Hi,

I just discovered this board last week and have been trying to read all the great info here.

I've got a site (http://www.pcsecurity101.com) that's been open for about a week. I've not really done any promotion yet because I'm trying to fix some backend issues. I've just about got all that settled and am ready to dig in.

One copywriter told me that the sales letter was too much like a "make a bunch of money now" site and that wouldn't fly with my market.

I might agree but let me tell you who my initial market is - it's people on the lists of the group (the Warrior group) that I have a reputation and credibility with and most of them are the make money types.

That has to be my initial market because they are who I know and who know me but eventually as things get better and sales are made I want to do some offline work with various groups (like corporations who have telecommuters).

Another comment this fellow made was that my target market wouldn't relate to testimonials from people who own ebook sites.

Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Mark

Edit - One of the things I've been working on is a set of nice bonuses that are unique to my site. I should have them ready in 2-3 days.

Prevention is a tough sell.

One strategy to overcome inertia is to make your bonuses worth the price of admission.

A niche market where you might make some progress is with financial planners. Then you would be able to flag your headline - "Wells Fargo Financial Planners..." and get very specific in your marketing.

I don't believe readers will know who ICSA Labs or the Computer Security Institute are without some further explanation. They do know who the New York Times, USA Today, Business Week, The Washington Post, WSJ, various TV news anchors and tons of other credible (to their direct daily experience) sources of quotes are. You go to CNN and tell them how many PC security stories are filed.

Active verbs and imperatives would shape up some of your bullets -

• Get this
  Have that
  Now, ...
  Finally, ...
  The correct way to...
  How...

I didn't study your testimonials as I'm rushed for time, but I don't see anything wrong with your sources. Could they be improved? Yes, for Wells Fargo financial planners, a testimonial or endorsement from the head of Wells Fargo or Allen Greenspan would be better. Will they detract or somehow be a negative? I don't think so.


Peter Stone,
MCSE

Hi Peter,

First, thanks for your comments - they were very helpful.

Several people have said this to me as well as I should've found something easier to sell for my first product. Some have told me that I'll never sell even one because no one cares about PC security until they have a problem. There are whole big industries (prostate exams, insurance, vitamins, burglar alarms, etc) that sell prevention. I'm not trying to be like a 3 year old with a whole list of "yeah buts" but millions are spent daily on prevention.

For the Internet marketing crowd there are several prevention products that sell well too like tools that prevent people from stealing your ebook, and website monitors in case their site goes down, etc.

I guess I have to find a way to turn a need into a want like the weight loss industry has. Losing weight may make you look great at the beach and so this is emphasized many times instead of how losing weight will keep you from having a heart attack.

One thing that I need to do that I hope will convince some of the people I have relationships with to help push it is to convince them that there have been several situations lately (Clickbank and 2Checkout in a distributed denial of service attack and the thousands of infected emails some received from the Sobig worm) where people who weren't practicing safe computing by using the techniques I teach cost them big in time and money.

Anyway, thanks I'll put some of that to good use. Anyone else?

Mark

Hi Mark,

Firstly, congratulations on launching your first product!

OK, now for the tough stuff. I am potentially one of your customers, or at least I think I am. I run a business from home, I get a zillion emails a day, and I have broadband and a fixed IP address, so I'm at risk, and I am aware of that.

However, I didn't find your sales message compelling. Even more worrying is that I found it confusing. I thought I was going to get ongoing updates and ongoing access to your site, but then suddenly 3/4 of the way through the piece you say that I'll only get it for 3 months. So which is it? And how much does it cost after 3 months - you need to manage my expectations, because for all I know, you'll say it costs $100 per month thereafter. If that's the case, then frankly, I'll take my chances.

I also feel that the letter is way too long and rambles. There are some key points that you've missed such as having your credit card details stolen. I feel that the letter lacks specifics and I can't figure out who it's aimed at. I don't know what the "Warrior Group" is, so I don't have any picture in my mind as to who your target market is.

Do you want to target network administrators? Not all companies have in-house security specialists - many small and medium sized companies will have an IT department with only 1 or 2 people. In this case the appeal might be "save time and impress your boss" or "no longer pay out thousands of dollars for security specialists when you've got your very own security specialist on tap".

Or you could target small IT providers - the pc and network support specialists who need to know what's going on in the world of security but don't want to read the whole of IT security update.com (or whatever it's called). Then the appeal is "critical information provided in bite-sized chunks". Saves time, cuts through the chaff etc etc.

I can tell you now that targeting individual consumers with a prevention product won't be easy. As Peter says, most people don't feel the pain until they've had a crisis. And you will find that burglar alarm companies probably make most of their sales to people who have just been broken into. My Dad's in Fire Protection - how many sales do you think he'd make if fire protection wasn't compulsory under law? NOT MANY!!

