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Hello Niche Marketing Enthusiasts
Hello niche marketing enthusiasts,
I am fairly new to the niche marketing community but have been studying and following along for about a year now. I've started my own blog but like to take the time to visit others. The blogs I have found are...
How To Ramp Up Your Business With Sizzling Ad Copy
What is the importance of Ad copy? Your ad copy, sales letter will make or break your business. You can have the best product/service but without a good sales copy, you cannot sell anything. Website visitors are becoming increasingly savvy, hype...
My Favorite Expert Advice on Writing the Stories of Our Lives, Gleaned From My Favorite Books on the Subject
This outline is adapted from a handout I give to my lifewriting students. The points made here apply to writing in general as well as to writing our life stories in particular.
I. Why should we write?
A. Frank McCourt in Writer’s Digest, Feb....
SEO Copywriting Makeover: Good Rankings but No Sales Part 1 of 2
by Karon Thackston © 2004-2005 http://www.copywritingcourse.com It's been a myth for as long as the Internet has been in existence. Get good rankings and your site will be successful. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that has never been...
The Art of Reading Your Buyer's Mind
Wouldn't it be fantastic if you had a crystal ball and you could read your prospects' minds you knew what they were thinking when you were making your sales presentation. You knew why there were considering the product in the first place. You knew...
The Best Place to Put SEO Copy on Your Web Page
by Karon Thackston © 2005
http://www.copywritingcourse.com/keyword It seems like a funny
question to me, but it gets asked a lot. "Where should the SEO
copy go on my Web page?" That question gets asked so much
because there are several pieces...
The Top 7 Rules of Power Copywriting!
Here are the top techniques and tricks that today's best copywriters use. Learn them well, remember them always and use them often! 1) Research, Research, Research. The biggest difference between good copywriters and great copywriters is...
Use Grammar as a Marketing Weapon
If you're like me, you're not writing that ad, Web page, or
radio script to make your English teacher proud. You're writing
to sell.
If you get an "A" while you're at it, great. But don't count on
it. To get prospects to click, call, or buy,...
What is Advertising - and What Does it Mean on the Internet?
Today’s Quick Tip answers the question “What is advertising?” “Advertising is salesmanship. The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It is profitable or unprofitable according to its actual sales.” - Claude Hopkins, one of the early...
Wild Bill's Top 30 Copy Writing Principles!
1. The Right Product for the Right Target Group: Make sure that you are promoting a product that is useful and/or desirable to the audience you are targeting. 2. Use Attention Getting Headlines: You web site will have or should have much...
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Copywriting Makeover: Making An Emotional Connection - Part 2 of 2
by Karon Thackston © 2004
http://www.copywritingcourse.com
In part one of this article series we began looking at the Cruise Vacation Center site: a travel site whose copy was sorely lacking in emotional appeal and visual imagry. (You can see the previous version of the copy here: http://www.copywritingcourse.com/CruiseVacationCenter-Original.pdf.) In the conclusion, you’ll see how all the rewrite turned out and how exciting the end results have been.
The Rewrite
It took me a while to get started on this copy. Before I began writing, I wanted to really be in the mood. I played around on the vacation search feature of CVC’s site and read all about some of the places I have always wanted to go. I took my time and let my imagination run wild while reading about the ports-of-call, the activities, and the ship’s amenities.
When people shop for vacations, they are typically interested in what they’ll get first and they worry about the price second. They want to feel and sense the experience of a vacation while reading about it on a website or in a brochure. It sort of falls into the same category as copywriting for brides.
Getting married, for most people anyway, is a limited experience. It’s not something you do every day. While a bride may be working on a budget, she still loves to see the $10,000 Donna Karan gowns and imagine herself in one. The same holds true for those planning a vacation.
You usually only go on one vacation/holiday a year. That’s why we dream. It’s a limited experience. Something we plan for and look forward to for months on end. So, while a vacation planner may not choose to buy the king-sized, master, grand suite, all-inclusive, five-star vacation trip around the world, s/he sure has fun reading about it and imagining it. Why do you think shows like “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” are so popular?
Once I’d filled my mind with everything wonderful about cruise vacations, I was ready to tackle the copy.
Keyphrase inclusion was simple on this page. There was just one keyphrase, cruise vacation. I used both the singular and plural forms throughout the text. My challenge with the SEO aspect of the copywriting was to keep the balance.
Normally, when there is just one keyphrase, there is a very high tendency by most people to ram, shove, and squeeze the phrase into every nook and cranny of the copy. I beg you… resist that urge! As you’ll see
shortly, SEO copywriting is NOT about forcing keyphrases into every possible slot.
And, of course, there was the matter of letting visitors know that they would get a better bargain and save more on their luxury cruise if they booked online.
Starting at the top, I changed the headline of:
“Planning quality discount cruises for you since 1993!”
to
“Book Your Exotic Cruise Vacation Online and Get Rock-Bottom Prices to the Hottest Destinations”
Next, I immediately began to entice the visitor with visions of what s/he could expect - from their vacation and from CVC.
Rather than talk about the company directly as the original copy did:
“Dreaming of a cruise but don't want to pay full price? Cruise Vacation Center is one of the nation's largest cruise agencies.”
I started the copy with this:
“Just imagine… you’re walking along the deck of a grand cruise vessel as it gently keeps rhythm with the waves. The sun is on your shoulders and a soothing breeze wafts through your hair.”
I continued to build the new copy with phrases like: “wander your way through the medieval castles,” “stunning gardens of the Mediterranean,” and “oceanfront luau in Hawaii,” while intermixing statements including: “deep discounts,” “book securely online,” and so on.
All the while, I was dropping reminders to book online for the biggest savings and offering explanations about why that would benefit the visitor.
The call-to-action was designed to reinforce the idea that the customer *could* get more vacation choices for their money with CVC.
You can see the end results for yourself at http://www.cruisevacationcenter.com.
The Results
It’s fun to see how these makeovers turn out. What did my client have to say? The response was astonishing and immediate. “…Weekend sales tripled! Usually around 10 online books over the weekend. Last weekend had 30! [Also], they re-indexed and the home page moved up [two positions] for ‘cruise vacation.’ It has a great lead-in on the search page, too.”
Man… I just love my job!
About the Author
Copy not getting results? Learn to write SEO copy that impresses the engines and your visitors at http://www.copywritingcourse.com. Be sure to also check out Karon’s latest e-report “How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)” at http://www.copywritingcourse.com/keyword.
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