How a Single Bullet Can Get a Customer To Buy

A guest post by Sean DSouza of Psychotactics 

Sell what you write

I remember going to a workshop in the year 2003
The price of the workshop was $8000. Plus there was overseas travel involved. And yes the usual accommodation and food expenses. In all it was going to cost me almost $12,000 to get to this one workshop. And I made the decision on the basis of a single bullet.

So what are these bullets?
The bullets I’m talking about are the bullets that you see in advertising. Bullets are the same thing that you see on the cover of magazines and newspaper mastheads. And if you want to sell more effectively here’s how bullets can help you considerably. When you’re writing copy or creating a speech or rehearsing a presentation or writing an article for that matter, don’t sit down and write text or sales copy.

Write bullets instead
Bullets help you clear your mind. It gives focus to your marketing message.

Let me give you an example of bullets in marketing material

  • The Spider’s Secret. How to get customers to call you instead of you chasing them.
  • How to get your fee paid 100% in advance every time.
  • How to create a huge demand for your product or service. This secret is over 10,000 years old and works every single time. And most business doesn’t use it.
  • Why your website, business card and your advertising can turn out to be a total waste of resources and effort. How the eye sees things and what causes customers to buy.
  • The secrets of being able to sell the same product or service at up to 400% higher prices.
  • How to create a sequential system that will bring business even if you don’t have a single new customer.
  • The Three Prong system. This tool will change the way you look at your business forever. Ignore at your risk.
  • How we got over US$40,000 worth of products complimentary this year alone…and how you can do it too.
  • Piggybacking: You’ll laugh and cry when you see how simple it is to piggyback on the success of others. The more the others succeed, the more you succeed. And all at zero cost to you.
  • The Secrets of Conversion. How to engage and make your customer never want to leave you, and instead, continuously buy from you.

What you see are just some of the bullets that we used when we sell one of our courses. At that point the course wasn’t ready. Just the bullets were.

Bullets are your foundational material
Bullets free you to just run wild with your thoughts and create the outline for your sales copy and syllabus. And they help the customer make a decision. Often, the customer may be too busy to read copy. So they’ll skim till they reach the bullets. Then hit the brakes.

It’s the brakes I hit back in 2003
One bullet caused me to stop and make my decision to spend all that money on that single workshop. That one bullet was my starting point. From then on, everything I read on that sales page was just an added bonus. The more I read, the more I felt that it was exactly what I was looking for.

But let’s get one thing straight
That one bullet alone can’t take the entire load. The rest of the sales page needs to do the job as well. We know this to be true, because if we turned things around and put just one bullet on the page—and no other sales copy—I would most certainly not buy into the workshop.

But the one bullet acted as a brake. It stopped me, and then got me to re-evaluate everything else. And that’s why bullets are so darned important.

No matter how good your marketing material, your customer will usually buy for just one reason
They’ll pick one bullet out of the whole lot and say, ‘Yeah, that’s what I really, really want!’ And they’ll buy. So before you go into that long winded presentation; before you write copy; before you do anything.

Write bullets
They’re the key to getting customers to stop, read and then buy.

To read more articles by Sean DSouza—and get a very useful report on “Why Headlines Fail”, go to PsychoTactics.com

Categories: Blogwriting - Tags: ,

Why Copying Inspires Creativity

Copying can lead to creation

A guest post by Di Mace of Word Swords

Copying is how we all learn.

From early childhood through to adulthood we are in a continuous cycle of copying, reimagining and combining.

Blogging is no different – by emulating things we read, see and hear we then become comfortable with our tools of trade and are inspired to remix, recreate and reimagine new different derivatives of the original.

At first, newbie bloggers may copy, but good newbies copy and try to understand how it works in the overall scheme of blogging. Further still, a great newbie may also copy, but with modifications based on what they’ve learnt. The difference between the three newbies is up to their ability, their drive to improve and their level of expectation from themselves.

The true essence of this argument is the ‘thinking’ that’s done behind the copying. That defines how well you learn and in fact if you learn at all. It’s being spoon-fed versus being told which spoon to use and how to use it.

We learn technique from emulation. And being great at something (including blogging), is sometimes defined by how well one masters technique, not by originality.

