Provide testimonials
Why should people believe what you are telling them about your product? You can understand why they might be a little skeptical; after all, you are the owner or creator of the product you are advertising. At the very least you will have been paid to write the copy they are now reading, even if you have nothing to do with the product itself. That’s why Read more…
Copywriting is the art of using words to help promote businesses, products, people and the like. That catchy commercial jingle or magazine ad phrase you can’t get out of your head is the work of a professional copywriter, so copywriting is very pivotal to assisting advertisers in drawing attention to the things they want to sell to prospective customers.
If you are an ebook author, you know that your success depends upon what kind of marketing you do. There are a throng of other ebook writers and self publishers on the internet, all fighting to get their products seen and purchased. To gain ground above your competitors, it is essential that you use the right promotional tools.
You don’t necessarily have to incur the cost of a professional copywriter, however. You can be your own copywriter by creating and distributing your own sales letters.
What is a sales letter? It’s the document you present to the public to get them interested in buying your products.
If you haven’t got the foggiest idea of how to create a sales letter, use other sales letters as a guide, especially those that influenced you to buy something. Don’t plagiarize, of course, but find out what it is that made that sales letter jump out at you. What was it about the headline or opening sentence that made you want to read further? What were some of the keywords they used that persuaded you to spend your money? An effective sales letter piques the interest of prospective buyers by describing your ebook in a manner that makes it sound beneficial to their needs. The purpose of a sales letter is to convince people that they just have to have your product or they’ll burst.
Decide the niche market that best fits the kinds of ebooks you write and gear your sales letter to them. Don’t waste your time and effort trying to market something to people who have no interest in what your ebooks are about, but focus, instead, only on those who want to know about the information you have to offer.
Make sure that your ad copy is enjoyable to read and not full of a lot of boring statistics or overly ponderous information. Learn how to use bullet points to list brief factoids or focus on specific highlights of your ebook. Remember, your sales letter is not another ebook, but is there to influence people to go to the one you’ve already written, so knowing the right words to use is extremely important.
We live in an “I-want-it-and-I-want-it-now” world, so it’s important to learn the methods for coming up with creative sales letters that will turn curious readers into enthusiastic buyers of your ebook and keep a continuing stream of internet traffic coming to where customers can buy and download your products..
Anybody can do their own copywriting, once they learn to understand and employ the true power of words.
If you want to be a hit on the ebook circuit, then finding out the secrets of how to use the best copywriting methods can help you attain the kind of success you’ve dreamed of.
The 800-Pound Gorilla: 305-page guide for Writing, Publishing, and Selling EBooks and 17 video tutorials at The Wealthy Plumber: Writing, Publishing & Selling EBooks.
Tell them exactly what they will get for their money
This should be in the latter part of the landing page, where you include details of any bonuses that are coming with the main product. But be sure to list the main benefits they will get from buying the main product itself. This is your primary focus, and you should always make sure you make it clear what a good buy it is.
Use facts to support your claims and strengthen your writing overall
Statements of fact are always worthwhile using because they add credence to your landing page. You have probably read landing pages before which have a number of facts dotted throughout them that are relevant to the product being sold. Look into all the research you have done to see if there is anything there that you can use. Sometimes simply pointing out certain facts about the product itself can have a big effect.
And don’t forget about figures too
Figures are equally if not more attractive than facts when it comes to spicing up your landing page and catching the eye of the reader. If someone is scanning your text very quickly to see if there is anything there that could be of interest to them, any figures that have been included in the text will leap out at them. Therefore, they will tend to read what follows those figures – and that gives you a great chance to convince them just how good your product is. You can use numbers in a variety of ways. Percentages are good if you can substantiate them – don’t try and use them if you can’t, because it will destroy your credibility. Look at the next point to discover a great way that you will always be able to use numbers to good effect.
