5 Tips to Get More Leads, Customers and Sales From Your Marketing Materials

Do you know the fastest way to generate better results from your website, emails, sales letters, and general marketing efforts? Write better copy.

You see, words make the sale. Not pretty graphics or pictures. Words. If you don't select the right words or put them in the right order, you will likely lose more sales than you make. The good news is you CAN fix this, using the five easy tips outlined below.

1. Know your audience. Those who say "Women are my potential customers" or "Anyone with skin is my target market" just don't get it. (Yes, those are direct quotes from someone who sold beauty products.) The quickest way to generate dismal results is to target everyone. Focus on a specific target market - the more specific the better - and write your marketing message directly to that customer.

2. Write about benefits, not features. This one can be tricky to “get" but it’s one of the most critical. People buy benefits, not features. So what is the difference between a feature and a benefit? Features are a description of a product whereas benefits are the solutions the product provides.

For instance, if we're talking about a diet pill, a feature would that the pill is small but the benefit is that the small size makes it easy to swallow. The point is, no one enjoys taking pills but touting the benefits of an easy-to-swallow pill alleviates a pain point.

3. Work on that headline. David Ogilvy, famous ad man and author of “Confessions of an Advertising Man,” said that people make the decision to read your marketing materials based on your headline. Your headline should:

• Speak to your potential customers
• Contain a benefit
• Be so compelling that your target market reads more.

That's a lot to ask for from a handful of words. So don't rush the process -- take as much time as you need to create the very best headline for your particular piece.

4. Include a call-to-action. Make your call-to-action should be strong and clear (and don't assume that your readers know what you want them to do). Remember, the call-to-action doesn’t need to be drastic (like proposing on a first date) it should advance the buying cycle.

5. Use “P.S.” and captions. After the headline, the two most read items in a sales piece are postscripts (and captions under photos, diagrams or other illustrations. Think of the ways you can use these items in your pieces. Include a special offer in the “P.S.” line or highlight a particularly compelling benefit. Whatever you do, don't waste that space.

By implementing just a few of these steps, you will start seeing better results. If you’d like to learn more secrets and make more money through better copy, download my Copywriting Rescue Kit below, which includes:

• A free 13-page white paper on how to get more leads, customers and sales through powerful copywriting tools and techniques. You’ll learn my secrets on how I get fantastic results for my clients, like Ali Brown, Alex Mandossian and Mark Victor Hanson.
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