But the answer is much more basic than that.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COPY THAT CONVERTS AND COPY THAT DOESN’T IS—THE FORMER GETS READ; THE LATTER GETS CLOSED

And what makes people read copy? You probably don’t need me to cite any studies to know that it’s the headline.

Without a good headline, no one reads your copy. And if no one reads your copy, no one clicks your call to action.

That’s why the headline is the most important element on the page. David Ogilvy, the great mad man, found that of everyone who reads a headline, only 20% read the copy. Pareto’s Principle at work.

Drayton Bird, perhaps the most experienced direct marketer in the world, suggests spending 80% of your time writing your headline. Put most of your effort into the thing that will yield the greatest returns.

And common sense suggests that if you rely on using words to make money, learning to write great headlines is more important than mastering every other copywriting trick combined. If your headlines don’t telegraph to your reader a message that gets him nodding and compels him to read on, you might as well give up copywriting immediately.

WHY YOU SHOULD USE A FORMULA FOR WRITING HEADLINES—BUT NOT THE ONE YOU ALREADY KNOW

You could power New York with all the electrons that have been (ab)used to produce articles, books, courses, and particularly formulas about writing headlines.

There’s a good reason for that. Formulas help us apply fundamental principles in a repeatable, consistent way. And even after doing that becomes second nature, formulas still make useful checklists.

But while there are some good headline formulas out there, they suffer from two problems:

1. They’re too forced—“ultra-specific”, really?—which makes them hard to remember; and,
2. They typically lack a key element which is extremely important to effective headlines on the web. (Not so much for offline writing—but definitely for web writing.)

I’ll talk about that element at the end. For now, let me introduce you to the SHINE headline formula. Why “SHINE”? Because after I’d picked out the five elements that go into a successful headline, and plugged their initial letters into an anagram generator, that was the only English word that came out.

If you are vague about the value of reading your copy, your reader will be too. Needless to say, he then won’t read it.

Nothing is as uninteresting as vagueness. Specific and concrete facts, on the other hand—particularly ones that form pictures in our minds—are intensely interesting.

So the first thing you must do to create a winning headline is use objective, quantifiable language. Figures are excellent; they imply research, which adds to your perceived legitimacy. But all kinds of specificity are good: names, descriptions—including of your reader himself; Mel Martin made millions writing “For people who…” headlines—titles, examples, projections, results, and so on.

Avoid subjective claims that anyone can make. “The number one ___”, “The leading ___”, etc. These are meaningless; like claiming your newborn is the most beautiful baby in the world. Everyone says that kind of thing, and studies show these sorts of claims actually reduce readership significantly, because people give them the same sort of attention they give to banner ads—i.e., none at all.

A WORD ABOUT LENGTH

A headline you can read in a single glance obviously communicates its content more effectively than one you cannot. Usability research shows that people not only scan body copy, but headlines as well—and they tend to take in only the first and last 3 words. This suggests the perfect length for a headline is 6 words.

Of course, that’s seldom enough to tilt the specificity-meter into the red. And I have it on good authority that some of the highest-converting headlines on the web are as long as 30 words. As a rule, if it won’t fit in a tweet it’s too long. But let me suggest that rather than worrying about length you should worry about making every word count. Especially the first and last 3—and if that means using the passive voice, so be it.

For your reader to see value in your copy, you must show how it will help him. Sounds obvious, yet most headlines give readers no clear idea of how reading the copy will help them—and so they don’t read it.

To make your headline helpful, simply speak to the issue which is foremost in your reader’s mind—the problem he came to your site to solve. People understand that what’s stated in the headline implies a solution in the copy. It can be explicit, as in 37Signals’s “Basecamp is the project management tool you wish you had on your last project.” Or it can be implicit, as in Saddleback Leather’s “They’ll fight over it when you’re dead”—implying both remarkable durability and enviable aesthetics and functionality.

Alternatively, if your reader isn’t yet aware of the problem, simply begin by stating it directly—as in the headline, “Toxic Killers in Your Grocery Cart”.

Speaking of toxic killers, your headline should be so interesting that your reader cannot help but read on immediately.

Why immediately? Why not just be interesting enough to avoid the back button? Well, let me ask you: how many browser tabs do you keep open because their contents look interesting, and you fully intend to read them…later? If you’re anything like me, it’s so many that you’ve signed up for a service like Instapaper or Readability just so you can create an ever-growing list of things you really must read later, to hang over your head like a gradually descending zeppelin, slowly reaching such epic proportions that the only solution, in an eventual but inevitable act of desperation, is to set the whole thing on fire and watch it burn.

Anyway, you know from experience that if you don’t read it right away the odds are slim you’ll read it at all. The same is true of anyone reading your copy.

Creating immediacy is obviously easier for topics with greater emotional appeal; more difficult if you’re selling something like project collaboration software—which, with apologies to Jason Fried, few people really get worked up about. Nonetheless, you can do it for anything if you appeal to your reader’s self-interest. Focus on desires rather than needs, as these are, strangely, stronger.

Even better if you can tease him while doing so. Curiosity is an immensely powerful motivator. Paradoxes, quizzes, an implied danger or reward, or even simple questions can inflame a headline’s immediacy by playing to your reader’s curiosity—almost forcing him to read the copy. Here’s a classic that illustrates the irresistible power of the self-interest and curiosity combo:

“How Safe Is Your ____?”

Useful for a wide range of things, from information products to security systems to hats. How safe is your head from bird flu carried in pigeon droppings?

To give your reader a reason to spend time in your copy, as opposed to your competitor’s, your headline must say something he hasn’t heard before. Or, more precisely, something he thinks he hasn’t heard before.

Obvious, generic, or familiar statements will put a bullet in your foot. In fact, anything that makes him think, “I already know what this is about.”

In other words, your headline must have news value. This doesn’t have to mean actual news—although headlines starting with “Now”, “Finally”, “Announcing”, “At last” and so on are all tested winners. But it can be as simple as the example I gave from Saddleback Leather: “They’ll fight over it when you’re dead.” How many leather goods companies emphasize quality and looks as their “unique” selling points? Probably all of them. But Saddleback gets away with appealing to the exact same USP by simply phrasing it differently.

Indeed, by putting your headline in terms of a story, you guarantee a unique spin. You also guarantee the critical element most headlines on the web lack—which brings us to our final point…

People today are information grazers. With so many blogs to read, so many things to Like on Facebook, so many tweets to scan, so many videos to watch…sales copy stands in boring contrast. Even non-sales copy.

Headlines which promise some entertainment in the copy succeed more often than those which don’t.

This is something you don’t see emphasized very often in headline formulas. In fact, since much of the advice you’ll read about writing headlines comes from the Cult of Claude Hopkins, you may even hear that copy should not seek to entertain at all. Hopkins famously said a salesman is not a clown.

But Hopkins wrote nearly a century ago, in a very different world. Although most marketing principles are universal, some things do change, so let me put this as bluntly as I can:

People on the Internet will not be bored.

Now, being entertaining doesn’t mean you should include the sorts of stupid “clever” gimmicks you see in much advertising—self-indulgent puns, whimsical turns of phrase and other such rubbish. That is worse than useless.

But stories, the oldest form of entertainment, are highly effective. So is humor, if used cautiously, but you must understand the kind of humor your reader likes and what he’s comfortable joking about.

Here’s a great example of the combined power of story and humor, written by the master of email, Ben Settle:

“How Even Skinny, ‘Barney Fife’ Cops Single-Handedly Control And Dominate Violent Criminals, Gang-Bangers And Other Cold-Blooded Killers…Without Even Drawing Their Guns!”

Let’s put all this to work. I’d like to help you construct a headline here, so you can see how the principles I’ve covered make headlines SHINE.

You know Mulder, I presume. Agent Fox Mulder of the FBI? If you haven’t seen The X-Files, he’s the guy who “wants to believe”. So let’s imagine we’re selling an information product that compiles all the world’s best UFO data into a comprehensive report. Mulder—or someone like him—is our ideal prospect.

Let’s start with specificity. This product is for the FBI agent who wants to believe. Can it be that simple to really get Mulder’s attention? Yes it can.

Right, how about helpfulness? What is it that Mulder will want out of this product? I’m thinking easy access to data which is normally scattered across multiple sources. He needs all the world’s UFO data at his fingertips.

Okay, what about immediacy? Well, Mulder’s job is often dangerous. Having the right data available in an alien encounter could be the difference between life and death. He doesn’t want to die because he didn’t know something.

Now, news. It’s pretty unlikely anyone is currently offering a product like this. But we can easily imagine that Mulder has often wished for one. Finally, we have created it for him—so we can play off that news factor for even more pulling power.

