Ever wonder how some writers can generate profits with their words even though they don’t seem to posses much skill while others who are quite poetic don’t make a dime? You may be focusing on the wrong parts.  Here are four very powerful techniques for writing effective sales copy.

Simple Sales Copy Technique: Use a Celebrity Endorsement

Celebrity endorsements can be a great way to get the attention of the public. You don’t have to get a national celebrity to talk about your services. Before you disregard this idea think “outside of the box” an industry specific celebrity can be more effective and far easier to come by. If you have a local business consider local celebrities as well.  When all else fails consider “creating” a celebrity “cartoon heroin” to feature in your sales copy.

Sales Copy Writers are Notorious for the “Take Away”

That’s because take away selling isn’t just effective, it’s also honest.
Use some take away selling techniques when telling the “whole story” good and bad. You utilize take away selling when you tell your clients all the reasons why they should not purchase. This may include explaining what benefits your product cannot provide, whom it may not be appropriate for and any other prohibitive reasons why they should not purchase. This technique can be very effective for a couple reasons, first of all it is human nature to covet what is limited, secondly in the process of utilizing take away selling, you tell the whole truth, and people tend to trust and respect those who are brave and honest enough to tell the entire truth. Some examples of take away selling statements are:
• “This program is not right for everyone.”
• “To be successful you will need the following skills…”
• “It will take (amount of time) before you will begin to see the benefits of this program.”
You get the idea. There is truth in the “take away,” and so not only can you benefit from our natural inclination to have what isn’t easily presented to us, but you can also build rapport by honestly divulging the drawbacks and limitations to your product/services. The truth is that we all know that every choice, program and system has drawbacks and limitations, and we go into a situation trying to identify them so that we can make a good decision. By “laying it all on the table,” you earn some trust while enabling the prospect to make a quicker, more informed decision.

Sales Copy Must Deliver the Message Even if They Don’t Actually Read It

You want the message to get across even if your prospect doesn’t have the patience to read it all. To do this, reserve color and special font for accenting important parts of your message so that it’s easy to scan the entire page and to get all the important information you need to make a decision to buy. A good test is to take all of your text with special font, highlighted sections, images, lift notes, and captions and copy and paste them onto another document (this only takes a couple minutes). Then hand the page to a few people and see if they can figure out what the offer is, and when, why, and how they need to purchase it. If they can easily figure it out, then you’ve done a good job.

Using Long Sales Copy

If you are a writer of few words, you may wonder why anyone would ever add anything else to their sales copy other than what, when, why and how they need to purchase (or take other desired action). The reality is that you don’t have to, but if you take the time to express all of these things in detail, perhaps in a story and then re-state them briefly your copy will be far more effective.
Our beloved copy-writing guru Dan Kennedy explains this eloquently by relating your copy to a salesperson. Would you send your sales staff out to sell your product and only give them a few minutes and limited information to sell it? Or would you arm them with all of the statistics, benefits and testimonials you have? Of course, you would give them all the tools you have. Your copy is your salesperson, and that’s why you need long copy.
As a general rule of thumb, the more expensive the product the longer and more detailed the copy must be. This makes sense since more expensive information products (Website membership, physical information products and coaching programs) are generally more complex than their less expensive counterparts. Keeping that in mind, make sure to keep your information relevant and avoid adding fluff just to bulk up your pitch. Rambling is a sure way to bore people into leaving.

What constitutes long sales copy?

There is no page requirement that I have ever heard of that you must meet in order to have long copy. What’s important is that you take the time to tell your story, reveal how the benefits could affect your clients’ lives, and explain the features so they understand how they can deliver these benefits. Share testimonials that you may have; tell them the investment, explain the guarantee and how the material will be delivered to them. This may take 400 words or 3000 words. What is important is that you take the time to do the job right.

Assistance with Your Sales Copy

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Related Posts for Writing Effective Sales Copy

Writing Sales Copy – First 3 Steps
How to Create a Promotion to Increase Sales
5 Ideas for Promotional Email Messages
Article Marketing – How to Get Started
How to Create a Squeeze Page or Landing Page (including how to layout the sales copy so people will enter their contact information)