Copywriting Tips – How To Deal With The FTC
It was bound to happen sooner or later. And now, the big name copywriters are going to certainly have their work cut out for them. In case you haven’t heard, copywriting has taken a big hit thanks to the new FTC regulations. If you haven’t heard what they are yet, I’m going to briefly go over them before I show you what you’re going to have to do in order to comply. There is no easy way around this one folks. The free ride is over.
Okay, so what’s the whole FTC thing about as it applies to copywriters? In a nutshell, it has to do with testimonials. In the old days, you could have a testimonial with some guy making millions of dollars from your product and then at the bottom of the page have a disclaimer that says “Results not typical”. Well, no more. This disclaimer no longer cuts the mustard. Today, you have to do one of two things. The first is that you show WHAT the typical results are. The other option is to have a detailed case study breakdown of EXACTLY what this person did to earn all that money. Let’s go over the first option.
This one is almost impossible to do, especially if you’ve already sold hundreds or thousands of copies of your product. Think about it. Of all the copies you’ve sold, how many people have gotten back to you with any results at all? Very few. So you have no way of knowing what the typical results are.
If you’re going to use this option, then you will have no choice but to say that the typical results are that the person gets no results, simply because by deferring to the lowest common denominator, you rule out any chance that you will be overstating something. Now, how you word this can mean the difference between a successful sales page and one that bombs out. I will explain at the end of this article.
If you go with the second option, doing a case study, then you have to make sure that the customer documents everything that they did to make your product work including how much money they spent, what steps they took, how many hours they worked and how long it took to see the results. If you can get somebody to do this for you, THEN you can use their results based testimonial.
Here are your easy solutions to this problem. For the first option simply say something like this.
“The typical person gets no results because they don’t use the product. They just let it sit around and collect dust. But you’re not the typical person, right?”
This placates the FTC and at the same time, puts the prospect on the spot. They’re not going to want to be labeled as a failure, so they’re more likely to buy the product just to show they’re not typical.
If you use the second option, simply include a link at the end of the testimonial to the page with the detailed results. Most people won’t bother reading them. Why? As it is, the sales page is too damn long anyway. Last thing they want to do is read more boring text. Still, you’ve appeased the FTC and have really done nothing to hurt your sales letter.
If you do these two simple things, you won’t have to worry about the FTC coming after your sales page OR losing any sales.
Best of Success,
Stephan
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