This is part one of a three-part series on how to profitably translate advice from old-school marketing guru Dan Kennedy to a new online environment.

Dan Kennedy is the Sovereign of Sales Letters. (Or maybe that’s the Duke of Direct Response.) He knows exactly how to deliver a marketing message with maximum clarity and zero confusion. As he’ll readily tell you, he’s one of the world’s highest-paid copywriters. His classic book The Ultimate Marketing Plan promises low-cost ideas and high-profit results.

This book delivers on both counts, and it’s well worth the read. But it was written in 1991, and at first seems like it’s more relevant to a restaurant or dry cleaner than it is to a web-based entrepreneur.

If you have a hard time translating bricks-and-mortar advice to your internet business, well, just be glad we’ve got Copyblogger.

The Ultimate Marketing Plan walks you through the 14 steps Kennedy considers necessary to build a bulletproof marketing plan that can help you to explode your business.

And this post will tell you how to translate those to what you’ve been up to.

Dan Kennedy’s 14 Steps to the Ultimate Marketing Plan

1) Putting together the right message

This is your business’s Unique Selling Proposition, boys and girls.

The principles behind the USP have been talked to death. You can call it the Purple Cow, your market position, your winning difference, or just the answer to Why Should Anyone Read Your Blog?

The reason the USP has been talked to death is that this core idea is essential to effective marketing.

Even though defining your USP is one of the best places to start when you’re building a solid marketing plan, it also seems to be one of the easiest places for people to get lost.

Kennedy defines the USP this way:

When you set out to attract a new, prospective customer to your business for the first time, there is one, paramount question you must answer:

“Why should I choose your business/product/service versus any/every other competitive option available to me?”

Kennedy, in his characteristically cranky style, has also been known to call this “justifying your reason to exist.”

You must know the facts, features, benefits, and promises that your business makes — inside-out, upside-down, backwards, forwards, and sideways. Because if you can’t clearly articulate what makes your business unique, how can you expect anyone else to care?

You will need to crow about your business if you expect it to expand, but it’s pivotal that you are trumpeting the right things.

The right USP coupled with the right offer, especially at the right time and place, is important for any business. For a business fighting for attention with millions of other blogs all over the world, it’s essential.

2) Presenting your message

Regardless of where you choose to market your product or service, there is a right and a wrong way to deliver your message.

According to Kennedy, the customer has five mental steps to take between first contact and completing the sale.

• Awareness of a need or desire
• Picking the thing that will satisfy that desire
• Picking the source for that thing
• Accepting the price/value argument
• Finding reasons to act immediately

Let’s say your particular product is a vacation package that includes a seven-day cruise.

Pictures of an island paradise might spark initial desire, while shots of a cruise ship will put a finer point on the new longing. Information about what makes your company’s cruises different will let the prospect know that you’re the right source to satisfy their craving.

Copy that paints a picture of all the fun to be had as well as the tremendous value of the package, backed by proof (user testimonials and pictures both work great), will serve to convince your prospect that his money will be well spent.

Finally, a special, a limited time offer, or perhaps a coupon or room upgrade, will help to get the deal done today rather than . . . never.

Whether you’re online or off, it’s your job to lead the prospect through these five points. Without clear road signs, your prospect will get lost.

3) Choosing the right audience

Who you don’t serve is every bit as important as who you do. It is always okay to trim the tribe.

Let’s say you’re planning to open a steakhouse. What do you think is most important to a spectacular opening day?

• Elegant decor?
• A well-trained staff?
• Ample parking?
• A robust menu?
• Reasonable prices?
• Delicious food?

The answer: None of the above.

The best thing you could possibly have when cutting the ribbon at your new steakhouse is a starving, steak-hungry crowd with a growl in their collective belly.

Which means you don’t want to send your marketing message to vegetarians or calorie counters.

When it comes to reaching your audience online, you’ve got to find the equivalent of those hungry carnivores.

A blog that tries to speak to everyone will find few, if any, readers. It’s always smart to choose a general topic that’s got wide appeal. But within that topic, the tighter your focus, the easier it will be to grow an enthusiastic base of readers, then customers.

4) Proving your case

It seems every decade makes us more jaded. The Internet has only accelerated the process. Your marketing messages needs to survive a lot of cold, hard skepticism.

Some people might argue that you should never put negative thoughts into your customer’s head.

You won’t be.

You’re simply addressing what’s already there.

You cannot ignore this step. Proving your case will get you a lot farther along on your way to making the sale.

Address objections. Your prospect may desperately want your fantastic online cooking course, but she’s got a list of objections holding her back. Fortunately, we’re no longer in Kennedy’s 1991, where you had to use a photocopied 16-page letter to tackle each objection. These days you can do it in blog posts, email autoresponder sequences, and with virtually any form of social media.

