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When you see dozens of copywriting formulas promising “the perfect sales page,” how do you know which ones to trust?

After all, each formula seems to have a successful direct sales superstar behind it, and each one looks like a solid plan. What do you do in the face of these wildly different sales letter styles?

The first step is to realize that copywriting is more than any one “formula” — it’s an exercise in communication and persuasion.

Just like a recipe, different formats will give you different results. The recipe you’re looking for will depend on your audience — and you’ll have to test yours to find out what they respond to best.

But whatever sales page recipe you choose to follow, the important thing is to understand the reasoning behind the “ingredients” that go into it. Let’s take a look at what every successful sales page should have — regardless of how your recipe gets stirred up.

1. Headlines that make promises and demand attention

Here at Copyblogger we’ve talked extensively about writing great headlines — and the importance that a solid lead-in has for getting your copy read.

If you don’t nail the headline (the single most important part of your sales letter), no one will stick around for the rest.

Your headline must pre-qualify the reader based on their needs and wants, as well as promise them an intriguing result if they’ll stick around and read what comes next.

Want to get good at making this happen? Practice. If you’re not cultivating a headline swipe file and honing your attention-grabbing skills with each blog post you write, then you need to get started now.

2. Opening paragraphs that promise and persuade

Presuming your headline piques your readers’ curiosity, you then need to lead readers to a psychological commitment to read every word of your copy.

You can do this by using those initial paragraphs to draw them in, establishing rapport, and expanding on the promise you made in the headline.

This is the place to get more specific about what your readers are about to learn. Most important of all, let them know how that knowledge will get them closer to their desired result.

There’s a reason opening paragraphs are often called “teasers” — they’re meant to show just enough to make the reader want to see more.

Continue to help your reader understand they’re in the right place (and that there’s juicy knowledge to be gained by scrolling down), and they’ll keep reading all the way to the very end.

3. Stories that reveal the reasons behind the offer

The old expression “Words tell, stories sell,” is still 100% true — people become more emotionally connected with copy that tells a story. You’ll do well to create a compelling (and true, of course!) backstory to why the offer you’re making came into existence, because that pulls the reader into your copy on a deeper level.

We all want to see how the story unfolds — and that’s precisely why so many effective sales pages include transformative stories about the product’s author (or the people the author has helped). The reader wants a result via your offer, and they’ll pay close attention to storylines that involve that result coming to pass.

If you’re not a natural storyteller, then revisit some sales pages you’ve seen in the past and read them again with an eye for story. You’ll be surprised how you see good writers work these seamlessly into their copy.

4. Details that foster rapport and credibility

Many sales letters include a “Who am I and why should you listen to me?” section meant to establish credibility (and more backstory) about the product author. You can definitely emulate this straight-to-the-point delivery, but there are other ways of achieving the same result with more subtlety.

Let’s go back to the story — this is the perfect place to weave in the writer’s background — the results received, the credentials that establish authority, and the reasons that make that person the perfect choice for satisfying the reader’s needs.

Readers buy from those they trust and like. Pepper your copy with details that make the product author an interesting and authoritative source, and the overall message becomes much more compelling.

5. Subheads that stop scrollers and make reading easy

Solid subheads serve two powerful purposes in a high-conversion sales letter.

First, they make it easy for the reader to know why they need to read the section of text below. Essentially, they are mini-headlines designed to set up a promise and entice the reader to keep going.

For each text block in your sales letter, ask yourself “Why should anyone read this?” and translate the answer into a compelling sub-head. Revisit blog posts you loved reading, and watch how the author kept you hooked with solid sub-headlines.

The second purpose of subheads is to convey such an attention-getting promise that the people who “scroll and scan” stop in their tracks and say “I’ve got to go back and read this.”

Don’t let a subhead into your sales letter without first asking if it’s “stop-worthy.”

6. Anxiety-reducing testimonials

Most people treat testimonials as an exercise in stroking the product author’s ego.

But readers don’t care about that. They care about their own problems (and specifically, getting them solved) and they care about the objections they have when they consider clicking that “Add to Cart” button.

They’re going to be thinking things like:

• “Will this work for my situation?”
• “Is this going to be too hard?”
• “Will I have time for this?
• “What if I need to return this?”
• “How can I trust this person?”

It’s your job to anticipate their objections and gather testimonials that show an antidote to the anxieties behind them. Take a look at your testimonials and ask if they’re doing their job. If not, you know what to do.

7. Proof that your product or service actually works

If “the proof of the pudding is in the eating,” then you need to have some full bellies to show to your soon-to-be-customers.

