Dynamic Copywriting

I just posted a new ebook I've been working on for small business owners and professionals who need to increase sales or attract new clients.

This new ebook is free and can be downloaded at How To Increase Your Sales With Non-Spam Email Marketing.

I've done a lot of work with lawyers and law firms, as well as "brick and mortor" small business owners, and have seen them spending an inordinate amount of money on useless advertising that produces disappointing results. In response, How To Increase Your Sales With Non-Spam Email Marketing was written to give them the tools of Permission Marketing, email marketing, information products, direct response advertising and direct response web sites.

I absolutely believe that almost all businesses can double their sales using these marketing tools.

So if you are a small business owner or professional who wants to attract more business, be sure to download your free copy. Using these methods, you really can double your sales - and I can prove it.

COPYRIGHT © 2008, Charles Brown
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One of the greatest treasure troves full of knowledge on all things related to marketing, advertising and copywriting is David Ogilvy's book, "Ogilvy On Advertising." He is a legend in the field and was the creative genius behind more successful ad campaigns than anyone can keep track of. (And by the way, if you are in marketing, copywriting or advertising, and have never HEARD of David Ogilvy, you really should consider another line of work).

Okay, I know I get a little full of myself sometimes, so let's get down to what this article is all about.

Is Direct Response Advertising Right?

Let me quote from a section in his book called, "The lessons of direct response."

"For all their research, most advertisers never know for sure whether their advertisements sell. Too many other factors cloud the equation. But direct-response advertisers, who solicit orders by mail or telephone (and nowadays by the internet), know to the dollar how much each advertisement sells. So watch the kind of advertising they do. You will notice important differences between their technique and the techniques of general advertisers. For example:"

"General advertisers use 30 second commercials. But the direct response fraternity have learned that it is more profitable to use two-minute commercials. Who, do you suppose, is more likely to be right?"


"General advertisers broadcast their commercials in expensive prime time when the audience is at its peak. But direct response advertisers have learned that they make more sales late at night. Who do you suppose, is more likely to be right?"


"In their magazine advertisements, general advertisers use short copy, but the direct response people invariably use long copy. Who do you suppose is more likely to be right?"

Results vs Creativity For Creativity's Sake

There. It is one thing for me to proclaim the benefits of direct response techniques and how they allow a marketer to measure and test the effectiveness of their ads, websites and every element of their copy. But to hear it from David Ogilvy is like having the Word brought down from the mountain.


Ogilvy also believes that every copywriter should start his career by spending two years in direct response. I agree. Every day I see websites and ads that are creative masterpieces, but have little effectiveness in selling.


Common errors I see are: too much white space, headlines that appeal only to curiosity but not to the customer's "what's in it for me?" motivation, no call to action, and too much design and too little copy.

Ogilvy's Best Work

Ogilvy concludes his thoughts on imitating direct response, by saying:

Do I practice what I preach? Not always. I have created my share of fancy campaigns, but if you ask which of my advertisements have been the most successful, I will answer without hesitation, that it was the first ad I wrote for industrial development in Puerto Rico. It won no award for "creativity" but it persuaded scores of manufacturers to start factories in that poverty-stricken island.

Advertising, marketing creating business websites are not art forms. They are business strategies that are intended to bring in new clients, new business and make sales. Even David Ogilvy tells us that we forget that to our peril.

COPYRIGHT © 2008, Charles Brown

For many businesses, an annual ad in the Yellow Pages or one of its competitors, can be a huge investment. If the ad works well, it can bring a in steady stream of new customers all year long.

But what if your ad just doesn’t pull in as much business as you need? Worse, what if it doesn’t even break even for you? Many businesses depend on the Yellow Pages for most of their sales for the year, so the risk of an underperforming ad is something to be reckoned with.

Here are a few ideas that should help you maximize this investment and generate the highest possible return throughout the year.

1. Test your ad. How do you do this? In the months leading up to the deadline to place your Yellow Page ad, run several small or even classified ads in your local media. Test several headlines, run them against each other to see which one pulls the most. The winner gets to be your standard bearer all year long.
   
   
2. Use your ad to generate leads by offering a free booklet or some other form of free information. Not only will this pull in a better response than your competitors, it will also build a list of interested prospects for you to send out future mailings.
   