As for entertainment value, a man like Mulder is intensely curious, competitive, driven, highly skilled, and knowledgeable. Someone who can’t resist a challenge, who can’t resist finding out the answer to something, and who can’t resist perhaps showing off to himself a little. The kind of man who loves to test himself. Which gives us:–

For the FBI agent who wants to believe…
Can’t survive our “alien invasion” quiz?
Now you can get all UFO data right on your smartphone

About the Author: As well as being an expert on headlines, Bnonn is the author of a free video series covering all the elements of turning visitors into customers—from headline to CTA. Known in the boroughs as the Information Highwayman, he helps small businesses by improving both their copy and web design. When he’s not knee-deep in the guts of someone’s homepage, he is teaching his kids about steampunk, Nathan Fillion, and how to grapple a zombie without getting bit.

But as with most important things in life, that’s easier said than done.

Fortunately—as with most things in life—much of the mystery can be removed by adopting a system that takes care of the basics. So let me introduce you to my Four Keys for writing clear, shiny copy that affords prospects the perfect view of whatever it is you’re selling.

Key #1: Conversational style

I’m sure you’ve heard it said that people don’t buy from websites—they buy from people.

And I’m sure you’ve also heard that people seldom buy from people they don’t like and trust.

Which is why hyped highlighter copy doesn’t tend to work. There’s no real personal connection, because it doesn’t read like anything a person would say—certainly not a person you’d be inclined to like or trust.

The same goes for verbose, puffed-up “corporatese”. No one talks like that—and if they did we’d assume there was something ludicrously wrong with them.

The solution is to write like you would talk.

Simple, right? So simple you probably reckon there’s no need to read the rest of this section—but you’d be wrong.

Because actually, writing like you talk is hard, and you’ll likely fail at it to start with. That’s because you have to make a shift in your thinking before it will click for you.

You have to get out of “Writing Mode”

The more self-conscious you are about communicating, the worse you tend to do it.

So you have to stop thinking about writing, and instead focus on just telling. You have to stop thinking about how your sentences look, and instead focus on how they sound. You have to get out of the mindset that you are performing a task which is difficult, technical, complex, or in any way different to the task you’d have if you simply sat down with your prospect and talked to him about what it is you’d like him to buy.

This is actually surprisingly hard.

From a very young age, talking comes completely naturally to us. It’s so basic that even thinking about teaching it in school seems absurd. The only people who need lessons in talking are people with disabilities.

Yet from a very young age, writing is something we struggle with. We are conditioned to think of it as something hard—something requiring strict rules and methods if we’re ever to achieve some rudimentary level of ability. Even though we’re taught to write all the way through school, most adults are incapable of competently stringing two words together on paper.

Well, let me tell you a little secret: You started out a great writer. But as you went through school, and were conditioned to think of writing as writing rather than as simply communicating, you got progressively more self-conscious about it—and progressively worse at it.

The best writers—at least in terms of sales copy—are the ones who are able to completely ignore everything they’ve been taught about writing, and instead get on with the job of just telling.

How to write conversationally

Don’t write—tell. The best way to get started is not to write at all—but to speak.

Ideally, record yourself talking about your topic with a friend you know and trust. That way, you’ll avoid most of the self-consciousness that comes when you get out a voice recorder and try to record yourself talking to the air.

Then play back your recording and just listen to what you say. Take notes. How do your sentences sound? How often do you break the rules of formal grammar? I bet it’s all the time. So forget formal grammar. How often do you say something that in retrospect sounds totally gitty? Pretty often too, probably. So figure out what you wish you’d said, and use that instead. Write like you talk, but with the benefit of lots of time to choose your words. It’ll be a lot easier to read—because people read with an internal monologue. When you write conversationally, they can hear your words flow.

Key #2: Narrative Structure

The second key to clarity is to put your copy together in the way your prospect finds easiest to process and understand.

Let me give you a clue. How do you teach kids complex ideas?

The answer, of course, is stories. Indeed, as soon as we can talk, we want to hear and tell stories. And that is simply because our brains are wired to process information most easily in narrative form. We’re very, very good at processing specific actions that involved concrete things in a timed sequence.

We’re really, really bad at processing vague ideas, abstract concepts or relationships, and unordered sets of things.

We need stories to give things structure.

In fact, if you’ve studied any philosophy, you’ll know that it can be almost impossible to grasp some ideas without real-world examples of them. But as soon as we have such an example, we find it fairly easy to generalize it to other situations.

Because we most easily process information in a narrative structure, it only makes sense use that structure in your sales copy.

Now, this does not mean you have to tell stories. I highly recommend that you do tell stories—case studies are an obvious and very powerful example of why. And most of the best, most successful sales letters have used stories to get their point across (the “two young men” story for The Wall Street Journal, for example, or the chicken salad story penned by Lillian Eichler). Stories bypass the ol’ frontal lobe and get the limbic system champing at the bit. And the limbic system is what gets us to buy things.

But that’s another article—or three. Here, I’m simply talking about using a narrative structure for your copy. Like this: remember studying plots in school? Your 3-act, beginning-middle-end structure? A series of rising action leading to a climax? Well, here’s how that looks when applied to copy:

How copy can be placed into a narrative structure (action peaks are suggestions, not hard rules)

The headline has to start the exposition strong, or the rest won’t get read.

The lede has to bring an immediate peak of action to keep your prospect interested.

But don’t make the mistake of starting off so strong that there’s nowhere to go but down. You can’t sustain climax-level action for long—and you can’t keep getting more extreme indefinitely.

To give a concrete example: people often complain that the final raptors-versus-T-Rex scene in Jurassic Park feels flat. And it does—because after the shocking T-Rex-eating-a-car scene, and the nerve-wracking raptors-in-the-kitchen scene, the final climax doesn’t add enough extra danger. Even if it did, we’re burned out on danger by the time it arrives.

In sales copy, “flat” means your prospect loses his sense of excitement. Keep him strung too high for too long and he’ll get burned out and lose interest. So start gentle and raise the action gradually. Screaming headlines and hyped ledes might pull people in, but they won’t keep them to the end.

To use a bike racing analogy, it’s better to enter the corner slow and come out fast, than to enter fast and not come out at all.

Key #3: Benefits, then features

Copy that seems clear as glass to you can be muddied in a very simple way for your prospect. Here’s what happens:

You write a conversational narrative that goes through all the benefits of your product. But you don’t give any reasons for these benefits.

Or you write a conversational narrative that goes through all the features of your product. But you don’t give any reasons for those features.

To you, with your knowledge of the product, the how of the benefits or the why of the features are entirely obvious. But to your prospect they are opaque. There’s a murkiness about your product that prevents him from buying.

Here’s an example: Imagine you’re talking about how your home study course will teach your prospect to hack his neighbor’s wireless network in 2 hours. For example! The reason this is possible is that the course just teaches some simple principles for operating a bundled automated software utility. This does the actual grunt work of breaking into the network.

Simply talking about how your prospect will be wirelessly checking Facebook in 2 hours won’t give him the kind of clarity he needs. Even though he wants this benefit, and even though you may furnish plenty of proof—testimonials or case studies or whatever—it’s not clear how it’s possible.

Alternatively, just talking about the automated utility in detail, relating each feature back to a corresponding element of wireless network security, will show him that hacking is possible—but it won’t help him understand how it is possible for him, since he doesn’t understand it.

To achieve clarity, both the benefit and the feature must be explained—and then their relationship.

Talk about benefits first

It’s easy to talk about features before drawing out the benefits. If you know your product better than your prospect, which you probably do, then that’s the natural order to take.

But your prospect is only interested in the features inasmuch as they create benefits for him. Which means you should talk about the benefits first, then clarify them with reference to features.

Obviously there are exceptions to this rule. A lot of technical B2B prospects know exactly what features they’re looking for, and want to see them tabulated nicely. But that’s because they already know the benefits. So you must know your prospect to know how much you need to explain for him.

When in doubt, here’s a simple rule: use bullets to describe both features and benefits succinctly. For example (benefits are in bold):

• Peace of mind that your data won’t disappear if your connection drops, thanks to the persistent asynchronous database connection
• Better color reproduction for print work because of the advanced In-Plane Switching technology—the crystal molecules in the display move parallel to the panel plane instead of perpendicular, reducing the amount of light scattering in the matrix
• They’ll fight over it when you’re dead—with 4–5 oz Full Grain leather, tanned with high-grade oils and preservatives to keep it from being destroyed by dryness or moisture, and bound with polyester industrial thread, you can be sure your bag will outlive you

Key #4: Scannable Elements

79% of people on the web don’t read—they scan.

Which means that if your text doesn’t contain plenty of “hooks” for your prospect’s eye to grab onto, it’ll just slide right off the page.

What do I mean by hooks?

