The home page of any site with direct marketing at play is the key web page, especially if it is where you want a person to take some action, such as buying something or subscribing to something.

So, one of the great ways of building momentum, and also increasing the number of people who act on this, is by creating some urgency when writing your headlines. There are many different ways in which this urgency can be created, and below are just a few:

5.Daily deals – this is a great way of bringing in customers.

However, just a word of caution when using these types of tactics with the elements of copywriting: It is important that you are both credible and honest with the visitors to your site. So if you are saying that an offer expires on a particular date or at a particular time, then make sure that it does. Just imagine how bad it would look if someone came back to your site the day after, only to find the offer still in place.

But there are other ways in which you can imply urgency on your site. You could show a page with the prices, and that they are the best prices to be found on the web as at that time. With this method you are not providing a time limit or a limit on how much of the product is available. But by using a time stamp, you are also implying that the prices on these products could increase at any time.

The whole idea of this method is so that you get people moving. So those who would normally be sitting on the fence will actually make that all important purchase.

But above all, you can sell with urgency as long as you do it with integrity, or you may do more damage than good.

Headlines: How To Write Them

So just how you go about writing a great headline? It’s quite simple really. What you need to do is spend less time stressing about how to write your headline, and more time on figuring out what it should say.

Even if you say the wrong thing beautifully, it is not going to do you any good, but if you happen to say the right thing with poor wording, then this will help you much better in the long run.

So, it is important that you put your ego aside and spend time deciding what your headline is going to say.

So just how do you know what to say?

It is more important that you focus your mind on the desires and wants of your target audience, rather than on either the product or service that you are trying to sell.

Just as there are two basic types of website (direct response website and traditional websites), there are two types of website marketing: direct marketing and indirect marketing.

Direct marketing is the simpler form: make your link available to as many people as you can. The easiest way to do this is just to distribute your link to any of your online contacts. This has a few advantages: no one is likely to be upset with you for marketing, and you’ll probably get a few sales just on the strength of the personal connection.

The disadvantage, however, is massive: no matter how many people you keep in touch with on a daily basis, you always have a much, much larger group of people who could buy your product–if only they knew about it. So relying on your contacts alone is obviously not a good overall strategy.

A more effective option is to post your link on various forums, blogs, on sites. This reaches a large number of people and allows you to target your marketing to the people most likely to buy your product: a graphic design forum, for example, would be a good place to promote your graphics software package.

A blog about handcrafted art would be a good place to promote your wood carvings. A website devoted to literary reviews would be a good place to promote your book. Any number of options exist, depending on your product and the people most likely to buy it.

The disadvantage to this type of direct marketing, however, is the problem of reputation. Directly placing your link in as many places as possible can easily give you and your business a bad name.

The solution to this problem is to follow general rules of good online behavior. This means:

Don’t post your links in places unrelated to your product.
Don’t interrupt forum conversations in progress in order to promote your product. Be careful when promoting your product in forums that you don’t regularly visit. Read the forum policies and act accordingly. Don’t react negatively if anyone disparages you or your wares.

The top 10 blogs to read in 2009 « Direct Marketing Observations

Here are 10 more that I read because they are prolific in cranking out content that is in tune with the issues of marketing, PR, social media, and life. You didn’t think I could just read 10 blogs a day did you? Well neither will you, …

David Ogilvy: We Sell or Else

Renowned Advertising guru David Ogilvy gives a brief speech on the importance of direct marketing.

Indirect advertising involves one of the following:

Getting people to promote your product for you.
Promoting your product on wide-reaching advertising networks.

This has the advantage of making your link available to even more people than direct marketing can reach, even if you’re posting on widely-traveled forums or highly-trafficked blogs.

However, they’re still limited by the number of people who visit those forums or blogs on a regular basis. What’s more, the number of blogs or forums you can visit is limited by your own searches and your own ability to think up new places to promote your product.

With indirect marketing, you can promote to a far wider audience without having to think about each individual blog, forum, or other venue for promotion: you can do all of that work automatically, or you can get other people to do it for you.

There are many ways to get people to promote your product for you. The obvious way, of course, is just to ask people to do it, or to hire a permanent marketing employee whose job it is to find potential opportunities for promotion and to post your link.

A better way, however, might be to offer incentives: a discount on your product, for example, if a certain number of sales can be traced to a customer’s marketing efforts.

This means that you might take a loss (or simply break even) on one sale, but it means a guaranteed number of other sales at full price. You might also offer incentives for bringing people to visit your site with a higher threshold.

You can also promote your link indirectly by making use of advertising networks. Google Ads is one of the largest networks currently available but success is not easily guaranteed when people chase a definite but finite number of clicks.

Think about what a sales letter actually does. Your sales letter is responsible for three things:

1. Introducing the customer to your product.

2. Arguing persuasively about the merits of that product.

3. Inspiring the customer to actually purchase the product.

This seems like a simple structure, but it requires you to use three distinct modes of writing throughout, and to seamlessly transition from one into the other. It also requires you to do this in a fairly brief span of time.

The first section of the sales letter is your introduction. Within the introduction, you want to state clearly exactly what your product is. This is not the place to get persuasive about your product: this is simply the place to describe its essential nature so that any customer knows, right up front, what it is that you’re selling.

