Carol Bentley

Just a quick heads-up. My PA Kelly has told me she is going to send you a message Monday afternoon because she thinks I have lost the plot! But, because I don’t want the whole world to know about this, it will be in a private post - which means you get the password in your email on Monday.

Have a great weekend,

~ Carol Bentley

Well, the results are in and I’m really chuffed with the support I was given with this memorial project over the last 2 weeks.

We didn’t quite reach my intended target of giving away 800 copies of the copywriting book; we had 317 downloads, which wasn’t too bad. And of course other people may have seen it without visiting the website - so who knows, maybe I did reach my target

I rather like looking at figures and some of these stats were interesting. For instance, on average, only 30.6% of the people who were invited by friends to visit the offer website, did so. Now that could be because the other people decided they didn’t need help with their sales letters; so ignored the invitation.

Or - if I was really cynical I could say it might be because the people sending the invite used their own alternative email addresses instead of their friends’…

Hmm! I suppose that might happen where someone really wants the valuable gift being offered but is wary about giving a friend’s email address out online. And that got me thinking (as you do)… I’ll tell you more about my thoughts in a moment.

First off [drum-roll please]….

The Bentley Makeover Gift goes to…

Susan, from www.habitbreakers.co.nz, who came top with an impressive 55.6% take-up of her invitations. (I think the trick was sending out a tad more than one set of invitations). I look forward to working with Susan on her sales letter.

And my thoughts were…

Going on from what I was saying, the memorial offer of a free e-copy of my sales letter writing book finished at midnight (BST) yesterday. So anyone visiting the site, whether in response to an invitation you sent or from seeing the link on this blog, is now too late to get the complete book.

However, I know sometimes things can happen that stop you doing something you meant to. So I decided to leave the website up, just for another week, with the option to download 5 crucial chapters from the book. That will help anyone who gets there a bit late but still needs expert tips on writing their sales letter.

Plus - you do not have to invite anyone to get your copy of these chapters - it’s available as a completely free download (you just have to confirm your request to stop any ’spammers’ activity). And that’s it! No commitment, just an extremely useful gift.

So, if you haven’t downloaded your copy yet, or you want to tell your friends privately - it’s available at www.WriteLettersWinSales.co.uk

Please note: This 5-crucial chapters offer expires on 25th June 2008

~ Carol Bentley

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In my post dated 6 June I talked about the idea of a further gift as a ‘thank you’ for your support.

This is what I wrote:

Here’s My Idea

Apart from giving you your free e-copy of the book, ‘I Want To Buy Your Product… Have You Sent Me A Letter Yet?’ I’d like to acknowledge the support you are showing me.

So I decided I’d offer a gift to the person who has the highest number of friends accepting the invitation to download the book before the invitation expires at midnight (BST) on 18th June (my Father’s birthday). And don’t worry - my system has already recorded the number of people you’ve invited and how many have collected their gift, so you won’t lose out if you’ve already been pretty active with this memorial project.

You can send your invitation to more friends at Invite More

The New Gift

I’ve decided the most valuable gift I can give is some 1-on-1 time. Specifically the lucky recipient gets a complete Bentley Makeover on a sales letter and response form. The Bentley Makeover Service has a value between £427 ($838) and £967 ($1,899), dependent upon the length of the letter.

After sending your letter and response form to me, I record a review of the letter, advising changes to make it stronger and more compelling. I’ll also give suggestions for headline, sub-heads, copy content and P.S. if these need enhancing. The recording is supplied as an MP3 file that you can keep and refer to at any time.

So all you need to do, to be in with a chance of gaining this extra gift, is remind the people you’ve already invited to collect their ebook and invite more people to claim their copy before midnight (BST) on 18th June. You can invite more friends at Invite More

Thanks once again for your support.

~ Carol Bentley

P.S. If the invitation link in your email was not used, the people you invited are not contacted by me again. You might want to remind them that there is now less than 36 hours before the invitation expires.

A colleague has just finished recording an interview with me. He wanted to get some ‘behind the scenes tips’ on copywriting - specifically for sales letters. He asked a good many questions - but one came up that I’d never been asked before, or at least not in quite the way he put it.

And I thought it’s a good one to share with you.

Q:

HOW DO YOU BRAINSTORM HEADLINES FOR A GIVEN PROJECT?

A:

For many people, getting started on headlines can be an insurmountable problem. And sometimes I think it is because enough research and thinking about it has not yet happened.