Include page numbers with your facts
This obviously only applies to books, but you can use it with other products too. For example, you could make a reference to the size or dimensions of something. This will help a potential customer visualize the product more readily. If the product is perishable, say how long it is guaranteed to last for. If it can only be used a certain number of times, make sure you tell them that number. As far as page numbers are concerned, you can mention what can be found on a certain page of the book, or what they will learn in a particular chapter. It all helps people to identify with the product more easily – and that can lead to more sales.
The 800-Pound Gorilla: 305-page guide for Writing, Publishing, and Selling EBooks and 17 video tutorials at The Wealthy Plumber: Writing, Publishing & Selling EBooks.
Don’t deceive your reader
This should be obvious, but it’s not about lying. When you are in the middle of writing a landing page, you will find that it’s very easy to start exaggerating certain elements of your product without even realizing it. Always ensure that you are accurate and truthful about every aspect of your product, and be prepared to double check all your text several times before constructing your landing page and making it live. We’ll get into this in more detail in the section on editing your writing.
Don’t forget to insert those keywords
Remember all that keyword research you did? Well now is the time to keep that list of keywords close at hand while you are writing. You will need to make sure that your text is peppered with these without it spoiling the overall appearance of your writing. If you have ever read any piece of writing that has gone overboard with keywords and phrases, you will know how stilted and uninformative it can be. It becomes clear that the main task of the writer has been to get as many keywords in as possible. So while you should try and ensure that your landing page is as appealing to the search engines and to your potential buyers as possible, the number one priority should always be that your text is readable and that it flows.
Avoid using long sentences
Here’s a quick tip for you – once you have completed the first draft of your landing page, read it out loud. This is the single best way for rooting out any long sentences. Keeping them short will make the page easier to read. It will also make it easier to order your thoughts and to make sure that you don’t confuse the reader by throwing them too much information in one go. The rule of thumb is this – if you are reading the text aloud and you run out of puff before you get to the end of a sentence, try rewriting that sentence so it’s shorter.
Don’t apologize for anything
Every product has a downside in one form or another. It may only be a disadvantage when you compare it to a rival product, but you can still usually find something to point to. However, the trick is to turn that downside into a positive. And you should certainly never point out any disadvantage your product might have, because you will lose sales if you do. Try and identify any potential problems before you start writing, and think about how you can turn them around. For example, let’s say you are releasing a new eBook on starting your own business. You know there are others on the market and they are twice the length of yours. But instead of bringing attention to that in a negative way, you should think about how you can throw a positive light on it. Don’t even mention the length of the others. Instead, you could say something along the lines of your guide being the most no fluff and compact guide around today.
The 800-Pound Gorilla: 305-page guide for Writing, Publishing, and Selling EBooks and 17 video tutorials at The Wealthy Plumber: Writing, Publishing & Selling EBooks.
Write a great headline
We’ve mentioned headlines already, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the headline is one of the ten most important parts of any landing page. As such it should press some buttons and grab your reader’s attention. If it doesn’t, they may not get any further at all. That’s why you shouldn’t settle on the first headline you think of. It’s a good idea to make a shortlist of all the ones you can come up with, before evaluating each one carefully to see which one is the most powerful. Once again, take a look at as many landing page headlines as you can lay your eyes on; they will all help you to learn exactly how to reel people in. Even one word changed here and there could elevate your conversion rate significantly. For more information on optimizing headings check out the ultimate 305-page writing, publishing, and selling guide on the planet at The Wealthy Plumber with the link at bottom of this page.
Put words in their mouths
This is a neat psychological technique that takes a while to get used to, but once you know how to use it, you will be amazed at the results it can get you. You are probably familiar with the power of suggestion, where you state a fact rather than asking if someone believes that fact. By stating it positively you can have a huge influence on how someone reacts to the words on your landing page. For example, if you want someone to believe that your eBook is the best one on that subject; you would make sure you put that positive statement into a sentence. So the statement would be: “You know that our eBook is the best one on this subject.” And the sentence that you’d put this phrase into would go something like this: “Whether or not you know that our eBook is the best one on this subject…” You see how that positive sentence is still there? This can be very effective if used several times during the course of the page.
