5 Copy Questions About Your Customer
In addition to walking the dog through the fields in the
sunshine on the weekend, I also spent a lot of time writing
a new sales letter for yet another new product in my business.
And for this project, I followed my own advice and re-read
Dan Kennedy’s, “Ultimate Sales Letter” book as a guideline.
Learning to write your own copy is an essential skill if
you want to have a successful website business.
Now you might not end up writing all of your copy in the
future, but it is extremely important to know what GREAT
copy looks like. And you can’t know that without study.
In addition, you also need to be a meticulous tester of
your ad copy.
As a result of being both a dedicated student of copy and
meticulous tester, my business recently just achieved a
dramatic breakthrough in results, thanks a new approach to
delivering our video sales letter.
(I’ll be sharing this method with my Mastermind group on
Friday down in Vegas.)
The results of our new test show:
Our “control” sales letter is achieving a 1.2% conversion.
Our NEW video sales letter method is hitting 2.08% conversion.
Here’s an image of our split test results
Finally, after 18 months of trying to figure this out, we
did it, thanks to these 3 things:
1) Perseverance. We tried just about everything, and there
were many frustrating moments, but our team never, ever,
EVER gave up – or even considered it.
2) Networking – Thanks to an insider tip from a friend, we
made one simple change and almost double response. That’s
the power of building relationships with peers, mentors,
and affiliates.
3) Knowing the customer.
You absolutely must understand your prospect…you must get
in their shoes.
Thanks to a combination of surveying, forum interaction,
Facebook communication, and studying the trends in the
fitness industry, I realized that my sales letter message
was written for the wrong audience.
I was not writing for the people who were looking for what
I had to offer.
So I re-vamped my sales letter and tested it against the
previous control.
(We test using Google Web Optimizer – it’s free.)
I then created a video sales letter based on the new winning
sales letter, but we DID NOT succeed.
So I was left with the winning sales letter…until our
networking paid off, and we made the final change that
doubled our response.
But none of this would have been possible without studying,
surveying, and knowing my customers.
In fact, that is the very first task Kennedy recommends you
work on in his book.
Get inside the client’s mind.
Kennedy gives you 10 questions you must ask yourself that
will help you get into your reader’s mind, including:
1) What keeps them up at night?
2) What are they afraid of?
3) What are their top 3 daily frustrations?
4) What do they secretly desire most?
5) Who is selling similar and how are they doing it?
(The last one was a big help to me.)
For the other 5, you’ll have to get his book, after all,
it’s mandatory reading for building the mandatory skill of
copywriting. You might also want to pick up his “Copywriting
Seminar in a Box”.
Don’t give up. Anyone can learn to write great copy.
Persevere,
Craig Ballantyne
InternetIndependence.com On Facebook
“Study your reader. Know what interests him. Listen to the
conversation he is already having with himself. Enter where
he already is.” – Robert Collier