formulas that Capture Attention and Get Your Message Read

101 Headline Formulas - The Ultimate Swipe File

“The Only Swipe File You’ll Ever Need”

The headline is the most important part of any text.

It will either keep people reading what you have to say, or send them away.

How many headlines do you read during a day? Twitter, Facebook, email, magazines, etc. Altogether 100? Maybe more?

And how many of those make you read more?

An average headline gets around 25% of people to read on. And even fewer read to the end. Even when reading and leaving are the only possibilities (landing pages, magazines, etc.).

What do you think happens to those percentages in Twitter where dozens of headlines fight for attention?

So, what can you do to beat the odds?

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Review: Fascinate – Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

Fascinate by Sally HogsheadFascinate by Sally HogsheadFascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation by Sally Hogshead

Rating: 5/5

Ever wondered how to capture people’s attention completely? Or why you sometimes lose track of time?

The answer to both is fascination.

What is it? Fascination is powerful attraction that captures your attention and focus.

Why should you care?

Fascination is the best tool you have to get your message heard.

If you want to be good at copywriting, you need to understand how to fascinate people.

If you want to write captivating headlines, you need to make them fascinating.

If you want to be fascinating in your personal life or at work, you need to understand the seven triggers.

But the one question remains: What is fascinating and how do you write/become more fascinating?

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Stockmann Syndrome – Don’t Try this (Landing Page) at Home

Landing Page Conversion

You can’t always hit the bulls-eye, but you’ll always do fine with these three landing page principles. photo: ##Erika**

Landing pages are a cornerstone of online marketing, but sometimes even large companies forget how to build effective landing pages.

Stockmann is the best known and most prestigious department store in Finland. They’ve been around for 125 years and their special sale is an event people wait almost religiously.

Their marketing is usually really good, but the other day I stumbled onto their opt-in email list landing page. All the three basic elements of an effective landing page were wrong.

I could not believe they could go so wrong with their marketing. But so does many other major companies all around the world.

If you follow these three basic guidelines, you’re landing page will get at least an average conversion. But if you forget even one of these basics, your conversion will sink.

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7 Questions You Must Ask Before Marketing

There are countless aspects to think about when you start creating a marketing message. Here are seven that you must ask before doing anything else.

1. Who are you targeting?

“My customers/prospects” isn’t the answer. Not even close. But still that’s the most common answer.

You need to know which customers/prospects in particular you’re targeting with each marketing message. You can and you should segment people into buyer personas.

If you try to speak everyone, you speak to no one. Don’t try to please everyone with one message; no one’s interested in average or the mediocrity.

Copyright 2012 Peter Sandeen - Simply Effective Marketing | +358 41 433 0144 | contact {at] petersandeen [dot} com