Would you like to have the right people buying your products, or signing up for your services, just from reading a web page?

(Is there a way to write up an offer so that people purchase just from what they read, without using hype or manipulation?)

Writing sales copy, the words on a web page that present your offers to people, can feel overwhelming. It can also feel gross, strange, and intimidating.

How do you get the results you want–more people buying and responding–without sounding hypey or manipulative?

Having an effective, heart-centered sales page is one of the best tools for your business. Instead of spending hours and hours (and hours!) talking to potential clients one-on-one, people just click “buy.” You end up spending most of your time actually helping paying clients, instead of just trying to sell them.

One example is when we had 85 people join us for our Heart-Centered Article Writing course (which is now part of Foundations 1.) I responded to fewer than five people who had emailed me with quick, easy-to-answer questions, and I spoke to no one. They all just signed up through the sales page. And then I had a wonderful time teaching them.

One of the best parts? I had taught the course before, so I already had the sales page written. It just required changing the dates of the classes, and a few other logistical details and it worked as well as it did a few years ago when I originally wrote it.

I’ve taught dozens and dozens of clients about heart-centered copywriting, and they’ve seen the results come in for them, too. Increasing their sales, and massively decreasing the amount of time personally answering questions.

Introducing:

The Heart-Centered Copywriting Intensive
Home Study Program

An 8 module intensive home study to create a highly-effective and authentic sales page, plus how to create a promotional campaign to go with it.

So what exactly is “Heart-Centered” copywriting?

Copywriting is writing done with the intention of having the reader take a desired action, often a purchase. Because money is involved, a lot of money, copywriting has turned into a psychological and ethical quagmire, full of manipulative tactics and strategies, all aimed at exploiting the reader’s pain, shame and desire.

You know this already, consciously or instinctively, and it’s probably why you may have shied away from working with copywriting. There’s no reason on earth to do something that’s gross and immoral.

Heart-Centered Copywriting acknowledges two things:

1) That the heart, ethics, spirit, and the desire to serve come first.

You won’t betray what you believe in. You don’t want to incur karma, or sin, or just breaking your own heart to try and take money from someone who doesn’t sincerely want what you are offering.

2) People need to be fully communicated with when making a purchasing decision.

When making a significant or complex purchasing decision, it’s not like picking a choice from a restaurant menu. There are often many questions, and many types of questions, a potential buyer is asking. When that buyer is reading a sales page they need to have all of those different questions answered.

When you have a conversation with a potential client, you might spend 30 minutes or more talking to them. If you were to record, transcribe and print out that conversation, you would have dozens of pages of dialogue. Probably a lot more than you realize, or feel comfortable putting on a web page.

You don’t have to write 20 pages of a sales letter. But you do have to write more than just a few bullet points. Between the gross, hype-ridden, manipulative copywriting and the shy-away from anything to do with it is an elegant, heart-centered, and effective middle path.

Let’s get you onto that middle path.

I want to encourage your readers who might be sitting on the fence, unsure whether to commit to learning copywriting from you. I needed help from you, your experience, time-tested how-to’s, and great resources and materials. You provided a template (which allows for structure AND individuality) broken down into manageable weekly work that in the end, produced the sales page that I used for my very first, very real teleseminar. I was SO grateful to have a finished product at the end that I could give to my other team helpers so that I can now serve in my field of expertise.

Was it a lot of work and at times stressful? You bet! But my call to serve with my work was greater than any perceived need that copywriting should be easy. You helped me understand better who I am serving and what their needs are…what? It’s not all about me? 😉

I would say to your readers…if you are passionate about who you are being called to serve but don’t quite know how to get your work out there so that folks are signing up, taking your course, buying your product and getting exactly what they need in a world that needs your help, take Marks’s course. Write that sales page, let folks know that you are ready to serve and let Mark help you get there.
-Donna Powers, Copywriting Intensive participant

Here’s what the program offers so that you get results from the middle path:

