For me, the most difficult part of writing ad copy has been to come up with great benefit statements. And benefit statements are critical to selling your readers to try your products, services, and ideas, second only to the headline.
All of the other parts of copywriting such as good headlines, price offers and stories were much easier for me than finding good benefit statements. But creating a benefits list drove me crazy; that is until I learned how to come up with one or more benefits every minute.
You may recall from Sales 101 that benefits are what sells your product or service, not features. Knowing the truth to that, I started to take a closer look at what benefits really are. I discovered they are really just action items in disguise, agreed? For example, you “lose” weight or “make” money. So, why not start out all benefit statements with action verbs? The process goes like this:
1. Get a long list of alphabetized action verbs.
2. On your computer or desk, spread out the list so you can see the whole thing
.
3. Begin with the first verb in your list that begins with the letter A and read the verb out loud and make a sentence out of it that describes one benefit of your product.
”Accelerate” is the first word on my list of verbs, for example.
So, I might say that my product helps to “accelerate” fingernail growth.
Your ads will be inserted here by
Please go to the plugin admin page to paste your ad code.
4. Write as many benefits as you can and don’t stop! You can cut out those that don’t have as much impact later. Now is not the time either to worry if you are writing duplicative statements down. Just let your brain consider your product and freely create the benefits as they come to you.
5. Now is the time that you will prioritize your list from most important to least.
I’ve used this process not only for creating benefits lists, but also for writing articles, such as “35 Reasons Why a Blog is Better than a Traditional Web Site for Your Business,” or “50 Ways to Kill a Perfectly Good Seminar”.
Use my list of verbs or create your own and start creating your killer benefit statements in just 20 minutes. Usually, 20 benefits is more than enough to create great sales copy.
Marty Dickinson is an entrepreneur and the founder of HereNextYear, Inc., a full service Internet marketing company in business for 15 years. He specializes in Internet marketing solutions for the small business owner, speakers and authors. Visit to see what HereNextYear has to offer and to learn more about their innovative new website packages fully integrated for ease with social networking and other Internet marketing strategies.
