In part 1 of this 3 part series on writing effective marketing copy, I shared that “attention” is the first thing you’re aiming for when writing marketing copy.  That is, you want to grab the attention of your target reader and compel them to read further into your content.

In this article we’ll cover the next thing you want strive for, which is…

B = Believability

Regardless of what element of copy you’re working on, or where you intend to distribute it, there must be a certain level of believability in your words, or readers will simply dismiss you as a crackpot (or worse) and move on their merry way.

Does that mean you don’t want to make bold claims or statements?  No.  Or at least, not necessarily.

Does it mean you can’t challenge your readers’ currently held assumptions, biases, predispositions and unconscious beliefs?  Not at all.

You just have to do it in a way that allows them room for belief in the idea or concept you’re trying to get across.

“You can make a 6-figure income in 24 hours!” is unbelievable (unless you’re open to robbing a bank).

“You can make a 6-figure income in the next 6 months!” is, while far fetched, at least theoretically possible.  If you can go on to outline HOW you will help them do this… then you are back in the realm of believability.

It’s a fine balance that has no hard and fast rules that you can follow when writing your content.  And it’s tough to analyze your own copy with a fresh perspective, since you’re already so close to everything and you know what you meant by what you said in the copy.

So I’d suggest that you get someone else to look at your copy before putting it out there.  Ask them specifically to highlight any phrases, statements or claims that do not resonate as believable to them.

When you do this, ask three different kinds of people to give you feedback:

1. People who are IN the business you’re in (either an employee or colleague)
2. People who represent your TARGET AUDIENCE and who could potentially be a customer or client
3. People who DO NOT represent your target audience and who are otherwise dissociated with your business

Doing this will give you a well-rounded view of how your copy is being perceived by readers and will allow you to make the necessary adjustments before putting your marketing campaign out.

Got Something To Say?  Please leave your comments below and let me know what you think!

My advice to all business owners is to understand the fundamentals of good marketing, including strategy, copywriting, target audience, etc., even if they are not going to the primary implementer of these marketing activities.

Why? So that they can properly evaluate the work of their staff or contractors and be sure that they are getting good value for their investment.

When it comes to your marketing copy ~ the words you use in your marketing collateral ~ many coaches, solo entrepreneurs and small business owners find it difficult to write compelling copy that attracts the attention of their target audience, persuading them to read more.

Where does this “marketing copy” reside?  Here are just a few places you’ll need to have effective marketing copy:

• Website
• Blog articles
• Brochures & flyers
• Newspaper & classified ads
• PPC or Facebook Ads
• Article marketing content
• Press releases
• Etc

There are many more places you’ll want to use effective marketing copy, but these are the essentials… and they are enough to get us started.

Many small business owners, solo entrepreneurs and coaches are probably wearing more than just the CEO/Owner hat and may be the one writing most (if not all) of your own copy.

Over the next three articles, I’ll share my ABCs of writing effective marketing copy so that you can be sure to produce the highest quality (and most effective) copy you can… or so you can evaluate the copy produced by your hired-gun copywriter.

Let’s start at the beginning with…

A = Attention

The first and most important outcome your copy must do is grab the attention of your target audience.

This is usually done by placing a captivating headline at the top of your copy that draws your reader in and makes them want to keep reading.

There are many formulas for writing an effective headline, but there are three types of headline templates that I have found work particularly well.

The Question Headline

The format of this type of headline is obvious, from its name – you are asking a question of your reader.

What type of question you decide to ask is up to you, but you want to come up with a question that your prospect will answer “Yes” to. The alternative to a “yes” answer is an unanswered question.

Here are some examples:

• Are You Ready To FINALLY Take Control of Your Financial Future?
• Who Else Would Like to Lose 30 Pounds & 10 Inches… While Still Eating Your Favorite Foods?
• Did the Government REALLY Open Up This Tax Loophole To Every Citizen?

Each of the first two questions invites a “yes” response from the reader, which makes them want to keep reading to find out HOW to accomplish the implied promise.

The third question is unanswerable for most readers, but it incites enough curiosity that they’ll want to read further to find out if the mysterious tax loophole applies to them.

The Secret Headline

The secret headline is also just as it sounds, telling the reader that there is information that has been kept from them, but that is now available.

This type of headline works particularly well for business development, investment and weight loss because it takes pressure off your prospect, essentially letting them know that their problem it isn’t their fault.

Here are some examples of the secret headline:

• Investment Secrets Your Financial Planner Doesn’t Want You To Know
• Secret Indonesian Herb Finally Passes Approval… And Can Help You Lose 30 Pounds in 30 Days!
• Tax Secrets of the Rich… Now Available to Every American!

