The following 21-point copywriter’s checklist will help you inform, engage, and ultimately SELL:

TOOL:  The ‘21 Club’ of Copywriting

1. Don't talk about yourself; it's not about you!
2. Keep it AIDA simple ─ create Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action.
3. Test your headlines ─ you only  have one chance to get it right.
4. Determine the unique selling proposition for your product and from that, create your headline in a clear, short phrase.
5. Remember people are asking what is in it for me?  Talk to them about their feelings, values, and the benefits of your product.
6. Be honest with your prospect.
7. Write as much copy as you need and no more.
8. Don't be boring, but don't be flippant.
9. State your biggest benefits right away, don’t hold them back for the big finish, many people will never read your big finish.
10. Sub-headlines can be questions that the customer is asking.
11. Use bullets and underlines as well as bold face type, but sparingly.
12. Detail your offer and summarize the offer throughout the copy.
13. Repeat your headlines and summarize your offers again.
14. Ask for action.
15. Make it easy to order. "All you have to do is..."
16. Don't trust ad agencies or do image advertising.
17. Test on a small basis before rolling out on a large scale.
18. Be 100% believable.
19. Hit all the hot buttons you can.
20. Make your offer personal and exciting.
21. 21. Use the many devices available such as sweepstakes, free gifts, new and improved, guarantees and money back, limited time offers, etc.

I can’t stress this enough:  great copy sells products and services.  It’s worth all the blood, sweat, tears, and time you take to craft a marketing message that is appealing, engaging, and moves the reader to take action.

• Psychological Pricing — This approach is used when the marketer wants the consumer to respond on an emotional, rather than rational basis. A wonderful example of this is demonstrated in the consumer’s response to 99 cents versus one dollar.  Although only a penny separates the price points, the psychological impact is huge

• Product Line Pricing — Where there is a range of product or services, a scale of prices reflects the scale of benefits offered by the products.  For example, a car wash service could offer a basic wash for 10 Euros, a wash and wax for 15, and a deluxe package with wash, wax, and super-buffering for 20 Euros

Have you noticed all of those infomercials on TV? How about the QVC channel? Or HSN?  This is all direct marketing. They are trying to get you to take some kind of action today, this minute, right NOW!

Institutional advertising is just the opposite.  The consumer isn't asked to do anything.  Of course, the advertiser hopes they will…but they don't ask.  Watch the ads on TV ─ most of the time you don’t even know what the ad is about until it’s over.  Sometimes you have to watch it a few times to figure it out!

Look in your newspaper, your local penny saver, look at ads in magazines ─ most of these are institutional advertisements. There is no call to action and usually no compelling reason to do business with the advertiser.

Now look at your ads.  I'm sorry, but I’ll bet they're institutional…and I bet they aren't working for you.   Why do companies do this? Why do YOU do this?

Well, it all started when advertising agencies came up with a way they could stay in business without being held accountable by their customers.

They weren't trying to promote actually sales, so how could the results be quantified? 

Institutional advertising also allows an agency to keep coming up with different ad campaigns for the client.  After all, you need to constantly change the message right? Wrong, not if you are measuring your response and your message is working.  To agencies, new campaigns mean new initiatives and new initiatives mean new billings and new billings mean new cars, houses, boats and fabulous things ─ but for the advertisers… not for the business owner.

Now that you know the people you’re looking for...or more accurately, the people you want to look for you...it’s time to find them.  Let’s talk about some strategies to accomplish that.

Make Friends with Search Engines

Can people find your site with little effort? Odds are that answers are probably no.  If you really want to increase your ranking on popular search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo, just remember that the quality of your content will be reflected in the quality of your search engine ranking, your traffic, and your links.

The most common suggestion amongst the search engine optimization (SEO) experts is that all the content should be written so that people will want to read it, will remember your main points, and will hopefully tell their friends about you and/or your ideas.

Your goal should be to write content that is clear, concise and targeted at real people within your demographic. Focus primarily on topics you know and write things you would want to find when doing a search. Lastly, while writing, think about words that people would use when searching for content like yours and avoid using made-up, industry-specific, proprietary-sounding words to describe your ideas or product.

Regular words work just as well and they are what people are searching for.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo amongst others all have rumored to be adding natural language processing capabilities to their indexing algorithms. This is their latest effort to understand the meaning of a web page as a whole, rather than as a collection of distinct and independent keywords. The result is that they will get better at distinguishing between pages that are written for search engines and those that are written for people.

