When your sales page isn’t converting the way you need it to, it doesn’t just hurt your bottom line – it can cripple your confidence as a writer and make you doubt your future as a marketer.

On top of that, the frustration of having to rewrite underperforming copy can make copywriting seem like a tedious chore instead of the enjoyable exercise in persuasion it’s meant to be.

Fortunately, there are simple (but powerful) ways to write highly effective copy the first time – copy that gets readers emotionally invested and ready to click that “Add to Cart” button.

Read the next few paragraphs, and you’ll have a step-by-step, can’t miss foundation that will make your next sales letter a whole lot easier to write.

1. Get in touch with the pain your reader brings to the table

Features aren’t what sell your product – solution-oriented benefits are. You know, the kind of things that say “That thing that’s keeping you up at night? This will fix it.” Before you even begin to try and impress your readers with how incredible your offer is, you’ve got to establish situational relevance with them.

You absolutely must get yourself in tune with the pain points that are bringing them to a buying decision. Why are they searching for the kind of thing you’re writing about? What’s holding them back, causing them stress, or making them break out into a cold sweat?

Take the time to step into your future customer’s shoes and get a sense of what they’re feeling. What are the most important pain points that they care about, the ones that make them say “If only this could be taken care of, I’d buy that solution in a heartbeat?”

Then you can begin framing your product not as “impressive,” but as “the thing that makes their pain go away.”

2. Understand their frustration with “so far” and “out there.”

Chances are, your reader has tried to find a solution on their own. They may have tried everything and seen no meaningful result – or worse yet, they could have seen their efforts blow up in their face. This is the “so far” element you have to look into (and if you’ve already stepped into your customer’s shoes, you’ll probably have an idea of how this could play out).

This is your chance to think about how your product or service can work for them, even if they’ve failed “so far.” Consider how you’re going to position what you’re selling as a way to make sure those mistakes don’t happen in the past. This time, it’s different. Why? It’s your job to figure that out and express it.

The same goes for the “out there.” Your customers may be feeling frustrated that others have it easier in terms of having this problem solved, because other people are smarter, or more established, or naturally have the deck stacked in their favor. There’s a lot of “if only I had what they have …” thinking going on in your customer’s head, and if you can demonstrate how your offer closes the gap, then you’re halfway to the sale.

3. Step them into their “Dream Situation”

Once your reader understands that your offering might just be what helps them get away from their pain and frustration, it’s time to take them a step further. Envision what your customer’s perfect outcome would look like as they use your product or service. What problems go away? What new opportunities appear? What changes happen in their life?

People don’t buy products – they buy outcomes. Look closely at the outcomes that your offer can produce for your customers and help them see themselves there. Phrases like “Imagine if …” and “Just think of when …” contain powerful words.

Let them taste their future, and craft your sentences in such a way that they can immerse themselves in the feeling of being there. When you do this part right, you’ve helped them vividly see how your solution can move them away from pain and frustration and towards their desired outcome.

4. Close the deal with an “Ideal Solution”

By this time your reader is excited at the prospect of making their outcome happen – and now’s your chance to position your product as a slam-dunk solution. This is where you bring the features of your offer into play, stepping them through the specifics of why what you’re offering is perfectly suited to helping them achieve that desired outcome.

Maybe it’s the format you’re delivering it in – audio, video and PDFs are a great way to guarantee hitting the top learning modalities customers want. Maybe there’s one-on-one consulting tied into the offer, or a Third Tribe-style online community … or maybe it’s all of this.

Since your customer’s shoes are still on, think about how your he or she would view the ideal delivery method of your solution. Ask yourself what would make it easier for a customer to tap into the power of your offer, and then make sure it’s worked into your product or service.

Once you’ve done that, all that’s left is communicating just how well-suited your offer is to easing their pain, ending their frustration, and helping them finally get closer to their dream situation.

Use these four steps to make your next sales letter much more powerful

There’s no denying the power of a solid headline and a killer set of opening paragraphs. But the source of that power comes from these four elements – wrap them into the headlines and teaser text at the beginning of your sales letter, and your chances of having readers stick with you to the end go through the roof.

Need proof? No you don’t – because I worked these four steps into the introduction of this very post … and you’re still here.

The question is, where will these four steps take you next. Take a moment in the comments to share which of these points resonated with you the most, and how you can use them to make your next offer more enticing than ever.

About the Author: Dave Navarro is a product launch manager who can’t wait for you to join the 7,000+ people using his free workbooks in the Launch Coach Library (a crowd favorite in the Third Tribe forums).

You may think you only need to learn about conversion strategies if you are creating & selling products. Or if you’re a super affiliate, or an aggressive email marketer.

But that’s not the case.

ANYone who is working online needs to be able to convert. Like a blogger who wants to build a strong personal brand, with an active readership and community. Yes, even if you are not directly selling anything to your readers…

Your conversion rate is something you always want to improve. From the opt-in conversion rate, to the conversion rate on a sales letter or affiliate promotion, higher conversions equal more profit. Period.

Getting people to take action – such as clicking a link in your tweet, subscribing to your list, or buying a product – is something you must master to make money online. So today I’m going to give you the 32 most powerful “conversion triggers” of all time. And I’m going to give it to you completely free, with no catch…

Download The 32 Most Powerful Conversion Triggers Of All Time

Before you dive in, let me back up and tell you how this brand new free resource came to life.

3 months ago I met a really cool and interesting marketer. We met at Yanik’s UG6 Seminar in Washington, DC and decided then and there that we would be working together. We weren’t sure on what exactly, just that we definitely would.

His name is Oliver Olsen and we simply hit it off. We spent hours brainstorming ideas and discussing our business models and long term goals. We have continued brainstorming via email & Skype since that weekend in DC, and my opinion has not changed. In fact, my gut feeling has been confirmed accurate – the man is brilliant.

This exclusive free report that teaches you how to increase your conversion rates, improve your influence with your target market, and shows you how to create loyalty and trust… is just the beginning of what you’ll be seeing from us.

You won’t find this report anywhere else online…

And we are giving it to you free!

