Internet marketing is the selling of products or services over the Internet.

Choose Keywords / Research

The next step is to identify keywords for the product that you wish to promote by undertaking keyword research. A keyword is only good if it is relevant to the product you are promoting, and also to the landing page that makes the sale.

With PPC you do not need your own product or website because your ads will take the users directly to the merchant website with your affiliate id attached.

What is advertising?

Advertising is salesmanship.

How can we make our advertising as effective as possible. The answer is to test. Test again and again.

The Headline

• If you’re going to make a single change to boost your response rate, focus on your headline.
• Why? Because five times as many people read your headline than your copy.
• A headline is an ad for your ad. People won’t stop their busy lives to read your copy unless you give them a good reason to do so. So a good headline promises some news and a benefit.
• The headline is that powerful and that important.
• Make your headline almost impossible to resist for your target market.
• And those last three words are important. Your target market.

Focus on Them, Not You

When a potential customer reads your ad the one thing he or she will be wondering from the start is: “what's in it for me?”

Many advertisers make this mistake. They focus on themselves as a company.

• How long they’ve been in business,
• who their biggest customers are,
• how they’ve spent ten years of research and millions of dollars on developing this product.

Actually, those points are important. But they should be expressed in a way that matters to your potential customer.

When writing your copy, it helps to think of it as writing a letter to an old friend.

Emphasize Benefits, Not Features

Incorporating Proof and Believability

Include testimonials of satisfied customers. Be sure to put full names and locations, where possible.

The Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Also known as the unique selling position, the USP is often one of the most misunderstood elements of a good sales letter. It’s what separates your product or service from your competition.

Examples:

• Lowest Price – If you’ve got the corner marketed on budget prices, flaunt it. Wal-Mart has made this USP famous lately, but it’s not new to them. In fact, selling for cheaper has been around as long as capitalism itself. Personally, I’m not crazy about price wars, because someone can always come along and sell for cheaper. Then it’s time for a new strategy…
• Superior Quality – If it outperforms your competitor’s product or is made with higher quality materials, it’s a good bet that you could use this fact to your advantage. For example, compare Breyers Ice Cream to their competitor’s. From the packaging to the wholesome superior ingredients, the quality is evident. It may cost a little more than their competitor’s ice cream, but for their market, it sells.
• Superior Service – If you offer superior service over your competitor’s, people will buy from you instead. .
• Exclusive Rights – If you can legitimately claim that your product is protected by a patent or copyright, licensing agreement, etc., then you have a winner for exclusive rights. If you have a patent, even the President of the U.S. must buy it from you.

The More You Tell, The More You Sell

The debate on using long copy versus short copy is never ending. Usually it is a newcomer to copywriting who seems to think that long copy is boring and, well…long.

Long copy will outperform short copy every time provided it is not boring, or untargeted.

There have been many studies and split tests conducted on the long copy versus short copy debate and the clear winner is always long copy.

Research has found that readership tends to fall off dramatically at around 300 words, but does not drop off again until around 3,000 words.

Some will read every word and then go back and reread it again. Some will read the headline and lead, then skim much of the body and land on the close. Some will scan the entire body, then go back and read it. All of those prospects may end up purchasing the offer, but they also all may have different styles of reading and skimming.

Write To Be Scanned

Your layout is very important because you want your letter to look inviting, refreshing to the eyes.

If you do have white space and generous margins, short sentences, short paragraphs, subheads, and an italicized or underlined word here and there for emphasis, it will certainly look more inviting to the reader.

The Structure of AIDAS

AIDA stands for:

• Attention
• Interest
• Desire
• Action

First, you capture your prospect’s attention with your headline and lead. If your ad fails to capture your prospect’s attention, it fails completely.

Build a strong interest in your prospect. Y

Channel a desire. Having a targeted market for this is key, because you’re not trying to create a desire where one did not already exist. You want to capitalize on an existing desire, which your prospect may or may not know he already has. And you want your prospect to experience that desire for your product or service.

Finally, a call to action - attend the sales presentation, order your product, etc.

Use Takeaway Selling to Increase the Urgency

When you limit the supply of a product or service in some way (i.e. takeaway selling), basic economics dictates that the demand will rise. In other words, people will generally respond better to an offer if they believe the offer is about to become unavailable or restricted in some way.

And o course, the opposite is also true. If a prospect knows your product will be around whenever he needs it, there’s no need for him to act now. And when your ad is put aside by the prospect, the chance of closing the sale diminishes greatly.

It’s your job, therefore, to get your prospect to buy, and buy now. Using scarcity to sell is a great way to accomplish that.

There are basically three types of takeaways:

1) Limiting the quantity 2) Limiting the time 3) Limiting the offer

In the first method, limiting the quantity, you are presenting a fixed number of widgets available for sale. After they’re gone, that’s it.

Some good ways to limit the quantity include:

• only so many units made or obtained • selling off old stock to make room for new • limited number of cosmetically-defected items, or a fire sale • only a limited number being sold so as not to saturate the market • etc.

In the second method, limiting the time, a deadline is added to the offer. It should be a realistic deadline, not one that changes all the time (especially on a website, where the deadline date always seems to be that very day at midnight…when you return the next day, the deadline date has mysteriously changed again to the new day). Deadlines that change decrease your credibility.

This approach works well when the offer or the price will change, or the product/service will become unavailable, after the deadline.

The third method, limiting the offer, is accomplished by limiting other parts of the offer, such as the guarantee, bonuses or premiums, the price, and so on.

When using takeaway selling, you must be sure to follow-through with your restrictions. If you say you only have 500 widgets to sell, then don’t sell 501. If you say your offer will expire at the end of the month, make sure it does. Otherwise your credibility will take a hit. Prospects will remember the next time another offer from you makes its way into their hands.

Another important thing you should do is explain the reason why the offer is being restricted. Don’t just say the price will be going up in three weeks, but decline to tell them why.

Here are some examples of good takeaway selling:

“Unfortunately, I can only handle so many clients. Once my plate is full, I will be unable to accept any new business. So if you’re serious about strengthening your investment strategies and creating more wealth than ever before, you should contact me ASAP.”

“Remember…you must act by [date] at midnight in order to get my 2 bonuses. These bonuses have been provided by [third-party company], and we have no control over their availability after that time.”

“We’ve obtained only 750 of these premiums from our vendor. Once they are gone, we won’t be able to get any more until next year. And even then we can’t guarantee the price will remain the same. In fact, because of the increasing demand, it’s very likely the price could double or triple by then!”

Remember when I said earlier that people buy based on emotions, then back up their decision to buy with logic? Well, by using takeaway selling, that restriction becomes part of that logic to buy and buy now.

Conclusion

Great copy is made, not born. It is derived from proven test results designed to do one thing and do it well: sell.

Effective advertising doesn't always use "grammatically correct" English. It uses short sentences, fragments. Like this.

It convinces you to buy, and buy now. Period.

It talks about benefits, not features. It sells on emotion and reinforces the decision to buy with logic.

It paints a compelling picture and irresistible offer that forces your prospect to act and act now! And if it doesn't, then you drop that ad like a hot potato and go with one that does.

Effective persuasion is like your top salesperson--the one who continues to break all your sales records year after year--on the job 24 x 7, multiplied by thousands or millions! Just imagine if that salesperson, the one with proven results, could be multiplied as much as you wanted.

Now that would be effective (and cost-efficient) marketing!

And that's the kind of proven marketing you need to employ.