Internet Marketing for Small Business: writing copy for your business website:

 "What Is Copywriting?"

Copywriting means writing the words that will convince your reader of the value he or she will gain from accepting your offer and buying from you.

This is the single most important skill that you need to master if you want to turn your website into an effective marketing tool. After all, it is the words - not the design or the pictures - that will persuade your reader to buy from you.

Copywriting is a skill that needs to be learned. It may well be worth your while hiring a professional copywriter to write the text for your website ... and for your autoresponder series (which we'll cover on the next page).

If you'd like to receive a proposal from me, just give me a few details here, and I'll get back to you as quickly as I can.

If you want to try to learn to write your own copy, here are a few tips:

• Think of who your target reader is. Try to define your reader as precisely as you can. For example, if you're selling expensive wines from around the world, you might define your target audience as middle aged, fairly affluent, well educated and professional. If you're selling a fancy MP3 player, your target audience might be teenagers who talk in "text" language. It would be no good addressing these two audiences in the same way.
• Having defined your reader, imagine that he or she is in front of you - sitting across the desk for you. Nothing that you write in your copy should sound artificial if you said it to this person who is sitting opposite you. For example, if you were telling this person about your offer, would you actually say to him or her: "Smith & Jones was founded in 1953 and prides itself on making widgets of the very highest quality"? I'll take it the answer is no. So don't write it!
• Write down on a piece of paper a long list - the longer the better - of all the benefits that your reader will get if he or she buys from you. Note the word "benefits". Features are not benefits. You need to spell out the actual benefits. For example, a new tennis racquet might be treated in a certain way, or strung in a certain way. That's a feature. Explain it by all means (some readers will want to know) ..... but emphasise the benefit, which is that you can hit the ball harder with less effort.
• From your list of benefits, write a list of bullet points. Succinct, pithy, attention-grabbing nuggets that sum up all the benefits.
• The best bullet will be adapted for your headline. Some will be used for subheadlines. The rest will be listed - in groups - with prose leading the reader from one group to the next group.
• Do not underestimate the importance of the headline. If the headline fails to grab the reader's attention, he won't read any further. The headline needs to make it irresistable for him to carry on reading.
• The whole text should lead the reader to make the response that you want him to make (as we discussed in the Web Site Basics page).
• You might want to divide your copy into sections and spread it over a number of web pages (like this site) ..... with each page focused on a particular topic. You may prefer to put everything on one long sales letter page. It depends what you're selling - and it depends whether your reader will be totally confused if he arrives at your site half way through your message. Not everybody will enter your site on the home page!

Now, these are just some basic tips. If you want to become an effective copywriter, you will have to spend some time studying how to do it. Here are some resources to help you. More will be added.

Masters of Copywriting : The original 393 page work featuring timeless secrets from great copywriters such as Claude Hopkins and Bruce Barton - updated for 2007 with interviews with today's greats ... such as John Carlton, Dan Kennedy, Joe Vitale, Yanik Silver, Mark Joyner, David Garfinkel, Bob Bly and Michel Fortin. A crash course in effective copywriting by some of the world's best practitioners.

Magic Words that Make You Rich : As Ted Nicholas writes, "Different words produce different results!" In this work, he guides you towards "the exact words to enrich your life, financially and in numerous other ways too".

Advanced Copywriting for Serious Info Marketers : A recording of a 2-day intensive seminar held by Ken McCarthy. Ken is the teacher behind many of the most successful marketers on the Web today. Speaking personally, I have learned more about copywriting from him than from anybody else (you'll see a testimonial from me - Bernard Howes - about halfway down the page, on the left).

"But What If People Don't Buy There & Then?"

A very good question. Actually, very few people will buy straight away. They'll want to "think about it". Or they'll want to surf around some other sites first.

This is why you need to reinforce your sales message with a series of follow-up messages. This enables you to reinforce your message to those - probably the majority - who visit your site once, mean to come back, but never do.
And you can put this on auto-pilot by using an autoresponder.