• Show you how to craft a strong offer that sells itself.
• Teach you the nine elements of heart-centered copywriting, including how you assemble and design the page (the content and look of the page, not the technical parts. You’ll need your own web support to get it onto your website.)
• Support you to bring your authentic voice out, so your page doesn’t sound like everyone else’s.
• Teach you different kinds of campaigns and launches, including email sequences, and all the dozens of little pieces that need to fit together.
• Show you how to write promotional emails.
• Help you heal your reactions to sales and copywriting, so you can determine what truly fits and supports your efforts, as opposed to just avoiding everything because some people have used it in an icky way.
• Give you the campaign launch spreadsheet template of everything you need to do to launch your offer, with a sample timeline of how it all fits together.

What’s Limiting Your Copy is Limiting Your Business

Over the years, I’ve noticed that our spiritual and emotional issues come strongly to the forefront in sales copy. It’s not unusual for me to look at a client’s sales page, and be able to identify what might be going on in their heart around sales, money and business.

Because copywriting can be such a magnet for sleaze and immorality, and because it’s so necessary for any business that has an online presence, it becomes a flashpoint for issues such as willingness to be visible, willingness to receive money, and willingness to ask for what you need, among others.

By clearing these issues through the applied practice of copywriting, you will end up with a healing around your entire business. Way cool, eh?

“You’re not teaching me marketing if you can’t even fill your own classes.”

Back in 2001 through 2003 I was running classes that were half-full, or less. I even had one person write me “I’m not taking a marketing course from someone who can’t even fill his own classes!”

Good point.

I knew I had to learn how to really connect with the right people. I knew I didn’t want to manipulate anyone, but missing them entirely wasn’t working. And, all the while, we were struggling to pay the bills.

Then I learned, and saw the beauty and connection that was possible in copywriting. Since then, the results have been very different. In 2005 we had our first six-figure year, and since 2006 Heart of Business has been consistently generating five figures a month. When I totaled it up in 2010, I was surprised to realize that my copywriting had already been responsible for at least three million dollars in revenue.

It is, and it isn’t, about the money. I need to remind us all that while the money is nice, it’s not the most important part.

You have a gift in the world, and people need it. And, if you aren’t successful at giving connection, safety and knowledge at the point where someone is deciding whether to buy or not, then those people aren’t getting the help you are offering. And the world is a poorer place.

“Hold it just a minute, Mark… isn’t it just a numbers game?”

It is… and it isn’t. It’s true that you do need some sort of an email list of interested people to talk to, but you don’t need huge numbers to be successful. And, what’s more, huge numbers won’t automatically make you successful.

Actually, when we first started getting these kinds of results, the Heart of Business email list wasn’t that big.

Don’t worry too much about how small your email list might be. Learning and implementing authentic, heart-centered copywriting can double or triple your results, wherever you are right now.

What Copywriting Makes Possible

Let’s be clear: copywriting is, in part, about making money. With effective copywriting, you can increase your responses by 20% to 75% on the low side, to 200-300% or more on the high side.

To hire a professional copywriter to work on a single sales page usually costs at least $1000. The high-end copywriters charge ten times that, or more.

Most solo businesses have two problems with this. The first is that you just don’t have the cashflow to pay the really expensive (effective) folks.

The second problem is that a real business isn’t a one-shot deal. You rarely just make one offer and that makes your business. Instead, you have a constellation of offers. And the offers that you’ve already made evolve with time.

So… you’re going to pay that kind of cash every single time you need a sales page written, or just updated?

Instead, you can learn how to do it yourself. Learning to fish, instead of buying the meal, right?

Before I took the copywriting course, I had some good ideas about copywriting, but there was a lot missing. During the course, I learned a format, the elements of good copy, and how to write for an audience in a way that called to people without sounding like a hard sell.

I have used all of these to great effect in the past few years. I’ve seen our offers reach the people they need to reach and often sell out.

Now, when we create new offers, writing the copy is almost automatic. In fact, often I will write the copy for an offer first, just to study it and hone the offer itself. This backwards process has been very useful in figuring out what needs we are meeting with our work, and how to convey that in writing.

