Phung

BLUNDER #1: ME-TOO HEADLINES

I see this big old boo-boo all the time when critiquing sales copy.

If I ever look at a headline you wrote and say, Anybody could say this, Im just being kind. What I really mean is, This headline really blows. Start over.

Lets take a look at how we might never compel anyone to say such a gawd-awful thing about the headline on your ad

Obvious Ads

In promos with straight benefit headlines (as opposed to advertorial and dominant emotion leads), your headline will typically focus on the one benefit you believe will be deemed most valuable to the prospects youre addressing.

Alas though, you have gaggles of savvy competitors whose headlines vow to deliver similar if not identical benefits. Heck. You could probably tear their headlines out and paste them on your ad -- and nobody would even notice the difference!

So what do you do?

Simple: Use your headline to differentiate your product lift it head and shoulders above the competition and leave prospects believing your competitors are also-rans: Pale imitations.

Jeezum Pete, Clayton, how in the heck do I do that??

Heres some stuff to try

1. Be Unique: Everybody talks about Unique Selling Propositions today but the fact is, most of the USP headlines I see dont contain a Unique Selling Proposition at all!

According to Rosser Reeves, the father of the USP, a Unique Selling Proposition must meet three criteria:

A) It must contain a proposition (a benefit that people are willing to pay for) ...

B) The benefit must be unique (not the same thing a competitor says about his/her product), and

C) It must sell (be powerful enough to move the masses).

Oh yeah I see tons of heads that shout a benefit, and in most cases those benefits are something prospects are willing to pay for. But heads that differentiate the product by presenting a truly unique benefit are as rare as hens teeth.

And by unique benefit, I mean a benefit that prospects are willing to pay for and that your competitors cant (or dont) promise.

Think: What overlooked fact makes your product work faster than the competitions? What makes it more convenient, more effective, more cost-efficient or cheaper?

Incorporate that into your headline, and watch response soar!

2. Be Specific: Specific facts in a headline do more than just add all-important credibility: They can also ad a heaping helping of uniqueness to your headlines and by doing so, put miles between you and the competition.

Your competitor can claim that his product is the best ever but if you include specifics that prove yours is better, you win!

A headline for a weight loss system shouting, Lose weight fast! does absolutely nothing to differentiate you or your product. Any of your competitors could be (and probably are) making very similar claims in their ads.

Adding razor-sharp specifics quantifying the results youre promising can make it come alive:

Worlds first and only supplement GUARANTEED to vaporize 15 pounds of ugly fat from your belly, hips, butt and thighs in 30 days or LESS!

Think: How much faster does your product work? 20% faster? 40% faster? Twice as fast?

How much time will it save your prospect? Fifteen minutes a day? Forty-five minutes a day? Five hours a week?

How much money will it make him or save him down to the penny and how often? How much will it cut his health risks or mitigate his symptoms?

Load up your headline and deck copy with these differentiating specifics, and youll be miles ahead of the game.

Advertorial & Dominant Emotion Leads

Many pure benefit leads are no longer working as well as they once did.

Why? The answer shouldnt surprise anyone

Every day of the year, your prospect is bombarded with tons of advertising messages. His email box, his physical mailbox, every website he visits, his TV and radio, his newspaper and favorite magazines, even his milk carton and cereal box are crawling with sales messages.

Of the thousand or so ads your prospect will see today, hundreds will have benefit-oriented headlines. And many of them (maybe even most of the ads he gets over the net) will feature headlines that promise ridiculously inflated benefits: Benefits that nobody least of all the guy who wrote them even remotely believes.

In an act of sheer self-defense, your prospect has cranked his brains anti-advertising defenses up to DEFCON 5. Hes alert and ready to defend against this blinding blizzard of B.S. by ignoring or trashing anything that remotely looks like an ad.

So whats the solution? How do you get through?

Advertorials!

An advertorial is simply a promotion that looks and feels like a self-help magazine, special report or booklet and that begins just like they do: With a headline, deck and opening copy that offers to bring value to the prospects life for free simply for reading.

The copy then proceeds to deliver on the headlines promise by giving the prospect valuable information stuff that empowers him to assuage a fear, end a frustration or fulfill a desire.

Then, after youve demonstrated your advocacy, expertise and honesty by delivering valuable information for free, you offer him more of the same for free usually as a Thank-You gift for giving your product a fair try.

Prospect-focused, dominant emotion headlines and advertorial copy defeat your prospects anti-advertising defenses in much the same way Rommel defeated the Maginot Line during WWII: They slip AROUND prospects defenses by addressing their deepest fears, frustrations and desires.