You see, first off I do research on the project so I know everything there is to know about the company I’m writing for, their business; their products (or services) and the specific offer they are making.

I find out who their ideal customers are and what result the customer is looking for. I pore over letters the company has received from customers, including letters of complaints and how they were dealt with. Reading about an unhappy customer who has been turned into a satisfied, sometimes delighted, customer can be a great catalyst for innovative ideas.

I research their competitors to see what else is on the market - not just direct competitors. We are often competing against something completely different when it comes to persuading people to part with their money. For example if you were selling a portable CD player, your competition is not just other makes of CD players it could be MP3 players, iPods - in fact any other technology that can deliver the result the customer wants; to be able to listen to their music on the move.

Then, having decided I want to write some good headlines, I let it brew. The important step here is to state your intention; “I need some cracking headlines” so your sub-conscious knows what it is supposed to be working on.

I move away from the project and go do something else. And the good ideas; the approach to take; the results purchasers gain when they take up the offer start to percolate through my sub-conscious.

This process helps with the letter itself, as well as the headlines.

When things are starting to ‘bubble through’ I create a mindmap of the proven response - or ‘Power’ words as some people call them, starting with the 79 in my book. These words also act as a catalyst as I start to formulate the headlines.

(I’ve shared the next section of this process with you before on this blog) For each response word I write 2 or 3 headlines. Some are absolute rubbish - especially in the early stages - but as I warm up the better ideas start to flow.

By using a mindmap I can go back and forth between the different response words adding more headlines as they occur to me.

Using this method makes it really easy to create the 100 headlines I advocate in my book. And, more importantly, I find the stronger headlines to test as well as good ones that are natural sub-heads to use in the letter itself. And often a good P.S. can come out of this exercise.

So there you have it - my approach to crafting headlines.

If you are stuck on ‘what to write’ for your headlines - review all your material. Even if you are writing for your own product or service, take the time to refresh your mind. Then let your sub-conscious do the work for you. The combination of research and your sub-conscious is a powerful one, if you let it work for you.

~ Carol Bentley

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Wow! You guys (& gals) rock! Your support is overwhelming, I’m really impressed and very grateful. And I’ve had an interesting thought…

Before I tell you what it is, let me bring you up to date with some feedback. I’ve just checked the stats on the www.WriteLettersWinSales.co.uk site to see how my goal to gift my book to 800 business people is going.

Well we’ve had an impressive follow-through with 426 views of the page so far and I haven’t even sent out my offline mailshot or done the press releases yet! They don’t go out until the beginning of next week, cause I thought I’d give you a head start first .

Not everyone who visited has opted for the full book download - but we are getting there

And that’s what got me thinking… and I had a brainwave

Here’s My Idea

Apart from giving you your free copy of the book I’d like to acknowledge the support you are showing me.

So I decided I’d offer a gift to the person who has the highest number of friends accepting the invitation to download the book. And don’t worry - my system has already recorded the number of people you’ve invited and how many have collected their gift, so you won’t lose out if you’ve already been pretty active with this memorial project.

You can send your invitation to more friends at Invite More

What To Give?
I haven’t fully decided what to give - but I’ve got 12 days before the free ebook offer closes so that gives me plenty of time to come up with something really valuable; it may be self-study products (including new ones currently in the development pipeline) or it may be a personal copywriting review with me, which helps to hone your writing skills or - if I’m feeling really generous - I might even offer to write some copy to use in your current sales campaign.

Tell you what - you choose! What would be the most useful and valuable extra gift from your point of view? Click the comments link below and tell me what you’d like to receive and specifically why and how that would help you. If I get a tie between a few people on June 18th I’ll use the comments posted here as a tie-breaker.

Thanks again for your support and good luck if you decide to participate further.

~ Carol Bentley

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In my last post I asked if you would help me to deliver a gift to business people in commemoration of my Father. Well it is ready to go. And, of course, you’re invited to accept this gift as well.

The gift is a PDF version of my popular (rated 5* on amazon.co.uk) book ‘I Want To Buy Your Product… Have You Sent Me A Lettter Yet?. It describes, in easy to follow steps, exactly how to write effective sales letters and adverts.

I’m attempting to reach out to at least 800 business people as a tribute to my Dad, who would have been 80 this month. And that’s why I’m asking you to visit www.WriteLettersWinSales.co.uk so you can help spread the word and invite your business friends to get their copy and, of course, get your own copy too.

If you don’t want to invite anyone you can still get a useful gift on the website to use in your own business.

