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Copywriting is a skill that can help you in many aspects of your business. Learning it is a worthwhile endeavor, whether you are a business owner looking to write better ads, or wishing to pursue a freelance writing career.

Check out these ideas for you to consider as you are seeking to become better at copywriting.

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Every great copywriter knows that a testimonial can be one of your best selling tools. Unfortunately, you won’t always be handed a pile of powerfully worded testimonials. The good news is that you don’t have to settle for weak ones — even if that’s all you have to start out with.

By doing a little extra work, you can go out and get great ones. Testimonials that talk about specific benefits, and connect with your prospect because they are talking more than just "before and after" — they’re telling stories about real people. With testimonials like this, your copy becomes even more powerful.

A typical testimonial is what I call a Before and After testimonial. The customer tells you about the problem he use to have, and how it went away after he started using the product. The Before and After testimonial is a lot better than what we used to see, which was the "I love your widget!" style. But for today’s prospect, you need to do even better. Read the rest of this entry »

As usual, my much admired fellow business blogger Jonathan Leger is right on the money with his latest ‘motivational’ blog post. I’ve been reading his blog for some time, and although he doesn’t post very often, when he does his insights into online business are always well worth reading.

If you want to succeed in business, I advise you to take a look at his latest post on how to make it in your online (and indeed offline) endeavours.

With 90% of all small businesses failing within their first 5-10 years in the USA alone - we all need to make sure we stay on top of things and keep up to date with the latest copywriting, marketing and business management techniques. Read the rest of this entry »

Did you know there are over 100 million people online right now viewing videos and that YouTube, the top Video hosting site accounts for over 100 million views per day? Is that the kind of traffic your marketing efforts can afford to ignore?

Websites without video are slowly becoming a dying breed. No one can dispute the fact that marketing videos produce traffic and more sales. Video has become the rule rather than the exception and our online success depends to a large extent on the marketing videos we produce and add to our sites.

The new internet, or Web 2.0 as it’s become known, is driven by multimedia. It’s this new multimedia environment that we find ourselves in as internet marketers.

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In my last article, "How To Write A Headline - Part 2", I explained the "Who, What, Why" formula of writing a headline. In this article, I show you how I used this formula to come up with a headline for a weight loss newsletter.

As I explained in my previous article, the first thing I do when writing a headline is identify the customer. This is the "who" part of the "Who, What, Why" formula. In the case of a weight-loss newsletter, the "who" part could be: People who want to lose weight.

Now I’d advise breaking "people who want to lose weight" down even further into specific groups, like "stay-at-home moms who want to lose weight", "busy executives who want to lose weight", etc., and craft your headline accordingly. The more precisely your headline is targeted to your audience, the more likely it is to grab their attention. Read the rest of this entry »

For any advertising method to be effective, it has to have a target audience that is consuming the medium with which the advertising is attached to. That being said, advertisers are starting to realize that online video advertising is now an effective method to attract large relevant audiences.

Online video consumption has grown tremendously in the past few years and as a result, video sharing and video search companies are poised to reap the benefits of video advertising. Read the rest of this entry »

Getting a top ranking on Google: How is it done?

Here we will help you develop a sensible strategy for promoting your website by weeding out all of the nonsense, myths and hype.

First of all, what puts a page at the top of the rankings?

Search Engines are out to deliver the most current, relevant and accurate information to the public. They do this by using top secret algorithms for site rankings. Therefore, they are at constant war with SEO experts, whose goal is to ensure the top is dominated by their clients. Read the rest of this entry »

As you may have noticed, there is a ton of buzz out there about video search and marketing for video search engines, and there are a few posts out there with good information on how to upload your videos to these search engines, but most do not provide insight into the specific needs of SEO for video.

To ensure that your video gets seen and discovered on these search engines, it is important to first learn some of the technical aspects that are important to online video as well as search. Read the rest of this entry »

In my article "How To Write A Headline: Part 1", I shared some basic tips on writing headlines. In this article, I’m going to get a little more in-depth on exactly what things you can do to make sure your headlines grab people’s attention right away and get them started on the path to the sale.

In the previous article, I talked about the three questions you need to answer before you write a headline:

"who am I selling to?" (your target audience)

"what am I selling?" (your product or service)

"why am I selling it?" (your marketing objective)

Let’s look at why each of these questions are important… Read the rest of this entry »

Anatomy of A Sales Message – A Step By Step Writing Guide

Now that you’re familiar with the philosophy behind effective marketing, let’s get down to more practical matters:  writing a sales message.

Every sales or marketing message has the same basic structure.  Whether it’s an advert in the Sunday paper, a postcard, an online sales letter, a television commercial, or even a flyer stuck under the wipers of a car, an effective sales pitch will almost always include:

• Headlines – attention-grabbing words that convey the biggest benefit of using your product or service. They should be emotive and have impact.
   

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