After you have expanded on their most pressing problem or desire and how you can offer the solution.

Our third basic principle of direct response site design holds true here: keep it simple, stupid. Online customers have millions of other websites that they could be visiting, and if your sales letter starts off trying to dazzle your readers by going into the long history of woodcarving in order to promote your handcrafted wind chimes, you lose them straight away. You can not educate the prospect until they have BOUGHT the product.

Your first line should NEVER read something like this: “XYZ is a new type of Widget from the brilliant designers at ..”–where XYZ is the product, Widget is its description, and LLC is your company’s name. Immediately your customer knows what you’re selling, how that product might fit into their life, and who’s doing the selling. You’ve laid your cards on the table–and with this level of simplicity, your customers will be no more willing to pick them up and play.

THEY want to know what is in it for them, ie save, gain etc much sooner than knowing who you are. Yes it is important but many in the offline print media do this – and the results are much poorer.

The second part of your sales letter–the argument–is where you can start getting fancy, introducing some dazzle into your presentation of your product.However you must be building a picture in peoples’ minds whether your offering solves their issues or desires. Ultimately the buying decision is emotional.The same principles apply online as in the offline world and that of course is direct marketing.

]]> http://digitalmoneymakers.com/three-factors-for-sales-letter-orders-part-1/feed/ 0 http://digitalmoneymakers.com/creating-direct-response-websites/ http://digitalmoneymakers.com/creating-direct-response-websites/#comments Thu, 23 Oct 2008 22:22:44 +0000 Chris http://digitalmoneymakers.com/?p=45 Traditional websites focus on the website design and design goals . All money made from the website is based on outside advertising, donations to support the site, or sometimes selling products from the site. Direct response websites focus on selling a product. Most of the money made from the website should be directly related to [...]]]>

Traditional websites focus on the website design and design goals . All money made from the website is based on outside advertising, donations to support the site, or sometimes selling products from the site. Direct response websites focus on selling a product. Most of the money made from the website should be directly related to product sales.

To highlight the differences in approach between these two forms of ecommerce website, let’s first look at some of the common elements among all types of website, whatever the ultimate purpose:

All websites are based on HTML code. All websites are accessed either through links from other websites or through a customer actually typing in the URL (web address.)

Let’s look at some of the specific differences between traditional web design and direct response marketing websites.

Basic Rule #1: No External Links

In traditional web design, your website benefits to some extent from the amount of links you offer–viewers have more of an incentive to visit your site. (This is the logic behind the successful “portal” websites that sometimes offer little beyond a very good and well-organized collection of links.) In direct response web design, your website is actually harmed by offering viewers external links, or any distractions from buying the product.

Therefore, the first basic rule of direct response web design is this: no external links. Once your customers get to your website, they should only leave once they’ve bought your product, or if they are not interested.

Obviously this rule breaks down if you advertise with Google adwords because they quality score certain elements. You can make the contact/privacy links less noticeable though to avoid this distraction to placing an order.

Basic Rule #2: Small User Base, High Conversion Rate

Traditional web design’s aim is to attract and retain a consistent user base. If a traditional website’s hit count is high, the website is more attractive to potential advertisers, allowing the website to make money. But that high hit count carries with it a cost: bandwidth fees.

In direct response web design, you also need a high hit count–initially. What you don’t want is a high hit count that keeps coming back for more without ever buying a product or service.

In order to accomplish this, make your website as simple as possible. Give your viewers some basic facts about the product, some information about how this product stands up against its competitors, a few positive testimonials or a photo or two, and then an ordering procedure.

That way your viewers can read your information, think about whether they want to buy the product or not, and then either buy it or leave–keeping your bandwidth costs down by keeping out people who won’t be of value to your product sales. Of course as not everyone buys straight away, offering an ecourse througfh an autoresponder is a must .

Basic Rule #3: KISS

If your ordering information is buried under a maze of links and supplementary pages full of product details, and if your ordering procedure is complicated and full of bugs, your customers are going to be too frustrated with your website to order your product–and worse, they might start to think of your products and your business as equally customer-unfriendly.

Computer scientists have an acronym to combat this possible problem: KISS, or “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” If your website is easy to navigate, if the information about your product is clearly presented on as few pages as possible, and if your ordering procedure is bug-free, then viewers won’t be scared off by your website–which leads to a much higher conversion rate, and thus a successful direct response marketing strategy.

We make purchases because of 7 “laws”. They are…
• The Law of Emotion
• The Law of Value
• The Law of Expectation
• The Law of Referrals
• The Law of Recognition
• The Law of Necessity
The Law of Presentation (the offer) is the last but is THE MOST IMPORTANT LAW of them all. Master this one and I assure you, you will have more sales than you could ever imagine.

We buy on emotion and justify it on logic.I am going to share some ideas with you in future posts on making your offer different from all the rest — even if you are promoting the exact same affiliate program as countless others, or marketing the exact same product you purchased reprint rights to .
We have to make an offer that they can’t refuse. We can make mistakes with copy but without a decent offer , all the body copy in the world won’t get a sale.