The Numbers Headline

This type of headline grabs the readers’ attention because you are making a very specific statement and, as humans, we like specificity because it seems more believable.

It’s one thing to say that you lost weight on a particular diet.  It’s quite another thing to say that you lost 33 pounds in 27 days, removing a total of 54 inches!

Here are some examples:

• 3 Things You Can Do Every Day To Put $2,745.53 Back In Your Bank Account THIS YEAR!
• 7 Slim & Sexy Secrets of  Hot Hollywood Moms!
• A Proven 6-Step System for Protecting Your Income from Government Tax Collectors!

The key with using a numbers headline is to use actual numbers that you can back up… or to break down your system into a number of tips or secrets that you promise to reveal.

As you can see, each of these example headlines draws in your attention and makes you want to keep reading in order to find out more.  Once that happens, it’s your job to keep the reader engaged by delivering on your headline’s promise.

Because the headline is the part of your ad/article/website that is responsible for getting your reader’s attention, you should spend a large part of your time ensuring that it is as captivating as possible.

Often, I’ll write up to 50 different headline ideas for a single ad in order to narrow it down to the top 5, before eventually selecting two or three to test. (I’ll cover testing in a future post.)

I suggest you experiment by writing 3 – 5 of each type of headline for your next copywriting project and see what type of headline fits best for your particular purpose and style.

Got Something To Say?  Please leave your comments below and let me know what you think!

Every coach, author or solo-entrepreneur wants to get more leads (and eventually, more customers) through their website.  One way to do this is to have a highly-targeted free offer (also known as an ethical bribe) that compels your site visitors to enter their name & email address.

By submitting their information, your site visitors are effectively raising their hand and saying “I’m interested in what you’re selling.”

Their “lead quality” score goes up because they’ve self identified as having a problem and being willing to actively search out a solution to that problem.  The one big factor they haven’t yet confirmed is their ability (or willingness) to pay for your solution.

Like many people, when I started out I offered a lower-value, more general opt-in bonus… and my subscription rates suffered as a result.  But when I updated my offer and made it clear WHO it was for and WHAT kind of information it offered, my subscription rates skyrocketed immediately.

How to Make a Strong Opt-In Offer

Typically your free offer should be directly related to the problem or that your customers or clients experience. And it should offer a high perceived value.

In addition, you should “sell” the free offer using a clear, compelling call-to-action that is available on every page of your website… and which is highlighted in particular on your main landing page.

You want visitors to be immediately presented with a compelling offer and then you want to re-state the offer in case they decide to browse around.

A good example of this kind of high-value, highly targeted offer that has a strong opt-in rate (nearly 10%) is the one you’ll find on the sidebar of this page or on my homepage.  It’s a free video training series called “Double Your Coaching Income” and in it I share an unusual math formula that will allow coaches to double their profits, without doubling their workload.

When someone signs up for this training series, I immediately know a few things:

1. They are a coach (after all, the training series is called Double Your COACHING Income!)
2. They want to increase their income (they probably already have some coaching revenue coming in and they want to increase it)
3. They are interested in VIDEO (this will influence how I interact with them and what offers I present in the future)

After the video series is complete, those people who register for this training will have an INTIMATE experience of working with me (the videos are like having a conversation with me), they’ll know whether or not they like my style and they’ll know something about their business that they probably didn’t know before.

Of course, I still don’t know if they are willing or able to invest in the products and services I offer, but that’s a conversation for another day.

The important thing is that I know a lot more about the people who sign up for my training series because it was made specifically for coaches… and they know a lot more about me, providing they’ve actually completed the 6-part video series.

And, as a bonus for those who actually do complete the video training, I have a special surprise in store at the end.

So, make a strong, clear offer with a high perceived value to a specific audience and watch your lead capture rate increase.

What is marketing?  Everyone, it seems, has a different answer.

In this short video, I share what I believe is the most practical definition of marketing… one that every business owner can use to qualify and quantify the advice you receive and the results you generate from your marketing efforts.

What is marketing to you?  Does this definition suit your business?

Leave your comments below.

Ah, Google.  The 800 pound gorilla in the search engine race, that shows no signs of wanting to lose any weight.

According to Google’s corporate philosophy published on their site, their number one driving principle or guideline is to focus on the user (that’s you and me) and all else will follow.

That’s important, because oftentimes as business owners and marketers, we think the gorilla serves us.  Sadly, that’s simply not the case.  They serve the person searching for information and it is their overriding goal to deliver the most contextually relevant search results on the first page.