• Meaningful subheads which summarize major points or tease your prospect into the copy (like mini-headlines)
• Bullet lists which itemize important pieces of information such as features or benefits
• Boldface to highlight keywords, important benefits, etc
• Short paragraphs with only one idea each (otherwise a prospect scanning the first few words will miss the second idea)
• Images that convey value more forcibly than copy could, such as charts, graphs, or high-quality product photos
• Captions—these get read by 50% more prospects than body copy, and often have a nearly 100% recall rate

There should always be at least one scannable element visible on the page at any given time. Test this on the kind of screen and at the kind of resolution your prospect is likely to be using—not just your own.

Use scannable elements to sell

You have to make the bits that stand out, that catch the eye, count. If you don’t convey value with the scannable elements they aren’t going to achieve anything. So spend time distilling the most value into the least space for each of your hooks. It could very well be the difference between keeping your prospect on the page and having him slide off into the ether.

Four Keys for Clear Copy

These keys all take practice to master. But they are simple enough that you can get started today and see notable improvements immediately. Read your copy aloud—is it conversational, or stilted? Examine its structure—does it build up to the call to action, or is it haphazard? Test its benefits against its features—is their relationship clear? And stand back and squint—can you pick out the major items of interest when the body copy is blurry?

With these four simple techniques, you are guaranteed to produce copy far better than nearly anything you’ll find on the web.

About the Author: Bnonn is the author of a free video course on the secrets of creating websites that capture readers and turn them into customers. Known in the boroughs as the Information Highwayman, he helps small businesses sell more online by improving their marketing copy, design, and strategies. When he’s not knee-deep in the guts of someone’s homepage, he is teaching his kids about steampunk, Nathan Fillion, and how to grapple a zombie without getting bit. (Also you can follow him on Twitter.)

I mean, have you tried cold calling?

The same is true on the web and in email. Although we know we have to convince customers to buy what we’re offering—or we’ll go under—we dread having to write sales copy of any kind.

We loathe getting up in print and schmoozing, conniving, greasing, bamboozling, and doing everything in our power to persuade prospects to click on our call to action buttons. And you know what?

Prospects hate it too

In fact, although there’s nothing they love more than to buy shiny new things, there’s nothing they hate more than to be sold at.

Which is why all those persuasion methods, mental tricks, “hypnotic” techniques, shouting caps, yellow highlighters and other million-dollar secrets you see other marketers using…they don’t really work. Certainly not on savvy prospects looking for high-value products, and with the budgets to buy them.

Here’s a dose of common sense: if you feel icky writing it, your prospects will feel icky reading it. So this kind of approach is out.

Most companies then turn to…

Your classic business-to-business corporate garbage. Did you doze off halfway through the second sentence? I did.

This sort of puffy, built-up copy is maybe even worse than hyped-up sales copy. Because at least with sales copy people can understand it. But with corporate B2B copy it’s like the intention is to cow the reader into submission. The less they understand the better. “With all those big words and phrases I can’t even choke down, it must be awesome!”

But actually, readers either get bored and quickly hit the back button…or they really need to find a solution and have to read the copy—in which case they slog doggedly through, trying to understand what it’s saying, growing more and more aggravated with each passing second.

Neither situation is likely to result in a sale, is it?

Getting corporate marketing departments to change this sort of copy is like convincing a goat to stop eating the laundry—but some more progressive companies, and especially startups, are seeing the light. Which leads to…

What you might call “Web 2.0” copy. Many more modern companies—particularly those online—want to avoid the mistakes of the past, and understand the importance of speaking human. But although their copy is engaging (if overly chatty), it tends to be very abbreviated.

You’ve just started to get excited, you’re just wanting to know more…when it stops and asks for an action. (In fairness, it’t not usualy as extreme as the above example.)

Although you’re interested, you haven’t made up your mind yet. The call to action is premature.

Notice that in each of these examples the problem is a dearth of information

In highlighter copy, you can’t trust the information. In corporate copy, you can’t understand the information. And in Web 2.0 copy, there just isn’t enough information.

But the truth is, writing is not intrinsically different to speaking.

And in real life, someone who speaks in “corporatese” is generally known as a “pompous ass”. Someone who speaks with such breathless hype you can see the yellow highlighter on their tongue is generally known as a “used car salesman”. And someone who talks normally but doesn’t tell you enough…is just a “bad salesman”!

But imagine if we wrote like we talked…

You know, in plain English, saying as much as we needed to. How might that look? For the first example, perhaps something like this:

For the second example, don’t you think this is much easier to read and understand?

I’d create a revised version of the Web 2.0 copy as well, but it didn’t give me enough to go on! So instead, here’s an excerpt from BasecampHQ, a site that does Web 2.0 copy really well:

So what exactly is the difference between these…and the originals?

One word: clarity.

You see, when people are thinking of buying things, they want to know as much as possible about them. This is doubly so for big purchases—and triply so if it’s a business expense that must be justified with a return on investment.

If you’ve ever spent time considering plonking down a lot of cash for some new widget, you know what I mean.

You probably spent a lot of time researching. Comparing what was available. Looking at features, figuring out benefits, and comparing these to your needs. Reading reviews, examining proofs, and checking guarantees. Making lists of pros and cons so you could weigh up your options objectively.

Believe it or not, you aren’t unusual. Pretty much everyone buys non-commodity items like this.

And here’s the really interesting thing. If you enjoy your work, or if your widget was something you really wanted—a treat or a reward or something you’d been saving for—you actually enjoyed deciding what to buy.

But without clarity, that enjoyment turns to frustration

Did you get really frustrated when you couldn’t find the information you wanted? When for some reason the company selling your widget saw fit to offer only a brief description, or some corporatese fluff, or if there was so much hype you couldn’t tell fantasy from reality? You wanted facts, figures and features—and not being able to find (or trust) them kinda pissed you off.

Similarly, if your widget was a physical product, I’ll bet you got really annoyed when there was only a thumbnail-sized image of it. You wanted the highest-resolution photo possible. If you’re anything like me, you actually went to Google Image Search to see if a better quality photo existed.

And if you’re anything like me, you used Google for finding lots of other information as well. Information that wasn’t—for some reason—available on the seller’s website. Lists of features. What the product was like to use. What possible problems you might run into with it.

And if you couldn’t find the information you wanted…lemme guess, you didn’t buy that particular widget, did you?

In other words, the deciding factor in your purchase was not how persuasive the copy was, but how much information you could find.

As my personal hero Dr. Flint McGlaughlin of Marketing Experiments likes to say…

“Clarity trumps persuasion”

Or, in direct response lingo, “the more you tell, the more you sell.”

No one ever failed to buy a product that was right for them because they knew too much—but many people haven’t bought products because they didn’t have enough information to make a good choice, or they couldn’t wade through verbose copy, or they were turned off by pushy prose.

Plus, many products have been returned by people who bought blind for lack of information.

And you can bet your proverbial that if your own copy doesn’t tell people what they want to know, a lot of them aren’t going to have the time or savvy to troll through search engine results, doing your work for you. Which means they either don’t buy, or they buy sight unseen, and then ask for a refund.

Clarity, not persuasive techniques or marketing jargon, is the key to making sales

Remember, writing is not fundamentally different from speaking. The point in both cases is to establish a personal connection and convey useful information.

So engage your prospects in “conversation” about the thing they’re thinking of buying…and keep the conversation going until they buy.

Virtually no one does this. Why do video camera manufacturers, for example, write a two-paragraph brochure-style blurb in a faux academic voice—which customers know is just ponce and puffery—for a high-end camera worth $4000? Why do they place this paragraph beneath a 200×200 pixel thumbnail that you can’t click on for a larger image or multiple angles?

Why don’t they write as one videographer to another about what the camera is like to use? About professionals who have recommended it? About amateur movies that have been shot on it? About what conditions it is best suited to, and why?

Why don’t they allow customer reviews directly on the sales page—not hard, since that’s basically just a blog format? Why don’t they show high-resolution photos—or even better, actual footage shot with the camera? And allow customers to link to their own on YouTube?

Why don’t they talk about possible problems with the camera, or conditions where it won’t work well—thus immediately gaining prospects’ trust, since no one believes a camera is perfect for everyone? And so on.

Examples can be found for any kind of product or service.

The answer is that marketing writers copy what they see others doing. It is the blind leading the the blind into a pit of darkness, where sales are hard and there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

If only they knew the Four Keys to selling without having to sell

There are four principal elements you need to master to pull off “selling by telling”. They are very simple—and once you’ve mastered them selling becomes easy, even enjoyable.

You don’t feel like a phony, forcing yourself to use all kinds of persuasion techniques to manipulate your prospect into buying, or writing grandiose descriptions you know damn well are embellished, to say the least.

Instead, you feel like a normal person, telling another person about something you both find interesting.

It would be unfair to tell you about these four keys here. I have already demanded enough of your attention. So look out for my second article next week, when I’ll reveal these four keys to you.

In the meantime, I welcome hearing your thoughts in the comments below.

