Get Your Reader To Act Now

A big part of the battle when writing marketing copy on your web site, your print ad or your direct mail piece, is to get the reader to act right now. If they delay, you have probably lost them.
So how do you get someone to stop what they are doing, pull out their credit card and buy your offer immediately? Let me share some of the formulas I use when writing marketing pieces:

• Scarcity. Nothing motivates like limited availability. When the next Rolling Stones concert goes on sale, you know that it will be compeltely sold out within hours, so you must act fast if you want to hear Mick and the boys do Jumpin Jack Flash.
  
• Premiums. Remember the old Ginzu Knives commercials, "but wait, there's more" ? They kept adding on one extra after another if you acted right now. By the time they had added on about three or four extras, you felt that you couldn't afford not to order right away.
  
• Deadlines. Put a time limit on your offer and you will seldom fail to see an increase in your response rates.
  
• Discounts for fast responses. Have you ever received an offer for a seminar that gives you on price if you pay at the door, a lower price if you pay two weeks before the seminar and an even lower price if you pay two months early? Guess what, early bird discounts work very well with all kinds of offers.
  

Next time you need to bump up your response rate (and when don't you want to increase the number of responses?) try one of these ideas to increase the urgency of your offer, and get them to act now.

COPYRIGHT (c) 2005, Charles Brown