Copy Tip 13: Insider Tip on Headlines
Before we get into the juicy copy tips, I want to let you know something:
Some of the vehicles you use when creating and using copy don’t have to cost a fortune to bring you great results.
$75 returned for every $1 spent
Just recently a client (retail travel agent) sent out a 2-sided postcard to a list of around 290 of her clients … and got 24 bookings — worth almost $30,000 to her business. For less than $400 (I don’t have exact figures on this one, sorry!) … $30,000 returned in business.
In other words, for every $1 she spent on the campaign, she got back $75.
Low Cost Campaign Returns ROI 2158%
A campaign we did ourselves last year cost us $109.90 in setting it up. It was sent to 157 clients. 19 ordered during the campaign (a 12.1% response). Gross sales were $8161 and our net ROI was 2158%. In other words, for every $1 spent, we made a net profit of $21.58.
Our actual sales ended up being a fair bit higher … as orders kept arriving long after the “official” campaign was over … in fact, we were still getting orders last month (November 2008) — 17 months later! So our actual net profit would now be around 50 percent higher than the figures above.
“Fully Booked” from tiny classifieds ad
In October 2008 I created an ad that cost my clients (2 sharing one ad) less than $100 to advertise. Their services — tarot reading and reflexology — were fully booked while that ad was running. It was slightly smaller in area than one side of a regular business card.
Why am I giving you these examples?
For two reasons …
- I want to demonstrate to you that you don’t need to spend a fortune to put your copy skills to work in a way that’s effective for your business. You can invest just small amounts and see quite profitable results when you understand and can use effective copywriting techniques.
- Secondly, I want these examples to inspire you … if I can create these results, you can share in my knowledge and put it to work for your business. You can see that this stuff really does work.
Now of course I’m nowhere near the “guru” status in this industry and readily admit that I’m always learning. Learning never stops. While I live and breathe copy stuff day-in and day-out, there’s always masses of great resources to absord and study and put into practice. Any wise marketer or copywriter really is a perpetual student in the craft … there’s always someone doing great things to learn from, and I keep on learning from the world’s best.
The big difference is doing what you know rather than just knowing what to do.
When you start creating campaigns and testing your offers, the more you do, the more you’ll want to do … and the easier it becomes because you don’t only know it, but you also implement and do it.
Inside Secret on Headlines
Here’s today’s copy tip … your headline is “the ad for the ad”. It gets 70 to 80 percent of the attention of your copy — so it’s worth getting this part right!
We’ll talk a lot more about headlines in upcoming tips: but here’s the tip I want to leave you with today:
Your headline should persuade your prospect to keep on reading (or watching/listening) … and nothing else.
It has ONLY ONE purpose.
It’s not designed necessarily to sell your product or get your prospect to take action.
It’s not designed to convey all of your copy points.
It’s simply designed to grab the attention of your prospect and get them to read the next sentence.
Joe Sugarman talks about this with his “greased slide”… your copy is like a slippery slide designed to keep your prospect moving in the right direction.
(You really should have this book in your must-read collection!). Here’s my link to the book on Amazon.com (yes, via amazon associates):
You want to sell your prospect to keep on reading. So don’t try and make your headline do everything: just make it do this one thing.
To be successful, it must achieve this one purpose!
Tomorrow we’ll get more into headlines … and some essential considerations you cannot afford to overlook.
Err, it’s not my book!
I had to laugh today … a bit of pre-Christmas humour …
I use Google Alerts to track some client issues and also to track some marketers, to see where they get mentioned on blogs and in the news.
They’re a great way to not only keep track of what gets posted online, but you can also use the alerts to let you know of relevant new items on blogs, to then go and contribute and gain some valuable traffic.
Of course, I keep a track of my own name to see where it pops up.
An alert arrived today with this content off a blog:
Visitors to your site will submit their information using your forms if you use convincing sales copy. I think Dean Kennedy is a phenomenal resource to tap when creating your content. He may be unequalled in the field of writing copy. Buy his book, The Ultimate Sales Letter, and read it thoroughly.
I thought this was fantastic!! Alas, it’s not true of course!
The author isn’t referring to me here … he’s referring to Dan Kennedy! Quite often at marketing events people see my name and say something like “hey, that’s just like Dan Kennedy” — or on the odd occasion they call me Dan by mistake. That’s how ingrained Dan Kennedy’s name is as a world-famous marketing guru!
I don’t mind that name association of course, not that I’m any relation!
I have found, however, the Kennedy name has brought to my attention some excellent marketing resources over the years, so I have three Kennedy’s to thank for increasing my knowledge of this craft.
All of Dan Kennedy’s books are on my shelves, as well as much of his other products. Ian Kennedy has also influenced my knowledge. He is Chairman and founder of K & D Bond International (and often referred to as the ‘Father of Direct Marketing in Australia’) — I met him back in 1997 and have an autographed copy of the book he co-authored with Bryce Courtenay called ‘The Power of One To One’. Another famous Kennedy in marketing and advertising is Canadian John E Kennedy who in 1904 coined the phrase “salesmanship in print” to define advertising.
So it is quite amusing when my name pops up in this way (at least to me!) … albeit attributed incorrectly!
Nowadays I compete with an American footballer and the former NHL hockey player who both share my name, so it’s a bit of a challenge in Google at times to stay noticed!