Put the price in the right place
The price of your product is of course very important, and most people will want to know how much money they are going to have to part with in order to get the product. But you should never disclose that price until near the end of the landing page itself. If you reveal it too quickly, you stand a chance of putting people off buying it altogether. The benefits must come first – you must pre-sell it before letting people know how much it will cost them. You cannot make a valued judgment on whether or not the product is worth buying – regardless of the price – until you know more about it. So make sure you save this bit for last, otherwise you will lose a lot of sales that you may otherwise have made.
Add relevant bonuses
This is a technique that works well if you choose the right bonuses to offer alongside your main product. The perfect bonus is one that has much more value to the customer than it does to you. For example, if you are selling an eBook you can easily give away free reports and other similar items with it. These may be worth a great deal to the customer if they would have to pay twenty or thirty dollars to get them separately elsewhere, even though to you they are sitting on your hard drive, and there is no inherent cost in giving them away. Make sure the bonus complements your main product though; don’t give something away that is unrelated to it.
The 800-Pound Gorilla: 305-page guide for Writing, Publishing, and Selling EBooks and 17 video tutorials at The Wealthy Plumber: Writing, Publishing & Selling EBooks.
Don’t be too quick to start
I’m not talking about delaying the inevitable here – I’m merely talking about making sure you have done all your research before you begin. You should also have a clear USP in your mind, not just something you think will do the job. Give yourself enough time to gather together all the facts and figures you need to help you when you write your landing page. Make sure also that you have a direction to go in with your writing. Do you know which points you want to make in your copy? Do you have an idea of the benefits you want to talk about? We’ll get into this more later, but I’m sure you can see the benefits of being prepared.
Think about different headlines, and which type of headline would serve your purpose most effectively
The headline of any landing page is usually the first thing that people see when they land on your website. Even though there will be other writing that is visible, the headline is always created in larger lettering, so it will immediately jump out at whoever is reading the page. It pays to find as many landing pages as you can, simply to read the headlines that they use. You’ll start to see how different copywriters use different techniques to attract peoples’ attention. And of course, some of these techniques are better than others, depending on the skill of the copywriter. Some headlines are merely intended to shock and grab the attention, while others get you thinking and immediately have you hooked, even if your own intention was to click away and find another site. Do you have any particular type of headline in mind, or any ideas for headlines that you might use? Jot them down so you don’t forget them – any one of them could turn into the real deal later on.
Do some keyword research
Keyword tools are many and plentiful online, so there is no excuse not to know which keywords people will be looking for. This stage can take some time to complete, but it is well worth doing because you need to know that people will be able to find your landing page once it is finished and online. A lot of your potential buyers will come from the search engines, which will send them to the most appropriate web pages for their needs. Google, Yahoo and all the rest will go on what you give them, and if your landing page doesn’t have the right keywords on it that your audience is typing into that search box, then you won’t get the traffic you need in the first place. Make sure you focus on your primary keywords and phrases, and add some secondary ones here and there as well if you can.
Stay focused on your audience
Think of your landing page as being a presentation to them – like you’re on stage, and you’re keeping their attention, so that they don’t get bored or wander off anywhere else. Keep that image of your perfect customer firmly in mind with every word you write, and ask yourself how accurately you are aiming at them. Will they understand what you are trying to tell them? Are you making your product appeal to them in ways that only they will really ‘get’? What else can you say to seal the deal and have them reaching for their credit card to make a payment?
The 800-Pound Gorilla: 305-page guide for Writing, Publishing, and Selling EBooks and 17 video tutorials at The Wealthy Plumber: Writing, Publishing & Selling EBooks.
Start by brainstorming
Probably the worst thing that you can do when you sit down to create a landing page is to write. Before you get to that stage, you need to brainstorm as many ideas as you can. Don’t let yourself get inhibited by thinking about whether specific ideas are any good or not – just get them all written down to begin with. Think about how you could approach your topic and your product in a way that will immediately capture the attention of your audience.
