Copywriting Tips – When There’s Not Much To Work With

The copywriter’s nightmare…getting an assignment with a product that has no zip. Sometimes you wonder if it’s a product. I’m sure you’ve seen them all…30 pages of junk thrown together to make an ebook or a piece of software that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do, or if it does…nobody would care anyway. These are the jobs that give us fits. So what do you do when there’s not much to work with but you still have a job to do because the mortgage company expects that check in the mail on the first of each month? Well, these tips should give you something to hold onto as far as hope.
The first thing you do is be straight with the customer. I learned from a very well known and successful copywriter that the customer is NOT always right and that you, as the copywriter, have to tell the customer when his product does not lend itself well to writing sales copy. Make it perfectly clear to him that there isn’t enough substance to the product to write copy appealing enough without blatantly committing fraud. If this customer is reasonable, and wants to actually put together a product that sells, he’ll listen to reason and make the changes that you suggest. This is, of course, the best case scenario and doesn’t happen very often unless you are a very big name copywriter. But then again, if you are, you’re not going to attract clients who create garbage products.
Should the above tip fail, the next option is to rifle through the product and pick out all the main points. Make a list of them and go through each one in detail, looking for the best way to present each main point in its best light without lying. What you want to do is rate each bullet point on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best. You want to accumulate as many bullet points that are at least higher than a 5. If you can come up with at least 8 bullet points that are better than 5, chuck the rest of them and don’t mention them in the sales copy. There is no sense mentioning something that isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
By following the above procedures, you’ll get the most out of your sales copy. No, it’s not going to be the greatest job since sliced bread, but it will be the best copy that you are capable of writing. Having warned the client that his product is simply not that good, he should not be surprised when conversions aren’t as good as he would have liked.
To arm yourself against bad products like these and discover everything you’ll need to know about writing sales copy that converts well (at least with decent products), check out the link in my signature.
When there’s not much to work with…you have to work with what you have.
To YOUR Success