If you want to be successful with your solo ad, you should try to keep it real. This refers to ensuring that your ads are of top quality in all possible ways. This article will present 3 original solo ad ideas that can be used immediately.

A vital tip for solo advertising that you should remember is that you need to avoid selling your ad. Yes, you understood right because your ad is supposed to tempt people into coming to your site where you can pitch to them. Writing your ad like a pre-sell article is the most effective way to increase the response rate. You want to educate people about your product while also providing them with the benefits. You want to appear as someone who has helpful and wants to provide a valuable solution to them.

Writing their solo ads like regular ads is one critical mistake many marketers repeat. You have to remember that the e-zine offers people unique and targeted information. When receiving an e-mail from the publisher of the e-zine they expect to receive top quality information. While you do need to pre-sell people on your product, you also need to ensure that they feel you are providing with top quality information as well. This is the best way to generate a higher click-through rate and ensure you get more people coming to your site.

Run a spell check on your ad to ensure there aren’t any errors because your ad has to be very professional. Most people don’t like answering unprofessional ads because they think the ads reflect on the quality of the product. Therefore, the quality of your ad reflects on the quality of your product.

The flow of your ad also needs to be checked, besides the spelling. By reading it out loud, it will be easier for you to find any mistakes. Also make sure you are formatting your ad properly, just like you intended it to be. Don’t complicate matters, as simplicity works best.

Ensure that your ad is targeted to the readers of the e-zine you will be placing your ad in. You can’t simply publish any solo ad in any e-zine because you think it will work. Your ad needs to be extremely targeted. Presuming that you are marketing an e-book that promotes weight loss through yoga, you have to run your ads in targeted e-zines in the niche, which is weight loss. As long as your ad is related to the readers of the e-zine you will be fine. If you are targeting the audience properly and you keep things in context, you will find you get a much better response. Advertising in e-zines, as we have learned from this article, is quite similar to other methods of advertising. If you want to see an excellent return on your investment, then you need to take the proper steps and make sure it is at the right time.

All experienced marketers know and understand the immense value of effective copywriting. High response, converting copy is what sells anything and everything, and all businesses depend on that. However, it does take some time before you can actually write like a pro. It is not academic writing, not in any sense, so just remember that. You’ll need to have an understanding of copywriting principles and lots of practice before you’ll be doing it with any measure of competence. What follows is a discussion about on copywriting tips and suggestions to whet your appetite for the craft.

As you write your copy, almost all the time you want to discuss the product benefits, and do it as if talking just to one person. You will realize greater conversions through the use of social proof, and that means showing other satisfied customers in your sales material. Use testimonials as much as you can, and do be sure they are real because it’s illegal to use fake ones. Your readers will be full of doubts and suspicions to begin with, so you must build your case and establish trust. You need to be careful how you go about obtaining testimonials, and the best kind of all are unsolicited and real. You’ll have a greater impact with those that have some good and informative details on how the product helped them. Of course if you’re asking for an expert’s opinion, then you’ll need to furnish them with a copy or sample of your product. It’s not always possible, but if you’re lucky enough to get someone to send a video testimonial, then that’s pure gravy because they’re powerful and work well. Taking the risk off from the shoulder of your potential customer will increase the chances of getting sales. The most common method to do that is with an iron clad guarantee that removes the risk. So many newer marketers are scared of being taken by a customer and are intimidated to offer the guarantee. It’s certainly worth doing, though, because you’ll simply make more sales with it than you would without it. The thing to do is simply forget about that concern because the incidence of it happening is truly rare. Try to keep it all simple and uncomplicated. Here’s a small tip: the longer guarantee time you will have for your product, the less refund requests you will get.

Don’t keep your copy dry, try using a bit of humor to spice it up. People are busy and really tend to want the facts, so it’s a judgment call to be sure. There is a big difference between serious copy and stale copy. Learn the difference.

If your goal is to become a good copywriter, you can achieve this, but it will take time and dedication to get there. Some copywriters who are paid quite a bit for their services are actually self-taught, and had no special training or even a marketing background. If you want to get better, you have to practice and make progress at your own pace. If you want to be able to make money whenever you need it, copywriting is the skill that gives you this power.