Update: Here’s the second article: The 4 Keys to Writing Persuasive Copy Without Hype, BS, or Other Icky Gimmicks

About the Author: Bnonn is the author of a free video course on the secrets of creating websites that capture readers and turn them into customers. Known in the boroughs as the Information Highwayman, he helps small businesses sell more online by improving their marketing copy, design, and strategies. When he’s not knee-deep in the guts of someone’s homepage, he is teaching his kids about steampunk, Nathan Fillion, and how to grapple a zombie without getting bit. (Also you can follow him on Twitter.)

Real persuasive writing is silky smooth. It’s the cool guy hanging out nonchalantly by the jukebox: comfortable enough with itself to arouse your curiosity and tease you into taking one small step. Before you know it, you’re not only at the “thank you” page, but you couldn’t be more satisfied about your purchase.

So how do they do it? And how can you harness the hidden secrets of persuasive writing to make your offer more compelling? Follow these easy steps with your writing to make the customer acquisition process a whole lot sexier.

1. Digital Flirting: Establish a Bond with Your Customers

The first step to writing more persuasively is to find something you can both agree on. Remember, the customer might be hesitant to buy your product for any number of reasons. To the marketer, that only means that you haven’t given them enough reasons to buy yet.

Start with a statement that they can easily agree with or appreciate. Then slide in a compliment, a question or a light-hearted challenge.

Example – from the American Cancer Society:

Who doesn’t agree with celebrating more birthdays? Facebook is also a great outlet to get people committed, as Nexcare demonstrated with its focus on World Blood Donor Day:

People are naturally hard-wired to be curious – which leads us to the next step:

2. Getting to Know You – With Supporting Details

Some buyers need more convincing than others – and many of them have unanswered questions that your current content doesn’t address. Think of some ways that you can give your readers all the information they need to make a confident decision:

• Social Proof (Testimonials, Referrals, and Endorsements)
• Comparisons
• And one of the best reasons: WHY

Show them why your product or service is worth spending money on, and how it will help them in some way. Go through your copy as if you were your own customer and try to address any potential issues they might have. Everything you do in this second step should lead right back to strengthening that bond you made originally.

For example, Hotels.com gets people started in three simple steps right on the main page of their website – without asking for personally identifiable information. Then adds in supporting details that will get them to take action under “Our Promise to You”:

3. Motivating by Agitating

After you’ve weaved in a good number of your best benefits, it’s time to get the customer to take the next step. This is where your call-to-action makes a huge difference. You can’t wimp out at this point with a scrawny “click here” button and hope for the best. You’ve lead them along the persuasive path all this time now – just to finish with a fizzle instead of a sizzle? Make that call to action big, bold and important. Tell them not only what to do – but what will happen when they’ve clicked.

If they’re still undecided, it’s time to remind them what they could lose if they don’t act. Real limited-time offer dates can apply here, as can things like a free bonus or a coupon. The idea is that you remind them of the issue you started with in your statement – and lead them to understand how your offer will make that issue a thing of the past.

Woot.com, the original “Daily Deal” site, displays a daily countdown, and how much of the product is currently in inventory. If anything is guaranteed to spike people’s actions, it’s knowing that you might miss out on a great deal.

You can also browse comments other users have had, and after the deal ends, see interesting analytics from the sale.

At its core, persuasive writing is designed to get you to take action without feeling like you’re being sold. It goes from a whirlwind romance of product benefits that perfectly meet your needs – to a long-lasting customer relationship that continues to reward you with loyalty, sales and referrals.

About the Author: Sherice Jacob creates beautiful, high-converting landing pages, in addition to designing blogs and writing compelling content. Learn more at iElectrify or @sherice on Twitter.

Still not convinced? Then check out the eighteen articles we’ve covered here, as just a small taste of what Copyblogger has to offer.

1. Learn the Habits Standing in the Way of Your Creativity and Success

In the article 8 Bad Habits that Crush Your Creativity and Stifle Your Success, Dean Rieck discusses some of the most common things that people do that prevent them from reaching their creative potential, and stop them from being successful. It’s broken down into list form, with in-depth information about each habit, as well as simple steps you can take to break those bad habits.

…even if you’re no smarter than most people, you still have the potential to wield amazing creative powers. So why are so few people highly creative? Because there are bad habits people learn as they grow up which crush the creative pathways in the brain. And like all bad habits, they can be broken if you are willing to work at it.

As you can see from the quote above, the information in the article can be applied by almost anyone, whether you consider yourself “creative” or not.

2. Create Winning Openings for Your Blog Posts

In 5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post with a Bang, Brian Clark shows us five great ways to open a blog post that will grab the attention of your readers. The five methods described here can be implemented on virtually any kind of copy, regardless of what its intention is.

A great headline mixed with a lame opening is like inviting someone into your house, only to slam the door in their face as they approach.

This post will make sure that your opening paragraph ushers your visitors into the rest of the copy, rather than slamming that door.

3. Learn to Stop Being Invisible

How to Beat “Invisible Content Syndrome” will teach you how to make sure your content gets seen, rather than just languishing on your site for weeks or months with few readers. It’s filled with practical advice on how to get traffic, specifically tailored to blogs.

Invisible Content Syndrome is an equal-opportunity menace. It doesn’t just hit lazy people, or people who don’t care about good content. In fact, every blog starts out this way. But some grow out of it quickly, while others get stuck there. And being stuck with Invisible Content Syndrome is amazingly frustrating. So let’s get you out.

Invisible content can hit any blog, with little regard for who the blogger is or what they’re writing about. This article gives concrete advice, like being useful and a good friend, that can help you overcome invisible content.

4. Set Your Social Media Efforts On Fire

Why sit back and wait for your content to go viral? It’s a risky strategy, and often results in no visitors and no views. Instead, try the techniques in Fanning the Social Media Flame for Viral Exposure. Don’t leave the viral potential of your content up to chance.

What is more common is that marketers need to fan their content to help it ignite and go viral. And sometimes that means stepping in when an accidental hit shows signs of life. How do you recognize those signs to take advantage?

The rest of the article goes on to tell you some specific ways to foster the spark a piece of content might have, to get it even more attention. And it’s all backed up with real-world examples.

5. Learn Better Information Architecture Through Helpful Analogies

We’re all familiar with window shopping, but rarely do we think of it in terms of online marketing. In her article, Does Your Site Hold Up to the Window Shopping Test?, Pamela Wilson explores the concept of window shopping and how it relates to website design and information architecture.

Online businesses have window displays too – or at least a good counterpart. If you’re doing business online, you may be surprised to know that your window display could be making promises that your store doesn’t deliver on.

We’ve all had the experience of seeing a beautiful window display and then being disappointed upon walking into the actual store. Don’t make the same mistake on your website that a lot of brick-and-mortar stores make; make sure your entire website meets the expectations set by your “window display.”

6. Get Expert Suggestions on How to Become More Influential Online

A lot of marketers out there would love to be able to tap the brains of online marketing experts to get ideas on how to increase our online influence. Copyblogger did just that, with their 60 Ways to Increase Your Influence Online. This article collects the wisdom of sixty experts, all brought together on Twitter for The Influencer Project. Included are the “one thing” each of these experts said during that Twitter conversation that were found to be unique and essential to building online influence.

#46. Brian Clark. “Learn to be a storyteller. Narrative – it’s what makes us human. Big media does it great. You have to as well.” -@copyblogger

That’s only one tiny bit of advice included in this article. If you read nothing else included in this collection of Copyblogger posts, read this.

7. Become a Better Marketer with Some Help from Mad Men

Mad Men made copywriting sexy. And now you can tap into their tools of the trade with the The Mad Men Guide to Changing the World with Words. Taking quotes and concepts mentioned in the show, this article offers a great overview of what it takes to write great copy that sells.

They sit around thinking up the perfect ad. Then they convince their clients to spend beaucoup bucks on it. Millions of people fall all over themselves to buy the product, shifting consumer culture, spawning billion-dollar industries, becoming household names.

It’s what we’d all like to do, right? Create copy that spawns a new industry, one we’re at the top of. And the article here shows how to apply these principles not just to copywriting, but also to blogging.

8. Get More Blog Subscribers—Fast

We’d all like to add a few thousand subscribers to our blog in a day. And if you follow the advice set out in How to Get 6,312 Subscribers to Your Business Blog in One Day, you might just be able to.

Existing businesses have incredibly valuable assets that others do not – customer and prospect lists. That being said, telling your existing customers about your new blog full of press release content and expecting them to come running is a recipe for mediocrity. If you don’t have an existing list, you can create an offer that is attractive to social media news site users and your results will be similar.

So instead of sitting back and expecting your customers to come running to check out your new blog, employ the tactics covered here to create a blog that your customers really want to subscribe to.

9. Write More Effective Copy

Writing copy that sucks your visitors in is the dream of every writer, whether online or off. 10 Secrets to More Magnetic Copy teaches you to do just that, in ten easy steps.