Gift Offer Finishes on 18th June

My Father’s birthday would have been 18th June so that’s when this free gift expires, at midnight (BST).

Why not pop over to www.WriteLettersWinSales.co.uk now rather than risk not remembering until after the 18th, when it is too late.

Thanks again for your support with this. I’ll let you know how many we reach between us.

~ Carol Bentley

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Will you help me to reach 800 action-orientated business people with a special gift? I’m just finishing up the web pages and plan to release it within the next day or two. For some businesses this gift can literally turn them around - helping them to generate more revenue than ever before. In fact it ties in strongly with my previous post ‘Ostrich or Hawk‘.

Let me explain. You’ve probably noticed the book graphic in the panel on the right of this page - you may even have the book, in which case I’d like to say ‘Thank You’ for investing in it.

The direct marketing concepts revealed in this book find additional business using sales letters and adverts. It describes the fundamentals of how to make your sales letter more successful, or as Dr Joe Vitale said…

“Outstanding! It shows you an easy way to transform mediocre letters to explosive letters - the kind that get noticed, get read, get sales!”

Unfortunately there are hundreds, No! thousands, of business people who do not understand these powerful principles; who do not use these ethically persuasive techniques and who, consequently, do not get the sales they richly deserve. And, with your help, I’d like to reach out to them with. . .

A Gift To Celebrate

If you are a regular reader of this blog you know I lost my Father earlier this year. Dad, who was a gentle and sensitive man, would have been 80 this June. Obviously I can’t celebrate with him, but I know that celebrating his life by helping others (as he always strived to do) is a fitting tribute for him.

But I want to help people in a way that I’m uniquely positioned to do, so

Your Mission - should you choose to accept it..

…is to help me gift a PDF version of this book to 800 businesses (including yours) by June 18th (his birthday); that’s just 10 people for each year of his life.

Will you help me reach this goal by accepting this gift and inviting business people you know to download it completely free of charge and with no obligation?

As I said, the website, describing the book and what it can do for those lucky enough to get a copy, is just going through the final testing stages. It will be ready shortly. Look out for a post entitled Copywriting: A Celebration Gift. And in the meantime check your contact list for the people you believe would appreciate and use this valuable gift.

Thanks

~ Carol Bentley

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I’m forever going on about making your letters to clients and prospects interesting and information-packed. (Are you sick of hearing it yet? ) Well sorry, I’m not going to apologise for emphasising it (oh - I just did, sort of… didn’t I? )

No, seriously! Including useful tips, insider knowledge or understanding puts you at a higher level than your competitors, who do not do this, because you are giving value.

What’s better - is you are giving value without obligation because you are making it freely available without your prospect having to pay a single penny. And they come to regard you as the ‘go-to-expert’ when they decide to buy your type of product or services.

Adding Value

So what sort of thing is useful to your prospect; what gives your letter ‘added value’?

The actual content you can offer is different in your industry or profession compared to another. Let’s see if we can discover what would be useful for your target audience by going through a few questions:

1. When you have a face-to-face meeting with a prospect do they ask you questions? (What? Did I hear you say “Doh!” ‘course they do! )
   Alright, what questions do they ask?

   Are any of the questions generic to your industry or profession rather than specific to your product or service?

   Those are the ones you should be answering in your letter. And by doing so you are giving valuable information to your reader. (An added bonus is you might also be overcoming a possible objection the reader might have had).

2. Along a similar vein - what tips do you share with your staff and customers? Again look for the more generic gems. Include these in your letters.

   Remember, something very simple and obvious to you can be a real eye-opener to a person who does not have your experience or knowledge. Sometimes it’s easy to forget the wealth of expertise we accumulate over the years.

Offering free advice, from a position of knowledge, goes a long way towards encouraging people to decide in your favour when they decide to buy!

~ Carol Bentley

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Are you having a conversation with your customers and prospects? Or are you lecturing them?

We are the experts in our field. And we want to be sure our prospects - and customers - fully understand the results our offer gives them.

So, just like the experts tell us, we ‘paint the picture’ in our letters or on our web pages; clearly describing all the benefits our features deliver. And it reads well, because we know what we meant to say. And we know the tone we are using to express our thoughts.

The problem we all have - yes, me included - is making sure what we’ve written is read correctly.

There’s two challenges we face:

1. The words we use. Are we friendly, persuasive and supportive without being condescending, dismissive or just downright ‘in-your-face’ annoying?
2. The emphasis that someone reading might put on the words you’ve given them.