Therefore,

Writing for people is the only successful long-term Strategy since the search engines themselves target people and not each other

Linkability

The original principle upon which Google was founded was very simple. Basically it was the idea that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be.

In addition to this, the more important the voting page is, the more heavily weighted the vote itself is. For example, one link from an industry-leading magazine’s website can have much more impact than a thousand links from sites no one has ever heard of.  This mechanism of determining popularity vaulted Google to a household name and made the search engines far more relevant than they had been before.

Today, most major search engines use some form of voting mechanism to determine a site’s popularity. Therefore, your goal should be to obtain as many inbound links from highly-ranked sites as possible.

The other benefit of getting linked from high-traffic sites is that they also refer high volumes of visitors to you directly – without the involvement of the search engine. Those visitors are then able to tell their friends (possibly by linking to you), which in turn perpetuates the cycle one step further.

I’ll be honest.  Obtaining the first few quality links can be challenging and the strategy for doing so varies with the demographic and theme of your content. In general, you should consider which kinds of sites you would visit to find links to topics and products like yours, then determine if there is a way you can solicit a link from them. Some experts call this technique “link bait”.

Sometimes you can write some guest content or possibly entice a reporter to do an interview or story about you. Other times you might be able to negotiate some sort of cross promotion deal. Regardless of what you do, you should try and avoid building up links to your site too quickly as the search engines are able to detect these bursts and look unfavorably upon them.

The last point I’d like to make about inbound links is that the words in the link text have a huge impact on the value of the link. Links like “click here for more information” give the search engines no context about what “here” is. However, links like “visit We-Create Internet Software for more information” tell the search engines what is on the other end of the link and thus are valued more highly.

These types of links are also much more likely to be clicked when a reader is skimming an article.

Meta Descriptions

Years ago, any SEO expert would tell you that the first thing to do would be to make sure every single page on a website has a good meta-description and a concise and accurate list of meta-keywords.  Today there are very few search engines that even bother to parse the meta-keywords list and when they do, they compare them with the body of your content before trusting them.

Therefore, they are a waste of time and you’re better off writing a few more pages of quality content than you are itemizing keywords for every page of a website.

What is important to your site are your meta-description tags, though not for the same reasons they have been in the past. Many search engines, Google included, will make use of a well written and concise meta-description as the text that appears under your link in a search result. A human-targeted, clear and enticing meta-description can enable a site that ranks fourth or fifth in the results to get more traffic than the site that ranks first.

This is because once on the search results page, people actually read the summaries and descriptions before clicking on a link.  Think of the meta-description tag as a way to

Convert a searcher into a reader and make all the other search engine optimization efforts worthwhile

It seems obvious, but using title tags for the title, header tags for headers, list tags for lists and paragraph tags for paragraphs is very important. The reality is that the web programming industry has developed some exceptionally bad habits and far too often developers mix markup for content, presentation and functionality all into one big HTML document.

This is a bit technical, but it’s valuable information.

You’ve got good content that people are linking to, and your meta-description is ready to entice searchers into clicking on your link instead of the links for your competition, but when will you show up in the rankings? The only answer anyone can honestly give is “sooner or later.”  So be patient; its takes time. Sure, you can reduce the total time if you put lots of effort into SEO, but even then it can take weeks to get indexed and months before you see measurable results.

One reason for this is that search engines also consider various time factors when ranking your site in their search results. Metrics like how long it’s been since your domain was first registered, as well as how many more years before it expires show them how dedicated you are to your website. Search engines also consider the longevity of the links to your site from others, and weight medium-value, long-term links much more heavily than high-value links you only obtained yesterday.

• Bonus – an additional value (“But wait, there’s more!”) to transform your offer from good to irresistible

• Urgent Call to Action – a statement of what the consumer has to do to place an order, with an incentive for them to act quickly

• Response Mechanism – a way for the consumer to place the order

• Postscript – a restatement of the biggest benefit

That’s it.  The “secret formula” that has been quietly making people rich for decades.  The beauty of this 8-part “template” for sales messages is that you only have to write your main sales copy once.  After that, it can easily be adapted to fit whatever medium you’re using it in:  website, autoresponder, newspaper ad, etc.

Effective sales and marketing copy simply captures in words the essence of a face-to-face exchange with a prospective client.  In that regard, copywriting is salesmanship in print...and the rest of this manual is devoted to making you Salesperson of the Year for as long as you’re in business.

