My Seven-Step Copywriting Process

Posted on November 26, 2007 | Filed Under Copywriting

My Seven-Step Copywriting Process By Michel Fortin

A lot of people ask me how I write copy. I don’t mean the content-writing process (such as how I come up with headlines, bullets, offers, etc), but how I tackle the actual task of composing a new salesletter from scratch.

Everyone is different. My writing process is one developed over many years, and many people may adopt or dislike the same techniques. But in the hope that knowing my process may be helpful to some writers, I’d like to share it with you.

Of course, if I were to describe all of the steps, there would be way too much information to squeeze into one article. But for now, I can offer you a basic look at my methodology by giving you a short list of the seven steps I take.

Here they are.

1. Gather Initial Research

For starters, with all projects I ask that my clients take time to answer an initial, 25-point questionnaire. Their answers will provide some background information. I ask several questions from four main categories:

The customer
The product
The business
The offer
The first one is the most important. It’s where I ask questions like demographics and psychographics, and try to build a perfect customer profile or persona. The others include things like features and benefits, stories behind the product, testimonials, actual results, the buying process, etc.

(The questionnaire can be an eye-opener for many clients because it forces them to dig for the answers, and to see where some of the flaws with their current copy are.)

Admittedly, this is just a start. But their answers, which give me some direction as to where to conduct further research, give me at least a basic understanding of their business, the purpose of the copy’s message, and its goals.

Yes, that’s “goals” in the plural.

Of course, there is the main goal, which may be to generate leads or sales. But other, secondary goals may include to dispel rumors, answer questions, build credibility, eliminate misconceptions, differentiate from the competition, etc.

2. Conduct Exploratory Research

Then, I read and study the answers carefully, and I conduct some exploratory research. That is, I try to gather as much information as I can — anything about the business, the product, the offer and, above all, the target audience.

I surf their websites. I research their competitors. I look at some of the trends in that particular product category, market, or industry. I do comparative analyses.

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How To Bring Sanity Into The Small Business

Posted on November 21, 2007 | Filed Under Business Management, Productivity

How To Bring Sanity Into The Small Business

Working closely as a consultant with many business owners
over the years I often have seen an all too familiar
pattern. It appears to me small business owners work to
much on the wrong tasks.

The pattern seems to be much the same.
1. Learn a trade and become good at it.
2. Turn your knowledge of the trade into an offering and
call it your own business.
3. Hire others to begin helping when you as owner simply
can’t keep up.
4. You end up being responsible and accountable for the
business with no one to rely on.
5. You work so hard IN the business that you seldom if ever
work ON your business.

Do you know anyone like this? Businesses with millions of
dollars of revenue are not immune to this scenario.
Besides, business revenue is not the measure of success as
some believe. Profit is the measure of success. At the end
of the day just how much of the revenue did you keep?

Successful business owners find great processes combined
with a great vision make all the difference.

Without a vision, a business is lost with no clear
direction. ‘Making a ton of money’ is not clear direction!
‘Making a ton more products’ is not a vision that anyone
can get excited about.

A great vision is: ‘A computer on every desk’ or ‘Overnight
delivery guaranteed’.

A vision can be helpful in many ways. Vision is the
absolute guiding force behind every decision made in the
company. Every employee should ask: “Is what I am doing
getting our company closer to our vision - or not?” If the
answer is no - then they should be encouraged to speak up
and the discussion should continue until either the vision
is changed or the process is changed.

Vision creates inspiration. Sure most people work for the
money - but they will work a heck of a lot harder if they
are inspired. A great vision - created by all and
communicated daily - is a very powerful force and separates
companies that do and those that do not.

Vision is the end result of the processes and procedures
that should be recorded for every possible task. Then those
tasks need metrics so everybody knows what is expected -
and everybody knows when something is not going well.

There are other simple but amazingly powerful tools any
owner or manager can use to take control of their company.
Only then will they be able to release accountability and
responsibility to others - and do what owners are supposed
to do. Lead.

How well are you leading?

Miami Phillips has added greatly to the ability of business
owners to build powerful businesses. His online video
course “Small Business Strategies for Small Business
Owners” is available at:
http://www.smallbusinessexpertise.com

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Manage Your Time to Earn More In Less Time

Posted on November 21, 2007 | Filed Under Business Management, Motivation, Productivity

Manage Your Time to Earn More In Less Time

By Terry Dean

People talk about the 80/20 rule quite a bit.

20% of your customers produce 80% of your profits.

80% of your problems come from 20% of the customers.

20% of your activities produce 80% of your results.

Let’s talk about this in regard to how you’re spending your

time. Since 80% of your activities only produce 20% of

your results, and the other 20% of your activities are

producing 80% of your results…wouldn’t you be better off

concentrating only the 20%?

Let’s say someone works 12 hour days. It’s almost

unbelievable to me that people work that much, but I’ve

spoken with MANY who do so. Sure I could understand and

have done a 12 hour day right before a vacation or on the

last day of finishing a project. But working that long

every single day? That’s the surefire recipe for a

breakdown, both physically and mentally.

Applying the 80/20 rule to their 12 hour days means the

80% is 9.6 hours and the 20% is 2.4 hours. If we cut

out the 80% that isn’t producing very well for them, we

would only have 2.4 hour days. Now there’s a schedule

I like.

Something I often suggest to my coaching clients is to

make an activity log for the next week. Every day,

simply list all the activities for the day and how long

it took you to do them. At the end of the week rate

each of those activities by how well it is building

your business.

You’re going to find you’re wasting way too long on

certain activities.

You may find like many of my clients these activities

include:

- Reading too many blogs (Limit the number you subscribe to)

- Subscribing to Internet marketing newsletters that only

sell without providing good quality content.