I’m sure you know (or have read somewhere) that only 7% of our communication is in the words we use - the rest is made up of body language (55%) and voice tonality (38%)

So how do we get over these challenges in our writing, where we don’t have the benefit of body language or voice tone? Here’s a couple of techniques I’ve developed that you might like to use:

1. After writing your letter, sales page, email or message, read it out loud. If you can record your reading, so you can listen back, that would be even better. When you listen to your reading does it sound right? Do the words flow? Does it sound like you are having a conversation or does it come across as a speech or lecture?

   Writing in a conversational tone is not easy, which is why I so often recommend recording what you want to say and then transcribing it into your document. The words you use when you speak come across more naturally and, after using this technique a few times, you’ll find it easier to write in that style as well.

   Now, ask someone else to read the same message aloud. Does it still sound as you expected? Or has the message changed? If so, why? Words in the wrong order can change the meaning.

   Let me give you an example. On this website a pop-over appears if you visit the blog and are not subscribed. I recently changed the pop-over to offer a couple of reports as an incentive to subscribe.

   The wording I used for one of the reports was:

   31 Word Time Saving Tips for Sales Letter Writers

   I wanted the reader to know the report contains 31 tips on how to save time when you use Microsoft Word for creating sales letters. And that read OK, didn’t it?

   But when I looked at it again a bit later I realised it could be read as 31-Word Time Saving Tips for Sales Letters. Do you see the difference? The way someone reads it could be entirely different to what I meant! So I changed it to say:

   31 Time-Savers in Word for Sales Letter Writers

   It’s another good reason for putting what you’ve written to one side and coming back to review/revise it later!

2. Punctuation can sometimes create a problem as well. Pauses in the flow - created with commas, semi-colons, colons, dashes and other punctuation marks - may not be in the right place, or missing punctuation can completely change your message!
3. Formatting can change the emphasis on words. Here’s another example; read these sentences putting emphasis on the word in italics in each one:
   • I never said he stole the money
   • I never said he stole the money
   • I never said he stole the money
   • I never said he stole the money
   • I never said he stole the money
   • I never said he stole the money

   Do you see how changing the emphasis on a different word in each sentence changes the whole meaning?

   So how do you handle this challenge - the challenge of emphasis? It is more difficult when you are writing, compared to speaking. Using different formatting (as I did in the sentences above) can help. Use italics, bold, underline and capitals as well as careful punctuation.

   But again, I would strongly suggest going through the same ‘reading aloud and checking’ process as I recommended above just to be doubly sure it sounds OK.

The good news is once you’ve written a few letters or emails following these suggestions you’ll develop your own natural, conversation style. And I’m confident your prospects and customers will respond more warmly to you as result.

~ Carol Bentley

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Would you do me a favour?

I’m really close to finalising my Easiest Sales Letter Creation self-study programme, which is designed to help business owners get better results from the sales letters they send out.

The content is based on the material in my book, but before I sit back and say “Finished!” I want to be sure I’ve covered everything. And I thought “who better to ask than the folks who follow my blog?”

So, would you help me out by answering a few questions? Pop over to http://copywriting4b2b.opinion.sgizmo.com to answer the questions (and get a little more info about the programme).

Thanks.

~ Carol Bentley

If you are already subscribed to this blog you got an extra email today with information on how to get your subscriber gifts - check your Inbox or filtered email folder if you haven’t seen it.

And if you are not a subscriber yet you can get these gifts too, as I’ll explain in a moment.

Why am I giving these gifts?

Well, all is revealed in my original post on 1st April - ‘I had a Doh! moment’. You see, I decided to add to the value of this blog by giving these gifts to anyone who decided to keep up to date with my posts by subscribing for the email notices.

And I do try to be fair-minded, so I didn’t want people who are already subscribed to miss out. Hence the email that was sent separately.

Subscriber Gifts

So what do you get as a subscriber?

Two Great Reports

Report 1:

Profit Mastery Series - Marketing: Paul Stewart Interviews Carol Bentley

In this 16-page transcript of the interview I had with Paul you read about:

• Why targeting your market is crucial
• How marketing can give a return on investment
• Making your customer your best friend
• Breaking the £1m turnover barrier (or whatever level you are currently facing)
• Three copywriting mistakes you should avoid like the plague
• Using AIDA-A in your sales letter

And

Report 2:

How to Banish, Forever, The Hair-Tearing Frustrations of Microsoft® Word® When Writing Your Sales Letters!
31 tips make your writing a lot less stressful!

