Writing sales copy that puts your product or service into the hands of your buyer and money into your pocket isn’t hard to create—if you use a formula.

By studying the basic formula used for writing good sales copy you can fill your website, collateral materials and presentation copy with elements that are appealing, exciting and convert leads into sales. To get started follow these simple steps:

1. Identify Your Target Audience

Know your niche market and customize your sales copy to exactly what they’re looking for.

2. Perform Market Research

Learn about the needs of your target market by finding out what they need, like or dislike. This information will help your sales copy address your targets specific needs. It will also help to anticipate questions and objections your audience will have.

3. Craft an Attention-Grabbing Headline

Limp, lifeless, irrelevant and ineffective headlines clutter a message. It’s a turn off to read a headline that doesn’t address your target’s needs.

Examples are:

Poor Quality Headline:

Drain-Edge – Your Answer To All Your Plumbing Needs!

High Quality Headline:

Do You Have the Worst Plumbing Nightmare Ever Imagined?

Let Drain-Edge Take the Edge Off Your Mind by Helping You With a Low Cost and Easy Solution to Your Leaky Pipes, Busted Toilet or Cracked Septic Tank. Call Us Today for a Free Estimate, Budget Discount Rates and Fast Service!

By creating a headline that is highly relevant, simple and specific your target buyer will read on.

4. Establish Your Credibility

Detail your credentials and provide your target audience with information that makes you an authority.

Tell a story by explaining your business product or service.

Offer testimonials that are packed with positive results from satisfied customers. Make sure your testimonials are specific and describe exact benefits that your product or service provided. Include contact information for your testimonials so your potential buyer knows they come from real people or businesses you’ve serviced.

Add a guarantee to your product or service. A strong guarantee shows that you stand behind what your selling. Many businesses have reported, the longer your guarantee period is, the fewer returns there are.

5. State Benefits Not Features

One of the most commonly overlooked marketing mistakes is not knowing the difference between features and benefits. Sales copy must clearly state what the benefit of using your product or service is. Features are simply describing your product or service.

For example:

Feature:

Drain-Edge works hard to provide you and your home with carefree plumbing solutions.

Benefit:

Enjoy care-free plumbing solutions that put your mind at ease and let you live worry- free!

The basic rule is that a benefit answers the question “What’s in it for me?” By stating a benefit you are inviting your target audience to imagine using your product or service in order to take care of a problem they’re trying to solve.

 6. Format Easy To Read/Scan Copy

• Use bulleted lists
• Add sub-headings
• Create short, chunky paragraphs
• Emphasize important points with bold lettering, highlights or italics
• Use a plain font face that’s easy to read
• Compile relevant graphics and images to push your message
• Don’t clutter your message with too many graphic design elements
• Keeping your designs simple so  your message/sales copy stands out

7. Ask Your Target to Act

Promoting a call to action and encourage your target to act quickly—turn leads into sales.

Create special incentive programs that give your audience a reason to buy now rather than later. Limited time offers and limited supply can nudge a casual looker into a buyer. Coupons, discounts and special bonus offers  also motivate clients and customers to act quickly.

By making it clear what your audience can do to act, you are helping them choose to close the deal and buy your product or services. Motivational sales copy increases potential buyers to take advantage of a special program offer. This can result in a higher return on the time you invested in working on good sales copy.

It’s not too hard to follow the basics of writing good sales copy. The challenge is making the copy work for your target audience and their specific needs. Also consider the time of year and the current economic climate when choosing special promotional offers. Marketing and advertising is a delicate balance between being targeted, compelling and motivational. Good luck and enjoy creating your all-time best sales copy!

We welcome new ideas and you might inspire us for our next blog post! Share your thoughts and tips by posting comments for us. Thanks for reading!

By Sara Hassler

Opinionated articles and persuasive ad copy is the ultimate challenge for creative writers. Learning how to focus on style can help make this an easy task. Here are some great tips on writing opinionated and persuasive pieces.

• Engage your reader with a thoughtful beginning.
• Craft a unique point of view that adds depth that your reader can relate to.
• Include examples, explanations and evidence that helps your reader believe you.
• Give a reason why your reader should care about your subject.
• Offer your readers an action plan on what they can do.
• Reference a news story or event that ties into your copy.
• Present yourself as an authority on your subject by being confident and respectful as you write.
• Craft your pieces to be socially, culturally and community appropriate by using a friendly tone and easy to comprehend vocabulary.
• Avoid using jargon or slang for general audiences.
• Include key terms and jargon if your audience is industry-specific.
• Choose simple short sentence structures.
• Avoid snarky comments.
• If time and space allows include and acknowledge other perspectives.
• Finish your piece off with a call to action or thought to contemplate.
• Always strive to open the door and educate your readers.

By working with this basic set of rules you can match your style to your intended outlet’s submission guidelines. Creating a successful article or crafting fantastic ad copy that can withstand the test of an audience will take time and thought. Utilize your skills and extend your efforts whenever possible. We have a few great ideas on how to get your creative juicing flowing:

• Choose two or three focal points on your subject.
• Write to inspire your readers to think.
• Avoid extraneous details that will dilute your message.
• Inspire your readers to consider your thoughts so they see and feel your subject  on a deeper level.
• Consider who you are writing to, identify your target readers and then write to them in a conversational easy-to-read tone.
• Use words and terms that will resonate with your audience.
• Include answers to questions that your readers might have about your subject.
• Focus your writing on relevant points that will attract your audience.

Once your base copy is complete:

• Work diligently on editing, adding previously forgotten points and primping your copy so its appealing and easy-to-read from start to finish.