Some think that magnetic writing is all about talent. But a few simple techniques can make any piece of writing more compelling.

So, follow the techniques laid out here, and you’ll almost certainly write copy that will suck your readers in and keep them reading.

10. How to Find Customers with Your Content

A lot of us look at creating content in terms of pleasing our current readers and providing something they’ll find useful. We hope that that content will attract new readers and customers, too. But we often disregard the content marketing part of the equation. That’s what How to Use Content Marketing to Find Customers aims to show us.

Money doesn’t drop out of the sky just because we produce high-quality material. We need to put some time, thought and planning into the marketing side of the content marketing equation.

Creating great content is sort of pointless if we don’t learn to market it to attract new customers. We need to focus on both sides of the picture to get the maximum benefit from the content we create.

11. Learn to Use Twitter in Marketing Your Business

If your business is not already on Twitter, it really should be. But just being on Twitter isn’t enough to really grow your business. You have to know how to use Twitter to your best advantage. That’s what How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business teaches you.

When people I respect started singing the praises of Twitter, I decided to give it a go. At first I just didn’t get it. However, after a short while I was shocked at the level of access to high profile individuals I was able to achieve. This article reveals how bestselling authors and business professionals use Twitter to grow their businesses and reveals ideas you can employ to achieve Twitter success.

It’s a fantastic introduction to how to use Twitter to your advantage, as a way to grow your business and gain more customers.

12. Never Run Out of Great Blog Post Ideas

If you run a blog for your business, coming up with original post ideas can be time consuming and sometimes feel impossible. After all, you know that just regurgitating your most recent press release will almost certainly doom your blog to failure, but you’re just shot for other topics. When that happens, turn to one of the ideas in 50 Can’t-Fail Techniques for Finding Great Blog Topics.

Are you out of ideas for blog posts? Small wonder, if the only place you’re looking is inside your own head. We all need inspiration and you’re not going to find it banging your head against the desk and hoping an idea falls out. You need fresh inspiration if you’re going to come up with new ideas.

Follow the tips in this article and you’ll likely never find yourself at a loss for ideas.

13. Create a More Successful Email Newsletter

A good email newsletter is a great way to build brand loyalty. But even if you have a decent-sized mailing list, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re getting results. Sometimes, it just seems like no one is actually reading the email newsletter your sending out. 5 Reasons Why No One Is Reading Your Email Newsletter might give you some insight into why.

There may be seven thousand reasons why your newsletter won’t get the response you’re looking for. Most of those reasons have the same common problem, though: readers just don’t like it.

Read the article to make sure you’re not making one of these five fatal newsletter mistakes.

14. Learn to Build a Following of Raving Fans

We all dream of raving fans. Raving fans not only buy from us, but they also tell everyone they know about us. The Insider Guide to Creating An Audience of Raving Fans will show you how to foster and create a base of raving fans.

But 99% of the viewers probably didn’t find it the height of hilarity. I’d guess that 75% didn’t even know that the line was a joke. So why did the writers include the gag? Because the remaining 1% who did get it became fans for life.

The principle included here is a fantastic way to get your readers more involved, and to convert a portion of them into raving fans.

15. Write Awesome Twitter Headlines

Twitter brings a whole new set of rules to the art of creating great headlines. After all, you’re restricted to a lot less than 140 characters (when you take into account necessary characters for a link and for retweeting). The Art of Writing Great Twitter Headlines discusses how to create fantastic Twitter headlines that will get you clicks.

Twitter has become the place for sharing content links. If your content catches attention on Twitter and spreads, suddenly you’re getting significant traffic from people who may have never visited your site before.

We’d all like to get more attention from Twitter, and crafting the perfect headline can go a long way toward achieving that goal.

16. Go from Good to Great

There are a lot of good businesses out there. They have good sales, good customer service, good products. But they’re struggling to go from “good” to “great”. They’re not satisfied being “good enough”, they want to be leaders in their industry. 3 Steps to Take Yourself from Good to Great offers some basic advice on how to take your business to that next level.

There’s always room at the top, the guru says smugly. Don’t you want to smack that guy sometimes? How are you supposed to get to the top? And how are you supposed to pay your bills until you figure that out? But believe it or not, there’s a map to the top. And you don’t have to have superhuman skills, talent, or even perseverance to get there.

Take the advice in this fantastic post to move your business ahead, to go from “good” (where most of your competition is) to “great”.

17. Get a First-Class Business Education Online

Not every entrepreneur out there has an MBA (in fact, I would guess that most of them don’t). And most of them don’t have anywhere near enough time to go back to school to get one. How to Give Yourself a First-Class Online Business Education will show you how you can find all the information you’d ever want to know about business online.

Most of us who run online businesses get an education pretty similar to mine. We get some free stuff from our favorite blogs, we might pay for some information in a home study course or an ebook, and we cobble together a lot from pure observation.

Spend some time with this post to see how you can better educate yourself about business online, without having to invest thousands of dollars.

18. Learn to Shamelessly Self-Promote

From a young age, most of us are taught to be humble. We’re told not to brag about our own accomplishments, and that it’s much better to praise others for the things they do. But that doesn’t help if you don’t having anyone else to sing your praises for you and want to promote yourself online. So how do we get past the idea that talking about ourselves is a bad thing? The Art of Shameless Self-Promotion

If you take a look at the most successful (or talked about) people in any field, you’ll almost always see someone incredibly talented in the art of self-promotion.

Learning to successfully promote yourself is different than simply bragging about your accomplishments. And this post will show you exactly how it’s different.

Copyblogger Also Offers Subject Guides

In addition to their extensive archive of articles on a variety of subjects related to online content creation and marketing, they’ve also put together a number of pages that offer subject-specific information.

• Copywriting 101: An Introduction to Effective Copy
• Content Marketing 101: How to Build Your Business With Content
• SEO Copywriting: Tips, Secrets, and Strategies
• How to Write Magnetic Headlines
• Keyword Research for Web Writers and Content Producers
• Landing Pages: Tutorials and Case Studies
• Internet Marketing for Smart People: You Don’t Have to be a Genius to Master Internet Marketing

Be sure to check out each of these guides for more in-depth information.

About the Author: Cameron Chapman is a freelance designer, blogger, and the author of Internet Famous: A Practical Guide to Becoming an Online Celebrity.

I think so. Especially when that industry is built entirely on a particular kind of marketing—a kind of marketing which is directly applicable to the Internet.

Direct-response advertising has been an ever-lucrative, ever-growing industry for over half a century. Its success relies entirely on a fairly small number of key principles. And with the Internet being a direct-response medium, these principles transfer directly over. Here are eight of the most important of these principles, and how they relate to us as online marketers:

1. The money is in the (right) list

What’s the one thing you absolutely must have if you’re gonna sell your product or service?

I think you’ll find it’s customers.

In direct-response advertising, customers are sought through a mailing list. The better the quality of your list, and the more people on it, the better your response rates will be and the more money you’ll make.

Online, a list can be many things. The most obvious instance is an email list. The correlation is pretty clear between sending out a ‘snail-mail’ sales letter to a mailing list, and sending out an email sales letter.

But more broadly speaking, a list is any collection of people who’ll read what you put in front of them. Blog subscribers; Twitter followers; Facebook fans; etc.

Direct-response advertisers know the money isn’t in any list, though. This is something online marketers should take note of. Rather than being concerned with building up enormous numbers of followers, they should be focused on building enormous numbers of prospects. Because if your followers are not also customers, you aren’t going to sell anything. Better to have a hundred keen prospects than a hundred thousand freeloaders who never intend to buy anything.

2. Your first words count

Original Mad-Man David Ogilvy famously noted:

On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. It follows that, if you don’t sell the product in your headline, you have wasted 80 percent of your money.

Your headline or email subject line should focus on how what you’re selling will benefit your prospect. Simply talking up yourself or your product won’t sell anything. For example, a homepage headline like “The Leading Supplier of Blue Widgets in Blue Widget County” will fall on deaf ears—even for qualified prospects who want blue widgets. On the other hand, “Blue Widgets Shipped to You Direct, Cheaper & Faster than Anyone Else—or Your Money Back” gives prospects a lot of reasons to read your copy and find out more.

As a rule of thumb, if you can read your headline and then reasonably say, “So what?”…it isn’t strong enough.

3. The only purpose of advertising is to sell

Drayton Bird is very fond of quoting American advertising pioneer Raymond Rubicam, who said:

The only purpose of advertising is to sell. It has no other justification worth mentioning.

He is very right, and this principle can seldom be repeated too often. Many marketers are unduly concerned with ‘building brand recognition’, ‘increasing customer awareness’, ‘leveraging social media’ and all these other fancy marketing techniques. But what is the point of these things if they don’t measurably lead to more sales?