No one is truly original. By connecting the great ideas of others (through initially copying), some of the greatest leaps of ‘originality’ have occurred.

Blogging is no different.

The Copy-learning cycle

Look back to when you learnt to write your name.

For most of us, we first learnt this by someone writing it for us, and we then copied it. When you wrote your first blog post, I bet you copied a favourite post from another site. That doesn’t mean you cut and paste. Instead, you learnt the basics by copying the techniques, and then over time you changed them; and in the process, found out what happens when you do.

The difference between those who actually make it (in anything, not just blogging) and those who fail is the willingness to take the hard road. The easy road will eventually end because you’ll run out of things to copy-by-rote, which will either force you to learn, or force you to give up.

If you don’t make the effort to learn from your copying and starting to make your own interpretations, then you will undoubtedly fail. But once you’ve learnt the things necessary to start making your own blog a success, you must then start the creation process.

Combine, connect, modify

People learn from their own drive to improve, and their own expectation of themselves. To clarify, it’s not actually through the cloning or copying that you learn, it’s how you rework it so that the expression becomes your own, how it synthesizes your own ideas with the source.

That’s technically how you learn from copying.

Here’s where it gets most fascinating. From copying, you then begin to understand, and from understanding you then start to play and transform. You’ll connect and combine ideas, thoughts, styles, contents; transforming and fusing them into something new. Finally, to make sure you understand everything, you’ll try modifying. If the result of your modification meets with your expectations, then you have finally learned something.

So the process of learning and creating is: copy, understand, connect, combine and rework, then create your own reinterpretation (of what was once just an exercise in copying).

Substance, style and structure

Once you’ve gained the knowledge, confidence and ability to make your own decisions on structure, style, substance, design and implementation, then you have diverged from copying.

Funnily enough, as soon as you start copying from more than one source, then copying as a mindless exercise doesn’t work anymore. At this point, you are forced to start to understand what you are doing – otherwise you won’t be able to integrate the pieces into something passionate and effective.

The structure of your blog and layouts will take shape, plugins, links and sharing tools will be added, a whole network of support elements will start to form the web of your blog platform. This platform will then support your growing content strategy.

Your content strategy is how your blog will convey your style and voice – your blog-mojo.

First you will copy, study and incorporate the things you’ve learnt from others into your own work and blog. But blogging success has less to do with genius or talent, and more to do with the innate self-discipline to nurture your own talent to its full potential. With patience and practice, slowly your tone and mojo will start to shine and be recognisable as you.

It will transform from a copy into your very own voice. Not a copy of another.

Inspiration and reimagining

Over the course of history, many great ‘inventors’ or ‘thought-leaders’ were in essence, remixers. They used the basic ideas and techniques that they’d collected and learnt, to inspire the creation of their own interpretation.

Most artist’s first works are derivatives of another’s work and the tradition of copying the successful works of Old Masters to learn their secrets, is still carried on today by artists who wish to develop similar skills and sensitivities to form.

Hunter S. Thompson re-typed F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms in order to learn about the writing styles of the authors and to get the feel of writing a great novel.

In order to understand the words of our blogging-sages we need to put ourselves in their day-to-day shoes. They know how things feel and work and wear. We need to practice with their tools.

Think of it this way – we’re all using the same building materials; we just assemble them in different ways – some better than others. You need to play around and learn and you’ll get better until you get good enough to create your own reimagined work.

Some of the greatest original ideas have been born by copying and learning technique first, only to be remixed and reborn, and this is an important stage of the blogging process.

You should leave yourself open to learning from copying others and using their work as reference to assist you in your own creations. It will help you to progress, learn and expand your own talents until someday… people will be copying you!

 

Has this inspired you to learn-and-create? Let us know, in the comments.

Di Mace is a marketing and business writer, editor, re-inventor, blogger, learner, searcher for the perfect pencil case and storyteller; basically she spins gold from the straw at hand. She blogs at Word Swords.

Image: stock.xchng user weliton

Categories: Craft, Creativity

Seven Easy Steps to Much Faster Writing

Faster and faster

A guest post by Ali Luke from Aliventures.com.
If you can write fast (and well), you’re set for success.

You’ll be able to pump out blog posts, newsletter content, free ebooks and more – without killing yourself in the process. You’ll be able to meet deadlines. You can price by the project, and make a great hourly rate.

