Copywriting Tips to Increase Sales

In a recent webinar from the Target Marketing Group (sister unit of Catalog Success), copywriting veteran Bob Bly offered his top secrets on how to use copy to increase sales for both B-to-C and B-to-B marketers alike. Here’s a recap of Bly’s presentation.

“Next to the list,” Bly said, “the offer is the most important part of a promotion.” Offers consist of the following elements:

* product — what product you’re offering, and what model or version of it;

* price — what customers have to pay;

* terms — the conditions under which they have to pay;

* premiums — what bonus gifts you get if you order; and

* guarantees — what happens when customers don’t like the product/service.

“Without an offer, direct marketing will not work,” Bly stated. To help improve your offers, he listed seven characteristics to a winning offer:

1. High perceived value. Consumers perceive what you’re offering them costs a lot, or they don’t know what it costs and therefore may think that it costs a lot.

2. Unique and different. Is it the same thing that everyone else is offering?

3. Urgent. Is there a reason to act now instead of later?

4. Relevant. Does the offer tie in with your branding message or the proposition of the mailing?

5. Desire. “None of the other [characteristics] matter if people don’t actually want the premium,” Bly said. “But if they want it, in some cases they’ll order just to get the free gift.”

6. Easy to accept. Is the offer easy to respond to? Is there a form to mail in? A button to click?

7. Risk-free. To get the offer, do prospects have to make a big commitment? Is there a chance they could lose money?

Increase the Urge
There are ways to increase the urgency of an offer, Bly said. For example, there’s the obvious, “This offer expires Nov. 21” approach. But there are less frequently used techniques that can prove effective. One is playing up the limited supply of a product. Bly cited the example of a magazine offer that stated, “Only so many copies are printed each month — no more.” Of course, this is true of any printed piece, but it gives the impression to consumers that if they don’t act now they may miss out.

With many B-to-B catalog/multichannel marketers offering whitepapers as a premium to offers, one way to increase the perceived value of those whitepapers is to put a price in the upper right-hand corner of the whitepaper’s cover. To authenticate the value of the price, take all of your premiums offered (e.g., a whitepaper) and put them on your Web site for sale. Even if you only sell a few, it allows you to say that you’re not just saying this whitepaper is worth X, but you actually sell it at that price.

Marketing content (e.g., whitepapers, surveys, case studies, how-tos, etc.) as a premium produces several benefits, Bly said, including setting the specifications of how your product/service can benefit the consumer; making prospects beholden to you (the principle of reciprocity); generating more inquiries; establishing you as the expert in your field; educating the market to the nature of the problem that your product/service solves; and driving sales.

The Value of ‘Free’
“Free” still works, Bly said. Sometimes you need a little more than just free, however. One way is to position part of your product as a free premium, especially when selling multiple products at the same time, such as a set of CDs for information products. If you’re marketing six CDs, for example, position them to the consumer as five CDs plus a free bonus sixth disk.

Another technique Bly recommended was using graphic elements to make offers stand out. Graphically highlight premiums with pictures directly across from the order form. Put a burst that says “Free!” And do this often, Bly said, assuring that it’s not overkill to do this five or six times.

“Repetition gets noticed,” he said, adding that the more “order now” buttons you have on your e-mails or landing pages, the greater your response will be.

Referring to an old saying in financial copywriting that people don’t pay attention to numbers unless there’s a dollar sign in front of them, Bly compared the benefits of using an offer with a percentage off (e.g., 10 percent off) vs. a dollar amount off (e.g., $25 off). And he pointed out that recent studies indicate that dollar off works better than a percentage off.