I just read through the final draft myself, and I got a lot of creative ideas from each of the 32 “conversion triggers”. Everything from increasing the number of subscribers to my mailing lists, to (much) better ways to close a blog post (even when I’m not selling anything at all).

That was my biggest take-away from the report: the fact that conversion strategies are something I can use in more than just sales messages – they are something I can use to build or grow anything I am working on. Whether that be a podcast, a blog, a product, a following on Facebook or Twitter – you name it!

Converting visitors into buyers is the topic of a lot of questions I receive. A lot of people struggle with “asking for the sale”, or the best way to present a “call-to-action”.

Some worry that their marketing message will annoy readers. And done wrong, it often will. But done right, they will actually appreciate you and your offer.

There’s so much more I could say, but this report is free – and it’s a quick & easy read. So I’ll close now and let you get straight to it so you can read over it yourself.

Direct Download Link

After you read The 32 Most Powerful Conversion Triggers Of All Time leave a comment below and share your thoughts with us. I look forward to hearing your biggest take-away from the report.

Feel free to share this exclusive free report with your groups & friends!

Best,

p.s. Grab this free report now while you can, and then stay tuned – Oliver and I will be bringing you even more cool stuff in the near future!

If you haven’t experienced it, you’ve seen it.

Whether you’re a blogger or a marketer — or both — you’ve seen an audience rise up in revolt the moment someone tries to make a buck.

You’ve sold out! You didn’t disclose!

Whatever the contention, one thing is clear. Something backfired and backfired hard.

Nobody likes having to tip-toe around the fact that you’re in this to make money. Many bloggers end up groveling to their readers by low-balling prices for any product they release.

It is a real shame, too, because there are so many bloggers out there with very large audiences who find themselves incapable or unwilling to monetize by launching a product.

So, this raises a few questions:

• How do you avoid this issue altogether?
• How do you prepare your audience for your prices?
• How can you charge higher prices for your products?

Reciprocity — with a cap

All experienced marketers know about the power of reciprocity. Give a bunch of stuff away and the prospect feels more obliged to give back. Sounds great.

You can, however, take it too far.

As a young father, I’ve learned that you lead by example. If I go around cursing in front of my little girl, all of a sudden she’s going to think that’s normal. Then other parents look at me weird and that’s not much fun.

The same goes for our blog audience.

It’s about establishing a pattern. If your pattern is nothing but free-free-free, then the minute you try to make a buck, it’s like a rock thrown into a cool, calm pond. It disrupts the pattern.

On the flip side, no content marketer can pull off a steady diet of sell-sell-sell. We members of the Third Tribe know that we need to do both. We’re always looking for that perfect balance. We play in the middle ground.

With your blog audience, it is important to show that you’re here to sell as well as to provide valuable free content. That means getting out in front of your audience with an offer of some kind.

Establish a pattern of free-free-free-sell, free-free-free-sell.

Many bloggers have asked me when the right time to monetize is. I always tell them: early.

It doesn’t matter if your audience is small. You want to establish a pattern and you want to do it early in the game.

The Starbucks lesson

If all you ever offer are $7 e-books, you position yourself as a person with low-end products.

In other words, you’re Wal-Mart. And high-end stuff doesn’t usually do well in a Wal-Mart aisle.

So, should you just increase your prices?

Well, yeah! However, you’ll be able to give a powerful “reason why” if you get out in front of the objection and provide a point of positioning.

How does Starbucks get away with charging $3 for a cup of coffee? They did it by re-defining the coffee experience. Instead of walking into a fast-food joint, they’ve provided a nice communal atmosphere with music.

They don’t even have small, medium and large sizes. That’s too similar to fast-food chains and would defeat their positioning. So they borrowed words from the Italian language, and now we routinely ask for “venti” coffees, even at other coffee shops.

How can you change your positioning on your blog? Good design and professional graphics will help provide the right atmosphere. But you can do more.

Offer consulting. Almost anybody in any niche can offer some kind of consulting option on their blog. Even if you’re into underwater basketweaving, you can offer 1-on-1 help to pick just the right pond to dive into for your next basket.

Set your price a bit on the high side. Right now, you’re not really interested if anybody takes you up on it. You just want that offer out there so that (a) it shows people that not all of your expertise is free, and (b) it gives a point of comparison for determining prices for your other offers.

If you charge $100/hour for consulting, then offering a product for $97 starts to look like a bargain. After all, the buyer gets all that information for less than the cost of an hour of time. And the value is real.

Blogging with a strategy in mind

If you want to make money, you need to establish your value.

Many bloggers are great at building up traffic, but establishing their own value seems to fall by the wayside.

So do all the good social media stuff. Provide seriously awesome content. Help people like crazy. Connect with them. Interact.

But . . .

While you’re making all those connections, establish your value. Let them know you’re there to do business, and that you aren’t cheap. Do it with confidence and without apology.

When you do that, you set the stage for them to know, like, and trust you. And then the game is yours to win.

Looking for that balance between connection and doing business? That’s what the Third Tribe is all about. If the idea intrigues you, check it out today, because the price goes up on June 1.

About the Author: David Risley is a full-time blogger who confesses regularly on his blog, Confessions of a Six-Figure Blogger. Tech blogger turned blog marketer, David now shows other bloggers have to turn their blogs into real businesses.

This is the final installment of a three-part series on how to translate advice from marketing guru Dan Kennedy to a new online environment.

One of the smartest things any online marketer can do is to study the “old school” guys who wrote direct mail, magazine ads, and other artifacts of advertising history.

Why? Because it took a tremendous understanding of the psychology of persuasion to make those tactics work.

When you pair shiny new communication technology with tried-and-true methods to persuade and sell, you hugely increase your odds of success.

So let’s continue exploring what old-school guru Dan Kennedy can teach us about 21st-century marketing. This week we’ll cover lessons 11 through 14 from Kennedy’s book The Ultimate Marketing Plan.

I can’t promise these tips will make cash start spewing out of your laptop. But they do represent a lot of sound business thinking.

