Sales Copy Review- 5 things to rewrite

How often do you go back and re-read or rewrite your sales pages? If you’re like most professionals, probably not often enough.

This week I’m rewriting sales copy for our ebook on business blogging (Build a Better Blog). It’s been up on the Web for more than 3 years and although it has been tweaked here and there, it needed to be written for the 3rd edition due out soon.

It’s amazing to see how your writing evolves and how your sales copywriting improves over time. But if you never go back and rewrite your sales pages, you won’t be able to implement your new skills and improve your sales copy.

Here’s a list of things to review on your sales pages after time:

1. New insights on benefits: Your current customers tell you how your product has helped them, in ways you might not have thought about. Are all the benefits spelled out?
2. New testimonials: Some clients have written or called with amazing results you can use with their permission. Include new social proof from people who are typical and/or well known.
3. New features: Your product or book or service improves so be sure to highlight how the new edition or new version is better.
4. New stories: Your own personal and professional experiences are a great way to seduce readers and engage them into becoming fans.
5. New voice: Over time, you will develop more of a persona that goes along with your brand. Use your personality and your unique voice as much as possible.

Even if some of your stories aren’t new, with the perspective of time, you can see how an anecdote can be used to create trust and credibility.

For example, when I first wrote the sales page on how to set up a business blog on Typepad, I included very little information about myself and Denise. In those days we weren’t yet branded as The Blog Squad — which tells you how old our sales copy was because that happened in 2005!

This time, I include our story about how neither one of us were computer geeks (I was known as a techno-twit), but we discovered blogging to be super easy and user friendly for non-techie types. The idea that we are people just like our clients helps create trust that the book won’t be written in geek-speak.

Denise and I have always been just two professionals trying to help others with what we have learned about Internet marketing with the power of blogs. Now, as The Blog Squad, we can play up that persona and use our branding to reassure readers we know what we’re talking about when it comes to business blogging.

Perhaps you will go back and re-read and rewrite your own sales copy to include more of your personality, but remember to keep the focus on the needs of your clients. I hope this review of what I’m going through will be helpful to you.

I’m no professional copywriter, per se, but like many of you, I’ve learned a few things so I can write our own sales pages. I’ve studied with some of the best, Brian Clark, Lorrie Morgan Ferrero, Tom Antion, Adam Urbanski, Michel Fortin, Nick Usborne, and many more.