Making Modest, Yet Effective, Copywriting Self-Promotion Claims
In today’s REALITYcopywriting e-column…
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Send Prospective Clients RUNNING! Why making big promises about your copywriting abilities may leave real businesses less likely to contract you… | |
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BEYOND Copy! How I discovered (the hard way) that even if I wrote a great ad there were other factors (beyond my control) that could ruin its conversion… | |
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A Little Math Made My Life a Lot Easier: If you’re not sure you can produce big results for your clients — figure out how much even a little rise in conversion is worth to them… | |
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In response the my recent e-ecolumn, Why Copy That Over Claims Often Underperforms, Dr. Michael Beck (a chiropractor turned copywriter/marketer) commented: “John, great post. I haven’t thought about benefits in the way you described.”
He then went on to explain how in his niche (helping chiropractic doctors market their clinic) his competition is making over-the-top claims: “There’s all these marketers in my market promoting ‘get 30-40 new patients a month!’. 99% of doctors will never get that from buying their product… Then one day a guy said to me, ‘What about just getting 2-3 extra patients a month?’”
A Critical Lesson for any Copywriter
Promoting His Services
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Today, more than ever, the web seems littered with copywriters claiming that they’ll suck money out of their prospective client’s customers like “a vacuum cleaner on steroids.”
People with little understanding of direct-response may fall for that game. But your REAL clients — established business owners and experienced marketing directors —won’t be impressed. They are happy if you can turn a letter converting at 0.8% into 1.2% they’ll make an extra tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars in backend sales.
You don’t need to turn on the vacuum cleaner. It’s a noisy contraption that will send your real prospects running like small puppies.
Why My Honest Claim of
200-300% Increase in Response
Made My Life Harder
I had the same experience as Dr. Beck, when I used to write ad copy for local business — in particularly alternative health practices.
I would promote that I could produce a 200-300% increase in response for their print advertising. I didn’t feel this was a big claim, because I only took on projects where the print ads were lousy. In the case of the small businesses, 95% of their ads are a logo, slogan, credentials and phone number.
Seemed easy enough to beat.
Well, as much as that may be the case, there are aspects to a successful ad, beyond the copy, and I soon began to understand.
The Chaos Beyond Copywriting
For example, one of my first jobs was for a chiropractic clinic. I worked tirelessly interviewing the client and going through many edits of his ad. I created a genuine and appealing USP for his clinic. He was up against some Goliath competition and I was determined to knock them down with my “copywriting combat skills.”
As soon as I started the project, I had my client begin tracking response rates from his current print ads. It would be a while yet before my copy hit the presses.
Three months later, they faxed me their stats. My mouth dropped open. I called the secretary immediately, “Are you sure you recorded all of your incoming calls? You didn’t forget to do it sometimes?”
“No, I promise, I kept track of every single time the phone rang.”
Glancing back at the fax, I saw an average about 1-2 calls a MONTH from their current (expensive) advertising. The rest of the calls were referrals. And there weren’t many of those either.
Those numbers were so low that it was impossible to determine if my ad would make an improvement or not. We really needed to track the old ad for 12 months, average it out, and then track my new ad for 12 months.
Even then, with so few calls happening, I had to assume other issues were at play. Maybe the chiropractor had a bad reputation in town? Since it was my own town, I asked around and quickly discovered people didn’t really like him.
Personality wise they found him arrogant with a superiority complex. Every time he shook your hand he would arch his elbow up and come down on you with a strong grip.
Such personality traits spread easily via word of mouth.
My Life Became Much Easier After That Experience
As I went on consulting with future prospects and talking to others doing the same work, I found it was easier sell a 40% increase in response. Even for those who had 10 new clients a month, an extra five was fantastic.
In fact, one new patient, for my doctor clients, was more than enough to compensate my copywriting fee at the time of $1000. Each new patient brought in about $250 in initial consultations. That would easily be doubled by another $250 in follow-up appointments. So they were looking at making an extra $500 per month (conservative estimate). In two months they’d make back my fee. After that, it’s all profit.
And when my ads did outperform by 200-300%, everybody was happier and it was easier to offer my services for future projects. I went from being “this guy’s kind of expensive” to “don’t let this guy out of our sight.”
Why did I not stick with writing ad copy for small businesses? That’s another story. Let’s just say, it was a very good place to start, but not where I wanted to remain. That said, I probably transitioned to quickly and suffered for it.
The moral of today’s rant is what Dr. Beck pointed out… Once he started TALKING to his market he found out that promising less would be more believable and appealing to his prospective buyers. Intimate interviewing, as Shaune Clarke talks about in Sell More Without Hype: Indirect Persuasion Copywriting Secrets revealed, is the best way I know to go about this.
P.S. Are you interested in making $500-$1000 for writing one-page ads for small local businesses? You can read about how a colleague I’ve known for many years, landed her first client at $1000 writing a quarter-page ad. Her client (another doctor) was so happy with the results that he quickly paid her $5,400 for future work. Click here to read the full story of this school secretrary turned freelance copywriter.
P.P.S. If you’re new to Reality Copywriting please click here to subscribe via our RSS feed or to receive an email subscription plus a free recording of How To Write Copy That Sells Through the Coming Recession please click here
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