Walk them through specific examples of how the product or service worked for you (which incidentally, you can easily do by weaving these elements into your story).

If you have customers on hand with success stories, here’s where you work these in as well — taking special care to position the results in a way that reduces customer anxiety.

Look for ways that previous customers were able to get results despite the obstacles, setbacks, or circumstances that your new customers are likely to be worried about. Then use those examples to show how your new prospects can do it, too.

8. An offer they can’t refuse

Remember, you’re selling more than just a product or service — you’re selling solutions, outcomes, and experiences.

Break out every detail of what your product does for them (and weave that into your story as well), and get very specific as to how much each benefit is worth — financially and emotionally.

Paint a clear picture of everything they’re getting. Stack value upon value until your readers are filled with the sense that your offer is exactly what they need — and furthermore, that the price is a no-brainer bargain.

Shoot for the “10X factor.” If you can show the reader that your offer is truly worth ten times what you’re charging, the buying decision becomes much, much easier. And if you can show how the product pays for itself (essentially becoming “free”), so much the better.

9. A risk-free environment

People are terrified of being oversold, scammed, and taken advantage of on the internet — and so their shields are up when it comes to trusting what you say.

That’s why it’s such a good idea to offer a strong guarantee that takes all the burden of risk off of their shoulders.

It’s called “risk reversal,” and it’s easy to do. Simply offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee — if they don’t like what you’re giving them within 30 or 60 days, let them get their money back.

Never make refunds difficult — the goodwill you generate from being a no-hassle provider is worth any cost of returns.

Of course there are some exceptions — when a return is truly costly to you (for example, for a physical product), you may need to put some guidelines on returns so that you don’t get taken advantage of.

But if what you’re selling is digital, the downside just isn’t there. The small and temporary cost of refunds will be more than made up by the word-of-mouth referrals of happy customers.

10. A solid close that gets your “buy” button clicked

All good things must come to an end, and when your sales message does the same, you need a strong call to action.

Remind your customer what benefits they’ll get when they buy, and resurface the pain and inconveniences that will go away when they’ve fully used your product or service.

Once you’ve done that, ask them explicitly to buy. Not doing so will cost you conversions, and it’s an easy mistake to make because we can be hesitant to ask for things.

You don’t have to do the “hard sell” here — just invite them to “join you,” or “get access,” or “download” — just by clicking and making a purchase.

And that “P.S.” that’s such a sales letter cliché? Works like a charm.

When people get to the end of your letter, all their lingering objections get put on one end of the scale, and your price tag gets put on the other. Here’s your opportunity to tactfully let them know that they have the chance to get the benefits they want, and solve their problems at the same time.

Your call to action: Tell us what else you think is essential to a great sales letter

As I said at the beginning, there are dozens of copywriting formulas out there, and all of them serve their purpose and have solid avenues of conversion. This list isn’t meant to be exhaustive, it’s meant to give you the basic framework for persuasive copy.

Why don’t you join us in the comments below, where you can add your wisdom and get access to the ideas of others? Click in the comment box below and tell us what other essential “ingredients” you would add to this list. We’ll see you there.

About the Author: Dave Navarro is a product launch manager who can’t wait for you to join the 7,000+ people using his free workbooks in the Launch Coach Library (a crowd favorite in the Third Tribe forums).

P.S.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page after you leave your comment, so that every time you return to it in the future, you can learn even more about writing great sales letters.

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You can't go wrong if you study, refine, and include these points in your sales pages.

Here are some major tips on writing your blog for business by Rebecca Churt for Hubspot.

Excellent content leaves the reader with something new that they didn’t have before. People like to get something from blogs they read. You don’t have to be Shakespeare to have a good blog.

The fact is that web sites with a blog received 55% more visitors, 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages than those that didn’t have a blog. Businesses in particular can capitalize on this because businesses that blog experience 126% higher lead growth than non-blogging businesses. Can you really afford to miss this opportunity?

1. CONTENT

Remarkable Content – A mix of content is good. What’s remarkable? Anything relevant and useful, interesting, thought-provoking, controversial, and entertaining. Try things like current news, opinion, and media rich content. Note: this is not your place to talk all about your services or products.

Keep content topical, informative, and non promotional
Check your grammar and spelling
Organize your content
Title

Sub-heading

Content with bold words or language indicating importance

Give your readers something to chew on – A blog post should be 400-600 words on average
Search Engine Optimization Basics - As you create remarkable content you will want to optimize that content for search engines as well as users. Make it as clear as possible. This should include updating the following - Page title, Meta description, and internal page links.