They don’t really care if YOU show up on the first page.  Unless your page is exactly what their user is looking for.

While it’s true that advertiser’s pay Google lots of money every year to have the privilege of being “found” in the form of advertisements, there are other ways to leverage Google to find your customers and communicate with them directly… but to do it, you’ll need to become one of the people that Google has committed to serving above and beyond all else.

You need to think like a searchER instead of a searchEE.

Google Alerts, The Secret Tool For Finding Your Customers

Are you family with Google Alerts?  It’s an automated search function that you can “set and forget”… that is, until an email arrives telling you about any new pages with your specific search time have shown up on the internet.

Here’s the basic usage of Google Alerts:

1. Visit http://www.google.com/alerts
2. Type your specific search term in the field provided
3. Set the filters and email address to deliver the results to
4. Create the alert

I have an alert for my name.  Any time my name is used online, I get an email notifying me about it.  In fact, this post will generate an alert once Google crawls my site again.  This helps me because it helps to manage my reputation online – I know what people are saying about me and I can respond accordingly.

I have another alert set up for “Make My Marketing Work“.  That’s the name of my book and I’m interested in knowing when people refer to it in their blogs or other online conversations.  Again, I can enter the conversation if/when appropriate.  (Using that phrase will generate another alert to my inbox when this article is crawled.)

I also have alerts set up for certain keywords like “first marketing plan” so that when someone blogs about needing help writing their first marketing plan, I get a notification and can swoop in with some free advice and a link to my book page for more detailed help if they want it.

You’d be surprised at how much traffic you can generate to your website over time by being one of the “first responders” to blog posts or articles that contain one or more of your keywords.

How to Use Google Alerts to Find Prospective Customers On Twitter

Ok, so using Google Alerts to stalk yourself (or your competitors, by the way) may not seem overly valuable, particularly if no one is talking about you yet.  And getting email alerts and having to respond whenever someone uses your keyword could become a full-time job if you’re not careful.

But there are more interesting ways to use Google Alerts, particularly if you want to find targeted followers on sites like Twitter.

Let’s say your business serves people in the Vancouver, Canada area and you only want people on your Twitter list from around Vancouver.  You can set up an alert for that.

Or if you provide services to the small business owner or entrepreneur market.  You can set up an alert for that.

Or let’s say you want to know whenever someone uses the phrase “can’t lose weight” so that you can swoop in and offer some weight loss advice in 140 characters or less.  You can set up an alert for that, too.

And it’s not as hard as you might think.  The process is the same as above, but the trick is in “how” you search for information.  Using some of Google’s advanced search features, you can be finding people on Twitter all day long, without ever lifting a finger.

Here’s the search syntax you would use:

If you want to search Twitter by someone’s occupation you would search for:

allintitle:”*entrepreneur*” site:twitter.com

Of course you’d replace “entrepreneur” with the specific occupation you’re looking for.  The asterisk is a wildcard and allows for other words or phrases on either side of the word entrepreneur.

If you want to search Twitter by information they include in their bio you would search for:

intext: “bio* life coach*” site:twitter.com

Again, you’d replace “life coach” with the specific word or phrase you’re searching for.

Finally, you could simply search all of Twitter for a particular phrase using:

“*can’t lose weight*” site:twitter.com

The Skinny

Here’s the thing.  Google doesn’t care about you wanting to be FOUND by people.  They only want to help people FIND what they’re looking for.  Fortunately, if you want to FIND your customers, Google is more than happy to oblige.

You can set up an alert for that.

Do you have a powerful Google Alerts tip?  Share it in the comments below!

By Paul Keetch

Small business marketing can be distilled into two basic elements: the acquisition and the retention of customers. For many business owners, it’s not overly difficult to reach out and find their ideal target market. Where they often fail to achieve the kind of marketing results they are looking for is in converting those prospects into paying customers and in keeping them coming back for repeat purchases.

Since small business marketing can be broken into the basic elements of acquisition (the “getting”) and retention (the “keeping”) of customers, so too must conversion be broken down into the same two basic elements.

In this article, we will look specifically at three ways you as a small business owner or marketing manager can improve your new customer conversion rate.

Three Ways to Increase New Customer Conversions

The rate at which prospects can be successful converted into paying customers for the first time is the cornerstone of measured marketing. It is essential that you, the business owner or marketing manager, know precisely at what percentage prospects or leads are converted to paying customers for each of the marketing channels you employ.

Large “big brand” companies don’t necessarily have to worry about this metric and, in fact, have a difficult time even tracking it, because of the nature of their advertising.