(Incidentally, the links to the book are Amazon affiliate links, which means if you buy it, I’ll be able to buy a pack of gum! Put any of this advice into action and you should get quite a lot more out of the deal.)

11. Create a short-term sales surge

One of the factors that plagues most small businesses, especially when they’re starting out, is a shortage of cash.

Creating quick “sales surges” is one of Kennedy’s specialties, and he has a lot of suggestions for how to do that. (For more ideas, I can strongly recommend picking up his book.)

Essentially, though, all the variations come down to one basic strategy:

1. Make a great offer.
2. Limit it in time, number of copies you’ll sell, or both.
3. Make sure you come up with a good story or reason for the promotion.

Kennedy, as you can imagine, gives some rather old-school ideas like red tag sales or “My accountant thinks I’m crazy!”

He also likes to pluck interesting themes out of current events. For example, at a recent conference he invited loyal customers to bring old copies of his products in a “Cash for Clunkers” promotion.

Kennedy’s creativity is mostly involved in coming up with a reason for his promotions. But if selling information is part of what you do, you can also create a brand-new product for your “cash surge.” It doesn’t have to be extensive (it’s annoying how often we’re short on both cash and time). In fact, you can offer something that you develop over the weekend.

These “surges” can help any business, small or large, get through the lean times and amplify earnings during the best. And not only do short-term surges bring in cash, they also build your list of customers, strengthening your business for the long haul.

12. Take Advantage of New Marketing Technologies

As you might imagine, readers of Copyblogger are well ahead of the curve here. If any of these are missing from your current communication mix, you can very profitably add them to make your business stronger.

Audio, Video and Webinars: Record a meeting, training or presentation and post it to the web where you can repeatedly benefit.

Autoresponders: With a great autoresponder series, you can write copy which is delivered in a sequence, regardless of when a prospect signs up. This will enable you to automate your marketing and free up time to refine other aspects of your business. And they’re great for creating rapport and trust with your customers.

The next hot communication technology. Kennedy is a notorious technophobe; he doesn’t personally use email or the web at all.

But like many smart businesspeople, he’s willing to make money with new technology even though he personally dislikes it. In fact, Sonia seemed to have experienced a warm reception when she recently spoke at one of his conferences.

As long as a marketing tactic is ethical, be willing to consider it even if you aren’t personally a fan. If you hate Facebook but that’s where your customers are, you may want to suck it up.

13. Avoid employee sabotage

For those who use VAs or other employees (whether they’re on a contract or a regular payroll), there are some special areas to watch out for.

Employees are a reflection of both you and your business. Whether they are ringing up sales or answering email, they are ambassadors for your policies, and for how you feel about your customers.

In my first business, there were times when I would leave my shop on an errand only to come back to a rather unpleasant surprise.

“You said WHAT?”

“To who?!?!”

Delegating is a great thing (and usually necessary if you want your business to grow). But you must be the captain of your own marketing ship, as well as the navigator and the crew.

Even the most valuable employees are still just that — employees. And no one will ever care as much about your business as you do.

This is one reason the Partnering Profits model makes so much sense in the online world. Small businesses are easier and easier to create. It makes perfect sense to partner with people to run them with you, sharing the workload and the profit.

14. Hiring and firing experts

Learn from the best, but take everything with a grain of salt.

I’ve bought and absorbed numerous info products over the last year. Some were good, some were great, and a few were barely better than lousy.

Nevertheless, even the worst has taught me something.

You won’t learn it all in a day or a download, nor should you expect to. Someone asked an awesome question in Sonia’s Remarkable Marketing Blueprint forum the other day. They wondered, “What’s the point in having memberships in different sites, like Lateral Action, Third Tribe Marketing, and the Blueprint?”

I’m a member of all three, so I’m happy to share my thoughts on that.

There isn’t a single download that holds all the answers. Like life, we pick up a bit here and a bit there, all of it blending to make us who we are. We experience things differently at different times. True success is a slow and steady climb, rung by rung.

When you involve yourself with quality people who are putting out quality information, you get a better ladder. You still have to do the climbing yourself..

There is no guru or authority who can give you all the answers.

Not Dan Kennedy, not Brian Clark, not Sean Platt.

That said, you want to make sure you’re taking advice from someone who’s walked the walk.

In Cameron Crowe’s much-quoted movie “Say Anything“, there’s a scene where the hero, Lloyd Dobler, is standing at the gas station listening to a handful of lonely men handing out relationship advice. To which Lloyd says:

If you guys know so much about women, how come you’re here at, like, the Gas ‘n’ Sip on a Saturday night, completely alone drinking beers with no women anywhere?

Good question.

I would strongly recommend Dan Kennedy’s Ultimate Marketing Plan as a powerful resource that should be in any copywriter’s toolbox. He’s “walked the walk” and advised thousands of traditional businesses. And with a little creativity, his advice works just as well in the new online environment.

Obviously, the book contains more information than I could squeeze into a few thousand words. But I hope the “Cliff’s Notes” version has been useful!

Read the other posts in this series

• Lessons from one of the World’s Highest-Paid Copywriters: 1 – 5
• Lessons from one of the World’s Highest-Paid Copywriters: 6 – 10

About the Author: Sean Platt writes direct response copy, as well as helping authors write, publish and promote their book. Follow him on Twitter.

Do you despise long sales letters, yellow highlighters and blood-red, hype-laden headlines?

These tried and true copywriting tactics are proven winners at converting “cold” traffic into paying customers – and $10,000-a-page copywriters use them without hesitation because they appeal to the baser instincts of the easily swayed. They may be embarrassing to look at, but historically, they’ve just plain worked.

But if you’re a Third Tribe type of marketer, you’re in a quandary because you know these push-comes-to-shove sales page tactics just won’t work in your case.

They won’t work for you because you won’t be able to sleep at night. They won’t work for your audience either, because they’re smart and savvy, and they’ll lose faith in you and go off in search of someone more professional.

But these cheesy tactics are tempting nonetheless, because you’ve seen them on pages that you know are converting a lot of customers. Against your better instincts, you might feel a pull to use just one or two of them to stack the deck in your favor – especially if your current page isn’t converting as well as you’d hope.