These quick tips get rid of the irritation you feel when Word suddenly ‘does its own thing’ - you can make it behave as you want. And they save you a great deal of time. Tips apply to all versions of MS Word since version 2002.

Claim Your Gifts Now

If you are a subscriber - check your email notices.

If you are not yet a subscriber simply pop your name and email address in the boxes in the panel on the right and click the Tell Me! button or you can use the pop-up invitation if you prefer.

BTW - once you are subscribed you won’t get the pop-up box appearing ever again. That’s good news isn’t it?

~ Carol Bentley

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How do you get your creative juices to flow when you need to get that sales letter written?

When you are immersed in the day-to-day flow of your business it can be difficult to pull yourself away enough to allow those innovative, compelling words to materialise.

And sometimes we need to get back the imagination and free thinking of our childhood - see things through fresh eyes, with a new, vibrant perspective.

But how?

In my sales letter writing workshops I aim to get that free feeling in the delegates, before they even put pen to paper. Sure, I go through the ’science’ behind writing an effective sales letter (or advert)…

• craft eye-catching headlines
• structure the letter to follow my skeleton outline
• write a personal letter to your prospect
• paint the picture of what the reader gets - benefits - in a language that resonates with him

All of this is important. But facing a blank page or empty computer screen is a real dampener for many.

So I start off by giving everyone a small bottle of champagne.

What?!

Encourage people to drink - like a writing equivalent of dutch courage?

Absolutely Not!!

The bottle is champagne bubbles - the type you see at weddings.

Having fun - for some going back to the childhood pleasure of blowing bubbles - lightens your mood.

It generates laughter; lessens the sometimes sombre and serious mood of business. And thoughts and ideas start to percolate through.

And, happily, for many it does make writing easier, because writing about your passion; your business is fun! Isn’t it?

Give it a go - what have you got to lose? You might surprise yourself with a flow of creative writing that ‘hits the mark’.

~ Carol Bentley

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I read other blogs - but you already knew that. And some of them give me food for thought. But the posting I’ve just read made me go “doh!” slap my head and go a little pink with embarrassment.

Why? Because it reminded me of a fundamental method of encouraging people to take note of what you are doing.

You can read the post here (and my comment in reply): 5 Powerful Ways… It was the blue boxed paragraph in tip number 1 that made me exclaim.

As a result I’ll be changing my blog subscriber sequence to offer a gift, which hopefully, will encourage new visitors to subscribe.

A Gift for You…

If you’re already subscribed then I’ll make sure you get the gift as well.

I’ll send a link for it by email and put an announcement in a post on here so you can keep a look out for it. I’m not sure when I’ll do this because I want to check through all my material to find something useful for you. And this week is manic (it doesn’t help that my PA is on holiday too) so I may not get time to do it before next week.

But I won’t forget! Promise!

~ Carol Bentley

P.S. And NO! This is not an April’s Fool prank! (I’ve just noticed the date).

A letter I received in the post this morning broke the two golden rules when writing to prospects, which are:

1. Target your audience
2. Write to your audience

The sender did successfully use some of the copywriting techniques I share with you - but the fundamental research hadn’t been done. Either that or they purchased an inaccurate mailing list!

After the headlines, here’s the start of the letter…

Dear Carol:

As an active investor, you’ve experienced more than your share of losses.

But did you know that professional traders also have losses? Yet they have skills and understanding of the market that makes them successful while others lose a fortune!

A little later in the letter it said…

This FREE workshop is perfect for anyone with an interest in investing.

So what’s wrong with that?

• I do not trade on the stock market so this is not relevant to me. I am not their target audience.

• If I did trade, the writer is making a huge assumption that I’ve made losses. You could say in view of recent events in the financial world this is probably a fairly safe guess. However it could alienate someone whose trading has been a bit more successful than he is implying, but who would otherwise be interested in what he has to offer.

This was a well written letter and if I had been correctly targeted I would probably have responded.

Learning From Others Mistakes

Why am I sharing this with you?

Because we can learn from the mistakes other people make in their copywriting. And it’s often easier to see these mistakes in letters we receive, whereas sometimes we can be too close to our own material and not realise the trap we’re falling into.

Tell me, how well targeted is your audience? How well do you know them? Are you writing your letters with their circumstances in mind and in such a way that you are not eliminating a good portion of your recipients?

And - just for a bit of fun and practice - how would you have started the letter (assuming it is going to a targeted audience of trade investors).  Share your suggestions using the comments link below.

~ Carol Bentley

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