On the subject of weight loss, I challenge you to interview 1,000 people and find out how many of them are trying to lose weight for fear of a heart attack? Not many, I'd wager - $10 says less than 1%. For some middle aged or older men, this might be a secondary reason, but the primary reason is to look and feel good. I.e. the motivation has nothing to do with prevention, and has everything to do with vanity plus the low self esteem they feel from their perceived loss of positive regard from their fellow human beings.

Nitty gritty time. Your call to your target market as "All PC Users". So, apart from the 10% Mac users (or whatever the figure is), that's literally everyone on line. My gut feeling is that you're trying to appeal to too broad a market. It might be better to break your market down into segments most likely to buy from you - other IT specialists, your Warriors, Finance companies, Lawyers, Network administrators, Website owners etc. etc.. Then have separate websites for each.

The logic of this is obvious when you consider that someone with a dial up pay-as-you-go connection who uses MSN or Yahoo for their email has quite a different risk profile than a lawyer transmitting confidential documents, or a network administrator who might lose their job if their company gets hits by a virus or DOS. Each will need a different message. Heck, you'd could even create different packages for each - charge the lawyers more, they can afford it!!

Your headline. I don't understand this at all. Surely the whole crux of the thing rests on the fact that EVERYONE who uses the internet is at risk. Why say "2,500,000" when you can say 2.5 million?

How about this:
"Did you know that every time you go on line you are at risk of catching viruses which could destroy your computer or from hackers who can instantly start shopping with your credit card details?"

That's an appeal to consumers. For other segments, you would need something else.

You then go on to say "Now you can be one of the privileged few to get a head start on avoiding these malicious and harmful attacks".

OK, apart from the tautology (malicious is harmful by definition, so do you need to say it twice?), is the fact that, emotionally, computer security and privilege are not compatible concepts. If my computer is secure, I don't feel priviliged, I feel secure! I have peace of mind. The only person who is going to care about having a "head start" on knowledge regarding the latest and greatest worms, trojans etc. is someone whose ego is bound up in that - this would be your geeks and network administrators who can boast to their colleagues that they knew about "big fat wriggly worm" before anyone else did.

Now, I'd like to talk a little about the name for your product. I'll be honest. I don't like it. I thought you said it much better yourself when you said: "practicing safe computing". Here you have huge opportunities to do a play on words with safe sex. But again, this will depend on your target market - network administrators and "geeks" will need something different to the general public. But I like your concept of "safe computing" - "has your computer got it's condom on?" - "you wouldn't put yourself at risk of infections, so why put your computer at risk?"

With the study that you cite at the beginning, I think you must say who the "computer security Institute" is (like why should I care about their study), and who it was that they surveyed. It's a bit meaningless to say "90% of people did blah blah" - what sort of people? Companies? Individuals? Government departments? What? Who?

And this statement: "44% calculated their losses to be $455,848,000". What does that mean? That their combined losses were that much? That they were averagely that much per household? What? - It's meaningless numbers until you can put it into context. Ask yourself "what does it mean to me" for your subscribers.

If they are people working for companies, give them the stats for companies. If they are individuals, tell them a story about how Mr John Doe of Newark, New Jersey came home from work one day to find all of his credit cards maxxed out after some thieving, bastard of an internet crook had been on a spending spree.

OK, later on you say "by now you are probably worrying about the price .." No? What makes you think I'm worrying about it? I was wondering about it, but I certainly wasn't worrying about it. No need to introduce negative thoughts into the minds of your prospects.

Terry Jones says: "and he promises ongoing updates ..". But, you say the updates are only valid for 3 months. I think you need to explain this, because I'm certainly confused. Is it an annual subscription? A monthly subscription? What? How does it work?

To summarise:
I think you need to clearly target different segments with different copy, different appeals and different value propositions

You need to make your offer more clear

You need to chop out all the erroneous material - get your benefits and results in up front. Answer the question "what's in it for me" straight away

Get clear on the main benefit (again, it depends on the market), which I perceive as "get the information before the attack, before CNN reports it and before Symantec has a solution for it". Other benefits are: bite-sized information delivered to your mail box daily.

I think it was Alan who pointed out that copy should be written as though your prospect is sitting in front on you. If, at this moment in time, your main prospect is a "Warrior" then write as though you were talking to him - giving him/her the details he/she wants, the explanations that they require, outlining the benefits that are meaningful to them, and at a price that they are willing to pay.

If you were to market to other segments, then you may well find that you'd make more sales by charging more - it's the perceived value that counts. Don't assume that all markets value the same things in the same way - they don't!

Final word - aesthetics - why not allow your captivating copy to inhabit some well designed web real estate?