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That was a close one.

Remember when I lost all my blog posts last month? Well I tried to get as many of the valuable posts back as I could from Google’s cache.

One post that I didn’t find the first time around was an awesome interview I did with Ryan Healy.

I was reminded of it when I saw that the interview he gave me was still one of the most popular posts on his blog. Well, I didn’t want to lose this interview. I got Google up and running again and searched for that interview…

…I had to be clever, but I found it. So here it is, once again. The interview!

1. What attracted you to copywriting?

Actually, copywriting found me.

Starting in the 8th grade, I knew I would be a writer. I wrote for the high school paper, poetry journals, and the college paper. I wrote essays, speeches, and fiction — the whole gamut.

At every job I had, people would come to me to edit their writing. At Merrill Lynch, my managers would have me edit and rewrite their most important emails before they sent them out! (I wasn’t hired to do this; it just kind of happened.)

Anyway, I was approached by the owner of Sonlight Curriculum to write copy for him. He wanted to replace himself. He knew I loved to write and had an entrepreneurial bent, so he hired me.

I spent three years writing sales copy for him and his company, and doing all their Internet marketing.

And that is how copywriting found me.

This interview is continued over at my new blog, click here to keep reading.

Ever seen the spy movie “Cloak and Dagger” with Henry Thomas? Great movie, one of my favorites from my childhood.

Sometimes when I call my sister’s cell phone and she answers, I shout, “Lady Ace, Lady Ace, Come in Lady Ace!”

Guess you had to see it…

…in any case. I bring it up because it’s time to spy on your competition.

Now, you may be thinking I’m suggesting to spy on your competition so you can take their best ideas and copy them. And sure, I usually take ideas from competitors’ copy.

But that’s not the biggest reason you should spy on your competition.

The BIGGEST reason to spy on your competition is to see what they’re NOT doing. To find out what claims they’re not making… or what claims they’re not capable of making. To discover how your product kicks the pants off their product and so on.

Armed with that competitive intel, your job will be to craft a unique sales message that is superior to your competitors’.

The last thing you want to do is write sales copy that could apply to any other product in your market. If you did, how would they remember you? Why would they read your copy if they’ve read similar copy in the past? If your product is more of the same, why buy from you instead of just finding the cheapest?

It’s important to make your copy unique by discovering competitive advantages and exploiting them.

In my copywriting questionnaire, I ask the client to help me identify these competitive advantages with three simple questions.

4) Who are your competitors? (URL’s please, if available)

I can do a simple Google search to find out who are the top adwords advertisers for a market. But that doesn’t mean they’re the most popular competitor.

We want to find out out which competitors the reader has likely seen before so we can make sure to be different. Google searches are part of that. Checking out popular forums from the marketplace can be part of that.

But asking the client is the quickest and often the most valuable way. They usually know who is spreading their sales message around the best. And we need to make sure we differentiate ourselves from them.

5) In what quantifiable way do you stand out from the competition?

Now that we’ve identified who the main competitors are, this question is aimed at quickly finding out how you can stand out.

If the client gives a good answer, he/she can save you a lot of time digging up the competitive advantages on your own.

6) If your product is an info product, is their a specific passage/segment I can look to that I won’t find in a competitor’s product?

This question narrows down the competitive advantage even further, saving the copywriter a lot of time. Now we can quickly skip to the pages that detail how your client’s product is unique and superior to your competitor’s product.

After you’ve identified the main competitors and identified the competitive advantages, you’re ready to start brainstorming your angle and logical arguments. But NOT before.

That’s what makes questions #4, #5 and #6 so important.

When writing copy, you’re not selling a product/service so much as you’re selling a solution.  A solution that solves a problem or fulfills a desire.

So instead of asking something silly like, “What’s your product?”, I ask about the major benefit.  And that’s question #2 on my questionnaire:

“2) In one or two sentences only, what major benefit does your product/service uniquely provide?”

There are two key words to pay attention to in that question: “major” and “uniquely.”