Of course, brand recognition, customer awareness, social media and the like can all be used to increase sales—and significantly at that. But very often, marketers have no clear strategy as to how they should use these tools to bring in more money. Sometimes they don’t even consider the question; they just ‘know’ they should be doing these things…because everyone else is, so it must be important, right?

If you haven’t got a clear idea of how a given marketing technique will help you make more sales, don’t use it. If you’re already using it, stop immediately. On the other hand, if you do have a clear idea but lack any way to measure your success, find a way before continuing.

4. The more you tell, the more you sell

Debating the value of long versus short copy is pointless. The fact is that copy should be as long as it needs to be to sell as much as possible—and no longer. Generally speaking, that means it should be ‘long’.

Long, that is, compared to most of the marketing materials you see online.

Marketers are often afraid that if they say too much, they’ll bore their readers out of buying. Ironically, what they should actually be afraid of is not saying enough to persuade their readers to buy.

“But Bnonn,” I hear you say, “people don’t have time to read lots of information. And attention-spans on the web are short.”

Sorry, but that’s pure, unadulterated hogwash. What you mean to say is that people don’t make time to read stuff that doesn’t interest them, and they don’t devote their attention to things with no clear benefit. In which case, refer to point #1 of this article!

If what you’re offering is interesting to the people on your list, and the benefit to them is clear, they will make the time to devote a lot of attention to it. Like you’re devoting to this article right now. What—do you think you’re different to your prospects?

5. The only kind of copy that sells is conversational copy

Internal marketing departments: listen up. Catchphrases like ‘vertically integrated’ and ‘leading provider’ are no better than jargon. They are meaningless to your prospects. And I’d dare to guess that if you had to explain them, you’d get tied in knots trying.

Writing your marketing materials to sound pompous, stuffy, and formal is an excellent way to avoid making sales. People don’t read pompous, stuffy, formal copy. In fact, the more impressive and important your copy sounds to you, the more like meaningless self-aggrandizing tripe it sounds like to your prospects. Take this ‘what we do’ page for example. Can you figure out what this company does? I can’t!

Regardless of your audience, your copy should be written conversationally. That doesn’t necessarily mean ‘informally’ or ‘casually’. It just means you should write to your ideal prospect in exactly the same way you would speak to him. If you’d do that casually, fine. If you’d do it more formally, that’s how you should write.

For example, imagine you run into a guy at the pub, and he mentions he needs something like what you sell. To get him interested, would you say, “We’re a leading provider of top-tier full-service solutions”…or would you say, “We can build a new website for you, from start to finish, and support it afterwards—plus help you use it to bring in new clients”?

6. You have to ask for the sale

That’s right—prospects will rarely do anything if you don’t actually ask them to. When you include a clear call to action (CTA) in your marketing materials, your response rate will naturally increase dramatically.

This is really the ‘direct response’ part of direct-response advertising: you’re asking your prospect to immediately take an action; to respond to your offer. This doesn’t necessarily mean buying something. Your offer might be a free special report. Or an email newsletter. Any link in the sales chain. But the critical thing is that you ask for a response.

Calls to action can be very short. They can just be buttons or links. But if you’re using longer copy, a good CTA will summarize core benefits to responding, as well as including a clear and simple mechanism for doing so.

7. What you offer makes all the difference

Not only do your prospects have to understand your offer…but you also have to be offering something they want. This doesn’t mean you have to completely rethink your core business model if you’re not getting much success in your marketing. Rather, you have to rethink your language.

What’s the difference, for example, between these two offers?

1. If you buy two widgets, we’ll give them both to you at half price
2. If you buy a widget, we’ll give you another one free

There’s no actual difference between what you get with these offers. But offer #2 will almost invariably pull much better than offer #1, because of how it’s phrased. Rather than having to buy two widgets (when you only really needed one) and getting a discount for doing so, you’re just buying the one you intended to—and getting a free extra one.

People love to get things for free, and they love to get things without taking any risk. So premiums and guarantees are very important elements in an offer. They can make a huge impact to your response rate. But whatever you’re offering, the way you phrase it can make the difference between success and failure.

Here’s a practical example from a recent consultation I did. My client was offering a kind of online training service—and to get people hooked, he included a free trial. What he was finding, though, was few people were signing up for this trial. My suspicion is the word ‘trial’ has lots of negative associations. “Try our free trial” sounds almost like asking them to do you a favor. Would “Get your first lesson free, with no obligation” work better?

I can’t tell you for sure, because we haven’t tested yet. But it demonstrates the principle.

8. Test everything

Your offer isn’t the only thing you should test. Because every list and every product is different, it’s crucial to test as many different ways of promoting it as you can.

You might be getting a 5% conversion rate off your existing marketing, and making a tidy profit—but how do you know you couldn’t be getting a 10% conversion rate if you made some simple changes?

In direct-response advertising, testing requires weeks to gather meaningful results—and it can be very expensive. For example, if you want to test two different headlines, you have to create a separate mailing for each, print it, send it to a reasonably-sized segment of your list, and then wait for the responses to come in.

Online, split testing like this is simple, cheap—and you get results in mere hours. There are many web-based tools for split-testing different pages to see how they do—Google Website Optimizer and Visual Website Optimizer are two popular ones—plus of course KISSmetrics lets you visualize your conversion rate across split-tested pages. And most email campaign tools allow you to segment your list and send different campaigns to each, with different subject lines, calls to action and so on (I use MailChimp, but a lot of people are fond of Aweber)

If you aren’t testing, you’re simply leaving money on the table. I’ve seen split testing a website yield a 400% increase in profits.

Summing up

The Internet is a direct-response medium. Websites, being naturally interactive, are as direct-response as you can get. And emails are the electronic descendants of traditional sales letters. Any marketing you do online, then, can benefit from the application of the principles which have made direct-response advertising such a successful industry.

Bnonn is known in the boroughs as Information Highwayman—the dashing & debonair conversion-rate consultant and attention-thief. When he ain’t writing wallet-pilfering content or cleaning up at poker, he’s helping business owners get better returns from their marketing. His free Ace o’ Spades newsletter comes with a complimentary copy of ‘The Busy Business-Owner’s Cheat-Sheet For Web Copy That Works’.

With website conversions there’s always something to test, something to improve on. Of course you have the biggies like accessibility, third-party endorsements (think Trust Seals like Verisign and Comodo) and a clean, fast-loading design, but there are also several “small” things lots of people miss.

Here are 7 you’ve probably never heard of. Individually, they can each give a nice bump to your conversion rate, and collectively, the effect can be enormous.

1. Remove (or Change) Your CAPTCHA

A CAPTCHA is a form visitors have to fill out to prove they are human. It gives them a series of random letters, numbers or words that are hard for a human to read and it nearly impossible for a computer, helping stop spambots. You might be using one on your registration or comment form.

The problem with CAPTCHAs isn’t that they don’t work. It’s that they often work a little too well.

This study from SEOmoz shows that, while the CAPTCHA was pretty good at keeping out the riff-raff, the number of failed submissions that happened when it was turned on vastly outweigh the few spam messages that came through.

If it’s too difficult to figure out, lots of people get frustrated and leave. If the CAPTCHA is on your comment form for your blog, then maybe that’s not a big deal, but if it’s on your registration or sales page, it could potentially be costing you thousands of dollars.

Still, if you get a good bit of spam on a daily basis, not having a CAPTCHA on your form simply isn’t an option. If that’s the case, choose one that’s as user-friendly as possible. Personally, I would recommend NuCAPTCHA, an up-and-coming alternative which has a simple but highly effective method for sifting out the spambots without causing readability issues for normal visitors.

2. Contrast Your Button Colors

While it defies all logic, choosing a button color that fits in with your overall color scheme can actually hurt conversions.

For instance, in a button color test run by Performable, the red button outperformed the green by 21%. When you consider the connotations that red versus green have and how they affect our everyday lives, it’s surprising. You’d think green would do better.

But in general, it’s not only about colors. It’s about contrast. If you look at the example below, the red pops out because the rest of the page is so subdued.

Lesson learned: Don’t be surprised if changes to something as simple as a button color make a dramatic difference in your conversion rate. Use contrast to make your buttons standout, so visitors don’t miss them.

3. Explain What “Free” Means

You’d think that telling people your offer is free would get them to sign up, right?

Well, it used to, back in the glory days of the web, but people have gotten so used to free offers that they’re getting more and more suspicious. They start looking for the catch.

For instance, will they have to:

· Go through a lengthy sign-up process consisting of multiple upsells?

· Give you all of their personal information, exposing them to email pitches and telemarketers?

· Handover their credit card, so you can bill them a few weeks or months later?

Chances are, they feel like they’ve been tricked before, and they don’t want it to happen again. If you want them to move forward, you need to qualify your call to action.

Use phrases like, “Instant Access,” “No Registration Required,” or “No Credit Card Required” to let them know you’re not trying to dupe them somehow. In general, the smaller and easier you make the commitment, the higher your conversion rate will be.