The copywriting course is incredible. I’m grateful for the things I learned. It’s one of the best things I have ever done for my business.
T.H., course participant

So Just Who Is This Program For?

You know how some make an offer sound exclusive, and then their list of conditions describes anyone with a pulse and the cash? That’s not the kind of copywriting I want to teach you, and it’s not what we’re doing here.

This kind of an in-depth intensive is most effective when you have some clarity about your business already.

Let me tell you who it’s not for:

• If you are brand-new, and haven’t seen clients yet, you’ll be frustrated because there will be foundational questions you won’t easily be able to answer.
• If you don’t have a website yet, you won’t have the online infrastructure to be able to implement what you’re learning. (I recommend starting with Heart-Centered Websites.)
• If you don’t have an email list or blog readership at all yet, then you won’t yet have the audience to get results. A small list is okay, but starting from scratch won’t be fun in this instance.

Those three situations point to the fact that it’s not the right time to invest in this kind of an program. Feel free to to tell us your situation, using the form at the bottom of this page, and I’m sure we’ll have recommendations to get you going.

The person who this intensive is right for has:

• A good, maybe a fantastic, offer that at least some clients and customers already love.
• Limited success selling through your website.
• Often ends up needing to have a lot of conversations with potential buyers, rather than seeing people just buy from the web page itself.
• A yearning to finally feel good about selling through your website. You want to feel like you can write a love letter to your clients, and have them respond.
• A desire to sell more, and more easily, for your price.

Plus, you’ll need to really be ready to learn. This program is an intensive. It’s going to be fun, it’s going to be effective, and there’s a lot in it.

In fact, if you jump right into it, you’ll be ready for promotions in the next few months! If copywriting is a big missing piece for your business, then you might be having a very much more fun next year.

What Does “Intensive” Mean? Should I Be Scared?

Please, please don’t be scared. 🙂 The is fun and nourishing. I love copywriting, and I intend to infect you with the love of it also by helping you see it in a whole new light.

Intensive means that I’m serious about you getting results. I want you to learn, practice, and implement.

To that end, if you get this program, I’d love for you to commit to:

• Reading and Listening

There is a combination of PDFs and audio recordings that you will need to read and consume. Learning is partially a game of repetition and engagement, and if you read and listen to the material, you’ll learn.

• Completing Assignments

Every module you will have assignments. It’s in your interest to complete those assignments, imperfectly and messily. I’m going to ask you to let go of your inner perfectionist, and instead just get the assignments done to the best of your ability, even if you don’t fully understand what you’re doing.

The learning process works when you’re engaged. Making a mess first, then cleaning it up and tweaking (or remaking it) into something that you like and that works means you’ll understand how to do it again and again for yourself.

• Staying Connected to Your Heart

Writing sales copy brings up some of our deepest fears and self-doubts. Worries about survival, making enough money. Worries about acceptance, and upsetting others by being too pushy or salesy. Overwhelm, because there’s too much to do and it seems as if it all needs to be done perfectly.

I want you to remember the source of love, and remember the deeper intention of service is going to be critical to making this a nourishing and worthwhile experience. (The program will help you with this!)

It is also critical to creating effective sales copy, because it needs to come from the heart, from love, from service. It needs to be real. (The program will help you with this, too!)

I didn’t know how to put together a proper sales page before taking this course, and now that I have completed it I can see why I felt daunted: there are a lot of different elements that go into creating an effective sales page, not to mention getting the sequence and flow right.

I found Mark’s approach moved me swiftly along through a lot of new concepts, in do-able steps that build up my sales page step by step. Crucially, and uniquely in my experience, his teaching is not merely about getting your technique right, it’s also about expressing yourself with integrity and heart.

I feel I have a sales page now that’s both inviting and confident. Accurately naming my own strengths and the value of my offers is both an art and something of a personal journey, and I have found Mark to be a trustworthy and inspiring guide.
Leo Sofer, www.storiesofthejourneyhome.com, www.palaceofstories.com

The Eight Copywriting Topics

The approach here is to learn the elements, or “bones” of a sales page in stages, and then to assemble it. As you go through these topics, you’ll find your sales page magically coming together.