There’s nothing anywhere that beats solid sales copy that gets the selling job done. Regardless of what you sell, you can’t do it without the help of sales copy that converts. Be prepared to spend some time and sweat if you want to learn how to do it. Copywriting is totally different, in so many ways, from any other form of writing. It takes a great deal of focus and understanding to create compelling copy. We want to share just a few copywriting tips with you, and we hope it sparks your desire to learn more.

The best sales copy is the kind that has an emotional impact on readers. You have to write words that can persuade your prospects that you have an answer or solution to their needs. You need emotionally compelling copy that will cause them to buy your product on the spot, without too much thought. You can’t write copy that’s monotonous, it has to be compelling and fascinating. Remember that you’re not writing a random piece of information here but content that is aimed at getting the prospect to take action. This doesn’t mean you should lie or exaggerate about your product; stay within ethical bounds. You have to appeal to their emotions, while remaining truthful. You should develop a connection with the reader by showing that you empathize with him or her. By doing this, you can get them to put aside their suspicions and feel comfortable with you. Taking the risk off from the shoulder of your potential customer will increase the chances of getting sales. A common way to do this is to offer them a risk free guarantee. The less experienced marketers tend to be afraid to offer a great guarantee by thinking they’ll get ripped-off. However that is really not very common in most markets, and the increased sales you will get by having the guarantee make any risk worth it. You will have very few people who will take advantage of the guarantee and misuse it, but this can be easily ignored. But the simply-stated guarantee works fine. Here’s a cool one to use, make your guarantee period long…like a year, no kidding, and the effect it has is to almost eliminate refunds.

Don’t forget to use lots of bullet points in your sales copy. When you write about the product benefits, not the features, then you’ll put them into bullet points. Bullets are great because they contribute to the easy readability of the copy, and they’re easy to digest and understand. Besides that, keeping your copy organized will give it a neat, professional look and make it easy for the prospect to reach to a buying decision.

Copywriting is a difficult art that takes regular study and practice if you want to excel at it. If you want to get better, you have to practice and make progress at your own pace. Being able to write good copy is the most important skill you can have in the world of Internet Marketing.

All experienced marketers know and understand the immense value of effective copywriting. Regardless of what you sell, you can’t do it without the help of sales copy that converts. If you’re interested to learn how to write good copy, then you need to know it takes time to learn. It’s not the kind of writing you did in high school or college. It takes a great deal of focus and understanding to create compelling copy. So we’ll get you started with just a handful of copywriting tips you can learn.

One of the oldest tricks that copywriters use to convince the prospect is to tell a compelling story. Think about the movie industry. Just in the US alone, it’s a “multi-billion dollar a year” industry, and it’s based on telling stories, right? People read stories for all sorts of reasons, but one thing is the ability to see themselves in the plot and form a connection with the characters. People connect with story characters in all kinds of ways, both for good and not-so-good reasons. Obviously, stories in copywriting are highly condensed, but you can incorporate the same emotion tugging words that make people respond in a certain way. If you search hard enough, it’s easy to pinpoint some kind of story in any business selling a product or service. Whatever you find or come up with, take a good look at it and see how you may be able to use it. A well-written and integrated story always has some positive effect on people.

If your product warrants writing long copy, try not to cause your reader to become confused about anything. In other words, it has to be easily scanned. This needs to be done because most online readers and surfers will scan and skip around, first, before anything else. Break up your copy by writing in shorter paragraphs and shorter sentences. Use lots of white space when writing the content for your copy so that the prospect is able to read it easily. Always use well-written subheading because they’re useful for organization, plus they’re another tool for creating white space. Keep your sub-headings short and relevant to the next few paragraphs. They should go from one step to another of your sales letter’s content.

You always want to stick to words with a positive impact on readers, such as incredible, happy, money, you (rather than “I”) or wealthy. Remember to focus on how your product will actually help people, don’t just list its features. And when you use such strong words in your copy, you make your prospects feel happy and special. If some of your language sounds like hype, that’s okay, as long as you don’t go overboard with it.

Copywriting is a difficult art that takes regular study and practice if you want to excel at it. Some copywriters who are paid quite a bit for their services are actually self-taught, and had no special training or even a marketing background. So don’t lose your focus and keep improving if you want to make a mark. If you want to be able to make money whenever you need it, copywriting is the skill that gives you this power.