Some of the biggest and most recognizable companies in the world employ a “brand marketing” strategy to remain in the forefront of our minds. But small business marketing managers don’t have the luxury of an eight-figure marketing budget and have to take a much different approach.

Customer Conversion Tactic #1 – Know Your Customer

Knowing your customer means understanding at a basic level exactly what fears, frustrations and desires motivate their behavior.

In many cases, business owners or marketing managers assume that they know what their customer needs, without ever asking them what they actually want.

Since people make most decisions from an emotional state of mind and then validate their decision with logic after the fact, missing this key point can be the difference maker for many businesses.

Of course, the easiest way to know what your customer wants is to ask them!

You can ask in the form of a survey that they fill out online or complete and send back to you, you can ask them directly while they are in your store or you can call them up and ask them.

Which method you employ will depend on the specific type of small business that you own or are trying to market.

Case in point: if people always purchased what they need instead of what they want, sports cars and beer sales would be overshadowed by economy cars and milk sales.

Customer Conversion Tactic #2 – Craft Your Message

One of the most common marketing mistakes that small business owners make when trying to create their own marketing materials is talking about themselves instead of talking about the customer.

Just like everyone else on the planet, including you, your customer’s favorite topic of conversation is them! So start your marketing efforts by talking about their favorite subject and you’ll go a long way to improving your new customer conversation rate.

You can tell right away if your marketing material is “you” focused or customer focused by seeing how many of your sentences start with the word “we” or “I” or talk about your own company’s history or credentials.

When first starting a conversation with your prospective customer, you want to focus on their needs and desires first. Proving that you know what you’re talking about and that your company is worthy of their business is important… just not at first.

Customer Conversion Tactic #3 – Measure Your Marketing

There is a saying that “what you measure, you can manage”. When it comes to improving your small business marketing conversion rate, this couldn’t be more true.

Unless you know at what rate your marketing is creating new customers, you’ll never be able to take steps to improve on it. Getting this data is vital to your success in business.

Fortunately, with many of the newer digital marketing mediums like mobile marketing, pay-per-click and other online advertising, tracking the conversion rate is relatively straightforward.

But how do you measure your marketing results using offline marketing tactics? You need a specific call-to-action that motivates readers (or listeners) of your marketing message to take a specific action and then you need to record that action.

For example, if you regularly advertise in a magazine aimed at your target audience, you could include a note to “mention this ad and save 10% off your first order”.

That way, whenever someone mentions that particular ad and completes a sale, you can place a checkmark on a tracking sheet under that particular advertisement.

Another option would be to have prospects call and ask for “Anna” when requesting more information. In this example, “Anna” is a tracking code for the specific advertisement. Once again, when someone calls asking for Anna you know right away where they heard about you and can make note of it accordingly.

As a small business owner or marketing manager, your number one priority has to be the acquisition of new customers. The best way to get the highest return on your marketing investment is to improve your new customer conversion rates incrementally over time.

Want better marketing results for your small business? You need a compelling marketing strategy that gives you the knowledge, tools and confidence to take the time to implement it daily.

Amazon #1 bestselling book Make My Marketing Work: How to Win Customers & Make More Money can help you write your first marketing plan or revise your existing marketing so you can start seeing improved results in as little as 3 days!

Order your limited edition sign copy at http://www.MakeMyMarketingWork.com today and make YOUR marketing work!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_Keetch
http://EzineArticles.com/?Small-Business-Marketing:-3-Ways-To-Increase-New-Customer-Conversion&id=5287629

When I first saw the “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” commercials from Old Spice, I literally fell off the coach laughing.  The last line “I’m on a horse” was such a classic line that I am actually withholding using it until life presents me with the perfect opportunity – it’s not a line to be squandered.

If you haven’t seen it, watch it now before continuing on this with this post because how they’ve leveraged an already great commercial using Twitter and YouTube is pure marketing genius.  (Yes, Alyssa Milano you were right, it IS genius.)

Ok, that’s pretty good right?  Here’s where it gets even better.

When people (often people of note, like Alyssa Milano, Perez Hilton and a particularly hilarious “get well” message to Digg.com founder Kevin Rose to name a few) mention the Old Spice guy and these hilarious commericials.

Consider the reach these celebs have (yes, even Kevin Rose is a celeb in tech circles) within their fanbase and how their tweets are being retweeted throughout their community and you’ll quickly see how cool this is from a viral marketing perspective.

The original video has almost 13,000,000 views as of this writing!

How would your business do if you could get even a fraction of that kind of market visibility?

If you’ve got some specific ideas or examples about how you’ve created a similar (if smaller) viral buzz for your content, product or service using the power of online video combined with the social web, post it in the comments below!