Module 1: Long versus Short copy, Who-What-How, FAQs

In the first class you tackle what copywriting is, the age-old (and ill-informed) debate of long copy versus short copy, and then we get into the very first and most important of the exercises, which has to do with coming up with the Questions.

Class 2: Bullets, Case Studies/Testimonials, Urgency

Bullet points can be boring, but they don’t have to be. They can create a dry, sandy patch in the desert, or they can make the benefits of what you’re doing come alive. You’ll be learning a three-part formula for creating bullet points that make a real impact on readers.

Then, you’ll be digging into what really makes a useful case study or testimonial, and how to get a great one from your clients, instead of the usually boring, useless one. And then you’ll learn how to use testimonials within the copy, and not just drop them randomly throughout.

Finally you’ll be addressing that painful topic of urgency. The truth is that without urgency, very few people buy. It’s just how humans are wired. At the same time, the ol’ “buy now while supplies last before the deadline and we triple the price!” is completely gross and unacceptable.

There is a line, and one side of the line is legitimate, helpful, heart-centered urgency, and on the other side is manipulative hype. I’ll teach you how to use urgency ethically, and how to avoid hype.

Class 3: Visuals, Guarantee

Visuals are important, not just images, but how your sales page presents. You’ll learn about the effect of eye-candy, and how to make your pages effective visually, without a lot of fancy graphics.

Then there’s the guarantee. Guarantees can be a scary topic, because you don’t want to bankrupt yourself. At the same time, the people buying want to feel safe. How do you craft a guarantee that’s effective at helping someone feel safe enough to buy and doesn’t bankrupt you?

Plus, there’s another important function a good guarantee fulfills within the sales copy, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the money-back promise.

Class 4: Premium/Regular, Bonuses, putting it all together

The whole premium versus regular, and including bonuses can feel smarmy and gross. And yet, they work. Sometimes. Sometimes they are so smarmy and gross they backfire. Other times they are elegant and they feel normal, working powerfully in an understated way.

This program will show you the elegant, normal kind. The kind that helps convert people and which can increase your profit by 10% or more.

Then all of these ingredients get assembled into a draft of your sales page. Exciting! You’ll learn how to put them together.

Class 5: The Art of Writing

With an assembled sales page, you then want the copy to flow from one paragraph to other, all the way down to the bottom where the right readers click buy.

You’ll learn how to make the copy flow, both writing techniques, and structural tips that can make a huge difference in how easy it is to read.

If it’s not easy to read, people won’t read. Let’s make it easy, eh?

Class 6: Campaigns (including the Template) and promotional email templates

Now that you’ve gotten the sales page written, we talk about campaigns. The sales page itself is only half, or less, of the effectiveness. You have to get people to the sales page for it to work, and that’s where campaigns and launch strategies come in.

Launches can feel extremely intimidating both because there is so much to do, and because you don’t want to be pushy.

You’ll be introduced to different types of campaigns, the thinking behind them, and why they work. You’ll also receive a template of a complete launch, with everything that needs to be done that you can configure to your own timeline.

Class 7: Campaign and Promotional emails

It’s no use writing a beautiful, heart-centered page describing your offer if no one actually reads it. Getting people who are interested in your offer to the page to read it is critical.

How many emails do you send? How few is too few, how many is too many? And how often? When the whole topic can be a bit (or very) uncomfortable, you already suspect you need to send more emails than you are comfortable with. But when you’re already uncomfortable, how do you sense when it really is too many?

And… what in the heck do you write in them?

Here’s a little-suspected fact: when someone is making a significant purchasing decision (your offer, for instance) they’ll think about it a lot. They’ll almost decide, and come back to it over and over again. They often need to be reminded of it several times, because that’s how often they’ll read your offer page.

A single, understated email just won’t do it.

