In your copywriting approach you need to be specific about needs and desires so that you are attracting your targeted customer base. You will want to have an intimate knowledge and expeiereince of the people in this group. Therefore you will want to do some serious research and even testing to attain that knowledge and feel. Being too general in copywriting can be disastrous.

2.) Headlines Must Grab Attention:

It’s a known fact that you have mere seconds to grab the attention of your reader. It is therefore imperitive that your headlines shock your reader out of his mundane life. If you fail to write headlines that shock and grab, you may lose the sale. Spend as much time as you need to crafting headlines that really grab attention.

3.) You! :

One of the best ways for you to connect with your customer is to speak directly to him. When you use the word you, you are using a powerful method to attract the attention of your reader. We all like to have individual attention and using “you” creates this sense of personalized attention.

4.) Benefits not Features:

When connecting with your reader you will want to answer the question “What’s in it for me?” or “So what?” So you want to employ personal benefits that will resonate with them causing them to heed that call to action you are ultimately after.

5.) Order Now!

If you don’t ask for the desired action you may not get it. State what you want your reader to do. Be bold about it and make it really simple. “Click on the ‘Order Button’ below and fill out the information on the next page.” Make it really easy to follow your instructions and then make them feel really right about their taking this action by removing all their hesitations with a money back guarantee.

6.) 100% Money Back Guarantee:

The best guarantee is the 100% lifetime money back guarantee. Now I know what you are thinking and I was there once too. But if you offer just a thirty day guarantee your customer will be more likely to ask for his money back because he will have his attention on that thirty days. But if you make it a lifetime guarantee you are less likely to have a lot of people asking for their money back because, well really, they’ve forgotten all about it.

The first trick is to identify sales letters that spark an interest or an emotional response and thus are income producing. Take the letter of your choice and first copy it in your own handwriting, line by line. You want to pay special attention to the rhythm of the letter. Notice the words that are used and how the writer puts those words together. Pay attention to the style and flow. Examine each sentence for it’s structure and how it relates to the overall message of the sales letter. Also pay attention to how the letter makes you feel. What sort of emotional response comes up for you.

Now go back and do it again. You can use the same letter or find others that are good sales copy letters.

Another method for learning the best copy techniques is something that I first used  long ago when I was in college. What you want to do is read some of these great sales letters aloud while you are listening to baroque music. I believe you want music that maintains 60 beats per minute. Try a piece you like from Bach, Mozart or Vivaldi.

The next step is to record yourself reading the copy along with the music. Later you will listen to the recordings while studying the flow of the copy, paying attention to the use of words and how the author uses those words to evoke an emotional response, usually a call to action.

What educators have found is that there is an association between the music and the item being studied. The baroque music helps to maximizes the learning of new material and our ability to retain that new information.It has a lot to do with engaging both the right and left brains simultaneously. Evidently the human mind works better when listening to this sort of music. Try listening to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Piano’s in D Major

What happens later when you go to write copy of your own is that through an association with the baroque music you are able to better recall the copy patterns that sell.

What’s in it for me?

The very first thing you want to do is grab the attention of your prospect. You will want to spend a considerable amount of dedicated time  creating the ideal headline. A common mistake amongst copywriters is that they write just one headline. But they’re missing out. Just as creating optimal copy takes time and many re-writes, so too does your headline. Take your time and create some great headlines. You’ll be glad you did.

After you identify your target market and your Unique Selling Point (USP) you will want to write at least a couple hundred headlines. Yes, that’s what I said, you want to write a couple hunderd headlines for just this one assignment. In the end you will use several of those headlines. One will be that great attention grabber at the beginning of your copy. The others may serve as sub-headlines in the body of your copy.

For your headlines you want to be using words such as:

* Announcing
* Breakthrough
* Now
* New
* Free
* Discover How
* You
* How to

You then want to capitalize on the benefits that your product or service offers. And make sure that you are talking benefits and not features. This will help you to awnser the question that your prospect has on his mind.

What’s in it for ME ?

Nevertheless, I took that information and arranged it by category and subject matter. They also provided a link to the site so that I could see exactly waht it was that they were  providing through their web pages.

My next step was to engage in the investigation process. I spent some time at their site familiarizing myself with their content, features and benefits and any special selling points that I could find. I did some other investigation about their ideal customer and what it is that that person might be looking for from this web site. It’s improtant to know your customers so that you can address your copy to a specific audience.

Then I spent some time perusing other relevant web sites with similar information to really get a better understanding of the industry as well as to get a better handle on unique selling points (USP) for my customer. And again, customer interest and demographics play an important role.

Then I had some questions and so I contacted the customer to go over my progress. As we spoke it became clear that she was thinking more along the lines of just one single page of the website. So the copy needed to address just a single service provided by a site that provides a myriad of services.

Given this much better understanding of the job intention and  specific intention I was better able to  pinpoint the focus of my efforts and provide the copy the customer was seeking.

When you are embarking on your copywriting endeavors it’s always a good idea to do all of your homework which should ultimately include a question and answer session with your customer, ideally before you spend a great deal of time putting anything together. You really want to make sure that you thoroughly understand what the assignment’s focus might be.

My initial information was vague. But in all fairness the customer always knows what she wants. It’s our job to help her articulate the specifics of that assignment so that we too have substantial knowledge of the assignment.

However, there is an often overlooked area which is not often discussed, and that is how to influence your prospect with keywords. This method, in all actuality takes precedence over all the others, as the keywords which are relevant to the product you are delivering is what ultimately interested the prospect to consider reading your copy to begin with. When you learn how to influence your prospect with keywords, your keywords can serve as a reference point to the prospect, and remind them why they are reading your sales letter in the first place.

Copywriters often get too caught up in the “calls to action,” “the buzz words,” and the fancy adjectives, not realizing that after they proofread their ad copy, they completely left out the product, and must begin again. Such things as product names, competitor’s names, company slogans, logos, etc., all qualify as keywords that must be repeated often to a prospect.

In learning how to influence your prospect with keywords, you will be bringing them back to what they were seeking, and not distracting them by overusing literary devices, which can turn off a prospect.

If you diligently learn how to influence your prospect with keywords effectively and concentrate on this area, you will unlock one of the best-kept secrets in copywriting, and be on the road to becoming a successful copywriter in no time.