4. Make Returns Easier

One of the most difficult parts of buying online is not being able to hold the product in your hand. Sure, you can see pictures, but who’s to say they are accurate? Most of the time, you don’t know if it’s what you really want until you get the product and have a chance to use it.

And that scares people.

What if they buy it and don’t like it? What if they accidentally bought the wrong model? What if it doesn’t work?

All of the “what-if’s” can stop them from buying. That’s why many companies with strong online presences are offering more liberal return policies.

One of the most heralded examples of a great customer returns policy can be found at Zappos, where the company foots (haha) the bill for shipping both ways. If you buy the wrong shoe, no big deal. You can just return it and get another one.

5. Display a Privacy Policy on Your Opt in Forms

This one is simple enough, but it’s also easy to forget. How often have you put up a new website and intended to have a privacy policy, but he never got around to drafting one?

These days, you don’t even have to do it yourself. You can use a generator like www.freeprivacypolicy.com that makes creating a privacy policy push-button simple.

6. Offer a Video Option (Even if your Users Don’t Use It!)

ReelSEO did an interesting study regarding the use of video on product pages. Even if participants didn’t watch the video, conversion rates on those pages increased –sometimes by as much as 46%!

There are several reasons why:

• People like to see what they’re buying, as well as who they’re buying from. If you’re willing to show your face, your office, and your product on camera, then chances are it’s not a scam.
• If you’re likable, your personality will probably come through a lot stronger on video and audio. And people buy from who they like.
• We live in a TV culture. We’ve been conditioned through years and years of TV and movies to enjoy watching videos

So, give it a try. Look for a way to demonstrate your product, a story you can tell, or a lesson you can give, and film it. Then upload it to your website as a video.

7. Capitalize on Your Error Pages

Are your error pages letting sales slip through the cracks?

Obviously you should try to fix any missing pages that show up in your analytics, but for some sites, it’s not always possible. In these cases, use error pages strategically to corral them to related products or articles they may be interested in. RedEnvelope even goes so far as to give people a 10% discount when they happen to land on a Not Found page.

It’s about Making It Easier for the Customer to Buy

Sometimes, we get caught up trying to sell people, when all they really want is for us to make it easier for them to buy. If we can just make it simple and pain-free, they’re ready to take action.

So, concentrate on removing barriers. Go through your sales process and think about what might be stopping your customers from buying, and then figure out how to make it easier.

It won’t just give you a better conversion rate. It will also make your customers happier, giving you the chance to do business with them for years to come.

Start improving your conversions today

We’ve made it easy for you to identify bottlenecks in your conversion funnels and improve results. KISSmetrics is the simplest and easiest way to improve your conversions and get more customers. Sign up for a 30-day free trial today.

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps businesses improve web design, performance and conversions at iElectrify.com.

Often described as the “Original Mad Man,” and “The Father of Advertising,” Ogilvy is known largely for his advertising work while serving as the founder of Ogilvy & Mather. In addition to building a multibillion dollar company, he also helped create hugely successful campaigns for clients such as Dove, Shell, and Rolls-Royce.

If you spend any amount of time reading or watching David, you’re sure to be inspired to write better copy, so I’d encourage you to read his book or watch some of the videos floating around the web. In the meantime though, I’d like to present you with what I believe to be the best of Ogilvy’s arsenal:

1. Go Big or Go Home

Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals. -David Ogilvy

The product you represent is depending on you, and if you allow yourself to take shortcuts or present a less than compelling argument, then you’ve failed. As an entrepreneur or business owner, you simply cannot afford bad copy. If you cannot achieve perfection on your own, then you should hire someone who can.

2. Do Your Homework

Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals. -David Ogilvy

Ogilvy spent years working for George Gallup, founder of the Gallup Poll, and it was during this time that he realized the true value that comes with knowing exactly what your target audience is thinking.

You cannot write copy unless you know:

• Who you’re writing it for
• How that person thinks
• What that person needs

If you haven’t done your research, then you’re simply faking it, and it’s that type of copy that gets marketers in trouble, either with the government or with their boss.

To write great copy, you need to understand your audience to the letter, so that you know how you can best serve them. Nothing else will do.

3. Never Talk down to Your Customers

A consumer is not a moron. She’s your wife. Don’t insult her intelligence, and don’t shock her. -David Ogilvy

This is a great Ogilvy quote (for the video, click here), speaking on behalf of consumers everywhere. As great as your product may be, speaking down to your audience is going to turn them away, and as much as you’d love them to be infatuated with your charming pitch, understand that, at the end of the day, they simply want to solve a problem.

Treat your customer with respect and dignity. You’re on equal footing, or perhaps a bit lower, considering you’re the one who needs the sale. Reflect that position in your copy.

4. The Headline is 80%

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar. -David Ogilvy

Headlines are as close to a magic bullet as you’re going to get, and if you’re going to be perfect in only once place, do it here. Write a strong headline that works.

Here’s how:

• Use headline templates, which are based on headlines that have worked in the past
• Lead with a strong benefit, making them want to read more
• If you can, split test different headlines to see what works best

5. Don’t Get Distracted from Making the Sale

If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative. -David Ogilvy

Couldn’t be more true. Marketers love to be cute and funny, original and innovative, but it’s also dangerous.

People don’t set aside time to read ads; they are probably in a hurry, just taking a quick glance before they move on to something else. If your point isn’t immediately obvious, chances are they won’t get it, and you’ll lose them forever.

If you want people to buy, you need them to see your product in their hands and be able to envision how it’ll improve their lives. Everything else is secondary. If you can awe them with your words in the process, fine, but don’t do it at the expense of the sale.

6. Explain Why They Should Buy

The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be. -David Ogilvy

You’ve hooked them with the headline, and you’re telling them all about the product, but before they decide to buy from you, they want to know one thing:

Why?

Why is the product important? Why is it a good deal? Why should they be interested? Why should they buy it from you? Why should they buy it now, rather than later? Why should they trust you?

Consciously or subconsciously, all of those questions are going through a customer’s head. If you want them to act, you need to answer them, and that means making your copy informative.

7. Your Copy Is Important. Treat It That Way.

Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns. -David Ogilvy

All too often, business owners treat their sales copy like an afterthought. They scribble down a few notes, have someone check it to make sure it’s grammatically correct, and send it out. Then they wonder why it doesn’t get results.

David Ogilvy, on the other hand, looked at each of his campaigns like his babies. He nurtured them, fought for them, helped them develop. And he produced some of the best-selling campaigns in the history of advertising.

The truth is, writing great copy takes time and energy. Some of the best copywriters will spend weeks just crafting the headline, and they might take months to write the body copy.

It’s not because they’re slow. It’s because they know the importance of getting it right.

Are you committed to that type of excellence?

If not, you should be.

About the Author: Nathan Hangen is an entrepreneur, author, and co-founder of the Fountainhead Society.

They’re those designers, writers and marketing consultants who have their own ideas about how everything should be done.

Oh, sure, they listen to your instructions, but you can tell they secretly think you’re an idiot. If you insist on them doing things your way, they get upset and threaten to walk out on you.

Sometimes you want to throw them all out a window, right?

I can sympathize. Over the years, I’ve had to work with my share of creative prima donnas. It’s frustrating. You’ve seen the great results they’re capable of, but dealing with their arguments and eye rolling may seem like it’s not worth it.

I’ve also worked on some amazing creative teams that produced jaw-dropping work, even though there were some prima donnas on board. Through it all, I learned a powerful lesson: you can’t treat creative prima donnas the same as you do “regular” employees.

No, you don’t have to put up with tantrums. No, you don’t have to let them do everything their way. No, you don’t have to accept whatever work they feel is “best” for your company.

But there are some rules you should follow.

It took me years to learn them, and now that I have, working with “creative prima donnas” isn’t nearly as tough as it used to be. If you do it right, it can be a real pleasure.

Let’s take a look:

1. Work with the Smartest People You Can Find

If you’re putting together a team, don’t be afraid to be the dumbest person in the room. As a matter of fact, that’s a pretty good goal to keep in mind.

Here’s why:

Smart people aren’t just good at coming up with brilliant ideas. They’re good at explaining them, debating them, and also seeing other people’s points of view.

In my experience, most of the freelancers who are the hardest to work with aren’t geniuses. They are the people who willfully refuse to think. They have an opinion, but they don’t have anything to back it up, and so when you try to discuss their ideas in more depth, they just get mad.

Truly brilliant people don’t do this. Put half a dozen of them in a room, and sure, you’ll have some disagreements. Chances are though, they’ll be high-level, well-thought-out disagreements, and if everyone sticks with it, they can probably come to a consensus.

You don’t have to feel threatened by it. In fact, one way to know you’re on the right track is when you have half a dozen million people all debating about the right way to go.

The trick is, you also have to give them the freedom to have that debate.