Think positively
It can be a very daunting experience at the moment when you sit down and start to make some progress on writing your landing page. Where on earth do you start? This is where it helps to be positive, so that you can approach your task in the right frame of mind. If you don’t do this, and you end up worrying about how good your landing page is going to be, then you may not achieve the results you want. To put it simply, if you are in a negative frame of mind, then it is more likely that your writing will come out in a negative way as well – and that is the last thing you want for a web page that is supposed to be making people feel excited and enthused about your product.
Avoid your computer – at least to begin with
Many of us are so used to working on our computers that we never think of just picking up a notepad and pen any more. But when you are starting to put ideas together for your landing page, there’s no doubt that they will flow much more easily when you have a piece of paper to look at and not a blank screen. Computer documents don’t allow you to scribble in the margins or cross things out in quite the same fluid way that your good old pen and paper does. Don’t try and keep things neat – so long as you can read what you have written, that’s all that matters.
Ask yourself what the focus of your landing page is
Some landing pages are designed simply to give away a free product, in the hope of selling something else later on. Others are clearly designed to make a sale. What purpose is your landing page going to have? Whatever it might be, you need to get it clear in your head what needs to be done, so that you can stay focused on that the whole time you are writing. You will also find it much easier to research how other similar landing pages have been written and structured.
The 800-Pound Gorilla: 305-page guide for Writing, Publishing, and Selling EBooks and 17 video tutorials at The Wealthy Plumber: Writing, Publishing & Selling EBooks.
Research your subject
When you sit down to start making notes about your landing page, think about the subject or area that the product you want to sell falls into. Gather together as much information as you can about that subject, because it will help you to build your landing page. For example, if you are selling an eBook on making cash through online auction sites, find out all you can about the current situation regarding those sites. Have they been in the news? What have other people achieved in this area?
Research your audience
If you don’t know anything about your audience, how can you hope to sell them anything? There may be a limit to what you can find out about them, but the more you know, the more likely it is that you will be able to really connect with them when you finally sit down to write your order pulling landing page. Try and create a mental picture of the typical customer who will be interested in your product, and jot down some notes about them. How old are they? What kind of income do they have? If you have created the product you are going to sell, then you should have a lot of this information already. By working out who the ideal buyer is, you will be able to write your page directly for them.
Research your product
More research! But you will soon see that this part of the copywriting process is just as important as the actual writing stage. After all, how will you know what to write if you aren’t clear on who the audience is, what the product is and what subject it is about? So find out all about your product – what it does and what benefits it offers to the customer. Think about how it will be used and whether it has any multiple uses as well. Write down anything that you think might be helpful – you can always delete it later if it doesn’t help in any way.
Determine your unique selling proposition
This is known as your USP. It is vitally important that you know what this is before you start writing – otherwise you may end up with a vague piece of copywriting that doesn’t really convey anything strong or worthwhile to your customer. What you need to remember is that everyone who visits your web page will very likely have seen other similar web pages already. Why should they pay any more attention to yours? That needs to be the question that you ask yourself before you write your landing page, and at every second of the journey as you DO write it. Only then will you be able to come up with a great and unique selling proposition and be able to get it across to your potential buyers as they are reading your copy.
The 800-Pound Gorilla: 305-page blueprint for Writing, Publishing, and Selling EBooks and now you can receive a FREE110 pages ABRIDGED VERSION just by clicking Work From Home Writing, Publishing & Selling EBooks.
To view the unabridged version and the 17 video tutorials see The Wealthy Plumber: Writing, Publishing & Selling EBooks
Make sure you understand what a landing page is
This might sound strange, but some people THINK they know, but they have never done their research properly. A landing page is a single web page whose entire purpose is to sell a single product. You should never try and squeeze more ‘value’ out of a landing page by trying to sell more than one thing from it.
Research other landing pages
There’s nothing better than taking a look at what is already out there. It goes without saying that you shouldn’t copy anything, but the more landing pages you read, the more the techniques that have been used on them will percolate into your brain. And that will make writing them yourself much easier. It doesn’t matter what products are being promoted on those landing pages either. If you are selling an eBook for example, you should still look at landing pages that have been created for physical products of all kinds. The techniques used in all of them will be very similar, and you’ll start to spot them after a while.