- Answering Email All Day (no more than twice per day and

shoot for once per day or less)

- Surfing the Forums (I can’t think of a bigger waste of

time if you’re not there for the purpose of generating

traffic by participating)

- Calling Someone Without a Specific Plan in mind (you can

waste an hour with no results - keep it short and planned)

All of the above are activities people do to make them FEEL

like they’re working instead of doing any real work.

They also consume your day.

What are you personally doing that is wasting your time?

What do you do to replace the real work of your business?

Usually these are activities that consume much of your

day…and don’t show any real results at the end. They are

part of the 80% producing only 20% of the results.

Next ask yourself which activities really bring in the cash.

For example, for me, these cash producers include:

#1 - Writing (used for the blog, new products, and article

submissions)

#2 - Copywriting (sales copy for my sites, tests, and emails)

#3 - Product Development (recording videos and doing

interviews to create products)

#4 - Business Development (creating systems for others to do

the work - could also be listed as the real #1 cash producer

but I love the writing part the best)

Where do I waste my time?

I asked myself this question lately and had to answer I had

slacked on following my own email rule (answering no more than

twice per day max which I do for the coaching clients). So

I’m pushing myself strictly back to this.

I’ve also allowed myself to check the comments on my blog too

often. So for the time being I’m turning off blog comments.

For me they are part of the 80% that’s not really producing

the results.

Be honest with yourself…and figure out where you waste

your time. What parts of your business are the 20% producing

80% of the results? Which parts are the 80% only producing

20% of the results? What can you eliminate or outsource

immediately?

——————————

—–

Terry Dean helps business owners Earn More, Work Less, and

Enjoy Life. Receive his Special report, “10 Key Strategies

for Any Business Owner to Earn More, Work Less, and Enjoy Life”

along with three other special reports worth $109.80 for free

at http://www.theterrydean.com

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Getting Web Traffic Today

Posted on November 2, 2007 | Filed Under Traffic Generation

1. Articles
What ezines or newsletters do you read in your topic or
market? Perfect, now start submitting your own great
articles to them and include a bio line with a short blurb
and a link back to your site. This is an awesome method to
get lots of high quality traffic.

2. Online Forums
Forums can be a good source of traffic, start out by just
reading posts in the forum to get a feeling of how it is
run. Do they allow people to advertise their own sites? If
so great, if not most forums will at least allow you to
place a signature at the bottom of your post with a link
back to your site.

3. Blogs
Blogs receive tons of regular traffic, look for blogs in
your market or a related topic and start posting valid
comments. Just remember that when you’re on a blog be
courteous and don’t get into flame wars with anyone, if you
disagree with a post just move on and don’t comment.

4. Digg Effect
The social sites like Digg and Reddit direct so much
traffic they have been known to take down servers. Start
getting on these types of sites and contribute by voting
for interesting sites and stories… be sure to put a link
back to your site in your profile or other place people can
find it.

5. Content Sites
The Internet is built almost entirely on content. Create
some sites for your market with high quality content
consisting of reviews, articles and resource directories.
To put these sites on almost total auto pilot you should
set them up to allow users to contribute to them as well.

Most of all when using these techniques don’t start
spamming with useless content or creating garbage sites…
these kinds of short term methods never lead to long term
success and results.

Article marketing rocks! Discover the course at
http://www.articlelistcourse.com and ratchet up your
article marketing campaign.

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5 Steps To Marketing With Christmas Cards

Posted on November 1, 2007 | Filed Under Offline Marketing, Relationship Marketing

5 Steps To Marketing With Christmas Cards

People in business often consider Christmas cards too much
time and hassle to have in their marketing. That’s
certainly true if you send cards the way most businesses
do!

One sales person told me he gave up sending cards because
he never seemed to get any response. Then he had his
customers phoning him wondering whether he had gone out of
business!

Would you like to get a real word of mouth marketing boost
from sending cards out this holiday season?

Remember these 5 tips to help you get the biggest bang for
your marketing efforts:

1.) Find a way to measure the response. Don’t be like the
salesman I mentioned who was unable to know what was
happening until it was too late. The card can include
something that gets the person to interact with you so that
you can measure this. For example they can contact you to
get a gift that you can’t send out to them in the mail. If
all else fails then at least contact some of the people
afterwards to check that the card arrived and get some
measure of how many others they showed the card to. Which
brings us to…

2.) Make the card stand out. Imagine your card is being
hung on a door, a fridge or a front counter with 50 others.
Would your card stand out and make someone pick it up and
look inside? It doesn’t matter how much embossing there is
or how much gold or other fancy stuff, if it fades into the
look of all the other cards then it’s a waste of time.

3.) Personalize the message. Sure you don’t have to send a
different card to every person, but at least make sure you
include the person’s own name in the message inside. If
you’re doing it by hand it can be too much hassle to add a
personal message too, but there are web-to-print services
now that can make even this easy.

4.) Don’t sell. This is the time for building the
relationship with someone for future sales. By all means
give them great reasons to think of you but if you need to
sell something this season then keep it out of the
Christmas card and send a separate mailing.

5.) Have your own face inside or even on the front of the
card. You don’t need to be shy. People want to buy from
human beings, not companies. Putting your face to your
business separates you from others who from the faceless
masses of other companies people deal with. It’s great word
of mouth marketing. If you like you can have a picture of
your whole team, and include their names so that your
clients can tell their friends exactly who they deal with
in your business.

Martin Russell is a medical doctor turned counsellor who
grew his own practice solely using referrals.  For more
information on word of mouth marketing methods that work
automatically, visit:
http://www.WordofMouthMagic.com

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