For your viewing pleasure, here are some of the “response videos” that Old Spice Guy posted for Alyssa, Perez & Kevin.

Hope You’re Feeling Better, Kevin Rose…

You’re Right Alyssa, This is Genius…

Question for Alyssa – Did He Actually Come To Your House Barefoot???

Accolades for Accolades to Perez Hilton

My big question is… does the Old Spice Guy favour celebs and people of massive influence only?  Or will I be the recipient of an upcoming video?

Only time will tell.  But I’ll have to start with saying something witty on Twitter…

P.S. Leave your comments (or links to your fav Old Spice Guy video messages) below.

It’s happened to the best of us… you create a powerful ad with a strong headline, great offer and a compelling call to action.  The ad goes out and people are responding to in droves, visiting your website at an unprecedented rate…

But no one is buying!

All that time, effort and money gone to waste.  But it could have been avoided.

The culprit is probably misaligned marketing and it can be a conversion killer – but it doesn’t have to happen to you.

The Integration of Marketing & Sales

Ah, the classic confrontation.  Marketing v Sales.  Which is better?  Which one is more important to business success?

The truth is that one cannot exist without the other – they are two sides of the same coin.  Marketing makes people pick up the phone and sales makes them take out their credit card.

If the marketers don’t do their job, there’s no one to sell anything to.  And if the sales folk don’t do their job, there’s no money coming in.

Why am I telling you this?

Because if your marketing & sales efforts aren’t perfectly aligned and in synch with one another, your conversion rates will suffer.

A Straight Line To Success

In order for your marketing efforts to have the desired result of generating top-quality leads that can be converted into sales, you have to put the right message, in front of the right audience, with the right offer.

The first two elements are marketing elements but the third is all sales.

If the message doesn’t fit the market, there will be dismal results.  If message and the market are aligned, but the sales offer doesn’t fit, all of your marketing efforts will have been wasted.

That’s why it is so important to ensure that your marketing and sales teams are working closely together, that they are in agreement about who your customer is, what they want and how your specific product or service will help them relieve their pain or achieve their desire.

Aligned Marketing, An Example

Consider a pay-per-click ad, similar to one you might find on Google Adwords.

The ad is only displayed when a user searches for a particular search phrase on Google’s website – keywords that you determine prior to setting up the ad in the first place.  This is one of the most powerful elements of Adwords – the potential customer is actually activating the ad based on the words they use to find what they’re looking for!

When the ad appears, it MUST be aligned with the phrase that the searcher entered or it will be completely ignored.  If someone types in “strategic marketing book” your ad had better reinforce that search parameter.

But if your headline reads: Sales Tactics That Sell you probably won’t get much of a response from this individual.

On the other hand, if your headline reads: Strategic Marketing Made Easy! then you’ll find that your click-thru-rate (CTR) is much better.

Once the user clicks, they’ll come next to your landing page… which had better support the same aligned message about your strategic marketing book.  And the offer had better be for a marketing book that the user can purchase then and there.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of small business owners and entrepreneurs forget to align their marketing right through to the end of the sales process and their conversion rates suffer needlessly.

The more aligned your message is from beginning to end, the better response rates you’ll see.

Watch as I open the package and get to touch and feel the book for the very first time!

A huge THANK YOU to David Hancock and Rick Frishman and the entire team at Morgan James Publishing for all their hard work on getting this book from concept to reality.

Get Your SIGNED, Pre-Release Copy Today for $20 Including S&H

What are reasons why exclusivity is valuable?

Paul’s Answer:

There are several key reasons why exclusivity is valuable.

First, because people naturally, for some reason or another, are drawn to things that they cannot have.  Tell your kid not to listen to rock music and they’re smuggling downloads onto their iPod and you’ll never know it.  Tell your daughter not to date that “thug” and she’ll go out of her way to see him away from you.

Tell me NOT to do something and all I can think about is DOING it!

Next, we all want to belong.  To be part of something bigger than ourselves.  When you add exclusivity into your marketing you limit the number of people who can be part of the club, which makes people want to get in sooner rather than later.

Finally, when it comes to high-end exclusivity, we want the transferred benefits that come with being part of the elite league.  Not everyone can afford a Rolls Royce, so if you have one, people will automatically assume you are of a higher social and financial status.

The desire to be seen that way will cause some people to go to extraordinary measures to get the object that they believe will transform other people’s perspective of them.

I highly recommend the book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion to anyone interested in learning more about this fascinating marketing art form.

Is “persuasion” evil?  Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment below.