That’s what this session is about, frequency and content of the email campaign so the right people don’t forget, and actually end up clicking buy, without tipping over the line and annoying everyone else.

Class 8: Wrap-up & the Checklist

Wrap up it is. It’s been a wild ride, and here you can wrap up loose ends, and get your offer launched.

Oh my gosh, my sales writing was a mess. I had no idea, no idea what to say, what to write. Before learning Heart-Centered Copywriting I had 3 years of 12 to 13 people in my 7 month herb program.

When I changed the web page after doing Heart-Centered Copywriting with you, within 3 months of rewriting that page I got 21 people in that program.

Learning copywriting from you… there’s something about the flow of the marketing syntax you taught that was so natural that it was confusing to me. Figuring out that I could have empathy as the basis for my sales page, something I value that is so close to my heart, it blew me away. It was so much the opposite of what I thought sales had to be.

It has really helped me that my idea of generosity-based marketing, or a generosity based business and an authentic sharing as opposed to marketing is what I am able to do now. I’m able to share it in a way that seems much more personal.

Now writing these pages is much easier. I put together a pretty decent sales page in an afternoon. I had this class on making your own cream, and I literally spent 3 hours on it, clearly articulated the problem, had someone else edit it, and I finished it in less than one full work day.

I feel better and I can share it without any pressure. It’s like I’m always having a personal conversation with people. It’s even improved the emails and blog posts that I’m sending to my list, deepening my relationships. I remember “All these people are blogging, I don’t get it, what am I going to write about?” Now I have a couple of ideas every day, and that came out of the Copywriting.

Practically what it means is stability, to not be bound by a town with 10,000 people. I can live in that kind of a place and still make a living, and be offering things that people are quite hungry for.

It has allowed me to move onto the web and that’s supplementing my lack of income from having a small presence locally. I’ve reached a huge audience by being able to move my business onto the web. There is a psychic compensation thing that helps me feel a level of pride and trust that I will continue to grow, as opposed to just the local stuff. There are so many more people on the internet than there are in Nelson.

There’s more than can be imagined in terms of benefit that comes from feeling easy and comfortable with your writing. I just don’t struggle with feeling icky about my marketing. I don’t have the voice of doubt in mind, I now just have a sense of my voice and I speak with confidence and clarity. People who like my voice, they read even my longest sales pages and my 4 page blog posts. That’s something I couldn’t have predicted in my desire to fill up my classes.

I wanted to have a better sales page so I could make more money. And now the benefit is so far beyond that. Not only am I making more money, but those internal nags are gone.
-Garliq, www.livingmedicineproject.com

Ready to jump in? Here’s the overview:

What’s Included	The Program
The Heart-Centered Copywriting Intensive Home Study Program in 8 Modules
Spreadsheet with launch campaign details
Detailed workbooks with all Copywriting teachings and Campaign launch strategies
Price	$744 click to order

And Is It Guaranteed?

Just to make it super-safe for you, I’m offering you a complete and generous guarantee:

The Backwards and Forwards Guarantee

We really don’t like receiving money from people when they aren’t happy with what they get. So we’re offering you a Backwards and Forwards Guarantee.

If, after you have the Home Study Course in your possession, you aren’t happy with them for any reason whatsoever, then:

1. We will pay you Backwards. Ask us, and we’ll refund 100 pecent of the money you paid for the Home Study Course.

2. You pay it Forwards. On your honor, we’ll ask you to then pass the Home Study Course on to a friend, colleague, organization, distant relative, whomever—someone you think might like and use the Home Study Course to their benefit.

Nothing’s simpler. You get your money back, and you get to be generous with someone, which always feels good. Plus, if you let us know what you didn’t like about it, we can try and give you a recommendation for a book, author, website, or other resource that might suit you better.

We’re really wanting you to get the help, no matter where it comes from.

Almost ready but not quite?

Maybe you think you’re ready but not quite sure. Maybe you’re worried about the workload. Maybe you’re not sure if your business is a good fit. Maybe you have another question.

Just use the form below to ask any questions you may have. We’ll get back to you pronto.