A product may have a gazillion benefits.  But the copy is going to focus primarily on the big idea.  The MAJOR benefit of your product. It could be to lose weight, make money, get out of debt etc.  That’s the major benefit.

But that’s not all I want to know.  I also wanna know how your product UNIQUELY delivers that benefit. There are lots of weight loss products out there, how does your product stand out?

If this question is answered correctly, it could be the entire theme of the copy.

Of course, most products have more than one benefit.  Or sub-benefits.  So question #3 is designed to expand on question #2:

3) Please list additional benefits of your product/service.

If your product helps you to lose weight while still eating your favorite foods, that’s a great benefit.

If you’re selling exercise equipment that stores away easily, taking up little space.  That’s a great benefit.

(Note: For great advice on writing benefits, check out Michel Fortin’s article “Forget Benefits, And you Will Sell More.” Make sure to read all the way down to the advantages vs. benefits portion.)

These secondary benefits will help you support the major benefit.  The more you collect, the easier it will be to connect with your reader and write great copy.

The sales letter was good.  It was more than good, it rocked.

Michel Fortin was my copywriting coach at the time, he didn’t have anything to add.  It was ready to give to the client.

The client was a big name guru you’ve probably heard of.

And he hated it.  He changed it quite a bit, including the entire angle, before he published it.

What happened?  I didn’t manage my client’s expectations.  Part of that job is to discover what the client is expecting the letter will look like.

And the easiest way to get that answer is to ask…

“1) Are there any competing sales letters you like that I should see?”

Have you ever heard, “The Grass Is Always Greener On The Other Side.”  If your client likes a competitor’s sales letter, they’re probably looking for something similar.

Of course your sales letter needs to be unique to be successful.  But you can get a good feel of the tempo and energy of the copy.  And that’s likely what your client is looking for.

The lesson: If you want to keep your client happy, find out what they like about their competitor’s sales copy.

1. What are all the variables you test for in headlines?

Interesting question! When testing headlines I test the format and then usually wildly different text. For example I don’t want to test “Discover The Secret To Losing Weight” against “How To Lose Weight.”

While that may be a valid test, you’re more likely to uncover a more profitable answer if you test wildly different ideas. So you might test “How A 300lb Man Accidently Lost 115lbs!” against either of the headlines above. Your more likely to find a big winner this way than if you just tweak words.

But the reason I say your question is interesting is because I never gave more than a little thought to testing variables IN the headline. Michael Masterson put forth the 4 U’s of Great Headlines, and they were “Urgency,” “Uniqueness,” “Usefullness,” and “Ultra-Specifics.”

If you use multivariate testing, you could have one headline that reads… “3 Steps To Making $1235 Or More From Betting On Football!”

And you could test every element of that headline.

You could test the urgency (football season comes and gos).

You could test the uniqueness (3 steps and $1235 makes this headline unique, could you find other ways to express it)

You could test usefulness (Making $1235 is useful. But you could test something else, like “Replace your income.”)

And you could test the specifics (”$1235″ is specific, you could try another number. You could test 4 or 5 steps. You could change “football” to this Monday Night’s football game.)

So if you do find a headline that’s a big winner, you might be able to squeeze some juice out of it by breaking down the elements of the headline even smaller. Interesting.

What are the most important variables in headlines?

Again, I’d say Urgency, Uniqueness, Usefulness And Ultra-Specifics.

What are the steps you take to find the hook for a sales letter?

Well you need something that will capture their attention. That can often mean being a contrarian. If there’s a commonly held belief, challenge it in the headline. “Scientists say (it) ain’t so!”, or something like that.

And that’s why it’s important to know the market so well, you can’t say something contrarian if you don’t know what their beliefs are to begin with.

So it starts with consuming a ton of information about your market. 99% of that is done online for me. I search for their favorite forums, I look for their most popular websites, and then sometimes I’ll listen or read the most popular books in that market.

I’m looking for a commonly held belief that somehow, my product can refute accurately.

What is your method for writing the close, or the call to action?

I don’t have it broken down step by step yet. As I approach the end of the letter I usually do a price reveal, which means building up the value of the product to a price much higher than they’ll pay. Then I reveal the price and immediately back it up with a satisfaction guarantee.

