Friday, March 19, 2010

Tom Antion: Copywriting Specifics

If you want to sell more stuff, easier and at a higher price be very specific in your copy so you can push buttons that make people buy.

I wish people would listen to me when I tell them this. I can pretty much guarantee failure when someone tells me they have a success product. They tell me, "Everyone needs this." That may be true, but pretty much nobody is going to buy it unless you write the exact words that push their buttons enough to get them to pull their wallet out and give you money. It's pretty hard to write "exact" "general" words. I sure can't do it.

The first thing you should do is to make up a profile for the exact type of person that you want to respond to your offer. Let's use the success product above as an example and we'll call the product "The Success Wand."

You certainly could put it in your mind that The Success Wand would be great to help any adult or child achieve his/her goals. Let me ask you this. Where would you advertise The Wand? Adult magazines, parent websites, children's websites, women's websites, men's websites? What words would you use to push emotional buy buttons? It's doubtful that the same things that would make a professional man buy, would make a single mom buy. These questions could go on and on and on and you'd have to have an enormous budget just to get started.

Now let's say you picked a targeted audience like doctors. It's an entirely different story. You can write words that specifically push the buy buttons of doctors. You can find exactly the places doctors frequent. You can find the magazines they read. You can find the websites they visit. You can price your product higher because doctors generally have a decent spendable income.

Do you see the difference? Just by picking a target audience you can give this project and infinitely higher chance of making you money.

OTHER WAYS TO BE SPECIFIC

Don't write that your Success Wand for doctors has made many doctors more successful in life and in business.

Write: 97% of the doctors who use the Success Wand twice a week report their income has gone up by at least 32 percent.

Instead of writing, "We have over 1000 satisfied customers" write "We have 1119 satisfied customers in 18 countries."

Make your testimonials specific too. Don't use a testimonial that says, "Tom was really liked by our salespeople." Use one that has specific results like this one, "After Tom's seminar on Creative Use of Email our sales force contacted 37 % more people in 18 % less time which resulted in 12 contracts we would have never landed. -- Now that's productivity."

Be specific in your copy and watch your sales soar.