Social proof is key. You’ll notice up there in the left-hand corner, that Copyblogger proudly advertises its 100,000-plus subscribers. That’s not bragging. It’s a decisive emotional trigger. Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.

Gather testimonials. Happy, satisfied customers can be a magnet for more. What others say about you will always carry a much higher impact than what you say about yourself. While it’s a great idea to put customer testimonials on your own site, you also want to always be aware of what people are saying about you off your site.

Pictures tell a story. Before-and-after, shots of the product in use, or bright smiles on the faces of satisfied customers. Seeing is believing. If you can prove your point with pictures, you’ll go a long way toward silencing the skeptic. Images can also set a powerful mood, which gives your copy an instant emotional charge.

5) Putting your best foot forward

Like it or not, first impressions matter.

If you run a brick-and-mortar business, make sure your store is squeaky clean. Freshly washed windows and a floor you could eat off of will help to create an environment that’s conducive to sales.

Believe it or not, the same holds true online.

If you’re using WordPress for your business, make sure you’ve got a great-looking theme that’s well optimized for SEO. (As you might guess, we’re rather partial to Thesis.) Even if you’re on a budget, you will still be able to do some basic customization.

Make sure your layout is simple and clean. Emphasize your USP with a strong tagline. Be sure your page instantly conveys how you can benefit your reader and potential customer.

When you can afford it, have someone customize your site in a way that’s unique to you and your business.

Either way, if your website is your business, it should look its absolute best. Fortunately, for a tiny fraction of what bricks-and-mortar businesses pay in rent, you can have a “storefront” that shows you’re serious, professional, and worthy of your customers’ business.

(In case you think I’m not too good at counting, the other 9 lessons gleaned from The Ultimate Marketing Plan will come in two future posts. 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.)

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

Buying online is a consumer’s paradise, right?

One can compare competing offers ‘til the heart’s content, all with simple clicks of a mouse.

Well, it’s not that great if you happen to sell online.

And what if I told you it’s not really that great for consumers, either?

Sound crazy? Read on.

Preface: Start with a killer product or service

This should go without saying in our age of global competition and reduced barriers to entry. But so often merchants are looking for a magic bullet to widely distribute something that the market simply finds inferior.

The problem is, there are plenty of people out there with exceptional products and services who are losing out to others with lesser offerings and higher prices.

What’s going on with that?

Superior marketing and sales techniques, that’s what. Here are 3 ways to level the playing field (or even tip the scales in your favor).

1. Eliminate competition with artful positioning

Wouldn’t selling online be wonderful without competition? Well, it’s possible, if only to the extent that a certain type of person considers you the absolute only option. Yes, it’s our friend positioning again, and we’ll keep talking about it because it’s so vital to success.

The traditional approach to positioning involves offering a benefit your competition cannot or will not offer, thereby making your offer the only choice for those who value that benefit. It still works too – look at the insane level of customer service that Zappos offers, and you’ll understand why throngs of people wouldn’t dream of buying shoes elsewhere.

For small and micro-businesses, positioning (a/k/a your unique selling proposition) can be as simple as creating a unique bond with enough people to build a thriving business. Whether by creating a hybrid business at the intersection of disciplines, crafting a better metaphor that communicates what people need to hear, or creating an emotional bond and huge trust based on your own personality, modern online positioning has come down to connections that resonate authentically and generate loyalty.

Remember, it’s not about where you rank in a hierarchy against others. It’s about carving out your unique territory and owning it outright.

2. Confront your competitors proactively

Let’s face it, in some markets, positioning alone might not get it done. When you’re selling retail items such as consumer electronics or commodity goods, shoppers are more focused on overall value for the buck.

The most common merchant response to the threat of online comparison shopping is not very effective. “Hey, let’s pretend they’re not there!” is nice as wishful thinking, but let’s be realistic.

You’ll hear time and again that the initial objectives of copy in a call-to-action environment is to 1) attract attention; 2) express benefits; and 3) overcome objections. The fact that your prospect thinks you have legitimate competition is really just an objection to buying from you right now.

Instead of sticking your head in the ground, why not proactively address why your offer is better than the other guy’s? Don’t assume that your prospect “gets” that your offer is superior; “show” her it’s better by doing a head-to-head comparison with charts, checklists, or even an interactive apples-to-apples demonstration.

People examining your offer want you to be the solution to their desire or problem. It’s your job to eliminate the lingering doubt that exists in the form of objections, and like it or not, your competition is one of those objections.

3. Emotional benefits make everyone happy

We tell you over and over (and over) to focus first on benefits rather than features, because people decide to buy based on lightening-fast emotional responses, and justify that decision with logic. But what if it turned out that making purchase decisions via emotion (instead of by overly-rational research and price shopping) actually made us happier?

Recent psychological resaerch indicates just that. The study focused on using proven methods to impede logical decision-making, thereby forcing people to go with emotional, intuitive choices instead.