There’s good news, though – you don’t have to sell your integrity to sell more of your products. All you need to do is learn how to use some semantic aikido to harness the power of these psychologically effective strategies – all the while saying “hold the cheese.”

Let’s take a look at 5 “hard sell” tactics and apply some Third Tribe magic to make them feel better for you and your future customers.

The “Everything Will Be Better In A Week” Tactic

You see this one all the time, online or off. Online it’s usually “Give me 7 days and you’ll have a horde of customers trampling each other to give you their money!” Offline it could be more subtle, such as the SlimFast slogan “Give us a week – we’ll take off the weight.” The promise is significant (as it should be in a headline) but it’s not realistic.

Sure, it works on those desperate for results, and that’s why it will never go away. But your customers are smart enough to know that they can’t really get those results, and that hurts your credibility. They know they’re not going to go from zero to $20,000 in a week or go from a complete unknown to A-list blogger in 7 days, no matter what people tell you.

But it still works on the easily swayed, because they’re desperate for results. Your audience may be desperate as well, but they’re just too darned smart to fall for the idea of an “instant solution.” So what can you do?

Take The Third Tribe Approach: Instead of promising instant victory over a situation, promise them immediate progress instead. For example, “Give me 7 days, and you’ll have a detailed and doable plan of action for getting more customers in the door this month.”
You’re still making the implicit promise of getting more customers, but you’re explicitly promising something more realistic in the short term – a sense of certainty about what actions to take next. That’s what gets product sold while protecting your credibility.

The “Set It On Autopilot” Tactic

I’m seeing this more and more online, and I’m sure you are too – phrases like “The Lazy Marketer’s Guide To Building an Email List” or “(result happens) automatically while you sleep!” Again, this tactic works on the easily swayed, because they are likely to, well, be pretty lazy people. They don’t want to do the work. They want to push that big red magic button and get their results.

But when you’re pitching to a more savvy, successful audience, this tactic backfires almost immediately. They know that success takes hard work (because they worked hard to be successful!) and that there’s very, very little in life that falls into the “set it and forget it” realm. And beyond that, they know if something seems “too easy” it’s either not legit or something that’s bound to be ineffective.

But in reality, there may be things about your product or service that for the most part have a “hands-off” aspect (for example, building a fantastic landing page that brings opt-in subscribers to your list day in and day out). How do you position these types of things without resorting to cheesy language?

Take The Third Tribe Approach: Instead of using words like “lazy way,” “autopilot,” or “does the work for you,” focus on how this aspect of your offer is truly something that streamlines a process that your reader knows is time or effort-intensive. Then follow up with the measurable benefit they receive.

For example, an email autoresponder service that “pulls in new subscribers like clockwork” sounds corny. But a service that automates opt-in form creation and has reporting statistics frees you from coding so you can spend that time tweaking forms for higher conversion.

Now you’re talking about automating one aspect so you can redirect time to higher-value activities … and that kind of benefit-driven description makes for a stronger selling point.

The “You’re Lucky I’m Talking To You” Tactic

This off-putting tactic is a staple of someone following the heavy-handed marketing techniques that by and large, have worked on the easily swayed in the past. You’ll see it in phrases like “At my normal hourly rate of $2,000/hour (if you could even get me!) …” and implies authority (based on the price) and a tension-inducing scarcity of the marketer’s time.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with stating your rates – mine are fairly high, and I use them as a selling point – but when you use it as the predominant selling point, it can work against you. This is especially true if you bring it all up before you’ve made your other, more significant selling points. And talking about how you don’t have time for clients can come off as reputation-diminishing bragging.

Savvy audiences don’t fall for this – they know that bragging is usually a sign of insecurity. And who wants to buy from someone who’s working so hard to try and impress you?

Take The Third Tribe Approach: Instead of leading with how in-demand you are and how expensive your rates are, save this selling point until later and gently position it in terms of the overall value you’re presenting and how the delivery medium causes a change in pricing.

There’s nothing pushy about saying “This workshop represents what I would cover in a ten hour, $2,500 one-on-one consulting package. But since I can only offer a large package like that to so many people, I’ve distilled those ten hours of consulting into a self-paced workshop that you can purchase for $197.”

With this approach, you’re not making a in-your-face statement that can turn off savvy customers, but you are effectively communicating the true value of what you’re offering in a way they can respect.

The “You’re Dead Meat If You Don’t Buy” Tactic

Since fear-based selling can be such an effective tactic, marketers often paint a post-apocalyptic picture of what will happen if you don’t buy their products. You may be told your business will fail, your competitors will eat your lunch and your spouse will leave you for a smarter, younger version of you who knows these “insider secrets.”

The idea is that if the sense of panic can be cranked up, the urgent need to find a solution will appear. And in 99 cases out of 100, you’ll find that same marketer telling you that only their product can save you from certain doom.

You’re too smart for this “Chicken Little” sales tactic, and since your customers are too, you need an approach that can boost the feelings of urgency and desire without resorting to panic.

Take The Third Tribe Approach: Instead of saying “all is lost” and pulling out the melodrama, paint a picture of how a particular product will be harder to solve without your product (and easier with it).

For example, you could say “It’s certainly possible to network with other savvy online business owners simply by participating in blog comments and using Twitter, but that can be a slow process with uncertain results. Being in the Third Tribe forums, however, means you’re immersed in the highest concentration of willing-to-network entrepreneurs you’re likely to find on the Internet – and that can take your business to the next level much faster.”

Could you write an effective sales letter without this tactic? You could, but you’d have to work a lot harder. (Get it?)

The “There’s No Good Reason Not To Buy” Tactic

I recently read a sales letter with this message at the bottom and shook my head, knowing that a few easily swayed individuals would fall for it. Certainly, it stands to reason that this line could work, because it’s one of those “proven” staples of a “good sales letter.” But it falls flat when selling to a savvy reader. (Which is a shame, because this marketer had a relatively savvy audience).