Attention Grabbing Headlines – Not to pile on the pressure but your Headline/Title/Subject line is important. In most cases it is also your post URL so make it count. If you can include your keywords. Generally things like top 5 lists, trends, and news focused articles do really well, but add variety and measure what readers like best.

Target Audience – Who are you writing for? Focus on the "who" of your blog. You need to think about the type of person, on average, who you want to attract to your blog.

Bloggers – Who is writing? Will you be the one writing articles? Or are you just a champion/facilitator/coordinator and others will be doing the writing.

Schedule – How often will you publish? – Plan or schedule how frequently your content will be published. Every day or every week or anything in between. Do what is realistic for you. The most important thing is consistency.

2. READER ENGAGEMENT

Call-to-Actions – Your blog should be a lead generating machine. Offers for call-to-actions can include: newsletter sign-up, eBook download or webinar registration. Great blog call-to-actions are action oriented, positive, clear, and direct.

Published Author Name – Give people credit for the content they write and also show your readers who is involved. It is more friendly to know whose work you are reading that have it be a mystery.

Comments – Be sure to moderate your comments for spam. No one wants to read “great post…I will bookmark this” over and over again. At the same time, don’t eliminate good conversations even if they are potentially controversial.

Lists – People like to read posts with a nice, simple presentation of information. The most popular kind are list of: recommendations, popular posts or articles by tags.

Search – Give people the opportunity to find content easily and quickly. People are used to having answers at their finger tips. Chances are that if you don’t provide that information people will wander elsewhere.

3. INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Images – You want to think of images as supporting assets. They are the supporting characters in a feature film. Now, you shouldn’t litter your post with pictures but at least one is good to start. Graphs, diagrams and even screenshots can come in handy as useful blog images.

Video – This is pretty much the same as with images. A good interactive video can help your blog go viral. You don’t have to do your own mini-series but maybe you came across a video that is relevant and supports the point of your content, go ahead and insert it and share it with your readers.

Polls and Surveys – Done right, polls and surveys can give you some good data. They may even be somewhat entertaining. But don’t show a poll about “where you should go on vacation” when your blog is not even remotely related to the subject.

4. SUBSCRIPTION OPTIONS

Email – People like options. So give them the option to subscribe to your blog via email. You’ll be surprised that many people will still prefer this over RSS.

RSS – This is a standard feature for blogs. You can take it one step further and make it even easier by just taken the RSS image icon and hyperlinking it to your RSS URL. Within a click you will have subscribers to your blog.

Social Media – This seems like it should be common sense by now, but many bloggers still seem to miss out on this one. Give people the option to share your content. Again, simplicity is the key here. Have the icons display alongside your blog posts. Think about your industry - Is it more technical? If so then include Reddit and Digg. Are you in HR? Then be sure to use LinkedIn etc.

Follow Me Option – Having people share your content is only half of the equation. You also want to build a following on your networks, whether it be your own Ning network or Twitter. Let people know where they can connect with you.

5. MEASUREMENT

Javascript - You should be using some kind of tool for the purpose of tracking traffic, which means you will have to copy and paste some kind of javascript code into your website for that tool to track that information. Don't forget it.

Analytics – Look at page views, links, comments and where content was shared. The same way you want to know how your website is succeeding, you'll also want to know what's working on your blog. And if you've followed the steps above you should also be generating leads from your buiness blog.

BONUS TIP - Things you don’t need

Advertising – Unless you are generating tons of traffic this is a waste.

Splash screens – Pop up screens are incredibly annoying and distracting. Try to keep them at minimum or only shown once, not repeatedly.

Free Checklist

For people who like to have a paper checklist, check out the document below. View this document on Slideshare and click download at the top of the document to get a copy of this checklist for your business.
Rebecca Churt is a member of the Inbound Marketing Consultant team at HubSpot. She also blogs at www.rchurt.com.

Three Primary Social Media Goals

When we look at online marketing, there are three broad categories into which nearly all social media related goals can fall. They are usually either aimed at:

1. Building/Strengthening the Brand
2. Driving Conversions
3. Increasing/Monitoring the Presence

Starting at this broad level and thinking about the goals you have for your business can help you begin to write up a list of realistic ways in which social media might help you reach those goals.

Let's take a closer look at these three areas and how they might apply to your social media efforts.

Goal #1: Build the Brand

When it comes to building and reinforcing your brand, social media is one of the most powerfulmarketing tools available. It gives you the strongest and broadest opportunity to both find your target audience and to engage in conversation with them. 

