How to Write a MagalogCommercial Copy The word "magalog" is the contracted union of two separate words: "magazine" and "catalog." Thus a magalog is actually a product catalog written in the form of a magazine. It can be anywhere between 8 and 32 pages in length, usually in multiples of 8 or 4 (due to convenience of printing). Each magalog page (excluding the cover page) should have about 300 to 400 words, depending on the physical size of the page. Magalogs were once very hot in direct mail industry. But I have a feeling they are still strong in selling health and financial products even in this day and age of the Internet. Why? Because they are personal information products that you can take with you and read anywhere you go. They are perfect for the older "boomer generation" who may not be always comfortable with online marketing as the younger generation. Also, due to its heft and depth, a magalog carries a lot more marketing credibility than a simple postcard or a direct mail letter. It is the perfect marketing platform for offers that are either too expensive and/or require in-depth explanation and illustration. A well-written magalog works and sells products. But you can’t have a great magalog just by writing great copy alone. This is one information product that has a very strong visual component to it. A good magalog is a mini-book that needs to be designed attractively with plenty sharp photos, diagrams, illustrations, and a top-notch order page or form. Assuming that you have great graphic support for your magalog, here are the things that you should pay attention to when writing the content: 1) DEEP INFORMATIVE CONTENT. Above all, a magalog needs to contain a lot of correct, interesting and relevant information. That's why you have to do a lot of research before sitting down to write a magalog. The person who is reading your magalog is ready to be convinced and sold, but you have to earn that. You cannot succeed in this writing niche if you try to repeat sales slogans and boring generalizations without backing them up with numerical, factual data and real quotations and references. That's why a great magalog is really a reference material worth keeping around even after the sale is over. For example, imagine you are writing a magalog to sell GOLD COINS. This is the worst way to do it: That won’t sell you a single gold coin. What you should do instead is pre-sell the reader on the whole idea of collecting gold coins. You should wet his appetite by sharing interesting facts about gold before you even mention its benefits. For example, here are some of the things that you can write to grab the attention of a prospective gold buyer: When sporting history was made in July 2009 as Roger Federer won a record fifteenth Grand Slam tennis tournament at Wimbledon he wore a special jacket featuring the golden number 15? The world's rarest gold coin, the 1933 Double Eagle, was sold at Sotheby's auction house in New York in 2002, for the record sum of $7.59 million? Gold is so malleable that one ounce (31.1 gr) of gold can be beaten into a thin sheet covering 16 square meters! Lenotre, the famous French pastry cook, sells unique chocolates with gold leaves in them... Etc…" Ask yourself after reading these interesting trivia: aren't you now more interested to learn more about gold? As a result of this learning process, at some point you might even consider to purchase gold coins… When you reach that stage, the magalog has accomplished its chief marketing goal, but not before then. If you hate research and are unwilling to discover a rich collection of facts about your topic then you should not try to write magalogs because it won’t work. 2) COVER PAGE. The cover of a magalog is very important in terms of grabbing the reader's interest and motivating her to flip pages and read more inside (hopefully all the way to the order page). For example, if you are selling time-share condos, don’t publish the photo of a clock, a calendar or a time-piece on the cover of your magalog. That would be too-literal an interpretation of the time-share feature. The external photo of the condo building would also fall into that category. Instead, publish the photo of a good looking couple relaxing on the balcony of their sea-side (or mountain-top, etc.) time-share condo, watching the sunset over the water (or mountains, etc.) while sipping their cool drinks on a great summer day. That's the BENEFIT (relaxation and happiness) that people expect from a time-share. So decide what the BENEFIT is and make sure your cover photo reflects that. BLAND Header: "Buy your time-share condo today at 10% off!" BETTER: "Say goodbye to bumper-to-bumper traffic, urban pollution, and Tension City! Enjoy your retirement in this flower-decked, quiet, sea-side time-share condo, available at 10% off until Sept 20…" Draw a PICTURE with words of the benefits you are referring to, as in "flower-decked" or "bumper-to-bumper traffic". 3) MAKE and KEEP a PROMISE. Make a promise on the cover of the magalog concerning "facts revealed" on an inside page. This is to entice the reader to flip through and go to that inside page. But the important thing is to keep your word and to really reveal what you have promised to reveal. If, for example, on the cover you promise "5 Never-Heard-Before Investment Ideas on Page 12" you'd better list those five ideas on page twelve. If the readers go to that page only to find a pitch to buy a booklet where those five ideas are supposedly explained, you'll lose their trust and respect immediately and your magalog will head for the trash bin. Respect the intelligence of your readers and treat them as the well-informed and rational adults that they are. 4) SIDE BARS. You need to have a lot of sidebars in the inside pages to break the monotony of text and keep the reader interest alive by interesting facts, trivia, and side benefits. For example, in an Investment Newsletter Subscription magalog, you can have sidebars devoted to testimonials of former and current subscribers, lifestyles of individual subscribers who made money with the newsletter, expression of regret by those who did not subscribe and thus missed important investment opportunities, facts about the way New York Stock Exchange and other important stock exchanges work, time-zone differences around the world and the way they effect round-the-clock fund transfers, the best way to use an investment calculator, etc. 5) TESTIMONIALS. You cannot have an effective magalog without testimonials. People trust other people like themselves who have done the same thing (bought the offer) and were satisfied with that decision. Although there are three ways to write testimonials, you should stick to real testimonials since hypothetical and indirect testimonials would not work well with this kind of writing. Magalogs readers love to read real testimonials, the more the better. And if you can at least publish the initials of the testimony providers, their photos, and their city and state, that would be even better compared to anonymous testimonials. 6) ORDER FORM. After all that effort to create an 8 to 32 page magalog you should go ahead and ask for the sale in a great ORDER PAGE which should be designed by a direct mail professional and a graphic designer who know what they are doing. But in the very least try to include a TOLL-FREE PHONE NUMBER for then to call and place their orders. Repeat that number at the bottom of EVERY PAGE so that if and when they feel like it your readers can place an order without searching for the order page. In this day and age, you should of course also include the URL of your WEB SITE where the reasons can place their orders through a secure connection.
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