Lesson Objective:
To do the final edit on your sales letter and website; to write come compelling titles and
descriptions for your pay-per-click links.
Skills Needed:
· Imagination
· Basic word processing
· Basic html
· Basic ftp
Today’s Lesson:
Okay, onward to day 11 (hey, we’re 1/3 of the way done -- Hooray!!)…
Today, we’re going to work on some more copywriting assignments starting with putting
the finishing touches on your sales letter.
If you’ve been doing your assignment you should have a fairly well put together sales
letter – well, now we need to polish it up and really make it sing.
Now, that we’ve let a few days pass since working on your sales letter -- you can go back
at it with new, fresh eyes.
Take a look at the headline – does it really grab your audience’s attention? If not, let’s
make it stronger.
How about the opening? Does that compel people to read further into the letter?
2 tricks, I’ll tell you about here:
1. Sometimes it takes a while for our brains to get warmed up when writing (just like
a car) so many copy editors will just cross out their first couple paragraphs and
make the copy start from that point.
Can you do that?
2. I like short openings that really make people continue reading. For example….
“It’s crazy….”
“Yes, it’s true…” etc.
You want to create a “slippery slide” that people can’t off of once they start reading.
Now, pay attention to your subheads.
Are they making a sales message all by themselves? You’ve got to be able to get the sales
message across to the skimmers who come to your site.
Okay, how are your transitions? Copy transitions (or bucket brigade copy) work to carry
readers over from paragraph.
Things like…
“But, wait there’s more…”
“Let me explain…”
“Fact is, ….” etc.
Next, look at your guarantee and call to action.
Are they easy to understand? Do people know exactly how to give you money?
And the final test is to read it out loud (or have someone read it to you).
The copy should be smooth with no bumps.
At this point your Sales Letter is officially done… but be prepared to make changes in
the future as you make additional distinctions about headlines, copy and more!
Pay-Per-Click Copy
Okay, now it’s time to work on your pay-per-click titles and descriptions.
Overture will let you set your title and site description as anything you’d like – but they
will also review your titles and descriptions to make sure you aren’t misleading anyone or
bringing people to your site under false pretenses.
You can use different titles and descriptions for each search term if you want to hit
certain ‘hot buttons’ specific to those searches.
FACT - Your site titles and descriptions are equivalent to classified ads.
Have you ever seen magazines with hundreds and hundreds of classified ads? Well, this
is almost the same thing. You’re competing with lots of other sites for your perfect
customer to click over to your site.
It’s important to write benefit-laden copy and so people will click on your site. People
don’t want to waste the 10 seconds it takes to click and then hit the ‘back’ button on their
browsers.
So why should they come to your site?
Your title and description are critically important!
Your title with Overture can only be up to 40 characters long. You should capitalize each
word but you can’t use all CAPS. Here’s what Overture says about it:
Title
Titles are normally the first thing users read, so be sure to include the search term in
the title to maximize your clickthroughs. A recent study found that listings that
include the search term in both the title and description have a higher clickthrough
rate (more than 50% higher on average) than those that don't! Titles must be
between 1 to 40 characters long. You must capitalize the first letter of each word in
the title, and keep all characters lower case. (Example: Buy Cars Online Now!)
And your description can be up to 190 characters long. So come up with an important and
compelling reason for people to click on your site.
Here’s Overture’s insight into the description:
Description
The description is your opportunity to draw people to your site by capturing their
interest and attention. Write your descriptions so that users know what they would
find if they clicked through to your site. Including the search term in the description
increases your potential to get clickthroughs by more than 50%! Descriptions must
be between 1 to 190 characters long. You should write your descriptions in a
sentence format and you may not capitalize all characters.
Here’s what I have listed for my title and description on Overture:
Create Instant Sales Letters
Now in 2 1/2 minutes you can quickly and easily create a
sales letter guaranteed to sell your product or service…
without writing!
You’ll notice how the title is my headline and the description is my supporting “classified
ad” copy. You can use this is as a model - now get going…
Today’s Assignment:
1. Finish polishing your sales letter – get 2 people to read it – don’t tell them you
wrote it and listen for their reaction.
* If they ask where they can get your product or service – you’re doing well.
* If they mention how nice the letter is – you need to go back and tweak.
* Or worse, if they say “what the heck is this?” – you’re in real trouble.
2. Create your Overture titles and descriptions. Work on 3 or 4 variations and pick
the best one for the keywords you’ve selected.
3. Submit at least 50 keywords to Overture today using your new titles and
descriptions.
Today’s Resources:
Instant Web Site Traffic! – a complete guide to squeezing every last dime out of your
pay-per-click search engine listings.
Killer Classified Ads – learn how to move people to action with just a few words! The
perfect skills to have when it comes to writing pay per click ads!
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