It’s common to lose yourself in a creative work with overstated opinions or hyperbolized persuasive thoughts. Following the basic rules of creative writing can help re-focus and re-connect your passion so your thoughts are reader-friendly. If you’re writing during a hurried crunch, limited deadline or if you get hit with a mental block, revisiting these basics can be inspirational to finishing a fabulous piece of work that provokes deep, intelligent and educated thought. Set your goals, follow the rules and good luck with your next opinionated article or persuasive advertising copy job!

We welcome new ideas and you might inspire us for our next blog post! Share your thoughts and tips by posting comments for us. Thanks for reading!

By Sara Hassler

Lots of people think that freelancing is a dream job and for many it sure is! For those that work out of a virtual environment, most would agree that a flex schedule can be as demanding or more than working in a structured office setting because your office and home are one in the same. There is not a definite division between what time you start work and what time you call the day closed. Lots of freelance workers admit that they are logged on day and night and work a continuous schedule around the clock that many times pours into their personal time. Finding a way to balance managing your work schedule and keeping yourself and your family happy all while staying productive can be quite a task! Here are a few easy steps that you might consider when trying to balance it all:

Create Set Work Time Zones

General Work Time

General work time can be a collection of basic tasks that include:

• Checking your email inbox
• Logging onto your freelance websites to check for new work opportunities
• Updating your social media networks and checking for updates from others
• Catching up on general phone calls

 Focused Work Time

This list of focused tasks might include:

• Shutting down all forms of outside communication
• Setting status alerts to busy or completely logging off websites
• Closing down pop-up alerts or audio notifications
• Working on projects that need your un-divided attention

 Break Time

Refreshing yourself during the workday with a break can include:

• Taking small short breaks in-between long periods of hard work.
• Finding time to decompress in order to re-focus on your work task.
• Indulging in reading the news, stretching or light physical activity.

 Control Your Notifications

Working independently without controls can lead to a troubled work schedule. By tracking the things that could potentially de-rail your workday, you’ll enjoy a more productive workday every day!

To ensure your daily success be sure to:

• It’s been well-documented that audio and visual alerts can create longer periods of distraction. Sound notifications are the easiest to control and the least disturbing. 
• Configure your notifications to be audio only. Use your standard volume controls to limit distracting alerts throughout the day.  
• Shut off visual notifications. This visual stimulation can cause longer distractions because they force a shift in visual focus on the screen.

Organize Your Time

• Batch process your workload by scheduling your tasks, timing them and sticking to a routine.
• Set specific times to read and respond to your email messages.
• Create a daily routine with a limited time frame to work on your social media networks or sign up for an automatic program that streams your updates across your social networks.
• Work on small tasks when you need a focus break and choose less mentally straining tasks like filing paperwork or other less complex work projects.
• Continue to work even when you need to re-gain your thoughts or re-focus. By staying in the work “groove” you might figure out the answer to the complex problem that you were previously stumped on!
• Formulate a list of rules with dates and length of time about when and how long you will be in need of general and focused work time.
• Ask for the help from family, friends and others to support your work ethic and provide you with the time you need to work independently in order to fulfill your obligations.

 These are just a few ways that you can increase your productivity as a freelancer and independent service worker. Whether you’re a graphic designer, consultant or virtual accountant, these basic work controls can help build rules and a healthy work routine for you. If you have been working outside of a structured office environment and have secrets of success to share please post a comment and share with others.

We welcome new ideas and you might inspire us for our next blog post! Share your thoughts and tips by posting comments for us. Thanks for reading!

By Sara Hassler

No one buys sight unseen. Customers want to thump the melon, smell the coffee, and squeeze the Charmin before they put it into their shopping cart. The same holds true for your creative clients. Before hiring you for advertising, design, copywriting, web development –or any kind of work– they want to see what you can do. Sometimes that’s trickier than it sounds.

That’s where Oozil comes to the rescue. Part of the long list of creative tools Oozil is providing to its members is a virtual portfolio. With practically limitless memory, this space is invaluable: not just as a portfolio, but also a gallery and resume in one that makes your work available for the whole world, without the cost normally associated with hosting your own.

If you don’t have a webpage of your own, you might want a quick lesson in what that entails outisde of Oozil. A simple Google search for “artist webpage” turns up a long list of ads posted by companies that want to relieve creative people of their hard-earned money, charging monthly fees for the design, the space, and the web hosting, with extra charges if you exceed their limits. The cost is often more than you would stand to make by selling your work.

Those aren’t the only fees you would incur if you try to host your own webpage. The domain name costs money too. How much money depends on how good the name is, and you could end up shelling out hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars if you want a catchy one. You can go cheap and purchase a site name like dog-carrots-art23.net (all you’ll get for a budget price) and cross your fingers that anyone will ever find you.

But you don’t have to do any of that. Oozil has done the work for you. They’ve secured the space, the tools, and a catchy name that everyone will remember. You’ll have no need to pound the pavement in your own town with a bulging briefcase full of sample work. You can tell anyone, anywhere: “I’m on Oozil.”

For Oozil members who are clients, this collection of portfolios will be a one-stop shop for finding the people to fulfill your creative needs. Why spend hours flipping through resumes or doing online searches that yield nothing, when you could stop by Oozil and actually see what your potential hiree can do for you?

Oozil is all about connection. You could have the swankiest portfolio in town, but what if no one ever calls to see it? You could be offering a plum advertising assignment, but what if no applicants fit your needs? The virtual portfolio eliminates the hassle as well as the worry, and connects creatives to clients in a way that requires less work for both of them.

Imagine if you had an agent that worked for you, finding the right jobs (or hirees, if you’re a client) for you while you went about your everyday business.

Now stop imagining, because you have one already. Meet Oozil.

by Elizabeth Kelly