4 Tips for Writing Successful Swipe Copy

Posted by Bruce Carlson on: 2005-04-23 15:32:16

Self SEO > Copywriting Articles

© 2005 by Bruce Carlson

Master copywriter and marketer Dan Kennedy, in his highlypopular and successful copywriting seminars, likes to tellhis students that "sometimes good enough is good enough"when it comes to a piece of sales copy.

What does Dan mean by this?

Simply put, you don't need to reinvent the wheel in orderto write successful copy. What has worked in the past canand will work again.

Learning to effectively "swipe" from winning sales lettersis one of the most important skills you can develop as a copywriter. And, contrary to what you may sometimes hear, there is nothing "unethical" or "sleazy" about it. Every great copywriter employs swipe techniques to some extent.

The key to writing good swipe copy is awareness. By keepingfocused on a few key areas you'll quickly develop a senseof what can work for you and your market.

Here are a few tips for writing swipe copy that works.

1) Be on the lookout for parallel markets

Parallel markets to your own niche offer great opportunitiesto borrow elements for your own purposes.

For example, let's say you're writing a piece for a websitethat sells dog toys.

Your first possibility for a parallel market would be any websitethat sells pet toys (other than dog toys). You'd also want tolook at sites that sell children's toys (although I certainly don'twant to imply that dogs and children have a lot in common!) :-)

After this you could stray further afield and look at sites thatsell other pet accessories. Keep in mind that you are looking forsuccessful sales elements that might work for you. Anything andeverything that looks like it could work for your own campaign needs to be taken into consideration, as long as it's been provensuccessful. Parallel niches offer a golden opportunity because oftheir similarities to your own niche.

How do you determine if a parallel niche site is successful?

Use Alexa to see what kind of traffic they get. Search around the Weba bit and see how often their name pops up. More than anything though,just use your marketing instincts to sniff out the quality of what they're doing in terms of direct response.

If you think they may be doing OK then sign up for their newsletter orf.ree report or autoresponder series. Study their marketing diligently.

If you get even one idea for your copy from a parallel marketer thenyou've done well.

Occasionally marketers hit the jackpot and find a full letter that fitstheir market's purposes to the tee (with a few alterations needed hereand there). But more often it's an approach or an element of the salesletter that proves useful.

2) Know your target market's level of awareness

As you know, you need to be on a very intimate level with your market. You need to know their wants and needs inside out.

For freelance copywriters this can be a particularly troublesome area, because freelancers often have difficulty just jumping into the prospects'shoes at the drop of a hat. Thus many freelancers choose to specialize in a few select niches whose target markets they do have a good understandingof and/or can learn about without an inordinate amount of work.

But beyond a good working knowledge of your market's wants and needs there'salso a knowledge of its level of awareness or sophistication.

You'll want to determine how much knowledge your prospects have of techniquesused standardly in sales copy which targets them. With our dog toys example, the online market's level of awareness would be fairly low. New ads for thismarket could be brought in from other parallel areas without much fuss.

But with a market like online marketers, for instance, the level of awareness would be quite a bit higher. Copy aimed at this audience needs to take that higherlevel into consideration and not make the mistake of using worn-out copy fromthe past that every marketer has seen a million times.

Over time the market's level of awareness will increase (and with the Internetwe find that online shoppers' levels of awareness in general are increasing, thus making some of the techniques seen even a few years ago less effective). And so you need to stay in tune with what's going on in the whole marketing arena for your product or service.

After all is said and done, testing and tracking will show what's working however. And in some cases marketers are genuinely surprised at how much highertheir market's level of awareness is than they had imagined.

Or lower...

3) Build a swipe database

All good copywriters keep a swipe file. Some have entire rooms full of old ads,mail packages, and sales letters that worked in the past. And once in awhile theypackage them up and sell them for a nice profit...

With the Internet it's easy to just save good copy to your hard drive or a folderin your email program. When you run across something that catches your eye save itimmediately before you do anything else. Otherwise you might suddenly find yourselfimmersed in other matters and forget about the sales letter you just read.