These days, you have no choice but to differentiate yourself from your competitors unless you have an exclusive product. Otherwise, you're forced into the unwinnable battle of competing for the lowest prices and the fastest shipping.

Think about the things that make your company different from your competitors; your Unique Value Propostion. This is the thing you want to use social media to built awareness of. 

If you're a service professional, target a specific niche and build a blogging and Twitter strategy around that. Demonstrate your expertise in working with a certain type of client and then seek out those types of clients to have conversation with. Look for new ways to connect with them and encourage your current clients to socially share your articles with their networks. 

Goal #2: Drive Conversions

One of smartest reasons to use social media is for the potential boost it can have to your conversion efforts. Whether you're looking to drive sales, increase leads or simply drive people to action, conversions are an easily trackable goal in the realm of social media.

Sit down and write out a list of all the potential actions someone might take while engaging with your company's web site or while interacting online.

Obvious options like buying your products or becoming a lead spring to mind, but don't forget about other valuable actions like subscribing to your newsletter, retweeting a blog post or downloading a white paper. 

Read over your list and think about the different ways you might be able to use social media to increase conversions for each item. Often times, this is the best way to start planning your social media efforts. 

Goal #3: Increase Presence 

Finally, we come to the goal most often associated with social media outreach efforts; increasing the conversation about your brand. After all, social media is all about the conversation. It's about theonly space in the world where consumers talk to each other and to companies in an environment that can be tracked, sorted and followed-up with. This makes social media a prime outlet for PR driven companies who want to know what customers are saying about them. 

Setting up even a baseline of social media monitoring can go a long way toward helping you follow these conversations. Whether you're launching new product and aiming to get people buzzing about it or trying to reach out to a new target audience to share information about one of your best selling services, it's all trackable.

When it comes to the conversation people might be having about you online, ask yourself a few questions. 

• Who do you want to hear talking?
• What do you want them to be saying?
• Who do you want them to say it to? 

These are your starting points for setting up key goals within the realm of increasing your presence.

You've Set the Stage, Now Start Building a Plan

Looking at your business with each of the above goals in mind helps you set the stage for your social media efforts. This post isn't aimed at telling you what to do, I'm simply trying to get you to figure out why you want (and need) to do it. 

If you're small business looking to take your social media efforts up a notch (or maybe even just get started,) take the time to define at least two goals from the categories above. Once you've identified your desired outcome, you'll be a lot more ready to start mapping out the path to get there.

Mind Mapping for Small Business

 

May 26, 2010 -

I am a mindmapping freak. I use the process of mindmapping for many of my projects, especially in the planning phases, but all the way up to keeping status on many projects at once. Have you tried it? Here are some thoughts:

Mindmapping is Drawing Out Your Ideas

Just to quickly level-set what we're talking about. Mind maps are those drawings (like the one in this article) that let you start at a main idea, branch out into sub-ideas or sub-topics, and then branch out even smaller. The basic idea is that by drawing (on paper or on the computer) your thoughts, you'll uncover things you weren't considering before. The act of mapping out your thoughts gives you a whole different visualization and taps a whole different part of your mind than when you use something like project management software, a spreadsheet, or a word document.

Mind Maps Help You See The Big Picture

In planning by mindmapping, you can see which categories of your process are considered major and which are minor. For instance, in the launch of my upcoming new business, I was having trouble defining what it was my company did in a succinct way. After a few tries drawing (and you can use software or paper, don't forget), I found that my best description was that I'm building a media and education company. This wasn't clear until I tried organizing my thoughts into the various branches of a mind map.

You Shake Out Little Details

In a much more detailed mindmap I drew the other day, I realized that I needed a whole new discipline added to my set of potential vendors, because a new business idea I was launching required some "real world" elements (most of my companies are online). It's moments like that, when in drawing out the little lists in the little branches, that I come to realize there are details missing. If you were mindmapping out a band, and you forgot the drummer, it'd be quite obvious quite fast. It might not be as obvious if you were using a spreadsheet, for instance.

Maps Let You Re-Think Decisions

When I map out my projects, I then realize how many steps and details it will take to accomplish some tasks. Sometimes, this gives me enough of a heads up that I can look for help, scale back the deliverable, or push out the deadline. If I hadn't mapped it out, I might not have really thought through the depth of the project. You can do the same.