Ive already written volumes on advertorial and dominant emotion leads and intend to write more. For now, just a few words about the concept or theme you select for your advertorial:

When I say theme, Im talking about the general focus of your advertorial. In the investment markets for example, your theme could be great profit opportunities (or dangers) posed by rising interest rates the falling dollar rising gold or oil prices or the emergence of China and India.

Fact is, the theme you choose for your advertorial is one of the two most important decisions youre going to make in your ad. Here are some rules I like to follow when trolling for the ideal advertorial theme:

1. It must be unique: Resist the temptation to create me-too themes for your advertorials. If the competitions hottest control is about soaring gold prices, going with the same theme is only going to get you the crumbs off his table.

2. The opportunity or danger must be imminent: I learned this the hard way. If your theme focuses on a danger or opportunity thats years away (like the profit opportunities presented by graying baby boomers, for example), youre gonna get spanked.

3. It must have personal consequences: Goes without saying but strong themes always imply big personal rewards for reading or penalties for not reading. So-What themes are guaranteed losers.

For a year now, a client has wanted me to create a promotion warning that real estate values are about to crash. Ive resisted for four reasons:

First, it lacks credibility. There has never, ever been a nation-wide crash in real estate values. And on the few occasions when real estate values declined locally, they quickly recovered.

Second, I seriously doubt that a real estate crash theme addresses a conversation the majority of my prospects are already having with themselves. With values still rising or holding steady in most of the country, prospects are far more concerned about other things.

Third, Im pretty sure that a lot of our prospects would shrug at this theme and say, So what?

When stocks crash, you can lose up to 100% of your money. And if the company goes bankrupt or is delisted, youll never get your money back. But we all know that real estate prices always come roaring back after a correction.

And Fourth, the product an investment newsletter cant provide any satisfactory solution. What are you going to do? Tell folks to sell their homes and move into their cars? Tell investors to dump all of their properties?

BLUNDER #2: THE BURIED LEAD

Cant tell you how many times I see direct response promotions with fair to middlin heads and leads then read on, only to find a 200-tons-of-TNT lead idea on page 4 or 8 or 14.

When it happens in one of my packages or a promotion Im critiquing, its kind of a good-news-bad-news deal.

The bad news is, the copy isnt there yet.

The good news is that a white-hot headline and lead already exists, and just needs to be brought forward.

The problem is, few writers are able to spot this kind of problem in their own sales copy. By the time we have a complete draft, were too close to the trees to see the forest.

Im lucky I have a secret weapon that instantly spots buried leads in my copy: my wife Wendy, a.k.a. The Redhead.

See, I never let anyone see my sales copy until I think its in pretty good shape. Then, I show it to Wendy before anyone else.

Wendy has a knack for sensing the feelings prospects will have in each passage of copy. Whats more, she takes tremendous delight in pointing out the sections that were slow or boring to her. And she instantly spots the sections that cause her temperature to rise.

Whats that you say? You dont have a Redhead?

No, you cant borrow mine. But you can find a reasonable facsimile: Another copywriter wholl agree to critique your stuff if youll crit theirs.

One of the very first things I said at the Summit was, Many of you copywriters came hoping to find clients; and thats a good thing. But finding another copywriter wholl agree to exchange crits with you can be just as valuable!

Gospel truth.

Until you find a copy buddy, the simple act of reading through your sales copy with a critical eye can help. Just be alert for subheads, phrases or ideas that grab your gut more powerfully than your lead.

BLUNDER #3: MUDDLED VISION

The other day, I critiqued a package that promised one thing and delivered another. It began by offering a health benefit but right after the headline, launched into a five-page tirade against drug companies.

Prospects who chose to read because of the headline and lead copy would have immediately felt deceived. Ripped off. Flim-flammed. We fixed it post-haste.

More often, I see copy that takes so many sidetrips, you wind up wondering what in the heck the copywriter is smoking.

My advice: Have a roadmap before you get in the car with your prospect. Know where youre starting from and where youre going, then map out the quickest, most direct way to get the prospect from Point A to Point B.

Create an unbreakable, irrefutable chain of logic beginning with a proposition that the prospect already believes. That gets you on common ground. Then introduce each new idea with ample proof elements to keep his head nodding.

Bring him with you every step of the way. Never make him wonder where youre headed. Never make him feel disoriented or lost. Never make him work to figure out where this is going.

I hope this helps!

Clayton Makepeace is a working direct response marketing consultant and copywriter who has helped his clients attract more than 3 million new customers quadruple their profits and rake in more than $1 billion in direct mail and internet sales. His daily e-letter, The Total Package, shares his proven response-boosting techniques with younger writers, business owners, and marketing pros. Find out more at http://www.makepeacetotalpackage.com