After that I employ a Scarcity technique to give them a reason to act immediately. As I’m discussing why they should act now, I repeat phrases like “Click the button below” several times. (Although I try to say it with different words.)

Then I put the order button, and right below it I try to help them imagine what will happen if they do not act now. Then usually in the PS section I’ll remind them of the Scarcity and the satisfaction guarantee.

Instead of giving information about your product on the sales page and asking for the sale, is it better to give less info on the page and then ask the prospect to opt in for more information?

I don’t have a lot of data on this. And I suspect it can depend on your business model. If you direct people to your sales pages through a blog, I’d send them directly to the sales page.

However for most projects I write an opt-in page to go after their email address so that we can follow up. But I also try and test this against sending them straight to the sales page so we can see what the difference in conversion between the two methods and make a better decision.

If you have a sales page for a paperback book, is it ok to now offer the ebook version as an alternative, or would having to make a choice cut down on sales?

In this situation I don’t think having too many choices would be a problem. You’re really only making one decision and that’s if you want the information. Deciding on whether you want the book in print or digitally isn’t a decision that I’d expect to make people procrastinate.

Whereas if you were selling different information on the same sales page it might have that effect. And that’s a “might.”

If your ratio of sales to unique visitors falls between 5-9% most months, is that good enough that you should be thinking about tweaking the sales page vs. testing entirely new pages?

I don’t have a solid answer. 5-9% is quite high and you certainly risk dropping the conversion rate substantially by writing new copy from scratch.

If you’re split testing, I can see why you might try this. But I think it makes much more sense to continue tweaking the page through multivariate testing so you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The way I try and test pages, substantial parts of the letter can change. So over time, the copy may end up looking like a completely different sales letter. With a different hook, a different offer, a different headline and so on.

Great questions everyone. If one of your questions was answered above, leave a comment and I’ll send you a free digital gift.

Warning: The link below contains images of scantily clad women, sexual messages and dozens of free lessons in effective headline writing. Click at your own risk and reward:

http://www.magazine-agent.com/cosmopolitan/covers

Here’s 3 great links for discovering how to write a risk reducing guarantee…

Give Your Guarantees Teeth And Eat Filet Mignon More Often

An Irresistible Guarantee: Overcoming Your Prospect’s Final Reservations

Risk-Reversal’s Role Reversal

I gave away a free gift a couple days ago to anyone who was on my list. But did you know that I automatically give anyone who signs up for the announcement list on the right access to my Split Test software?

You can read more about the software here… http://www.easysplittest.com

I purchased “Web Copy That Sells” by Maria Veloso before I moved, but just started reading it last night. It was recommended to me by my copy coach, Michel Fortin.

I’ve only read the first chapter, but I already picked a few tips (that made it into the copy I was working on today). I’ll share some of those with you soon, but I highly recommend picking up the book yourself:

http://webcopythatsells.com/

This week I’ve spending a lot of time getting caught up on blog technology, social bookmarking and other things that have had me surfing the net a lot. One blog I’ve been reading recently is from Rachel Rofe.

Apparently she’s the resource QUEEN. I should have known from her product, Top Secret Riches, that she would be the first to know about any valuable resource. But two links to great tools she’s provided on her blog this week have blown me away. And they will be immediately implemented in my business.

The first was Robot Replay, which records the actions of individual visitors when they hit your site… and then replays them for you to watch. Do you know what that can do for anyone who writes copy?! You can see exactly where your copy is doing it’s job, and where you’re losing the reader. I’ll be implementing this on my sales letters and clients’ sales letters very soon.

Next is FoldSpy. This software lets you take a peak at how much of your webpage the majority of your visitors can see without scrolling. Essentially, it lets you identify what is “above the fold” for most visitors to your sites. This is VERY important for things like squeeze pages, where you want to get the opt in box above the fold. It can also be useful for your blogs and sales pages, but that’s a bit more complicated.

Again, I’m thrilled to have these resources. And I recommend checking out Rachel’s blog and her list of resources.