Copywriting is one of the most valuable skills that an Internet marketer can have. Why is that? When you want to make money online, you need to work hard to earn your prospects’ trust and that is incredibly hard to do when your copy is not well written. Remember that you don’t have a chance to convince your visitors face to face, which is why having a salesletter that gives results is important. Keep reading to learn what you can do to write good copy.

First, when you begin a sales copy, do not talk about what the product does, but instead tell the readers why the product will help them with their problems. All in all, you have to show them how the product will help them more than what the product has. This is because no one is really interested in the features, but more on how these features will be useful to them.

If you want to give a list of product features in your sales copy, make sure that you provide a list of benefits to go along with each feature. This would make it simple for your customers to know how much value your product has, which will also keep you above the competition. Your customers will now be capable of identifying with your product because they know how it can solve their problems. So always disclose the benefits first. Testing your copy is critical. Don’t focus on just the heading; test the content, subheadings, links and the graphics on the page. A successful copywriter knows the value of proper testing because it not only helps you correct your mistakes but also improve the results you’re getting from your copy. Testing is a great way to tell what works and what doesn’t work. There are times when you see a massive change in the response by making a small tweak to the headline or by cutting down a few bullet points. As long as you continuously monitor and test your copy, you are guaranteeing your business a better potential return on investment.

Reassure your audience by offering a strong guarantee within your sales copy. By giving an iron-clad guarantee, you’re showing your prospects that you believe in your product and stand by it. Offering a longer guarantee will decrease the rate of refunds as people are more likely to keep products that offer a long refund period. Your guarantee makes people feel comfortable buying from your site. These tips should help you realize that writing professional quality sales copy isn’t that difficult. Just remember that these basic ideas are essential to the creation of a strong foundation for your salesletters. There are many new Internet marketers who tend to ignore creating a sales copy but they forget that it can make the difference between success and failure.

“Use a strong guarantee” is standard advice in direct marketing.

Without a strong guarantee, your sales will slow to a trickle since buyers are hesitant to buy products over the Internet, phone, or by mail sight unseen.

But what exactly makes for a “strong” guarantee?

A strong guarantee has 5 defining characteristics and your guarantee should possess these qualities too.

First, length: as a rule of thumb, the longer the guarantee, the better.

Typical guarantee periods are 10, 15, 30, 60, 90, 180, and 365 days.

Of these, 10 days is the weakest, because it requires the prospect to act too quickly for comfort.

The buyer is afraid that, if he puts the product aside, the guarantee coverage will expire, and he’ll be stuck with a product he can’t return.

And so he doesn’t order in the first place.

30 days is a standard guarantee period, and certainly adequate.

60 and 90 days are better. All the information products I publish and sell online are guaranteed for 90 days.

I don’t like lifetime guarantees, because it creates a financial liability on the books that may be problematic when it’s time to sell your business.

6 and 12-month guarantees may be worth testing, but won’t work for some products. For instance, a 1-year guarantee doesn’t make sense for an annual directory.

The second consideration is the conditionality of the guarantee.

Meaning: are there strings attached? Or is it unconditional?

A conditional guarantee might say: return the product in saleable condition for your money back.

The buyer is concerned that you will quibble with him over “saleable condition.”

That is, you will refuse to issue a refund for a book he returned because, say, the dust jacket has a smudge on it.

Another conditional guarantee is the one used by many sellers of small business and investment home study programs.

They say: if you are not satisfied, send back the course for a refund; just “prove to us that you made some effort to follow our system”.

When you ask for a refund, they ask for more and more proof—and whatever you send, the seller counters that “you didn’t do what we said” (or do enough of it)—and denies your refund on that basis.

Much better is to offer an unconditional guarantee. Tell the customer all he has to do is return the product for a full refund—no ifs, ands, or buts—without question or quibble.

The third quality of a strong guarantee is that everything is clearly stated and spelled out.

Be careful about wording that the consumer can misinterpret.

For instance, a performance-based guarantee—”If you do not earn extra money trading options with our program, return it for a refund”—sounds good but contains a potential concern…

Does it mean that if I DO make some extra money with the product, I can’t return it? Even if I only made ten bucks?

Rewrite the guarantee so there is no condition or ambiguity stated or implied: “If you do not make extra money trading options with our program, or you are not 100% satisfied for any other reason—or for no reason at all—just return the program within 90 days for a full refund.”

Fourth, the guarantee should be graphically emphasized within the promotion.

Don’t bury it in body copy or put it in an asterisked footnote in 8-point type.