9 Tips to Improve Your Copy

Looking at the tips below it may seem that good advertising involves manipulating the emotions of your customers. Yes, it does. Selling is a blatant form of emotional manipulation that involves convincing your customer that they want to buy your product or service, and they want to do it now.

We talked earlier about the fact that emotions drive sales, not logic.  Logic is what consumers look for to justify making the purchase.  So it’s much more important that your copy first connects with prospects on an emotional level.

Is this unethical? Well, it can be. It depends where you draw the line. In point 9, for example, I say that your sales message could include a sense of urgency. A common ploy on the web is to include a claim like “Offer closes this Saturday”. If you go back to the site the following week, though, the offer is still available. If you were tricked by such a claim, would you order from that company again?

With that in mind, use the tips below to write as persuasively as you can, but remember that if you attract sales by deceiving your customers you risk legal action, poor word of mouth, no repeat business and refund requests.

So, be as persuasive as you can possibly be, but avoid the temptation to be “too” persuasive.

1. Write copy that emphasizes the benefits in a way that makes an emotional connection. For example, let’s say you’re selling toothpaste. A feature might be that it contains fluoride. Sure, but that’s boring. Rather, say it “Lessens Tooth Decay!” or even better: “Brush with Boffo and Avoid the Dentist’s Drill!” See? You’ve turned a dull feature into a strong emotional benefit linked to people’s fear of dental procedures. Isn’t that more effective than “Contains fluoride”?
2. Start by choosing a single benefit of your product or service that you wish to highlight above everything else.  Ask yourself what specific benefit makes your product or service different, better, or special. Is it quality?  The convenience? The reliability? How are you different from your competitors?
3. Write attention-grabbing headlines. This is very important. People are overloaded with information, so they skim read - particularly on the Internet. If your headline doesn’t get their attention everything else may go unread. Your headline will often highlight your principal selling position.
4. Write a list of all the features of your product or service then translate each of these into a benefit for the customer. One way to do this is to look at each feature in turn then ask yourself “So what?” Imagine you’re a customer; why should you care about this feature? Ask yourself, “What will it do for me?” For example, don’t just say that you product is fast (a feature) tell the customer that it will give them more free time (a benefit). Better still, paint a picture of them using their free time to go to the beach, read a book, or relax.
5. Start with your strongest selling points.The first few paragraphs are particularly important. Use them to create a desire for your product or service by briefly touching on the major benefits it will bring the customer. You don’t have to go into too much detail up front as you can expand on these benefits later. Do try to get your big guns in early, though.
6. Testimonials sell.Good, believable testimonials from real people will help sales, particularly on the web where establishing credibility is a tough job. For even better credibility, ask your testimonial writers if you can include their contact details along with their testimonial.
7. Write with a natural style. Don’t try to be pretentious or over friendly. Just write it the way you’d say it.
8. Decide who you’re writing for and why.What tone are you trying to convey: light hearted or serious? What level of jargon are you going to employ? Suit your language to your intended audience.
9. End by telling the reader what to do; e.g. “Ring now” or “Click here to order now for immediate delivery”. Needless to say, ordering details must be clearly visible and simple to follow.

If your headline doesn’t catch the reader’s attention, it has failed…and so have you.  The headline is the most important part of the ad.  It is 80% of your outreach effort.

Your headline should illustrate a major benefit that the customer can expect from your product. It essentially sells the reader on your ad.  It doesn't announce the product, but rather catches the reader or listener's attention and convinces them to listen or read on.

The headline has one other function:  it brings your reader or listener into your ad.  A good headline reaches out and grabs readers by the collar and pulls them in.

The reason I had you spend so much time determining your unique selling proposition is because one of the things it will do is help you produce a headline. And, since your headline can be your most powerful benefit, there's every reason to spend as much time as you need to in order to get it right.

One of my favorite comments on headlines comes from advertising industry legend David Ogilvy:

What is the biggest promise that you can put in your headlines?  From your unique selling proposition, you derive the words or small idea that sparks the interest of prospects and motivates them to learn more about your product.

As you read through newspapers, look at ads in magazines, or get direct mail offers.  You will find that the letters you read and the ads that you take the time to listen to are the ones that grab you up front early and get your attention.

Attention comes because the headline illustrates a direct benefit for the prospect.  This benefit is so powerful and unique, that the prospect is encouraged to continue listening to or reading the ad.  If you are going to invest in any type of marketing to get your product sold, you must come up with a headline that is a description of your unique selling proposition or aspect of it.