   
3. If you go the lead generation route, give your booklet an interesting title, like “31 Ways to Save Money on Car Repairs,” (for the auto repair shop). Or “19 Health Care Tips For Your Child” (for a pediatrician). Be sure this title is prominently displayed on your ad and make it the focus of your ad.
   
   
4. Instead of one large ad that reads like a laundry list of all the services you offer, experiment with several smaller ads offering a single service. Law firms especially put up really boring Yellow Page ads that do little more than list all the specialties they practice. Unless your ad is the biggest, with the brightest colors, and is in the first page of your category, you will have a hard time getting a decent return on your investment for such an ad. But narrowly-targeted smaller ads give you a much better way of catching the eye of a specific group of clients who need a specific service.
   
   
5. Piggy back on the narrowly-targeted smaller ads by offering more free information related to each specialty. Offering free booklets or newsletters positions you as an expert within your specialty.
   
   
6. Now here’s my soapbox.. I have called on too many expensive Yellow Page ads only to be met with incompetent or rude people on the other end of the phone. Train your employees how to answer the phone, to return calls promptly and to have intelligent answers once a caller actually responds to your ad.
   
   
7. Don’t just automatically run the same ad year after year. Your competitors aren’t going to just roll over and play dead. If you run a successful ad this year, you may just find a dozen imitators running very similar ads next year. Find ways to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack. Don’t claim to be the biggest, the best or the most experienced. None of that matters to your potential clients. Don’t try to fight it out among the other big fist in the pond, find your own pond and be the only fish in it.
   
   
8. Write your ad to solve a really vexing problem your reader may be having. To use the law firm ads as an example again, if you specialize in juvenile criminal law, target your ad to the worried parent who has a child in trouble. Make your information piece about “what to do if your teenager is in trouble with the law.” People pick up the Yellow Pages because they have a problem. And they will call the ad that best demonstrates the ability to solve that problem.
   
   
9. Be a specialist. Specialists make more money than generalists. So, if you can, let your ad show your specialty. But a category is not a specialist. (Using lawyers again) if you specialize in white-collar criminal law, don’t just say you practice criminal law. If you specialize in personal injury involving a reckless commercial vehicle, don’t just say personal injury. If you specialize in contract negotiations, don’t just say you practice business law.
   
   
10. Your headline is the most important part of your ad. So don’t just run with the first thing that comes to mind. At the risk of repeating myself, test your headlines. Put your strongest benefit front and center in your headline. Address a problem in your headline. Make a promise in your headline. Headlines are too important to leave to chance. After all, do you want to live a whole year with a mistake?

Don't put up your ad blindly. Too many businesses put no thought into their ad, and then have to live with the results for an entire year.
freelance copywriter, writing web content, copywriting tips

COPYRIGHT(C)2006, Charles Brown. All rights reserved.

Inch for inch, a small ad just might be the best advertising deal around. If done right, a small space or classified ad can bring you profits far exceeding what a larger often produces. Here are some ideas to get more bang for your buck with small ads:

1. Use small ads to test headlines and other key elements before you pay for a larger ad. Headlines are funny things, you really never know which one will take off and be your best money maker. Instead, you have to let the people who read your ad “vote” for the headline that appeals to them the most with how they respond. So it makes a lot more sense to test headlines on small ads before you spend money on a larger ad.
   
   
2. Use small ads to generate leads. Offer a free booklet or some other free information product in your small ad. When the reader gets your information, make sure it contains far more useful information than sales message. But even then you will have much more space to sell than in a full space ad in a publication.
   
   
3. Of course you should also make use of the leads generated by your small ad. Send these people follow up information. This way, your single small ad enables you to recontact the same interested people over and over again.
   
   
4. Instead of using a single, large ad to tell about your wide list of services or products, use several small ads to target each niche you cover. For example, the Yellow Page ads of many law firms are little more than laundry lists of the services they provide. A more effective campaign might be to target each specialty with a single small ad. Take this one step further, and the law firms might offer different free information products or white papers on each small ad targeting each specialty.
   
   
5. Speaking of Yellow Page ads, many businesses make the expensive mistake of putting up a year-long ad without testing. Since the Yellow Pages only come out once a year, it is not feasible to test the ad there. But you can run several small ads in local publications to see which one is most effective and choose the winner as your year-long Yellow Page ad. Running an untested Yellow Page ad is one mistake that can cost you not only in a poor return on investment, it also causes you to go a whole year with a lower sales than you might otherwise have been able to realize.
   