2. Give Them the Freedom to Suck (at First)

What’s Rule Number One we all learned about brainstorming? “No idea is too ridiculous,” right?

There’s a reason for that rule.

Group members want to feel like they can say anything when it’s time to generate ideas. No notion should be too far out, and no idea too crazy.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve participated in brainstorming sessions where someone blurted out a crazy idea, and someone else followed the thread until it led to the idea we all decided to implement.

Occasionally getting a dumb idea out of the way serves to clear our neural pathways so that a really great idea can come bursting forth. And sometimes one stupid notion becomes the inspiration for an innovative, groundbreaking plan.

This kind of thinking can only happen in an environment where all ideas are welcome, so avoid shooting down ideas when they bubble to the surface, no matter who they come from or how outrageous they sound.

3. Give the Group the Power to Decide

If you’ve handled the brainstorming right, you end up with a long list of concepts to explore. Some are junk, but others may be diamonds in the rough.

It may be tempting to have the most senior member of the group decide where to take the ideas you’ve generated. Don’t do it.

Once you’ve gathered a good group of concepts, get everyone together and prioritize the contributions. Decide as a group what’s useable and what’s not.

Sure, it’ll probably take some time. Sure, you’ll probably have some heated arguments. Sure, you’ll want to say, “I’m the expert here. Do what I say.”

But if you’ll trust the group, and commit to coming to a consensus, you’ll always be better off. Your end product will be stronger because of the range of ideas you’ve brought together.

4. Share the Red Pen

Finalizing a project always involves refining and perfecting it. This is where the red correction pen comes into play.

One of the first things I do with a new design client is give them a few of my favorite brand of red pens. I tell them that I expect they’ll need to make changes to the projects we work on, and I welcome their contributions.

The red pen makes it easier for me to see what they’d like to change, and read the notes they scribble to me.

I sometimes send the corrected work back to them with my own mark ups. I make their changes and suggest others. Design, at its best, is a collaborative process. This kind of back-and-forth refinement is a great way to perfect your ideas.

5. Treat Them like What They Are: Valuable

It’s important for people on your team, no matter how small a role they play, to feel like they can contribute to all stages of your project: idea generation; product creation and refinement.

Cultivating an environment where team members feel free to contribute, even if you have a small business, and even if those team members are temporary or freelance workers, will always get you a stronger final product.

It’s no fun to be stuck on the tracks with a project leader who’s about to run you over. Don’t be that person.

What do you do to encourage your team members to contribute? What have I left out? I’d like to hear from you in the comments.

About the author: Pamela Wilson helps small businesses grow with great design at Big Brand System.

Well… yeah.

It’s sad, but in the years I’ve been in the business, I’ve seen companies burned, stung, robbed, and strung out by unethical copywriters who couldn’t care less about them. To them, you’re just a walking ATM machine, and they lay awake at night, figuring out how to press all your buttons.

I know because my clients have told me. Sometimes, they tell me because the lie worked, and they’re thinking about taking their business away from my firm, but lots of times, it’s the opposite. They know it’s a lie, but they just can’t figure out how.

As much as some freelance copywriters would like to believe it, business owners aren’t stupid. You know when someone isn’t being straight with you. Maybe you just need someone to verify it, and so that’s what I’d like to do.

It’s ironic for me, a freelance copywriter, to be writing on the lies told within our field – but who better to reveal their lies than someone who’s right in the thick of it?

And here’s why: they make the honest ones look bad. Plenty of copywriters operate with full integrity, but when we have to struggle with a reputation given us by less ethical writers… well, it’s time to fight back.

Here are 10 of the most common lies copywriters like to tell. Take a look, so you’ll be ready:

1. “Every project is unique and I can’t quote you until I know more.”

Every project is unique, true, but top copywriters wouldn’t be where they are today if they didn’t have a good idea of ballpark rates and averages. Most top copywriters display their rates in plain view – they have nothing to hide.

Anytime you see this line, you can be sure that you’re dealing with either an inexperienced writer who isn’t sure of what to charge or a sleaze who is out to charge an arbitrary rate based on how much they think they can squeeze you. Either way, you can do better.

2. “I need to know your budget before I can quote.”

Why? So you can take all of it?

Writers who ask for your budget before giving you a quote are usually trying to figure out how much you can afford, or who want to push you just over your budget so they can get more out of you.

The good writers? They’ll either try to find a solution that fits or say they’ll be there to help when you do have the money saved up.

And they’ll never ask you for your budget.

3. “I’m qualified, because I have a degree in English literature.”

While having a degree is nice, those English lit degrees aren’t any measure of quality copywriting. They’re actually pretty useless where copywriting is concerned, because the field has far more to do with sales and marketing than with literature. Truth be told, most top copywriters don’t even have degrees.

Degrees don’t matter. Results do. The good copywriters aren’t going to show you their credentials; they’re going to show you what they’ve achieved for other clients, and they’ll tell you about the results they can get for your business.

4. “I had to quote high because of the time I’ll need to write this.”

Want to know a dirty little secret?

Top copywriters produce fantastic copy in minutes. The actual writing doesn’t take much time at all, and no copywriter worth his or her salt charges on an hourly basis. High rates are high because of the writer’s skills, experience, reputation and ability to get results. Good copywriters charge that much because they’re that good, not because they’re that slow.

A writer who justifies high rates with high hours is trying to make you think he or she is slaving away for days. It might be true, it might not, but the bottom line for you is that you expect results, and a copywriter whining about time doesn’t help you get them.

5. “Your email hit my spam folder.”

This time-stalling trick isn’t just used by copywriters – it’s the perfect excuse for anyone who wants to avoid dealing with you, for whatever reason. Maybe they’re running behind and can’t deliver on time. Maybe they don’t feel like making changes you’ve requested.

Whatever the reason for wanting to stall, the spam folder provides an easy excuse. Your communication disappears as if it never existed, and by the time the copywriter says, “Oops, I’m sorry,” it’s just too late.

The good copywriters? They know business, and they know that regular spam checkups is just part of the routine – no one’s email gets lost.

6. “I’m booked, so I can only squeeze you in if you pay a rush fee.”

This is pure psychological manipulation, and it works very nicely. A perception of being in demand makes you want the copywriter more, thanks to the magic of social proof.

The really in-demand copywriters don’t play these games. They don’t squeeze anyone, because they don’t need to. They have plenty of work, they’re not interested in filling up their plate, and they can afford to tell you that you have to wait your turn. Which you should do – it saves you money, and the results are worth it.

7. “You get what you pay for.”

Meh, maybe, if we’re discussing cars. But when it comes to freelance copywriting, there’s no such yardstick. You’ll find high-priced, poor-quality copywriters ready to take advantage of you and you’ll find just as many low-priced, fantastic copywriters ready to get you results.

Unscrupulous freelancers use this “get what you pay for” routine to elevate themselves and make you feel cheap. This influences you to hire them to show you aren’t a skinflint Scrooge.

But real copywriters? They simply point you to substantial portfolios and testimonials that prove they’re worth every penny. They don’t need to make you feel bad, and they don’t want to.

8. “All you need to make sales is great copy.”

That’s just silly. If great copy was all we needed to make sales, we could do away with websites, marketing campaigns, driving traffic, providing good customer service – there’s just no need!

Uh… no.

The best copy in the world won’t do anything for your sales if you don’t have a clear plan, tools, resources, tactics and strategies in place to draw in potential customers, convey trust and credibility and get their eyes on the page so they start to read. It’s just one piece of a successful business.

9. “This copy will sell anyone.”

Any copywriter worth his QWERTY knows this is a crock. You can’t write copy targeting “anyone” – good copy is crafted to reach specific people with specific problems. It’s laser focused on the ideal customer, and it repels anyone else.

Unscrupulous writers won’t ask questions about your target market, and the result is that they won’t sell much to anyone at all, including your ideal customer. They’ll miss all the crucial elements of good copy, like hitting the right pain point, addressing concerns, providing convincing benefits and drawing in your ideal customer to a sale.

10. “I know what I’m doing, and if you’re smart, you’ll trust me.”

This is meant to position them as an authority, but as anyone knows, people who feel the need to point out they know what they’re doing probably don’t know what they’re doing at all. And frankly, if you weren’t worried before, the statement “trust me” certainly raises an important question in your head: “Can I?”

The answer is… probably not.

Self-confidence in skills and knowledge is something that’s easily communicated and nearly tangible. You don’t have to be told – you can clearly see the copywriter knows exactly what he or she is doing without that person even saying a word.

Does a copywriter asking you to trust them guarantee they are shady?

No, but it’s another red flag. None of the lies we’ve covered here are enough by themselves to condemn anyone, but put several of them together, and it should set off warning bells. The slimiest copywriters use each of these lies intentionally, and having a collection to watch for, it should be easy for you to spot them.

About the author: James Chartrand is a straight-shooting copywriter from Men with Pens.