But … chances are, you’re not yet able to write as fast as you want.

Maybe it takes you two hours to complete a 500 word blog post – on a good day. Maybe you just can’t find time to get that ebook finished.

Here’s how to massively increase your writing speed, in seven easy steps.

Step #1: Find Your Best Writing Time

This is crucial. Don’t kid yourself that all hours are equal.

You need to know when you’re most productive.

For me, it’s mornings, around 8am to 11am. If I’m lucky, I’ll also get an afternoon spurt, maybe 2pm – 4pm.

For you, it could be morning, noon or night. You probably have a gut sense already of your best hours. Now, real life might be getting in the way – perhaps you have to drop the kids off at school at 8.30am, or you’ve got a day job. But you can still use your best hours at the weekends, or look for ways to shift other obligations.

If you’re not sure what your best writing time is, experiment! Try out different time slots and see what feels best.

Step #2: Minimize the Risk of Interruptions

So, you’ve got two golden hours set aside to write – 10am – 12 noon on Saturday. You sit down at the computer, ready to type.

And the phone rings. It’s a sales call.

Then your partner comes in and asks if you want to go out to lunch later.

Then a chat window pops up on your computer, from a friend you’ve not talked to in a while.

Is it any surprise that you don’t get much writing done?

Instead of snapping at your partner and moaning about sales calls, here’s what to do:

  • Turn off your mobile. Unplug the landline (or make sure that your partner/kids/roommate knows that it’s their job to answer it).
  • Tell people in your household that you’re going to write. Explain that you’ll be free to chat at 12 noon, but you’d appreciate not being interrupted before then.
  • Work in a room on your own, and close the door. If you’re sitting downstairs in the kitchen, you’re much more likely to get interrupted.
  • If you really can’t get any peace at home, grab your notepad or your laptop and head out to a coffee shop.

Step #3: Cut Out Distractions

Reducing interruptions helps a lot. But distractions are death to writing, too.

They look like this:

  • You decide that you really must tidy your desk before you start writing.
  • When you get stuck, two whole sentences into your piece, you find yourself opening up your inbox to see whether there’s anything exciting in there.
  • After writing 200 words, you tweet your word count. You then click on a link to an amusing YouTube video, and remember a blog post that you wanted to read. An hour later, you wonder where your time went.
  • Half-way through your piece, you realize that you need a particular statistic. You stop immediately and look it up. While you’re doing so, an advert for cheap laptops catches your eye, and you can’t resist checking it out.

Some distractions might seem legitimate. After all, your desk is untidy. And you do need to know that statistic.

The thing is, you don’t need to tidy your desk or look things up right away. All of that can wait for an hour or two.

There are plenty of ways to cut out distractions. You might:

  • Unplug your internet cable (or switch off your wireless).
  • Use a program like DarkRoom (PC) or WriteRoom (Mac) so that you’ve got a plain, clean, full-screen writing environment.
  • Clear away any distracting objects from the room. Do you really want to spend two hours trying to solve that Rubik’s cube?

Step #4: Write an Outline

One huge mistake is to leap into your piece without planning ahead. If you do that, you’re going to end up writing for a few paragraphs, then getting hopelessly stuck.

Outlining doesn’t need to be complex, especially if you’re writing something short (like a blog post). This post, for instance, started out as a title and seven subheadings. I spent less than five minutes on the outline – and it’s saved me a ton of head-scratching time.

When you write an outline:

  • You can spot (and fix) any obvious flaws or problems. Perhaps it becomes clear that you’re trying to tackle too much, or that your topic isn’t very well thought out.
  • Your subconscious immediately starts coming up with ideas for each point. Once you start to write, it’s a lot easier to get your thoughts down onto the page.
  • The whole project looks much more manageable. You’ve broken it down into small steps.

As you write, the outline continues to help, by keeping you motivated. You can see exactly how far you’ve come – and how far you’ve got left to go. It’s easy to keep on writing when you know you’ve only got three points left to cover.

Step #5: Set a Timer

I’ve come across a few writers who hate using timers, so – as with any advice – feel free to ditch this if it doesn’t work for you.