You Can Talk Through Maps Faster

I had a meeting with my executive team in my new business, and Diane brought her own mindmap to the meeting. At first, she'd written down all her thoughts in a Word document. That ended up going 17 pages long. She read from the map, with the other document ready, should she find herself unable to articulate a point. Guess how it went? We used the map the whole time. We got through hours of information in under one hour, which let us focus on decisions instead of exposition. Sometimes, having a visual map is a much easier way to "see" all the information you need to make a good decision.

So What Now?

I sure don't want to pick which software you choose to use, but I'll tell you my experience. The high end of mindmapping software that I've used was by MindJet, and I believe it's compatible with both PC and Mac. On my Mac right now, I use MindNode. There's a huge list of mind mapping software on Wikipedia, too. You might even consider an online version, so you can access it from many machines, though I prefer offline, so I can use it while on an airplane.

What should you map out? Try solving a decision with it: should I stand pat, or should I expand? Something like that. You can't really tell how it works without trying it. And, if you find that it works well for you, it'd be great to hear about it in the comments.

Chris Brogan is the New York Times bestselling author of the NEW book, Social Media 101. He is president of New Marketing Labs, LLC, and blogs at chrisbrogan.com.  

Tags: chris brogan, mind mapping, mind mapping software, mindjet, mindnode, new marketing labs

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Adam Singer, Paul Isakson, Brad Smith @ IMS Minneapolis

Social Media  advice is cheap and for the most part, you get what you pay for.  Best practices social media marketing based on experience, well, that’s another thing entirely.

The Social Media Best Practices session at IMS Minneapolis earlier this week gave attendees access to first hand insights from the likes of: Brad Smith from Best Buy, Adam Singer from TopRank Online Marketing, Paul Isakson from Thinkers & Makers (formerly of Space150) and Bryan Person, founder of Social Media Breakfast.

Brad Smith, Director, Interactive Marketing & Emerging Media from Best Buy opened things up talking about a “new marketing reality”. Customers are out there, but they’re bombarded with messages. Customers are not listening to us (marketers & advertisers) anymore. Social media is all about communicating.  Customers are listening to each other instead and tuning out marketing messages.

Each company’s journey in social media is different. If your social media consultant starts the meeting with suggestions about starting a Twitter account, leave the room. Treat social media like any other major undertaking with planning, understanding the marketplace, goals and objectives.

Tenents that support Best Buy Social Media Marketing:

• Deliver
• Blow you away
• Never leave you hanging
• Make a difference
• Make sure you know all we know

Brad makes the distinction of social media tools and the behaviors we seek to engage and influence. “I don’t use facebook, I participate. It’s a two way thing.  You’re not half way into social media. When you’re in you’re in.”

Best Buy’s Social Media Marketing Mission:

To connect customers and employees with the Best Buy brand and each other through the right tools platforms and collaboration delivered when, where and how they want.

The focus is on the customer, not the company. “It’s not about what Best Buy wants customers to do, it’s about giving people the tools to connect with each other and employees whenever and however they want.”

Best Buy Social Media Guidelines:

• (Essentially don’t be stupid)
• Listen
• Be findable, think distributed
• It’s about people
• Enable creation
• Make it social
• Listen some more
• Be authentic
• Be transparent
• Keep it simple
• Make a commitment

Best Buy and Twitter – @Twelpforce
The thing that makes it work is that they didn’t start with a “Twitter strategy”. It was born of a customer need. Best Buy simply leveraged an asset they knew they had with a customer need. Customers needed advice and there are 150,000 Best Buy employees world wide that are already being helpful. Twitter proved to be an effective platform for that. 2,500 employees are signed up to work as part of @Twelpforce.

Best Buy is also active with Community Forum, Best Buy IdeaX, a Facebook Fan page and other channels.

When Best Buy started their social journey with Facebook, Brad says they were overzealous and promoted commercial messages to the community. The community responded, “not to do that”. Customers want access to the brand, advice, tips exclusive access that others don’t get.

Best Buy Learnings From Their Social Media Experience:

• Listen first, talk second
• Its OK to fail
• The same social mores apply online as offline
• Customers don’t care about channels
• We have to be ready ro respond
• Customers will tell us and everyone else where our organization is broken. And expect a fix
• People are forgiving

Overall Best Buy is treating their social media experience as a journey and have learned the importance of listening instead of pushing.  It’s an impressive example, not only of a very large brand finding value in a humble and transparent, customer focused social media effort, but one of true Minnesota ingenuity when it comes to new technology and marketplace innovation.

I did miss some of the bulleted items above because the presentation went by very quickly. If access to the PowerPoint presentations is made available, I’ll link to it from this post.

I’ll be adding observations on the presentations from Adam Singer and Paul Isakson separately.

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