Determine what other successful sellers do
This goes hand in hand with the previous point. You’ll probably come across landing pages that are similar in nature to the one that you will want to create. They may tackle a similar product. Take a look at how they work and whether or not you feel compelled to take action and order the product yourself. How do they draw you in? Watch for any particular techniques they use and make a note of them as you may be able to do something similar yourself. Learning by association is a very good way to master the various techniques that will lead you to sell more products yourself.
Make sure you focus on online techniques
It is tempting to start looking at all kinds of sales letters when you start learning about copywriting. But make sure you don’t look at any which may fall through your mailbox, because the techniques for writing an offline sales letter are somewhat different to those that are used online. So stick to your area of interest, and if you are writing a landing page, learn about landing page copywriting techniques and nothing else.
The 800-Pound Gorilla: 305-page blueprint for Writing, Publishing, and Selling EBooks and now you can receive a FREE110 pages ABRIDGED VERSION just by clicking Work From Home Writing, Publishing & Selling EBooks.
To view the unabridged version and the 17 video tutorials see The Wealthy Plumber: Writing, Publishing & Selling EBooks
When people reach your sales page and start reading, they might be in any kind of mood. It’s your job to lift them up and make them believe that getting your eBook will change their lives in some way.
It’s obvious that no eBook can do that without help from the reader; they will need to put in their bit of effort too of course. You could give someone the winning lottery numbers for next week… but they would still need to physically go out and buy a ticket.
It can help enormously to make a list of the points you want to get across during the course of your sales letter. So, for example, a book about writing eBooks and earning a good income from them might cover these points:
It’s your job to make sure that you let them know just what your eBook can do for them. Don’t be shy and pull back from telling them all the benefits your eBook has. Remember that doing all you can to promote your eBook will make the difference between no sales and lots of sales.
Now it could be that your product has one or two negative points – or at least, one or two points that could be construed as being negative when viewed in comparison with the opposition.
For example, supposing someone else has released an eBook on the same subject that comes with a number of free videos as well. These videos actually show the readers how to complete certain steps and techniques that are included in the eBook. And let’s further suppose that this particular eBook is already selling very well.
But yours doesn’t have any of that. So what do you do?
It’s simple. Don’t make any reference at all to this other eBook, and don’t say that yours doesn’t have videos with it either. If you ever find yourself typing something negative when you are writing your sales page, edit it out immediately and turn it into a positive.
Don’t focus on the negatives about your eBook for any reason. For example, your eBook might only be twenty pages long, and you might think that some people could look at that as being a negative point. They might not buy it for that reason. Maybe they’re looking for something a lot longer and a lot meatier.
So what do you do?
Well to start with, you need to understand that just because an eBook is short, that doesn’t mean that it is any less worthy than some of the longer eBooks being sold online today. In fact, I’ll bet that many of the shorter ones are way better than the long ones anyway, because they get right to the point and don’t waffle on when there is no need to waffle on.
If your eBook is short, tell people that it is a handy little guide to whatever your subject may be. They won’t get any fluff or waffle – just the facts they will need to succeed in whatever you are writing about. Now that is a great benefit!
Let’s look at a few other examples of things that could be thought of as negatives turned into positives:
Do you see how this works?
I’m sure you are probably thinking about your eBook in a brand new way now. You should be proud of your product – hey, you created it yourself – and so now it’s time to tell the world about just how good it is.
You should know that whatever you do, you won’t be able to please everyone. But if you can please as many people as possible, then you will be doing pretty well.
This information is one of 305 pages of detailed steps for Writing, Publishing, and Selling EBooks and now you can receive a FREE 110 pages ABRIDGED VERSION just by clicking Work From Home Writing, Publishing & Selling EBooks.
To view the unabridged version and the 17 video tutorials see The Wealthy Plumber: Writing, Publishing & Selling EBooks
