3 Secrets to Writing ‘Winning’ Copywriting Proposals that Turn $100 Mini Projects into $10,000 Monster Gigs

A strong copywriting proposal can both win and increase the size of a gig

You get an email from a potential client asking for a web page.

You’re smart.

You don’t instantly email back with a price and a delivery date. That would be stupid.

Instead, you do some digging.

You ask:

…what action do you want visitors to take?

…what’s the traffic source?

…what’s your current conversion rate?

…what does your sales funnel look like?

Yadda, yadda.

They email you back – “What’s a sales funnel?”

Your eyes light up.

You have the chance to turn a one off project into a monster gig (and pocket a tidy sum in the process).

But…

First you have to convince them WHY they need a sales funnel and HOW it will generate profits many times over the fee you’re about to charge them (which has a couple more zeros than they’d budgeted for).

You can do it by submitting a copywriting proposal featuring these 3 key elements:

1. Strategy – Business owners aren’t always savvy marketers. They need some hand holding. Rather than talk about word counts, explain how the web page forms part of a larger strategy for taking visitors from curious to convinced and ready to buy.

2. List ALL the deliverables – Sales funnels have a LOT of components. This can include lead magnets, registration pages, webinar scripts, VSL production, ‘sideways sales letter’ email sequences, upsell pages and Facebook ads. There’s also background research, competitor analysis and an audit of their current progress and assets. List every single deliverable in your proposal.

3. Talk about revenue goals, rather than conversions – Clients could care less about CTR, time on site and ‘engagement’. All that matters is revenue. Present an estimate of how your strategy can increase their existing sales and profits using conservative numbers (e.g. 1-2% conversions). Always under promise and over deliver.

Building a proposal around these three elements will positions you as a valued consultant and a profit generator, rather than just a vendor of words.

This naturally entitles you to charge more for your services as you can justify your fee in terms of solid ROI.

The next time someone emails you to write a press release, web page or an email, consider how you can expand it into a bigger gig by setting a more ambitious target for what your client can achieve.

If you do implement these elements in a copywriting proposal, let me know how you get on.

The post 3 Secrets to Writing ‘Winning’ Copywriting Proposals that Turn $100 Mini Projects into $10,000 Monster Gigs appeared first on The Copywriter's Crucible - A Melting Pot of Punchy, Persuasive Copywriting by Freelance Copywriter Matt Ambrose.

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2 Easy Ways to Make Leads More Profitable (without Spending an Extra Cent on Traffic)

Have your lead costs gone up to $10 yet?

Advertising is getting darned expensive.

If the rumours are true, heavyweights like Clickfunnels and Digital Marketer now spend $10 just on getting a LEAD.

That’s right, a LEAD, not a sale.

With millions of marketers ploughing their ad budget into Facebook and Instagram, click costs are getting out of control. This is why it is your duty to wring every last cent from every lead, if you are to have any hope of making your campaigns profitable.

Thankfully, there are lot of tweaks, hacks and tactics you can apply which most of your competitors are ignoring (or don’t know about).

For starters, here are 2 easy ways of increasing the ROI on every lead that swims its way into your sales funnel:

1. How to convert more opt-ins into subscribers

Most marketers agonize over their landing page copy, the bullets and how they frame the offer.

But they’re ignoring where the biggest uplift in response is to be found. And that’s getting people to confirm their registration.

It sounds so simple, yet most marketers completely ignore what happens after people enter their email address, thinking all the hard work is done.

But the hard truth is this: about 4 people out of 10 people who opt-in NEVER confirm.

That’s right!

About 40% of ad spend is being completely WASTED simply because people never opened the email and clicked the confirmation link.

So what can you do?

A great way of rocketing your confirmations is to record a short VIDEO, instead of relying on the boiler plate email copy.

In the video, thank them for signing up, remind them about the benefits they’ll gain from registering and then tell them exactly what to do to confirm their registration.

Now, I know many people will have stopped reading when I mentioned the V word.

Us copywriters are introverted types.

We’d rather complete our tax return then go on camera.

I get it. So consider recording a simple slideshow using Camtasia and speak over the top. You can even hire someone off Fiverr to record the voice over.

However you do it, recording a short video asking people to click the confirmation link is one of the most powerful ways of driving up the profits of every campaign.

2. Getting people to complete their checkout

Reading stats on cart abandonment will make even the most hardened e-commerce warrior put down their mouse and weep.

Across industries, the average cart abandonment rate is a migraine inducing 67.4% (source – http://ift.tt/NLx4mU).

In other words…

Even after your lead has read through your onboarding email sequence…

sat through the 90 minute webinar…

read the sales copy and nodded their head sagely before clicking the purchase link…

in 7 out of 10 cases something goes WRONG.

Maybe they get a Whatsapp ping, the doorbell rings, the kids start playing up or they suddenly remember to put the washing on.

The list of possible distractions and reasons why people don’t complete is endless. And they are all out of your control.

They only thing you can control is the checkout page.

So it is your duty to invest as much time, if not more, on creating the smoothest, clearest most checkout sequence possible.

Just a small change – like a graphical progress bar – could lead to getting 1 or 2 more people out of 10 converting. This, again, can trigger a MASSIVE jump in your profits.

Luckily, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Analyze how your competitors or Amazon does it. And see where your checkout process is falling short.

Small hinges swing big doors

These are just two small changes you can make to your funnel that can rocket your conversions and maximise the ROI of your ad spend.

Even better is that when you iron out the chinks in your funnel, you can look forward to predictable, reliable results, consistent reductions in your lead costs and more PROFIT from every visitor to your offer page.

Put simply, you can make MORE money from ZERO extra traffic. So it is your duty to your business’s profitability and future success that tighten and tweak your sales funnel until it is a slick, sales pipeline that

Attribution – This post’s content comes from a training webinar in David Garfunkel’s Fast, Effective Copy (affiliate link) I’ve only mentioned 2 of the 3 ways to claw back profits they covered. So if you want to know what the third one is, you’ll have to sign up for the course. I’ve been working my way through it over the last few months, and I believe that its volume of top tier strategic thinking makes it an investment that pays for itself many times over, whether you’re a newbie copywriter or a grizzled veteran.

The post 2 Easy Ways to Make Leads More Profitable (without Spending an Extra Cent on Traffic) appeared first on The Copywriter's Crucible - A Melting Pot of Punchy, Persuasive Copywriting by Freelance Copywriter Matt Ambrose.

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