Home
Store
Need a Speaker?
Biography

E-mail me

kevin@
kevinhogan.com

Copywriting: The Final Frontier in Using the "Written Word" to Speak To Your Potential Customer

Part 4 of 5

by Kevin Hogan

That presents a bit of a challenge that you'll need to test with your clients and customers.

Do you include a guarantee, or not?

My suggestion is that as a rule, you DO until you personally establish enough credibility with your readers that you can eliminate the guarantee.

Once you have established credibility, you are cementing long-term relationships and then you don't have to guarantee anything.

You ultimately want to get to the point where your word as your bond is better than your guarantee.

Today, that point hasn't been reached, so you go with the guarantee.

The Value of a Guarantee in Copywriting

When people buy stuff online, they are taking a risk.

They are risking that they may not receive the product due to an unscrupulous seller. They risk that the product will turn out not to be what they expected.

They also risk that they will simply not be happy with the product because it does not live up to the promises of the seller. All of this risk makes online shoppers hesitant, especially when thinking about buying an unfamiliar or new product.

And all of these beliefs are reasonable on the part of the buyer.

A guarantee is basically a promise that if the buyer is not satisfied with their purchase, then they have the option of returning the product for a refund.

The guarantee is usually limited by a time period in which the buyer can evaluate the product before returning it. This is usually around 90 days.

Many people are familiar with the idea of returning a product.

However, making a return is usually full of hassle. Everyone has had a time when they tried to return something and were unable to do so because of some restriction or rule. This is upsetting and reflects badly on the seller. That said, online, if someone returns a product I wonder if they are likely to do business with you again. The fact is I don't know. In the case of large merchants like amazon, there is no problem, but in the case of smaller merchants...I don't know.

Ten years ago, when I started creating programs and writing books, we averaged about 1-3% returns. We were factually able to attribute a chunk of that to pirating and bootlegging of my work.

I learned quickly to appreciate musical artists who had their work stolen on the web. I still feel the same empathy.

I will personally put a guarantee on a program that is unusual or difficult to explain it's value in text.

Rarely do we get a return on any program now. A look at last year's receipts showed about a 0.6% level of return. Most of those were returns on programs that were not returnable. Most of those were from customers we then extracted from being able to purchase again as they simply copied the material.

You'll need to determine your own controls and how much time you spend in monitoring your products. In the future, I'll show you how you can reduce people bootlegging your work, but for now, we'll get back to assuming you MUST use a guarantee to reduce client's perceived "risk."

What's the first rule?

Continue: Page | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |

Kevin Hogan
Network 3000 Publishing
3432 Denmark #108
Eagan, MN 55123
(612) 616-0732

 • Biography •• Body Language • • Catalog/Store •• Tinnitus ••  Influence/Persuasion ••o