Print the guarantee in 12-point copy with a large, bold headline. Put a box or even a certificate-style border around it to make the guarantee stand out.

Fifth, how generous is the guarantee?

The best guarantees are unfair—but unfair in favor of the buyer, not the seller.

That means if the customer takes advantage of the guarantee, the seller is, in a sense, getting ripped off.

Example: for regular books sold via mail order, the guarantee is simple: return the book and we will send you your money back.

But think about the same guarantee for e-books…

Can the customer really send you the e-book back?

Do you expect them to send back the copy they printed out…or sign an affidavit that they erased the e-book from their hard drive…or shredded the print-out? (Some online marketers have done just that!)

Most information marketers skirt the issue of returning e-books in their guarantees.

They say: if you are not 100% satisfied, let us know within 90 days for a full refund.

No discussion about returning or erasing or not using the e-book takes place.

In the landing pages I write to sell the e-books I publish (see for example www.myveryfirstebook.com), I go a step further: I turn the fact that the customer does not have to return the e-book to me into a benefit.

I say: “If you are not 100% satisfied, let us know within 90 days for a full refund. And keep the e-book free, with my compliments. That way, you risk nothing.”

In a recent Internet marketing seminar, DP, who heard me talk about this point in my presentation, said that he too tells his customers to keep the e-book even if they ask for a refund.

But DP has split-tested it. And he swears that “keep the e-book free” increased his conversion rates on average by 21%.

The bottom line? Make sure your guarantee is:

1. Long—90 days is ideal for most offers.

2. Unconditional – no strings attached.

3. Clearly stated with no ambiguity or possibility of misunderstanding.

4. Highlighted with bold typography, color, and graphics so it really stands out on the screen or page.

5. Overly generous so that if the consumer exercises the guarantee, he is essentially taking almost unfair advantage of you, the seller.

The overriding principle of a strong guarantee is to take all the risk off the buyer’s shoulders and place it on the seller’s shoulders—as it should be.

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”.

Agora Publishing founder Bill Bonner uses the “IRS” (interrupt, reveal, sell) formula to write great copy:

1) Interrupt your audience with a big idea they haven’t heard before.

2) Reveal what it is you are talking about and how it connects to the reader.

3) Sell by linking your big idea message to the product you are about to offer.

Source: http://copywritersroundtable.com

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Recently JN, one of my readers, sent me an e-mail very similar in sentiment to dozens of other e-mails I have received over the years.

“Why do marketers like ETR and AWAI send me 16-page DM packages when the copywriter could have said the same thing in 1 to 2 pages?” JN writes.

“The prospect might even buy out of gratitude for not having to wade through those 16 pages and breathe a sigh of relief instead of snarl a nasty expletive.”

But JN is not through lambasting long-copy direct marketing yet. Her e-mail continues:

“My brother-in-law makes a hobby of going through those 16-page packages just for fun, red-penciling errors before he tosses them. He would never, under pain of death, buy from a DM package.”

And it’s not just JN’s brother-in-law who thinks direct marketing copywriters are fools.

“My sister just drops those 16-page mailings in the recycling without even bothering to open them,” JN reports.

“Many of the people I know feel the same way. So why do copywriters persist in creating these massive multi-page mailings? Because they are paid by the page? Or because the client wants his pound of flesh from his writers?”

Finally, JN turns to the Internet as the harbinger of doom for long copy, asking, “Isn’t the Internet killing off traditional direct response copywriting?”

The answer to JN’s question is fairly simple…

The marketers she complains about use long copy not because they love writing it…or paying their copywriters a fortune to write it for them…or because they enjoy spending more money on printing and postage.

They use long copy for only one reason: it works.

Now, does long copy always out-pull short copy?

Of course not.

But long copy often out-pulls short copy when:

>> You are marketing information products or other products that are sold by telling stories or conveying ideas.

>> You are generating a direct sale…via mail order…rather than just generating a lead or inquiry.

>> The reader is unfamiliar with your product and its benefits.

>> You are demanding payment with order. The prospect has to pay up front with a check or credit card. He cannot order the product on credit and get an invoice he can choose to pay—or not pay—later.

>> The product is complex and therefore requires a lot of explanation.

>> The product is something people want rather than something they need—it is a discretionary purchase.

>> The product is expensive, representing an expenditure the prospect is likely to consider carefully before ordering.

