Obviously, if you’re paying to advertise your business, you want people to read your whole ad, so they know what you’re offering and can make an informed decision about whether to do business with you, don’t you? Here’s a few ideas you can use in your advertising to keep your reader interested:- conversational short sentences, subheadings, break up long text into short paragraphs, using bullets to speed the reader through your copy, problem-solving copy the reader identifies with, talking in “What’s in it for me?” terms, educational copy, and not revealing price til the end.

Firstly, you need to be aware of the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) concept. What that means is you need to constantly tell your customer what’s in your ad for them, because if they’re reading your ad it’s only to find out something that they want to know about. YOUR ADS NEED TO BE THE ONES THAT REWARD THEM (while your competitors’ BORE them). This also means you should understand the difference between benefits and features.

Let’s say you sell a colour TV with a 90″ screen – that’s the feature. But the benefit of this is that the screen is so big that it makes your lounge room feel like a cinema! That’s the benefit, ok? Let me now introduce you to two powerful words which will automatically suck out the benefit of any feature;

“WHICH MEANS”

In the example above, in order to put it into WIIFM terms, you could put it together like this – “This sensational TV has a whopping 90″ screen, which means you can virtually turn your lounge room into a cinema!”.

Another powerful tool you can use in your copy is bullets. Why? Because you can package up your most exciting and riveting benefits into short little bursts. In fact, the effect of bullet after bullet of really amazing benefits can actually cause nervous tension in your reader. They can get so excited that they literally can’t read any more and go straight to the ordering details. That’s how powerful they are!

Here are some examples of how intriguing bullets can be in your advertising (then you can just adapt them to your own business)

* Why the advertising you’re probably running right now is wasting you thousands of dollars, and what you need to do to turn that loss into cash

* How to get movie and TV stars to help you sell your product or service

* How to get hundreds of prospects to seek YOU out

* The one mistake 99% of businesses make which loses them tons of credibility… and thousands of dollars in sales

* The secret about human nature which expert salespeople use to make their fortune

* 11 simple ways to make your business the “king” of your industry

In fact, each bullet point you write in your advertising should be just like mini headlines that promise something of value to the reader. You might have 25 or 50 bullet points in a long sales letter, if each of them are like a mini headline, then you may only need one to stand out to your reader and make them say “Yes, I need to know more about this!”

And this is also where educational copy comes in. You can’t assume that people know as much about your business as you do. You work in it every day, and possibly been doing it for years, and often you can get frustrated because you don’t think your customers respect your value. But the reality is, THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND YOUR VALUE.

So you need to educate them about the value you offer. If you tell them something about your company, then your job is to explain why that’s important for them. Let’s say you sell an expensive mountain bike, for example. In order to get people to buy the bike you’ve got to justify why they should spend $2000 on your bike. You’ve got to tell them the reasons why, which is what educational copy is all about.

Like that the bike has better suspension to handle rough terrain, a comfy seat that you could ride the bike for hours without getting sore, and maybe it has 50 gears for easy riding, and a GPS so you never get lost. These are all just examples of course, but notice how it’s talking mainly in benefits to the reader, how it will help them!

If you are a good writer, you should be able to pick up copywriting. The key behind copywriting is that you must understand that you’re writing in a different style and to a different audience. A good quote that will be used to start this article comes from the book The Copywriter’s Handbook, A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing Copy that Sells. “A copywriter is a sales person behind a typewriter.” (p.1 of book mentioned above)

This is the key when you are learning copywriting. You must learn to communicate with the audience in a way that persuades them to buy the product or service that you are writing about. There must be an initial connection that is made or else you’ll find that you’ve lost the audience’s attention. In this day and age, people are inundated with the number of advertisements that they see every day and quickly discard any advertisement that does not fit within their perspective immediately. You must realize that your writing cannot be for the entertainment of an audience now but rather to sell a product or service.

As a quick introduction to some of the important points on learning copywriting, the first key is to pay attention to the headline. The headline is read more often than copy at an exponential rate. If you cannot catch someone’s attention with the headline, you have wasted the rest of your sales copy. A sales letter essentially only has about five seconds in which you can grab a person’s attention and the headline is one the most important factors in being able to pull that attention. This is just an example of copywriting and what you must look for.

In learning copywriting, look into the works of Dan Kennedy. He is one of the foremost experts on the subject and he has said before that he became better by continual development of his skills. If you would like to learn more about any one of his books, look into the following title: The Ultimate Sales Letter. You will want to make yourself a lifelong student of the subject in learning copywriting because there is always something more to know.

Hopefully this article on learning copywriting has helped you. This field will seem very challenging but at the same point it is one of the more interesting fields that you can find out there. The key to being successful and copywriting is to learn from what you do. If you constantly read and continue to develop your skills, you’ll find that you will become a great copywriter. It is hard within a single page to truly give you an idea of what it takes to be a copywriter but go back to the quote at the beginning of the article that a copywriter is a person who sells. Your goal is to educate an audience in a way that persuades them. This is the only difference between how you currently write and how you will write as a copywriter.

Want to increase your online sales? Make sure your offer is one they can’t pass up!

Any offer you make through your Internet copywriting needs to be worth the readers’ time. Time is valuable and there is no bigger waste of time – for you as the creator or for your reader – than a worthless offer.

A number of years ago, a newspaper advertising sales rep went to her boss, disgusted that her client would not buy the ad schedule she pitched. It turned out that the last time the client ran an ad – five years before – “I didn’t get a single result from my coupon” that he ran way back then. The coupon was for a free coffee refill… something that was already common practice at the restaurant. Honestly, who would bother?

“Go back and tell that man we’ll run his ad for free if he will live up to the offer we create,” was the ad manager’s response. From there, he proceeded to tell the young sales rep to tell the client that the coupon would read “Bring this in for $1.00 in cash.” So, she did.

The client naturally refused because he knew he would have too many takers. What he finally admitted to himself is that his advertising did not work because his offer was lousy. Keep this business owner’s woes in mind as you plan to create your own irresistible offers with your Internet copywriting.

Make your offer one that is worth the time it takes to respond. A “Free 60 day trial” is a pretty good offer for an online program. What kind of offers can your business make?

The key to getting readers to respond to your offers is to make them irresistible. Can you afford to knock several dollars off the fee for your product or service? Or maybe you can make a strong guarantee, making your product or service almost risk free. Transferring the risk from the customer to you will help remove resistance to your offer.

Whatever it is you decide to offer, honor the offer at all costs. Keep your word and potential customers will quickly fall into place as current customers spread the word.

If you have never done any Internet copywriting before, don’t worry about it. No one knows your product or service as well as you do. Because of your passion for the product or service you are selling, you know it better than even a professional copywriter. Let that passion lead your Internet copywriting as you work to create the perfect offer that your potential customers just cannot refuse!

If you need some help creating an irresistible offer for your Internet copywriting, ask yourself, “What would make me buy?” Think about your answer. Is it do-able? If so, let that be your irresistible offer.

You can always make it available for a limited time (another good way to get people to act quickly) in case you decide the offer is too good to be very profitable.

Add a sense of urgency to your offer to get people to act immediately. If they put it off, they are likely to forget about it and you end up losing the sale. Adding a sense of urgency can be done by limiting the quantity or time of the offer or both. For example, the special offer is good only for the next 100 people who order, or the offer expires in 48 hours. You can even use both to heighten the sense of urgency.

In summary, make your offer irresistible. Make it worth the effort to the customer to place the order. Transfer the risk from the customer to you and add a sense of urgency. Then be sure to live up to what you have written in you copy. If you do these thing, you’ll see your sales skyrocket!