   
6. If your product has multiple uses or benefits, highlight each use or benefit in separate ads. Don’t count on readers wading through a long list text to get to the single benefit that appeals to them.
   
   
7. Test, test and then test again. Small ads give you a cost-effective way to compare many different ideas to see which ones pull in the highest response from readers.
   
   
8. Effective headlines for small ads can be shorter and punchier than larger ads. Try to compress as much meaning as possible in five words or less. Here are some headlines that have worked very well on small ads:
   $500 a Week
   
   15 Minutes a Day
   
   Free 48 Page Booklet
   
   Anyone Can Learn
   
   Fun-Packed
   
   No Obligation
   
   Money Back If Not Delighted
   
   Send No Money
   
   Mrs. E.C. Made $65
   
   Learn In 6 Weeks
   
   (reprinted from Tested Advertising Methods, 5th Edition, by John Caples)
   
   
9. If you are using the small ad to generate leads offering free information, give your booklet or information product a good title and experiment with using that title as your headline (but test, test, test). For example, “101 Ways To Help Your Child Get Better Grades,” or “33 Ways To Unlock The Hidden Job Market.”
   

It is hard to imagine any marketing plan that cannot be made better with the smart use of small ads. They are cost effective, allow you to more precisely target your intended audience and …..can be tested.

freelance copywriter, writing web content, copywriting tips

COPYRIGHT(C)2006, Charles Brown. All rights reserved.

Every freelance copywriter should own a copy of “Tested Advertising Methods,” written by the legendary copywriter, John Caples.

In the mid roaring twenties, 25 year old Caples made advertising history when he wrote the most famous ad of all time. It began with the words:

They laughed when I sat down at the piano.
But when I started to play---

That extraordinary ad for, of all things, mail order piano lessons, became the most successful, and most imitated ad of all time.

But apart from his remarkable writing talent, Caples changed advertising history in an even more profound way. Throughout his career, he pioneered the idea of rigorous, scientific testing for every element of ads and direct mail.

Every ad, every mailer was designated as either a test sample or a control sample. The control sample was usually the best performer from the previous test and not a single aspect of it was changed.

But the test sample was changed in one single way. It might have had a different headline, a different coupon, a different first paragraph, etc.

Then by comparing the results of the control and test samples, the ad or mailer could constantly be improved. In the next test run, the best performer of the two samples became the control for the next comparison.

Caples was such a strong advocate of testing because he saw how a campaign’s results could be dramatically improved. One time he tested to ads for the same product. Both ads were well written, both seemed to appeal to the target audience and both could have been chosen by many ad agencies as the final version.

But when the two ads were run side by side, one version pulled in 19 ½ more sales than the other.

Had this test never been run, the agency might have been pleased with the lesser ad’s results and run it for years.

So what things can be improved by testing? Here are a few:

1. The headline. This is the most important element of any ad, mail piece or web page. Without testing, you are leaving it to chance.
   
   
2. What picture or graphic produces the best results? Or would no image at all be best?
   
   
3. Which publication(s) produce the most sales when the same ad is run side by side in competing magazines or newspapers?
   
   
4. What appeal pulls in the most sales? The appeal is what hot button are you trying to push in the customer. Are you appealing to his need for security or his need for financial gain? Are you appealing to her need for sexual satisfaction or desire for adventure?

But how can the results of all this testing be compared? First, retail sales can provide the information needed. Laser-scanned bar codes at the checkout counter reports sales information instantly and in real time.

Another way that many consumer goods and fast food restaurants are tested is through test cities. I remember when McDonalds first introduced the breakfast burrito, I was in Indianapolis visiting my wife’s relatives. I tried the breakfast burrito and liked it. But when I got back home, I tried to order one from one of the local McDonalds and they looked at me as though I had green skin. The breakfast burritos were being tested in Indianapolis and no where else.

Finally there are key codes. If you look at a coupon for a typical direct mail ad, you will probably see something like, “Dept. XYZ.” I guarantee there is no department named XYZ at that company, but XYZ represents the key code for a particular version of the ad.

Despite the many decades of research demonstrating how testing improves the profitability of advertising, there are still many companies that spend mountains of money without testing. I hope they are winning industry awards for their creativity and the entertainment value of their ads, because their competitors will be making all the sales.

COPYRIGHT © 2006, Charles Brown