As for JN’s theory that the Internet is making traditional long-copy direct marketing obsolete, it’s quite the opposite: a product that requires long copy to sell offline usually requires long copy to sell online as well.

For instance, take a look at my website www.myveryfirstebook.com.

So…what does this long copy vs. short copy debate have to do with “the worst way to make marketing decisions”?

Simply that it illustrates that the worst way to make marketing decisions—which is what JN and her family are doing—is through subjective judgment.

Copywriter Peter Beutchel advises marketers: “Don’t let personal preferences get in the way.”

What’s important is not what you think, like, believe, or prefer…it’s what your prospects think, like, believe, and prefer.

The poor general advertisers! They are largely stuck having to make subjective judgments about marketing campaigns.

Reason: most general advertisers cannot precisely measure the ROMD (return on marketing dollars) for their ads and commercials.

But direct marketers don’t have to rely solely on subjective judgment. We don’t have to let our personal likes and dislikes cloud our judgment, like JN’s brother-in-law.

That’s because direct marketers can put almost any proposition e.g. headline “A” vs. headline “B,” or long copy vs. short copy, to a direct test with an A/B split.

So, JN, it doesn’t matter what your sister or brother-in-law do…or that they don’t like long copy.

What matters is that in a statistically valid split test, the long copy generated more orders than the short copy.

I close with this quote from advertising legend Claude Hopkins: “Advertising arguments should only be settled by testing, not arguments around a conference table.”

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”.

I recently read an online promotion from one of the big Internet marketing gurus.

In it, this gentleman—whom I consider a personal friend—stated that “Anything is possible.”

He also said he had a new Web site that would help you “find your super powers”.

That’s hype to a high degree.

And frankly, I don’t believe it.

I could never write something like that for one of my own products and still sleep at night.

Yet I don’t have a problem with this guy, what he is selling, or how he is selling it.

Why not?

Because he believes in what he is saying and selling—even if I do not.

And that’s the key to making hype work in your copy today: believing in what you say.

There are a lot of complaints today about the incredible level of hype in copy, particularly online.

As an example, take a look at: www.thecopygod.com—a humorous spoof site that pokes gentle fun at the hype style of copywriting.

A lot of copywriters and marketers see hype-filled promotions and have one of two reactions.

Either they hate it and make a deliberate decision to avoid it in their own copy…probably a good decision for them.

Or they think, “These guys wouldn’t write all this hype if it wasn’t working”—and emulate it in their own promotions, usually with disastrous results.

You see, a key to writing successful copy—copy that fills your mail box or shopping cart with orders—is enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm for the ideas…enthusiasm for the product…enthusiasm for what you are writing about…enthusiasm for the wonderful ways in which the product will improve the buyers’ lives.

The masters of hype can be genuinely sincere and enthusiastic in their hyperbolic copy, because they absolutely believe 100% in what they are saying and selling.

Therefore, if you too believe in something outrageous or seemingly impossible…and are sincerely convinced it can help others…you can write hype copy that comes across as energetic, enthusiastic, positive, and even sincere!

On the other hand, if you don’t believe the superlatives and outrageous claims you are making in your copy, the hype will backfire on you.

Your copy will have all the sincerity of a three-dollar bill—and readers will be able to sense your disingenuousness and B.S. a mile away.

Result: your copy will fall flat…and your promotion will generate minimal orders and revenues.

“How can some of these hard-sell marketers believe the hype they write, particularly about money making, business opportunities, investments, self help, and alternative medicine?” I have been asked many times.

It’s simple: each of us has different experiences and belief systems.

What sounds like baloney to you and me may be absolute gospel to our colleagues and competitors.

A year or so ago, two well-known direct mail copywriters, DH and PL, got into an argument in print about the ethics of writing for nutritional supplements.

DH called dietary supplements “snake oil”. PL countered that the pill he was promoting in his copy had worked wonders for those who had taken it.

The bottom line is: market and write about only those products, services, and ideas you think deliver an honest and fair value to the consumer.

Another copywriting friend, RS, often said he would work on any offer that wasn’t “illegal, immoral, or fattening.”

Good advice, but I also think you should avoid working on any product you don’t believe in and aren’t enthusiastic about.

After all, if you aren’t enthusiastic about the product when you write your copy, the prospect is likely to be equally unenthusiastic when he reads it.

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”.