Having said that, I think timers are brilliant. When I know I’ve only got 20 or 30 or 45 minutes, I stay focused. I write faster. I don’t succumb to the urge to check emails – they can wait till my writing time is up.

Timers help you to write for short bursts. At the moment, I’m trying out a system where I write for 20 – 25 minutes then take a break to exercise for five minutes. It’s been great for my energy levels, and I’ve been getting more writing done in less time.

You can use your phone or an alarm clock as a timer, or use a site like Tick Tock Timer or e.ggtimer – whatever works for you.

Experiment with different timed bursts: try just five or ten minutes if you’re new to this, and gradually work up to more. While that timer is going, write. No excuses.

Step #6: Start Wherever You Want

You do not need to start off by writing the introduction or Chapter One.

In fact, it’s often a good idea not to. Instead, jump in to the middle of your piece. Write the first subsection – or the third.

That way, you’ll get moving much faster … and by the time you’ve finished the bulk of your piece, you’ll have a better sense of what needs to go in the introduction. Since you have an outline (see step #4), you won’t need to worry about getting off track or writing something that doesn’t fit in.

Conversely, if you like to start at the beginning and work through to the end, that’s fine too. There’s no “right” way to do this.

What matters is that you don’t spend twenty minutes staring at a blank screen, wondering how to begin. Just get moving!

Step #7: Don’t Edit While You Write

Hmm, I didn’t phrase that very well. And should that comma go there? Maybe I’d better split the sentence into two. Would “gigantic” be better than “huge”?

If your thoughts go something like that when you’re writing, then you need to switch off your internal editor.

Write. Then edit.

Keep repeating that to yourself until it sinks in. Because it’s really important.

When you’re writing, you’re creating something. You’re putting words onto a formerly blank page, and you’re telling a story or explaining an idea or sharing your thoughts in a coherent form.

Don’t make this even harder than it needs to be. Don’t demand instant perfection.

Once you’ve created something, then you can start to be critical about it. You can look at whether your paragraphs are in the right order, and whether you need to add more transitions. You can tweak your subheadings to make them snappier. You can reword any clunky or confusing sentences.

I’m not going to suggest that you tie yourself in knots over this. It’s fine to hit the “delete” key occasionally, if you type something wrong. It’s okay to change your mind and restart a sentence if you need to.

Just make sure that most of the time, you’re making forward progress. And don’t stop half way through to edit paragraph one – that can wait until the end.

If you follow all the steps here, you could double or even triple your current writing speed. So give them a try – and let us know how you get on! The comments are open…

Ali Luke is a writer and writing coach. She’s got a free mini-ebook, How to Find Time For Your Writing, with ten short chapters and ten exercises to help you get your writing done – however busy you are. Find out more – and get your copy – here.

Categories: Productivity

Why You Should Write First for Yourself

Write for yourself

A guest post by Jeff Goins of Goins, Writer.

I’ve been blogging for so long that I’m tempted to forget a crucial truth to writing success. Maybe you have, too.

What’s that truth?

You need to write first for yourself and second for your audience.

For those of us who write for money or to change the world, this can be admittedly tough. But it is the only way that you can be true to your art — the only way that your writing can have the impact you dream of.

Writing for a response can be a great way to hone your skills as a writer — to find out what your audience wants and how to provide. It can help you make a living out of our writing. But before you start worrying about building an audience or platform, you need to write for yourself.

Ironically, this is the best way for you to serve your audience.

Here are three reasons why writing for yourself is essential to success:

1. It releases you from the temptation to entertain.

You are not a comedian. You are a writer. You create prose to challenge, compel, or convert. But you don’t write to entertain (If you do, feel free to skip this post).

If you are truly communicating — and not merely entertaining — you need to challenge people. Which means making them uncomfortable. Which means sometimes bucking the system and pushing the status quo.

How can you do that if you’re constantly worried about pleasing everyone?

You can’t. If you are to write what you need to write, you must free yourself from the limitations of what your audience expects. You must break off the bondage of an audience — at least for a moment — to craft something that will truly make a difference.

Trust me, your audience will thank you. (Some day.)

2. It allows you to be honest and transparent in your writing.

People naturally gravitate towards authenticity. Conversely, they resist anything (or anyone) that seems disingenuous.

