Crossing The FTC? Priceless

Came across this and had to comment - especially since I see a lot of younger copywriters here trying to find their way.

For any smart marketer this FTC reg is a non-issue, and not even a new one.

If you have bonuses with specific values on them, set up a store on your site and sell the bonuses individually at the valued price.

This has several benefits:

1) It makes getting your bonuses for free feel like an actual deal - it gives weight to your offer.

2) It keeps you compliant with the FTC - this is not a new issue, they've never liked the tactic of B.S. prices on bonuses, who would? (Yay! You're not a fraud!)

3.) You'll find people will actually buy your bonuses at the valued price - and that gives you the chance to upsell them to the full package by telling them they can apply the purchase price of the bonus towards the main product where they get all these other bonuses etc.

PLUS; you start to see what bonuses people actually want because they'll buy them as standalones - chances are those are the ones that have selling power in your offer. And will lead to all kinds of insights into what your market wants you to sell them.

Offer a guarantee too. The best bonuses are WORTH the money they're valued at. Especially if you're building a long term business where things like keeping customers matter to you.

You can then ditch unwanted bonuses as you replace them with ones with real value that people actually want - improving your offer even more. (More sales - yay again!)

4) Same goes for using a nominal price that you discount from in your promos. On passive pages that are not your primary sales page, like a store, you SHOULD offer the product at the nominal price. Or, if you use deadlines, have the product selling at full price after your deadline is over.

When you do offer the price break, it'll be stronger.

Then, to manage your customer relationship with people who buy at the nominal price just in case they see the lower priced offer, you should send an unannounced bonus "gift certificate" for the difference between the nominal price and the sale price that they can apply to the purchase of another product you have - ideally you have products that cost more than the difference so you're using this to motivate the 2nd sale.

And your copy should be written to be able to sell it at the higher price then when there's a price break (with a reason why of course) it'll just work better.

5) Random bonus stacking is a pathetic sales tool - the world of Direct response is full of tests where adding stupid bonuses lowered results. This is an area of your offer where you should apply creativity and marketing savvy to come up with credibile, exciting and believable bonuses.

The rule of thumb I use is your bonus should be something your top customers would gladly pay the full price of the product to get.

Just throwing crap up with a fake price and calling it a bonus isn't marketing, it's the blind following the blind.

The funny thing is; in most cases the honest, ethical strategy is more powerful than the lazy, half-assed B.S. marketing anyway.

I've seen "amazing" promotions kill businesses. Like one many "gurus" rave about because the gross sales were so high (and wannabe copywriters are probably holding up as examples of "how it's done") but the copy was so hyped, and the product so bad, the refunds were ridiculous (which, your merchant account charges you a % of so every refund erodes profits from customers who stick).

Worse, the customers who bought never, ever bought anything from that company again and the business withered and died on the vine. But, hey, at least the copywriter gets to promote how much his promo sold!

Just my .02

Just an Old Copy Dog

P.S. Food for Thought: These days many companies using extremely hyped up copy are getting average refund rates of 30%-50% on their promos so in order to fight the loss of profits from merchant account fees they're putting 10% refund processing fees into the fine print on their promos.

While, in the same market, other competitors are using less hyped up copy approaches, selling as much and more per promo and sitting on refund rates well under 10% on average.

Who do you think is developing a more profitable long term customer base?

You can make a lot of money using questionable tactics but you have to work a lot harder to do it.

P.P.S. Don't do anything behind the scenes in your business you wouldn't want published on the front pages of U.S.A. Today with your name plastered all over it.