The results?

Those who used primarily emotion rather than primarily logic made more consistent choices. And consistency is one of the hallmarks of a “rational actor.” In other words, the “emotional” people made more “rational” choices than those who focused on rationality!

What does that mean? From the study:

For the consumers, contrary to lay perceptions, attending to one’s emotional responses may prove to be very valuable in understanding one’s preferences. It is possible consumers would be much happier with choices based more on their emotional reaction. For example, if one buys a house and relies on very cognitive attributes such as resale value, one may not be as happy actually living in it, as opposed to a person who attends to his or her emotional reaction to the house prior to purchasing it.

Jonah Lehrer, author of How We Decide, thinks that online price shopping might actually make us unhappy. He notes that the study speculates that the Internet leads consumers to engage in more rational deliberation, which in turn produces an outcome that contradicts our assumptions about the “online shopping paradise.”

Remember, when introduced to an emotional benefit in an offer, neurology shows that our brains react as if we were already experiencing the actual benefit. In essence, employing emotional benefits not only begins the customer satisfaction experience before the sale, this latest research indicates that initial satisfaction maintains after the sale.

Isn’t bonding with prospects and customers better for everyone?

It’s amazing how many of the initial assumptions sparked by the Internet continue to be dead wrong. E-commerce was supposed to benefit the consumer by providing limitless options, and yet the counterintuitive paradox of choice shows that too many options make us anxious and unhappy.

Instead, we now have an entire movement devoted to voluntary simple living. We don’t necessarily want more choice; we want something that does what we need it to do when we desire a solution.

In an ultra-competitive environment, a quality product or service is an indisputable market obligation (and I’d say an ethical obligation as well). But given how we actually operate as human beings in the face of overwhelming choice, isn’t a communication approach that bonds emotionally with our prospective customers also a market obligation? Perhaps even an ethical one?

What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of DIY Themes, creator of the innovative Thesis Theme for WordPress. Get more from Brian on Twitter.

This week we’ve been focusing on the business of freelance copywriting. There are two good reasons for that.

First of all, the demand for quality online content and copy that converts has exploded in the last several years. And that demand will only grow.

That means a lot of opportunity for freelance copywriters.

It also means copywriters have an unfair advantage when it comes to marketing themselves. Why?

Because it’s content marketing in all its creative expressions that works online. Marry that with a persuasive landing page to close the deal, and it’s clear that it’s the copywriters who are in the driver’s seat.

Because you have talent that’s in demand. And every business seeking to effectively market online needs that talent.

Only problem is, you’re all competing against each other.

Which is a fairly common marketing problem for freelancers, small business, and big business alike. Every business has to differentiate itself and communicate the benefits of being the choice over the other guy.

But copywriters are skilled in solving that problem, right? It’s your function.

Have you solved that problem for yourself?

Dare to Be Different

One thing every copywriter needs to understand is how to develop and communicate a unique selling proposition. Whether positioning or purple cow, differentiating the client’s offer in a unique and valuable way is critical to winning copy.

Shouldn’t you do the same for your business?

Look, Michel Fortin can position himself simply as “copywriter” because he’s a well-established badass. He commands premium fees, and likely turns away more business than he accepts.

If you’re not at that point yet, a little unique positioning is just what the doctor ordered. Your business may not be sick yet, but you’re hardly in a defensible market position. And if you’re just starting out, here’s your opportunity to start out right.

Ever since I chose to become unemployable in 1998, I’ve been an initial nobody in a succession of industries filled with well-established badasses. Law, real estate, software, even this very blog… each time I was starting from scratch competing against those already at it.

I succeeded in each instance because I focused intensely on serving a different need in a different way, and then effectively communicating that difference.

Dare to be different, and you’ll be a badass in a league of your own.

Writing is a Feature, Not a Benefit

Another thing every copywriter knows is that brains crave benefits. And yet, when it comes to marketing themselves, many freelance copywriters seem to focus only on their writing, which like it or not, is a feature of your service, not the desired benefit.

It’s no secret that writing tends to be undervalued by many of the people who seek to hire you. Maybe it’s because any literate person can write to some degree, so perhaps they think it’s simply an hour or two of putting some words down on paper. What’s so hard about that?

We writers know that’s not true.

Good writing is hard. Great writing is even tougher.

The answer, however, is not to change how the client thinks, because that rarely works. At least not at the initial stage of the relationship.

The key is to start emphasizing the benefits clients are really after, not the feature that brings about the benefits. Because if a client could achieve his desired benefit without your writing, he would.

What are you really selling?

Think about that for a bit. Tomorrow, we’ll reveal the second reason we’ve been focusing on freelance writing this week.

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of DIY Themes, creator of the innovative Thesis Theme for WordPress. Get more from Brian on Twitter.