How to Write Copy that Sells

In this chapter we’re going to cover 9 Kinds of Offers. There are actually more, but these will be plenty to get you started, and will serve you for a long time, because most copywriters and marketers don’t even know these nine.

They are simply different ways of structuring the presentation of what you’re selling and how you’re selling it. There are advantages and disadvantages to each kind of offer, and I’ll be showing you how to choose the offer type best suited for your product or service. Let’s get to it.

This doesn’t mean it’s difficult, it simply means it’s straightforward and there are no fuzzy edges. This is what you get. This is what it will do for you. This is what it costs, so buy it now. It’s a hard offer. It’s plain.

This is the kind of offer that usually involves language like, “Send no money now. We’ll send you the kit, shirt, glasses (or whatever) for you to try for 30 days and if you like it we’ll automatically bill you.”

It’s called soft because it’s easier for the buyer to accept up front. They don’t have to pay anything right away, so they’re risking nothing. You let them try it for 30 days (or 2 weeks, or 3 months, etc.) and if they keep it, you bill them. The disadvantage to this kind of offer is that sometimes the people who accept it somehow “conveniently” forget that you are going to bill them at the end of the trial period, and they get upset. Some will complain to your payment processor, or even file a chargeback.

Keep this in mind. It doesn’t matter how clear you are in your explanation, how exacting it is, how large the typeface, I promise you if you do this kind of offer you will get complaints. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, (this is a powerful offer that invariably generates a lot of sales)... you simply have to be prepared for the complaints.

This should look familiar to you because you’ve seen it many times before. It’s the first time ever that a product is being offered, and so it’s offered at a charter price or rate that nobody will ever get again in the future. There’s a certain cutoff date, so if you buy before this particular date and you get the charter rate or VIP early bird rate or what have you, but nobody else ever gets this price again. This only works if you’re telling the truth. You can’t make this offer more than once, obviously... but you can also stay in “Charter mode” for as long as you want.

People often say, it makes no sense to have a “limited supply” in the digital world because you can make as many digital copies as you want. Well you can, and you can also release as few as you want, so I might only release 100 access passwords to my particular training program, if I don’t want everyone on the planet to have it.

Or, maybe I have only 15 places in a class that we’re selling. In that case it’s a limited number of units or positions that you have available, even if it’s digital. Again, like with all these offers, if you’re saying that once these are sold it’s over, you must be true to your word. You must not be tempted to use the ‘limited supply offer’ as a bogus ploy

Secondly, it’ll get you into a lot of trouble, and eventually your reputation will precede you, and people won’t buy from you.

This sounds similar to offer #4, but it’s a little different because it’s not about the units or positions in the class. In this offer the limitation is that it’s good for a specific limited time period. At that particular day and hour the offer is terminated. Again, you have to keep your word, and if you do, this can be powerful.

This is an elite offer. You make people apply for the privilege of buying your product. (Don’t laugh, this works like crazy). We use the application offer for our higher-priced workshops, like the Breakthrough Copy Workshop. In this workshop, participants gather with me and my team for three days, and we write their sales letter on the spot. We accept only a few people, and the tuition is $10,000.

But just because you have the ability to write a check doesn’t guarantee you have the privilege of getting into the workshop. You have to prove you’re a good fit for the group, and that the event is going to be the right thing for you. I don’t want someone to come to this if it’s not right for them, and I don’t want anyone in the room who’s going to spoil things for everyone else.

You don’t have to be hosting a $10,000 workshop to use this offer. It can be used to sell a position in your online class, in your coaching program or consulting business, etc. This is often a service or a live event, but it can work for nearly any product. You have to make a real application process, you can’t just say it’s an application only process and then not have one.

That being said, this offer usually works best for high-ticket items, and it usually involves personal selling. It’s very powerful.

This makes it easier to sell higher ticket items because people don’t have to pay all at once up front. It makes the price look more palatable.

This works best for the kinds of offers where you have the power to “turn the faucet off” (for instance, revoke their username and password) if they don’t pay.

Usually the copy will say, “This is a one-time offer. You will never see this again.”

The key to this offer is that you have to enforce the limitation. If it’s really a one-time offer, you have to go to the trouble of coding the page so that people can’t come back to buy it later.

The first few times you do a limited offer, people will ask you to make them the exception to the rule.

Resist the temptation to do that. Let it be known that you’re a person of your word and when you say it’s one-time, there’s a time limit, or a deadline... there really is. When you get that reputation, your customers will be quicker to buy when you ask them.

It’s also known as “forced continuity.” The customer buys something and they get a subscription that goes along with the thing they bought. Maybe they buy a set of fitness DVDs and they get an automatic subscription to a “DVD of the month” club, or perhaps they buy a bottle of your nutritional supplement, and then they get a 30-day supply sent to them once a month until they tell you to stop. That’s also called “till forbid” billing.

This is highly controversial! It generates a lot of revenue for companies who use it. But there’s a potential dark side: frankly, I think this works so well, because in most cases customers don’t understand what they’re doing. They click the button, they’re buying something and they don’t really take the time to read the screen, they just clicked the button because they wanted to get to the thing they bought.

Therefore, you end up with a lot of angry people who say, “I never paid for this, asked for this or bought it.” They contact their credit card company and file charge-backs, which causes you problems with your merchant account provider.