Why is it such an off-putting phrase? For starters, it’s insulting. It implies that whatever reason you have for not buying isn’t a reasonable one, and calling your potential (and intelligent!) customers unreasonable is a sure way to lose the sale – especially since the marketer doesn’t even know the objection.

And that’s where it gets embarrassing – because when readers realize they do have valid objections, it’s the marketer who looks foolish. Goodbye sale.

Take The Third Tribe Approach: Instead of trying to push your customers into this kind of hard-line close, do a little up-front research and discover as many potential objections as you can. Take each one and build a pre-emptive response into your sales letter.

For example, if price is an objection, remind them of how your product can pay for itself quickly. If satisfaction is an objection, re-emphasize how strong your guarantee is. The more thoroughly you defuse potential objections before the close, the less you have to work to close the sale.

And instead of bullying customers into having “no good reason not to buy,” you’re reminding them of all the very good reasons they have to give your product a shot.

What’s Your Sales Page Personal Pet Peeve?

These are only five old-school tactics that make your sales page unattractive to the Third Tribe type of customer – and as a savvy entrepreneur you’re likely to have your own set of sales page elements that drive you crazy. Share them in the comments below – and if you don’t mind, briefly tell us what you see as the “Third Tribe” alternative.

About the Author: Dave Navarro is a product launch manager who proudly wears his Third Tribe colors – and invites you to join the thousands of people who have downloaded his free workbooks in the Launch Coach Library (no opt-in required). There’s really no good reason not to.

Do you despise long sales letters, yellow highlighters and blood-red, hype-laden headlines?

These tried and true copywriting tactics are proven winners at converting “cold” traffic into paying customers – and $10,000-a-page copywriters use them without hesitation because they appeal to the baser instincts of the easily swayed. They may be embarrassing to look at, but historically, they’ve just plain worked.

But if you’re a Third Tribe type of marketer, you’re in a quandary because you know these push-comes-to-shove sales page tactics just won’t work in your case.

They won’t work for you because you won’t be able to sleep at night. They won’t work for your audience either, because they’re smart and savvy, and they’ll lose faith in you and go off in search of someone more professional.

But these cheesy tactics are tempting nonetheless, because you’ve seen them on pages that you know are converting a lot of customers. Against your better instincts, you might feel a pull to use just one or two of them to stack the deck in your favor – especially if your current page isn’t converting as well as you’d hope.

There’s good news, though – you don’t have to sell your integrity to sell more of your products. All you need to do is learn how to use some semantic aikido to harness the power of these psychologically effective strategies – all the while saying “hold the cheese.”

Let’s take a look at 5 “hard sell” tactics and apply some Third Tribe magic to make them feel better for you and your future customers.

The “Everything Will Be Better In A Week” Tactic

You see this one all the time, online or off. Online it’s usually “Give me 7 days and you’ll have a horde of customers trampling each other to give you their money!” Offline it could be more subtle, such as the SlimFast slogan “Give us a week – we’ll take off the weight.” The promise is significant (as it should be in a headline) but it’s not realistic.

Sure, it works on those desperate for results, and that’s why it will never go away. But your customers are smart enough to know that they can’t really get those results, and that hurts your credibility. They know they’re not going to go from zero to $20,000 in a week or go from a complete unknown to A-list blogger in 7 days, no matter what people tell you.

But it still works on the easily swayed, because they’re desperate for results. Your audience may be desperate as well, but they’re just too darned smart to fall for the idea of an “instant solution.” So what can you do?

Take The Third Tribe Approach: Instead of promising instant victory over a situation, promise them immediate progress instead. For example, “Give me 7 days, and you’ll have a detailed and doable plan of action for getting more customers in the door this month.”
You’re still making the implicit promise of getting more customers, but you’re explicitly promising something more realistic in the short term – a sense of certainty about what actions to take next. That’s what gets product sold while protecting your credibility.

The “Set It On Autopilot” Tactic

I’m seeing this more and more online, and I’m sure you are too – phrases like “The Lazy Marketer’s Guide To Building an Email List” or “(result happens) automatically while you sleep!” Again, this tactic works on the easily swayed, because they are likely to, well, be pretty lazy people. They don’t want to do the work. They want to push that big red magic button and get their results.

But when you’re pitching to a more savvy, successful audience, this tactic backfires almost immediately. They know that success takes hard work (because they worked hard to be successful!) and that there’s very, very little in life that falls into the “set it and forget it” realm. And beyond that, they know if something seems “too easy” it’s either not legit or something that’s bound to be ineffective.

But in reality, there may be things about your product or service that for the most part have a “hands-off” aspect (for example, building a fantastic landing page that brings opt-in subscribers to your list day in and day out). How do you position these types of things without resorting to cheesy language?

Take The Third Tribe Approach: Instead of using words like “lazy way,” “autopilot,” or “does the work for you,” focus on how this aspect of your offer is truly something that streamlines a process that your reader knows is time or effort-intensive. Then follow up with the measurable benefit they receive.

For example, an email autoresponder service that “pulls in new subscribers like clockwork” sounds corny. But a service that automates opt-in form creation and has reporting statistics frees you from coding so you can spend that time tweaking forms for higher conversion.

Now you’re talking about automating one aspect so you can redirect time to higher-value activities … and that kind of benefit-driven description makes for a stronger selling point.

The “You’re Lucky I’m Talking To You” Tactic

This off-putting tactic is a staple of someone following the heavy-handed marketing techniques that by and large, have worked on the easily swayed in the past. You’ll see it in phrases like “At my normal hourly rate of $2,000/hour (if you could even get me!) …” and implies authority (based on the price) and a tension-inducing scarcity of the marketer’s time.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with stating your rates – mine are fairly high, and I use them as a selling point – but when you use it as the predominant selling point, it can work against you. This is especially true if you bring it all up before you’ve made your other, more significant selling points. And talking about how you don’t have time for clients can come off as reputation-diminishing bragging.

Savvy audiences don’t fall for this – they know that bragging is usually a sign of insecurity. And who wants to buy from someone who’s working so hard to try and impress you?

