How A Street Vendor Improved My Copywriting

I’m quite stingy when it comes to buying bottled drinks, rarely ever spending more than RM10 ($3) on a single bottle.

But one day, I forked out quite a hefty sum for drinks that I never would have done under normal circumstances.

See these bottles? I paid RM40 for these two bottles (enough for me to eat like a king at Tony Roma’s or Carl’s Jr. Burgers… but that’s another story).

And no, my wife did NOT coerce me into buying these, in fact I was the one convincing her why we should buy it.

Here’s how it happened…

The vendor (an old lady) saw me walking past and offered me a free sample.

I drank and it tasted rather good. But normally, I would move on after finishing one glass. Before I got a chance to finish the first glass, the vendor quickly poured another flavor into another glass and passed it to me telling me all about the tasty new flavor.

She did it until I tasted 4 flavors (my wife drank another 2).

By this time, she was already telling me about the value of each bottle, telling me that each bottle can serve up to more than 40 glasses (because it was a concentrate)!

Already I was feeling a little bit guilty about drinking so many glasses of ’samples’ so I decided (what the heck) to buy one and said, “Hmm, 40 glasses, and it tastes good too, okay I think I’ll buy one bottle. How much a bottle?”

The vendor replied, “RM25 ($7.20)”

“RM25?! That’s quite expensive!” I cried (remember, a carton of milk costs RM4-5 ($1.50) only - In Malaysia)

But this lady was good… she told me, “Don’t worry, you are only paying RM25 for 42 glasses - that’s about RM1.60 a glass. Tell you what, why don’t you buy TWO of these bottles and it will only cost you RM40″

I thought for awhile and she pushed the offer saying, “You wouldn’t need to buy drinks for a long time for only RM40 so you can see this is a very good deal.”

Sheepishly, I forked out RM40 and selected two flavors.

But the vendor wasn’t done ‘upselling’ me stuff. She told me that if I were to get one more RM20 bottle (bringing it up to 3 bottles), she would give me two different smaller bottles of other drinks for FREE!

I thought in my heart, “Man! This lady is GOOD! It is such a pity she wasn’t in Internet marketing!!!“

I almost bought the third bottle but I didn’t carry enough cash in my wallet at that time so I walked away with only 2 bottles. If I did have the cash, I would have bought all those 5 bottles in a heart beat.

This experience alone has helped me improve my copywriting skills.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

• In Internet marketing, you must always start with an irresistible FREE offer on the front end (e.g. the free refreshing drink). You must construct your copy in such a way that it gives the prospect a very easy way to ‘get in’ to your sales funnel. The free offer is very effective because the majority of your incoming leads start from the free funnel (the widest entry point).

• Sending a series of follow up emails containing useful information is important to build a relationship with your ‘free’ leads. Most people do not buy products when they see a sales letter for the first time. You must entice them to visit your offer again and again. Most marketing surveys claim that a customer will only make a decision after seeing the product 7 times! The street vendor offered me many drinks to sustain my attention. It was very effective because I have a very short attention span. And also, remember that the low ticket must be as low as possible because your goal is to remove the ‘fear’ of buying by starting low. It gets easier to sell them more expensive stuff when they are already reaching for their wallets.

• Once your prospects has bought your low ticket offer, this is where your copywriting skills will make a huge difference. You can easily increase the ‘value per customer’ (the average net worth for each free lead that enters your funnel) by upselling them an offer that not only adds value to the existing offer, you will be able to convert higher if you can convince them that they are SAVING money even on their original offer! (like the street vendor lady, she convinced me that I would ’save’ RM5 by buying another bottle!) Convincing them on the value is also very important because the only way she could convince me to fork out RM20 a bottle is to elaborate about the 40 over servings per bottle.

• The ONE-TIME-OFFER (OTO) must also be structured in such a way that you don’t CLOSE the deal after they make the first purchase, rather, you should keep the door open (as they are paying), and ‘add-on’ more components to enhance the existing offer. Only once you are done ‘up-selling’, only then would you close the offer and collect all the money one-shot. (Here is a good line you can swipe: Thank you for your purchase. While you are waiting for your product, here is an offer that will add value to your purchase… etc) The finishing blow was executed perfectly by the street vendor when the offered the third bottle with free bonuses.

Remember, McDonalds increased their revenue by millions of dollars all because of a simple line that teach their employees to ask all the customers - “Would you like an upsize for only $0.50?”