Sunday, April 29, 2007

Copywriting Tips by David Darfinkel

Profile

David Garfinkel (http://overnightmarketing.com) is an internationally recognized authority on Internet commerce and direct marketing.

* He helped a small consulting firm get $50,000 in new business in a week - with a single e-mail sales letter.

* One of his clients picked up $5 million a year in recurring annual revenues - from a three-page sales letter mailed to prospects 25 at a time.

He has helped thousands of businesses in 81 industries around the world. He is author of "Advertising Headlines That Make You Rich" (http://www.adheadlines.com) and co-author with Jay Conrad Levinson of "Guerrilla Marketing for the Imaging Industry"

Many top marketers confidentially ask for David's help to solve their own marketing problems. He has been published or quoted in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times News Service and Sales & Marketing Management magazine.

Top Tips

1) Offer unique value to a highly targeted market. One reason why many of the dot-coms failed is they were selling the same old stuff you could buy in stores, catalogues and on TV - rather than offering a unique value and going after a highly targeted market

2) Let video game designers and "graphic artistes" do their thing somewhere else - but not on your Web site! A 100% guaranteed recipe for failure is to have a fancy, flashy Web site that takes a long time to load and calls attention to how cute and clever its design is. Keep it simple and stay focused on your target result - closed sales.

3) Follow the basic rules of direct marketing, viz

* be focused on an outcome, and make everything on your site contribute directly to that. The outcome may be to close a sale, to get a response, or to collect a name. Your outcome needs to be tangible and explicitly measurable.

* be direct and enticing in the language you use. Write headlines with promises of benefits, and use every form of proof that what you say is true that you can.

* ask for action, and make it incredibly easy for people to take the action you ask for.

4) Give your online prospects the simple, real-world assurances that make them comfortable giving you their money without ever seeing you or your business in person. For example, your Web site should include a physical address (street, not post office box) and a telephone number (that has a live person on the other end).
5) Be patient and methodical. Keep track of performance - such as, which forms of lead generation get you the highest number of leads to your site, and, more importantly, which forms get you new customers for the lowest cost. Become a fanatic about testing, measuring, refining, improving.

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