Take The Third Tribe Approach: Instead of leading with how in-demand you are and how expensive your rates are, save this selling point until later and gently position it in terms of the overall value you’re presenting and how the delivery medium causes a change in pricing.

There’s nothing pushy about saying “This workshop represents what I would cover in a ten hour, $2,500 one-on-one consulting package. But since I can only offer a large package like that to so many people, I’ve distilled those ten hours of consulting into a self-paced workshop that you can purchase for $197.”

With this approach, you’re not making a in-your-face statement that can turn off savvy customers, but you are effectively communicating the true value of what you’re offering in a way they can respect.

The “You’re Dead Meat If You Don’t Buy” Tactic

Since fear-based selling can be such an effective tactic, marketers often paint a post-apocalyptic picture of what will happen if you don’t buy their products. You may be told your business will fail, your competitors will eat your lunch and your spouse will leave you for a smarter, younger version of you who knows these “insider secrets.”

The idea is that if the sense of panic can be cranked up, the urgent need to find a solution will appear. And in 99 cases out of 100, you’ll find that same marketer telling you that only their product can save you from certain doom.

You’re too smart for this “Chicken Little” sales tactic, and since your customers are too, you need an approach that can boost the feelings of urgency and desire without resorting to panic.

Take The Third Tribe Approach: Instead of saying “all is lost” and pulling out the melodrama, paint a picture of how a particular product will be harder to solve without your product (and easier with it).

For example, you could say “It’s certainly possible to network with other savvy online business owners simply by participating in blog comments and using Twitter, but that can be a slow process with uncertain results. Being in the Third Tribe forums, however, means you’re immersed in the highest concentration of willing-to-network entrepreneurs you’re likely to find on the Internet – and that can take your business to the next level much faster.”

Could you write an effective sales letter without this tactic? You could, but you’d have to work a lot harder. (Get it?)

The “There’s No Good Reason Not To Buy” Tactic

I recently read a sales letter with this message at the bottom and shook my head, knowing that a few easily swayed individuals would fall for it. Certainly, it stands to reason that this line could work, because it’s one of those “proven” staples of a “good sales letter.” But it falls flat when selling to a savvy reader. (Which is a shame, because this marketer had a relatively savvy audience).

Why is it such an off-putting phrase? For starters, it’s insulting. It implies that whatever reason you have for not buying isn’t a reasonable one, and calling your potential (and intelligent!) customers unreasonable is a sure way to lose the sale – especially since the marketer doesn’t even know the objection.

And that’s where it gets embarrassing – because when readers realize they do have valid objections, it’s the marketer who looks foolish. Goodbye sale.

Take The Third Tribe Approach: Instead of trying to push your customers into this kind of hard-line close, do a little up-front research and discover as many potential objections as you can. Take each one and build a pre-emptive response into your sales letter.

For example, if price is an objection, remind them of how your product can pay for itself quickly. If satisfaction is an objection, re-emphasize how strong your guarantee is. The more thoroughly you defuse potential objections before the close, the less you have to work to close the sale.

And instead of bullying customers into having “no good reason not to buy,” you’re reminding them of all the very good reasons they have to give your product a shot.

What’s Your Sales Page Personal Pet Peeve?

These are only five old-school tactics that make your sales page unattractive to the Third Tribe type of customer – and as a savvy entrepreneur you’re likely to have your own set of sales page elements that drive you crazy. Share them in the comments below – and if you don’t mind, briefly tell us what you see as the “Third Tribe” alternative.

About the Author: Dave Navarro is a product launch manager who proudly wears his Third Tribe colors – and invites you to join the thousands of people who have downloaded his free workbooks in the Launch Coach Library (no opt-in required). There’s really no good reason not to.

As the year comes to an end, there is a lot of SEO News coming down the pipe that will affect your search results (and your rankings) in 2010. We’ll take a look at all three of the major search updates including Google Caffeine, Real Time Search and the new site hierarchies that are being displayed in Google search results…

Google Caffeine was set to roll out with the New Year, just after the holidays. This is basically a new version of Google that will increase size, indexing speed, accuracy, etc. Matt Cutts explains Google Caffeine in this video:

I haven’t yet read anything definitive on how this may affect SEO, if at all, but will definitely keep my ear to the ground. For now it’s safe to say that good site structure, quality content and relevant inbound links are still the key.

As Matt mentions in the video, the Caffeine update will allow Google to handle the power and speed of Real Time Search…

Real Time Search

Real Time Search is probably the biggest and most exciting update for most online marketers, though Rand Fishkin predicts it will fade away in 2010.

Google describes it as a way to discover breaking news on the web with real-time updates from news, blogs and social networks. They put out this video earlier this month to demonstrate Real Time Search results:

What does this mean to you? As a marketer, you can now easily trump the current top results with a simple tweet or a new blog post… This is huge.

Tweets are showing up in Google search within minutes, if not seconds.

If you are not already actively blogging and using Twitter & Facebook, now would be the time to start. Now as in right now

Site Hierarchy Displayed in Search Results

Last month Google announced that site hierarchies would be displayed in SERPs, to help searchers see relevant information about each individual result.

This is similar to what we call breadcrumb navigation on websites. Here is an example given by Google:

What does this mean for you? Take some time to examine your site structure. Use categories to group micro-topics (or sets of products) on your blog or website, and make sure your categories are descriptive.

Best,

p.s. Still unsure about SEO? See Web Page Optimization (free tutorial & checklist) and download the free SEO Fast Start guide by Dan Thies

Many bloggers already know that Twitter is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your blog.

When I talked to Guy Kawasaki about my book, he called the Tweetmeme Retweet button “the most important button on the web,” because of the enormous traffic-driving power it possesses. With one click, any of your readers can spread your post to hundreds or thousands of their followers.

As a marketer, I, of course, see this as an opportunity for optimization. When I see a powerful tool, my first impulse is to figure out how to make it even more powerful.

When you click that button, Tweetmeme grabs the title of the page it’s on, shortens the URL, and combines the two into a autofilled tweet for posting. Thus, the title of your post becomes the tweet that is shared with a potentially huge number of Twitter users.