To be clear, there are empires that are built on this kind of offer. However, it’s also highly controversial and it takes backbone, because you have to hear a lot of negative feedback from customers. Honestly, I don’t think it’s worth it.

If you are going to make this kind of offer, you need to over-communicate to avoid the most serious problems. Make it obvious to people that they are buying a recurring subscription, and how they can cancel their subscription if they want to.

How do you choose which offer to employ for your particular product or service?

It comes down to knowing the stages of awareness that your audience happens to be in. I call it “opening the sale.” O.P.E.N. is my acronym describing the difference stages of buying awareness.

What does the OPEN acronym stand for? How does it help you understand the stages of awareness of your prospects? It’s quite simple:

Oblivious – These are the people who do not know there is a problem. They don’t know they have a problem, and they don’t know that you exist with a solution. These are the hardest people to sell to.

Pondering – Let’s say that you sell a headache remedy and the oblivious person has no headache, has never had a headache and has never thought about buying headache medicine — they’re oblivious. The pondering person, on the other hand, is beginning to feel the first little twinges of a headache coming on, and they’re beginning to ponder where they might get some Tylenol.

Engaged – The engaged person now actually has a headache. It’s not severe and they could probably make it through their day if it didn’t get any worse, but they’re now actively looking for something to solve this headache problem, before it gets any worse.

Need – This is the person who’s in agony, the person with a migraine. Their head feels as though it’s splitting open, and they will take anything if you say it will solve their headache problem. You don’t have to sell it or pitch it to them. All you need to communicate is that you have a solution. These are the easiest people to sell to.

The secret is to address each of these levels of awareness with a different kind of offer; the Oblivious with something like a Soft Offer, while the person in Need probably only requires a simple Hard Offer.

I know this sounds elementary, but it’s often overlooked. Make sure you know what they want and sell them exactly what they want. Now you may be thinking, “What they want isn’t what they need. They want one thing and they need another.”

Even so. You sell them what they want and you also give them what they need.

I like to think of this as “pill treat” copy. If you have a dog you may be familiar with pill treats. They are these weird little gelatinous balls of goo that dogs love to eat. If you have to give your dog a vitamin or some type of medicine, and you try to stick the pill in their mouth, they’ll spit it out. They won’t eat it from your hand, because it tastes bad to them, just like it would to you or me. So you put that pill inside the pill treat with the goo, and they’ll snarf it right up.

Your copy should work the same way. You’re going to put the pill inside the “pill treat” and it’s more palatable to your audience. Then, you sell them what they want and in the meantime you deliver what they need. But, if you don’t sell them what they want — they’ll never buy. People don’t buy based on need or prevention, as a general rule. They buy based on what they want.

No matter what they may tell you or how logical they say they are, it’s been proven that even corporate jets are bought for emotional reasons. There’ll be plenty of rationale later on to explain why it’s a good decision, why they chose the one they did, but the fact is they decided with their emotions first and they justified with rationale later.

This is not as obvious or as easy as it seems. You have to make sure there’s no vagary in your copy, no “voodoo copy.” If you can read a paragraph and not be sure of what it said, or if you read it to someone and they aren’t sure what it says either, that’s “voodoo copy.” In fact, what I recommend is that after you’ve written your offer out, you read it out loud to another human. Only if they can understand it, and repeat the offer back to you in their own words, can you feel confident that it’s clear enough.

This has probably worked on you. You’ve probably been contemplating buying some product, service or training program and you couldn’t quite make up your mind until you saw one particular bonus they offered and you said all right, if they’re going to offer that then I’m going to buy.

You need to pay special attention to the bonuses you offer. People overlook this and treat their bonuses as a second thought. That’s a mistake. Spend as much time on your bonuses as you do on any other part of your product creation, and as much time on the copy for the bonus as you do on any other copy that you write. The bonus needs to be as good as or better than what you’re selling.

The right kind of bonus is relevant to the product and it enhances the value of the product and makes it even more valuable or easier to use.

CHAPTER 9 QUICK SUMMARY

The 9 Kinds of Offers

OFFER #1 – Hard offer. This doesn’t mean it’s difficult, it simply means it’s straightforward and there are no fuzzy edges. This is what you get.

OFFER #2 – Soft offer. This is the kind of offer that usually involves language like, “Send no money now. We’ll send you the kit, shirt, glasses (or whatever) for you to try for 30 days and if you like it we’ll automatically charge bill you.”

OFFER #3 – Charter offer. This should look familiar to you because you’ve seen it many times before. It’s the first time ever that a product is being offered, and so it’s offered at a charter price or rate that nobody will ever get again in the future.

OFFER #4 – Limited supply offer. This just means there are a specific number of available units or positions.

OFFER #5 – Limited time offer. This sounds similar to offer #4, but it’s a little different because it’s not about the units or positions in the class, it’s good for a specific limited time period.

OFFER #6 – The application offer. This is an elite offer. You make people apply for the privilege of buying your product. (Don’t laugh this works like crazy).

OFFER #7 – The payment plan offer. This makes it easier to sell higher ticket items because people don’t have to pay all at once up front.

OFFER #8 – The one-time offer. You’ve probably seen this before, it’s usually an upsell or add-on sale.

OFFER #9 – The negative option offer. It’s also known as forced continuity. This is where people buy something and they get a subscription that goes along with the thing they bought.