By writing from the heart — and not for the impact or the profit — you will win true fans, a tribe that will defend you and champion your cause. All because you bore your scars and chose to be yourself.

It’s not easy, but it’s necessary to making a real connection with your audience. And it’s hard to be yourself if you’re constantly trying to impress or entertain.

Choose to be authentic; it’ll feel more natural for you, and it will cause your readers to let their guards down.

Again, they will thank you for it.

3. It gives you a chance to communicate your unique message.

Face it. It’s tempting to try to write like Leo Babauta or Chris Brogan or even Seth Godin. (It is for me, anyway.)

But we already have those guys. What we’re missing is you. We need your voice.

And if you’re writing to impress or entertain or even emulate, we may lose that crucial piece in your writing — the distinctiveness of you.

There is a story that only you can tell. It is your story alone. And you begin to tap into by being yourself, by writing first for you. The paradox of all this, of course, is that the truer you are to your voice and message, the more you will attract a true tribe of followers committed to you.

Do you write for yourself or others? Why?

Jeff Goins is a writer, marketing consultant, and pseudo-geek. If ideas in this post resonated with you, you can download his popular eBook The Writer’s Manifesto for more motivation to write for the right reasons.

Categories: Craft

Are You Missing This Crucial Skill Set as a Writer?

Have you got the tools you need?

By Mary Jaksch

Every writer dreams of being discovered. Don’t you?

Whether you write fiction or faction, you want people – lots of people – to read your stuff.

Maybe you dream of writing a bestseller, or becoming a Top 100 blogger, or writing a script for a box office hit, or landing an article for a top magazine.

How to get from where you are now to your dream?

For the slog from novice to master you need two different skill sets: skills as a writer and skills as a marketer

Why marketing skills are crucial

Here’s a story. A few weeks ago a blogger emailed me with a pitch for a guest post on Goodlife ZEN. Actually, you could hardly call it a pitch. She just threw an idea at me without telling me about herself, her writing, or what the guest post might be about.

I emailed back: “If you want to land a guest post, you need to read my article: The Perfect Pitch: How to land a Gig Every Time. Remember that I receive guest post requests every day – so you need to stand out from the crowd by writing a great pitch.”

She whined back, “Oh, but that’s like marketing my guest post. I don’t like doing that.”

Yes, well – as you can imagine, she didn’t land a guest post on GLZ…

The point I’m making is:

No matter what you write, you need to learn marketing skills to get your stuff in front of readers.

When writers need to market

  • When you contact a possible agent.
  • When you write to a publisher.
  • When you pitch for a guest post.
  • When you introduce yourself to fellow bloggers.
  • When you ask people to share your stuff on Social Media.
  • When you approach a joint venture partner
  • When you launch a book or a report- even when it’s free.

As you can see, there are many more occasions when marketing skills come in handy.

I must admit: at first I really disliked marketing.

There’s something about creating desire for something people don’t really need that doesn’t seem right to me. And I hate it when people try to sell stuff with a ‘gun to head’ style.

So, when Barrie Davenport – one of the best bloggers to emerge from the A-List Blogger Club that Leo Babauta and I run – approached me with the idea of joining up to create a marketing blog for bloggers, my first thought was: “Yeah, right – I’ll start a marketing blog when water starts to run uphill.”

But then I thought about it. Barrie’s a lovely person with lots of integrity. She runs a beautiful blog, Live Bold and Bloom. It seemed to me that there must be a way of marketing that’s different. That treats potential customers like valued friends. That places passion and respect before profit. And still works to create a great income.

I thought of all the people like you who would like to earn some extra cash – or want to develop an online career that gives them a recession-proof income.

So, in the end I said ‘yes’.

Barrie and I then developed a style of marketing we call ‘Good Karma’ Marketing because it’s based upon the principle that what we give out in life is what we get back.

And today we’ve finally launched A-List Blog Marketing as a resource for all those who want to learn how to market themselves or their products – in a way that feels good.

Do come and visit us! We’ve created a complimentary video course for you: The Heart of Online Marketing. Grab ithere.

Mary Jaksch is the Chief Editor of Write to Done. Check out her new blog A-List Blog Marketing

Categories: Blogwriting, Business, Craft

Next Page »