If the importance of compelling headlines wasn’t painfully obvious before, it should be now.

Nearly 20% of all “normal” tweets contain a link, yet almost 70% of retweets do. Retweeting is the most common way links are shared on Twitter.

I’ve done research into various factors surrounding retweets and found a handful of factors that you may want to take into consideration when writing headlines for posts that you hope to share and spread on Twitter.

Use nouns and third-person verbs

When I looked at the parts of speech that occur in retweets versus those that occur in normal tweets, I found that retweets tend to be noun-heavy and use third-person verbs.

This pattern is reminiscent of newspaper headlines. Highly retweetable headlines talk about someone or something doing something.

A headline should never talk about all the things you did yesterday and how you did them, as past-tense verbs and adverbs both lead to far fewer retweets.

The most (and least) retweetable words

The words that tend to occur more in retweets than in normal tweets are topped by the word “you.”

This means, whenever possible, you should talk directly to your readers. “Top” and “10″ also rank highly, showing that lists do well on Twitter. Not surprisingly, talking about social media and Twitter itself also helps.

On the other side of the coin are the least retweetable words. Random first-person verbs and details about your life, however fascinating you may find it, don’t get a ton of retweets.

Tell me something new

I compared how common words in retweets are to how often these same common words appear in normal tweets, and found that rare and more novel words are highly retweetable.

When you’re writing your headlines, you should be striving to say something new that breaks through the clutter of everyday chatter.

Don’t be dumb

I expected to find that retweets were simple and required less intelligence to understand. But my data showed the opposite.

Using two readability metrics, I found that retweets often use longer, more complex words. So don’t try to “dumb down” your headlines for Twitter; users and power retweeters are smarter than you may think.

Stop talking about yourself

LIWC is a linguistic system designed to identify concepts in pieces of text.

The most striking thing I found when using LIWC to analyze retweets is that self reference does not get a lot of sharing.

In other words, don’t talk about yourself if you want Twitter traffic; talk about your readers.

If you’ve been in social media awhile, you probably already guessed that was the case — now you’ve got the data to back it up.

About the Author: Get more tips like this and learn about the full range of social media marketing platforms, tool, techniques and strategies from Dan Zarrella’s The Social Media Marketing Book, published by O’Reilly.

With all this talk I’ve been doing about guest blogging & blog interviews, and one way link opportunities…
I completely forgot that my dear friend (and brilliant marketer) – Nicole Dean – recently published a complete guide on that very topic!

It’s called the Blog World Tour Planner and it comes with a 38 page detailed guide, an idea generator, research worksheet, sample email for contacting bloggers, and a “blog tour” planning spreadsheet.

The price? Only $17!

Not mentioning this earlier was a major oversight on my part. I’ve been a bit out of the loop lately after that spell of my daughter being ill, and in a mad catch-up phase ever since. At any rate – my apologies. This is definitely something you’ll want to hear about, so I sat down last night to give it a proper Lynn-style review…

Nicole Dean’s Summer Blog Tour

You may recall that Nicole was a guest blogger here at ClickNewz for an entire week over the summer. My blog was just one of her many stops in what she called her Blog World Tour where she made appearances as a guest blogger across popular blogs all over the web, week after week.

It was a huge success in many respects – from high-quality inbound links to tons of exposure & traffic, and even setting up long-term passive streams of income.

Nicole is brilliant like that, coming up with creative new ideas and documenting every detail. Not only do I like and respect her as a friend, but as a marketer – I pick her brain every chance I get!

The Blog World Tour Guide for Guest Blogging

As I mentioned, this package comes with a detailed guide and a number of super-helpful bonuses to help you take immediate action and get started with your own guest blogging venture.

Sure you can go it alone, and figure everything out as you go – or you can take all the guesswork out of it and just get started for only 17 bucks. That’s kind of a no-brainer, if you ask me.

The guide starts out giving you some insight into how people think, and how Nicole’s idea was born. If you’re smart, you’ll read those couple of pages carefully and consider other ways you can apply that to your business. It’s a simple but brilliant thought process – just one of the things I love about Nicole.

Even though I was part of her summer blog tour, I never knew exactly what all went into it – or that she ultimately wrote 75 blog posts across 15 different blogs (not including her own). Wow!

Obviously you don’t have to go to that extreme – or you could set out to out-blog Nicole Dean if you like – but either way just ONE of those blog posts is worth way more than 17 dollars. Consider that just one post on one blog equals a permanent high quality one-way inbound link.

Or let’s say you have a product of your own that you sell, and your guest post ranks high for a specific keyword phrase. That one blog post could result in ongoing product sales for months – or even years…

Nicole discusses the benefits of guest blogging, or doing a “blog tour” as she calls it, and she also discusses the benefits to the bloggers – why they would agree to let you guest blog, and how to make the offer even more enticing to them.

Having been involved in her blog tour personally, I can tell you that what she did was a HUGE benefit to me. I’d let her come back and guest blog here anytime! And my personal experience from that side of her guide gets me even more excited about using her methods myself…

By the way – she details out tips for you in the guide that make blog owners LOVE having you as a guest, and BEG you to come back and write for them again. Obviously those tips worked on me, so I paid special attention there!

The guide is laid out in steps, starting with choosing your commitment and your objective. You might need inbound links, or you might use this as part of a pre-launch buzz campaign for your product, or you may be recruiting affiliates.

There are a number of reasons to consider guest blogging, and a variety of ways to use it for major leverage and advantage.

Nicole goes through the process of finding the right blogs in great detail, as well as which blogs to avoid (and why). She also gives you a spreadsheet to keep track of each blog and their details, with screenshots of how she used it herself.

Organization & scheduling is covered as well – such as creating an editorial calendar you can share with an assistant, if you choose to outsource some of the groundwork. Even if you’re doing this on a small scale and managing the details yourself, this part is very helpful. Nothing like dropping the ball on a promise made…

By the way, Page 18 shares 3 resources I had NO idea even existed. Be sure to check those out

The Bonus Planning Tools

The guide itself is incredibly rich in ideas and step-by-step instructions, but the tools included is where this product really overdelivers. The “idea generator” that I mentioned earlier is a brainstorming resource for coming up with topics to blog about. Very helpful for those that struggle with writing but really want to make this work for them.