As so often happens in cyberland...

I kick myself sometimes because I forget to save a hot letter. And later on. whenI go back to try to find it, it turns out they've already taken it down because theproduct sold out.

You also need to get on the email lists of people doing marketing in your niche(s)so you can get their mailings. Some very good sales copy is written specifically foremail.

The more material you have to work with the better. There just might be one littleidea in that ocean of material that makes the difference in whether your copy succeedsor fails...that makes the difference between small profits and large profits.

So start a virtual swipe database. If you run out of room on your hard drive burn itonto CD's. It'll take a while to fill a room with CD's full of swipe material!

By the way, nowadays on the Internet there are several "swipe file" products available for purchase, but you need to be careful. These collections of "winning" sales letters areoften of very poor quality. So do your due diligence before you buy them.

In the direct mail industry the quality control is much more stringent. There are several excellent collections published in book form and most good copywriters, online or off, keep a couple of them on their shelves.

Some examples of these great works are Hodgson's "The Greatest Direct Mail Sales Lettersof All Time", Denny Hatch's "Million Dollar Mailings", and Herschel Lewis and Carol Nelson's "World's Greatest Direct Mail Sales Letters". Hodgson's book is available inPDF form from www.twipress.com , a great website for marketing books in general.

Oh, and don't forget that your own past successful efforts are also good candidates fora swipe or two...

4) Integrate Smoothly

It goes without saying that you should smoothly blend the material you swipe into yourown copy so that it looks like it belongs there. But it's amazing how often people failto do this.

Make sure to put the copy you borrow into your own voice so it reads as if it were something you wrote. Novice marketing is often easy to spot because of the discrepancybetween the less-than-experienced voice of the marketer and the confident voice of thegood copywriter or copywriters he or she has borrowed elements from.

When you've got conflicting voices within a sales letter people pick up on it.

While most buyers don't care about good grammar, they will notice, even if it's on a sub-conscious level, when your copy is out of balance. They'll know that something"just isn't right". And that's all it takes for them to click out.

So make sure you put what you borrow into your own words. Authenticity is a genuine keyto direct marketing. Customers identify with a perceived personality behind the words,not with the letters on the page.

You can borrow headlines, sub-headlines, bullets, stories, offers... Even ideas. The list goes on. But make them a part of you! Not just a cut-and-paste job that stands out likea sore thumb.

As long as you retain your own USP (Unique Selling Proposition) throughout your copy, you will maintain your offer's consistency. And within that context you can then borrowcopy ideas to your heart's content. But blend the borrowed copy in smoothly. Spend a goodamount of time with this. It's definitely worth it.

Swiping is a part of everyday life in the copywriting world. And once you get the hang ofit, only hard-core copywriting students will pick up on what you've done.

Which is perfectly alright. You may even get a congratulatory note from them.

So go forth and boldly swipe. Because sometimes good enough is indeed * good enough *!

About the Author

Bruce Carlson is a 12-year veteran educator and freelance writer who wants to help you improve your online copywriting. Sign up for his FREE newsletter at http://www.dynamic-copywriting.com

Giant Headline Swipe File

Learn How To Make Sales While Others Are Whining ! Without a powerful headline, your message stands little chance of being noticed in an increasingly competitive marketplace

With This 90+ Page Guide... You Can Simply Adapt These Proven Headlines To Your Own Products and Services... And Cash In Just Like Clients Of Topnotch Copywriters Who Created These Masterpieces Did !

Print this article

Tell a friend

User comments:

linsanguo - Posted on: 2012-01-09 08:37:55

The claim that some Replica Watches are 100% exact is a lie, as there is no standard quality control with Replica Rolex Watches . Avoid having high expectations so you will not be surprised or disappointed when you find your Longines Watches UK is not perfect. The only perfect timepiece that is 100% identical to the real thing is the real Breitling Replica itself!

Post New Comment

This site does not allow anonymous comments. Registered members can login to participate. Registration is free and takes only a few seconds