Weekly Twitter Tweets at 2008-12-21
- @caricatures yes, I have! I checked out your site (last week) and stumbled across you on twitter … will be getting caricature in early 09! in reply to caricatures #
- An early finish today from the annual Christmas TraveLeague luncheon … probably home about 12 hours earlier than some!!! #
- @caricatures thanks — I can’t help my design background and being a perfectionist sometimes!! in reply to caricatures #
- @michelfortin re: reading profiles first — usually profiles r blocked b4 being friends! I always add a personal msg to add Friend request. in reply to michelfortin #
- @michelfortin I still don’t think it’s spam if a profile is blocked. Eg most FB’ers only unblock own network (eg USA blocked for Aussies!) in reply to michelfortin #
- @michelfortin fair enough, that’s different — & I agree. Spam sucks whereever it takes place! in reply to michelfortin #
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Awesome Christmas Lights Video
Thanks to Mike Humphreys on the Copywriting Board for pointing out this one! Wow!
There’s even a link in the thread to the post on Snopes that verifies the authenticity, plus to the company who make the lights (and even more videos!).
Copy Tip 12: Evaluation
While we’re at the end of the marketing formula … the “E” in MOOVE … by no means is this the least important ingredient … in fact, without this, you could waste incredible amounts of money!
If you don’t track, test, measure and evaluate your marketing … you’ll never have any idea of what works and what doesn’t work.
You’ll be an advertising victim! You’ll keep spending money without any idea of your return on investment.
There is, of course, a better way!
Whether to TEST elements of your copy, or the various Vehicles you use to reach your market … evaluation is essential for success.
What should you be evaluating?
Well, you’ll want to know for each marketing “campaign” you create what value it returns.
So it’d be a good idea to know …
- Your cost per lead/enquiry
- When you get them
- How many leads convert into customers/sales
- When you convert
- Total sales (and average sales)
One easy way to track it is to setup a spreadsheet: you could even do that for FREE with online apps like Google Docs.
When you include the cost of the campaign (eg, your advertisement cost plus artwork), and know how many responses you get, you can work out your total sales, your average sales and your costs per lead.
Then, if you track WHEN the responses arrive (eg, the publication day of the ad would be Day 1, then each day you can track the responses you get) … you’ll know roughly how long it takes to be profitable, and how long your sequence of contacts should be with prospects to be worthwhile.
(That’s really a whole other topic — but your marketing should always involve a sequence of contacts. You’ll find with tracking that the 2nd, 3rd, 4th (and maybe more contacts in the sequence) really boost your ROI and profits over just 1 or 2 contacts in your sequence).
Evaluation
Once you have this kind of data, you can easily work out what was viable and profitable, and what wasn’t really worth your effort.
You can use this data to plan future campaigns.
If you knew that every time you invested $500 in one particular vehicle that you get back $2500 in sales, how often would you keep on doing this marketing with this vehicle?
As long as it stayed profitable!!
Sometimes, your vehicle/media may SEEM expensive (eg, a $7000 advertisement vs a $700 postcard mailout) — but that more expensive vehicle may have a lower cost per lead, and a bigger profit, because it reaches a much larger number of your prospects.
If you don’t track this data — you’ll never know!
How do you get the information from your prospects to track which “vehicle” is working?
The answer is simple: just ask!
It could be easy as “can I ask you please how you heard about us today?” — and keep track of the answer. You might just have a simple sheet with each vehicle listed, and put a tick next to the vehicle that corresponds to the answer.
Eg:
- Today’s Date: _____________
- Yellow Pages: IIIII IIIII III
- Wednesday Ad In Daily Paper: IIIII II
- Referred by Customer: IIII
- Coupon in letterbox: IIIII II
Etc etc. If for each sale you can link to the vehicle/media, you can work out the revenue that each has returned to you.
If you’re using a coupon, and have more than one in use at a time, you can include a small “tracking code” to keep track of where it was cut out and when you received it.
The Alternative
This is the scary part … if you DO NOT know what works, you’ll keep on responding to whoever shows up at your door to sell you particular media!
You might have a newspaper ad rep who asks you to spend $400 on a small advertising feature. If you’ve been tracking your data, you’ll know of course whether or not that’s a worthwhile decision — and you can control your spend according to what’s already working!
If you don’t know … you’re at the mercy of wasting your money on something you don’t know whether it works. Lots of businesses do this — and it’s a crazy unprofitable strategy!
What if you haven’t used this vehicle/media before?
Now “new” vehicles can be worth testing (especially when you KNOW your market and can evaluate whether this is a worthwhile risk).
Whatever Vehicle You Use, This Is A MUST …
When you do spend money on advertising or marketing — makes sure you include an OFFER. Don’t just “get your name out there” … how long can you afford to do that? Create an offer, based on your objective — and then track it to see if it works.
Testing Copy
When you’re testing your copy, you want to compare whether one version outperforms another.
The only way to compare this properly is to ONLY CHANGE ONE THING in your copy (otherwise you won’t know what changed element made the difference).
There is software (even part of Google’s free package of web tools) that can setup the tests and track the results … so it’s not even that hard to do!
The big thing about copy tests is — according to me — not get too bogged down in testing the minor parts of your copy. Test the things that matter: headline, offers, sub-heads and pre-heads, openings, testimonial placement, variations on urgency, etc.
You might want to try testing designs, but if you get into the real nitty-gritty it’s probably not stuff that makes a big difference.
Also keep in mind other factors outside of your control can also make a difference (eg the timing of economic news, other offers and launches in your market, seasonal factors) — you can’t always assume what YOU change makes the difference.
You also need to be sure the number of test results is sufficient to have some surety about your findings. Eg, having just 10 responses vs 500 responses might not yield a reliable result.
That’s a wrap on evaluation — both on testing copy and tracking your campaigns. Both are critical.
Tomorrow, we start on the juicy elements of persuasive copywriting … I don’t know how I’ll sleep in the meantime!! It’ll be exciting to reveal some great tips!