Also included is a guest blogging planner – particularly helpful if you’re going to be doing a full-on blog tour like Nicole, but also a very handy spreadsheet to use as an editorial planner for your own blog plus your guest blogging opps.

To recap the bonus tools included, you get the 38-page guide plus:

• Content Idea Generator
• Blog Research Spreadsheet
• Same Email To Bloggers
• Editorial Calendar Spreadsheet

All that, for only $17. Click here to get started!

Best,

p.s. I was hanging out with Nicole over the summer, during her vacation here in TN and at an event where we roomed together in early August. She was right in the middle of her now famous Blog Tour both of those times, so I got to see her in action firsthand.

That’s in addition to seeing how it all worked when she made her stop here at my blog – and experiencing the sales & traffic that she brought to ClickNewz. Nothing short of amazing. But what was most amazing about it was that, while Nicole IS brilliant in her creative marketing ideas, she simply rolled up her sleeves and did it.

And that my friends is what sets Nicole Dean, and other successful online marketers, apart from the rest- apart from the hopefuls and wannabe’s.

You can sit around and need inbound links, want to sell more product, or wish you could recruit more affiliates- or you can download these tools and take action.

I’m off to quit talking about it, and get started setting up these awesome tools…

There’s no delicate way to put this. If you’re a regular Copyblogger reader, you’re just . . . well . . . smarter than most people looking to market online.

You’re not interested in lame “get rich quick” schemes. You’re not trying to build a business with no work, no time, and no sense. You’re not chasing after that magical silver bullet that will solve all your problems.

Mainly, you’d just like some solid, smart advice on online business that actually works.

In other words, you don’t have to be an Einstein to “get” this stuff. But you’d have to be an idiot to believe some of the stuff peddled by traditional Internet marketing “gurus” (many of whom have never done what they’re “teaching” before).

Copyblogger has been delivering solid, smart advice for nearly four years now, and starting this week, we’d like to take it up a notch.

Oh, and one more thing: we’ll be doing that for free.

Introducing Internet Marketing for Smart People

Brian and I have been kicking around the idea of a focused email newsletter for months, but we wanted to make sure we put something together that reflected the high standards we always try to set for the site.

We wanted to create a systematic, simple way that you could get a good grasp of the power of effective online marketing.

We wanted you to have an easy-to-navigate tutorial on the “Copyblogger method” of creating and marketing a profitable online business.

And we wanted a way to make sure that you got a chance to see all of the “best of the best” that’s appeared on Copyblogger over the years.

The four pillars of online marketing success

Thinking through what this would look like, we found four themes that kept coming up.

So we created an introduction to the newsletter that works through these four themes, systematically introducing you to the most important concepts we think every online marketer must know about. It’s like a course in Internet marketing that prepares you for the more in-depth stuff newsletter content that follows (still all free).

These are the cornerstones of how to build a business with the Copyblogger model, using everything we’ve learned over the years. Ready?

Pillar 1: Relationships

Creating strong relationships with an audience is critical to everything we do here. Rather than constantly hunting down new customers, we’d much rather create a valued environment that benefits our existing readers and customers and keeps pulling them back. We don’t advertise in the traditional sense; instead, our readers do a great job of “spreading the word” for us.

It’s about having consummate respect, always, for your audience and your market.

It’s about focusing almost obsessively on their needs, over and above your own (and getting what you want, almost magically, in the process).

It’s about making a commitment to creating a quality experience for your readers and subscribers.

Pillar 2: Direct response copywriting

We certainly stay abreast of the latest social media trends (and sometimes create them), but underlying everything we do here is solid copywriting techniques.

Starting with a killer headline and moving strategically through the copy to a stirring call to action, traditional copywriting technique works amazingly well in social media.

“Old-fashioned” copywriting advice can make all the difference between a business or blog that limps along and one that truly thrives.

We’ll show you precisely what we mean in the initial issues of the newsletter.

Pillar 3: Content marketing

What’s backbone of the Copyblogger formula?

Deliver great content. Deliver more great content. Deliver still more great content.

Keep doing that in a strategic and focused way.

Every once in awhile, make a great offer that benefits the reader and involves the exchange of cash money.

Of course, we’ll give you some more specifics on how to do that once you’re on board.

Pillar 4: Have something worth selling

Everyone is selling something. It might be a service, a product, a download, or simply an idea.

Whatever you’re selling, it’s got to be worth the price. (And never forget that reader attention is a valuable commodity that’s in strictly limited supply.)

Whether you’re asking for dollars, euros, yen, or valuable time and attention, you’ve got to deliver something that towers above your asking price.

Bringing it all together

Each of these four pillars enhances the others. Together, they’re much stronger than they would be if any of the pillars were missing.

Internet Marketing for Smart People is a free course and continual newsletter that’s delivered via email. Each week you’ll get a new lesson on one of the four pillars.

You’ll get lots of pointers to archived Copyblogger content, but with a new frame that will help you “connect the dots” and start putting this advice to work in your own business, web site, or blog. It’s much like the approach Brian took with Authority Rules, but ongoing and ever-evolving as the Internet marketing space does (which is fast).

To make it work even better, we’ll also be including “behind the scenes” lessons that show you how we put our own marketing systems and launches together, and the role each piece plays.

What you need to do next

Enter your email address here to sign up for the Internet Marketing for Smart People newsletter: 

It’s very important to us that everyone receiving Internet Marketing for Smart People truly wants the course, so we’ll need you to confirm that you want to receive it by clicking a confirmation link.

So check your inbox after you sign up (and put us on your white list… we’re not spammy at all, but thanks to scuzzball internet marketers, our topic is often viewed that way by the major email services).

And of course we’re never going to rent, sell, or otherwise share the information we collect. That would pretty much be a violation of everything we stand for.