A successful copywriting technique is to use lots of “bullets” in your copy—short sales points presented in bulleted lists.

But have you ever sat down to write copy for one of your products, only to find it difficult to pull out of the product the salient sales points you need to write strong bullets?

If you’re a marketer, there’s an easy way to avoid this problem…and write kick-butt bullets that generate more orders and sales from every promotion you mail or e-mail.

And it starts way before you write a word of your copy. In fact, for maximum results, this step should be performed during creation of the actual product itself.

The method is to “build bullets” into your product. By that, I mean come up with a list of features you think would really convince your prospects to buy the product.

Or write a list of bullets you’d love to be able to use in your copy. And then, design all those features and bullets into the products as you are developing them.

Let’s say you are hiring a writer to create a how-to e-book you want to sell on the Internet on growing a vegetable garden in your backyard.

You have a section on growing bigger tomatoes. Make a list of the specific steps you take to make your tomatoes large and juicy. If the list has 5 items, give it to your e-book writer so he can write a few paragraphs on each.

Now, when you write the sales copy for the e-book, you can write a bullet that says, “5 ways to grow tomatoes so big, you can make a dinner out of them”.

I had a client who was an industrial manufacturer who used this technique with great success. They manufactured “spectrophotometers” which are instruments used to measure color.

Their competitors had all come out with a new generation of instruments, and my client was late to the game. But they used this to their advantage.

They carefully studied the other brands, made a list of flaws, and designed their new spectrophotometer to provide superior performance in each area where their competitors were weak.

In their product launch, they showed a picture of their new instrument. Call-outs highlighted every feature that made their device superior to their competition.

The launch was their most successful ever, because the “bullets” for their sales copy had been carefully built into the product. And they clearly distinguished the company’s products as superior in many ways to all others in that field.

As a copywriter you rarely have any control, but as a marketer, you often do. If you are an information marketer, it’s easy to design products with great sales bullets built in.

Just make the list of bullets your table of contents, and write or record an info-product that covers all the points listed there. The more transparent the sales points in the product, the happier the buyer will be.

Avoid writing bullet points that sound great but aren’t really covered in the product. Info-product buyers often compare the product to the promotion. If they can’t find content reflecting the bullets that caused them to buy, they will complain or ask for a refund.

My mentor, the great copywriter Milt Pierce, tells the story of when he was hired to write a direct mail package on a book on decorating by a famous author in that field.

He brought in his copy. The publisher and author read it. When they were finished, the publisher said to Milt, “This is incredibly strong promotional copy. The only problem is that it’s not what is in the book.”

Milt replied, “It should be.” And according to him, the author and publisher agreed to rewrite the book so it reflected in the letter copy. When mailed, the package worked like gangbusters and the book sold like hotcakes.

The old-time mail order guru Melvin Powers did it a better way: when he wanted to publish a new book, he would write and run the ad first.

Of course, he wrote the strongest ad possible. If it pulled, he then quickly wrote and printed a book that delivered all the content promised in the ad copy. If the ad bombed, he never wrote the book and just refunded the money to those few readers who had ordered.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.