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Visit a Newsagent to Learn How to be a Great Copywriter
publication date: May 10, 2006
 Headlines are the hook that will attract or drive away potential members.It does not matter what your website subject is, you can learn a lot from the consumer magazine industry. They are masters at using headlines and copy to entice people to pick up their magazine from the shelf and open it.
Here are five lessons you can learn from generations of publishing experience:
LESSON #1 Leave the Salesperson at the Back of the Showroom
If you are walking past a shop and you see a salesperson hovering by the door, does it encourage you to go in or put you off?
It certainly puts me off.
Have you ever seen a consumer magazine with “Subscribe to this Magazine now” splashed across the front page?
No?
Nor have I.
Take a look at lots of magazine front covers.
Understand what publishers do to make you want to pick up their publication and take a look inside.
The goal of your landing page is to immediately inform visitors what your site is about and then tempt them to spend time looking around.
The magazine editors are masters at this by using eye-catching, well-targeted headlines:
Use these types of headlines on the page where prospects arrive on your site ... although it is important that every article you write uses attention-grabbing headlines, not just the ones on the Home Page.
The internet equivalents of a pushy salesperson standing at the door of the shop are pop-up ads, a heavy-handed sales letters on the home page and generally too much emphasis on getting people to subscribe.
Let the quality of your content sell for you.
Ideally, you want prospects to read the home page and think, “I must have this information, where do I go to subscribe?”
LESSON #2 – Don’t Hide Your Light under a Bushel
Get the good stuff you have to offer up front.
Magazine editors don’t think “I’ll surprise my readers with an exclusive interview with Tom Cruise once they start reading the magazine”.
They put it right up front on the cover.
“Exclusive! Tom Cruise Talks about his Love Life, Films and Enemies!”
Likewise, shop owners fill their windows with the stuff that sells best.
Find out what your existing members read most on your website and tell your prospects about these articles on the Home Page.
LESSON #3 – Give Prospects a Glimpse of the Community
When you’ve been looking for a restaurant, how many times have you peered through several restaurant windows and gone into the one with the most people?
You have no idea how good the food is, but you make the assumption that if there are a lot of people inside, they must be there for a good reason.
On your site, you can give your prospects a peek through the ‘restaurant window’ by displaying headlines from your discussion forum on the Home Page. This lets visitors know that there are other active people at the site asking the types of questions that they would want to ask.
As we’ve continually mentioned, the member community is one of the most powerful aspects of your subscription website.
You want prospects to feel that they are really missing out on something by not being involved.
Take a look at Bullet Proof Retirement (www.bulletproofretirement.com) for a website that does this well.
Incidentally, having the forum headings on the home page has the added benefit of providing more content for the search engines to find and index. This will help push your website up the search engine results page.
LESSON #4 - Give Prospects a Taster
How often have you been in a food store where they give you a free taste of their food?
Retailers have known for a long time that samples increase the number of people who buy a product.
Magazine publishers also often give away free copies at well-targeted events to persuade people to sign up.
On a website it is easy to do the same ... and it costs you nothing!
Important Tip! Give away your best stuff.
Many website publishers I have spoken with say, “I’m not giving away my best content. People have to pay to see that”.
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
Can you imagine going into a food store and being given broken bits of biscuit from a damaged box? Would that make you want to buy the product?
If you find that 99% of your readers love one particular article, that should be the article you give away as your sample.
Successful internet marketers have learnt that they have to give away something of real value to stand out from the free content on the internet.
The best way we have found to do this is to give one (valuable) free article away every week in the form of a weekly email newsletter. At the bottom of the free article, list all the other articles that are available to members of the website. If a non-member clicks on any of the additional articles, they should be taken to a sign-up page that invites them to become a member.
LESSON #5 – Give a Free Gift (That Costs You Nothing)
There is not a newsagent’s shelf that doesn’t have a magazine with a free gift stuck on its front. The variety is endless – software, books, toys, cosmetic samples, invitations to events, etc.
This is a great way to make your product different from your competitors.
For website owners, the opportunity is even better than for magazine publishers. The reason?
They can distribute digital gifts for free.
Offer a gift that can be sent attached to an email or downloaded from your site.
Examples include:
People love to be given something for free.
Just a brief word of warning. Make sure that the free gift has a real value to your target audience. If it doesn’t, it can lower the perceived value of your website.
These five lessons from the print publishing world should have a significant impact on your conversion rate.
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