Grab any piece of junk mail and take a quick look at it. You will probably notice one of two things: either the copywriter hits you right between the eyes with his offer up front, or he forces you to read through the ad to locate the offer which will invariably be hidden at the tail end.
The first strategy is employed to qualify the potential buyers from the "just looking" crowd. The sales copy is very straightforward and pushes the prospect early to decide if this offer is for him or not. If the viewer has a genuine interest, he will continue reading the ad.
If there is no interest, the prospect will most likely move to something else on the web site or leave altogether. Surfers have no patience for reading sales copy that has no meaning or relevance for them.
The opposing strategy says to hide the offer at the tail end of the narrative. Supposedly, if you place the offer at the end, the prospect will be forced to make his way through the copy reading as he goes and being "prepped" to be confronted with the offer.
If you hide the offer and price, and force the customer to dig for it, he will find his answer and have learned all about your product in the mean time. At least, so goes the justification for this method.
I personally believe it's best to place your offer right up front in the narrative or ad copy. Readers won't accuse you of playing games, of wasting their time on a hunting expedition, or of boring them to death just to find out what the heck the company is selling!
I can tell you that most Internet users are impatient people. They want the information they're seeking right now!
They are in a hurry and don't like guessing games. If you have to offer what they want, they will stick around and read through your marketing message.
But if you aren't forthcoming quickly, they will not hesitate to leave a page and move to the next web site on their list or in the search engine results.
One method of presenting the offer in your copy that works like a charm is to very quickly give the reader the most significant benefit to making the purchase followed up directly by the offer in a nutshell.
You can then include further benefits and features of the product, give testimonials, and later restate what the original offer was. Your viewers will know, right off the bat, what you're selling and if they are interested, they'll get the opportunity to learn all about it as they move on down the page.
I would suggest trying some different offer placements on the page and then track the results. You will soon have some relevant testing information that will help you to know which version of your sales page works best.
I think you'll be surprised at the difference offer placement can make in converting prospects to buyers. By testing and tracking results early on, and with small samples of the prospect list, you'll end up knowing which version of your ad stands the best chance of converting sales.
Then you can feel comfortable in rolling out a large campaign because you will have optimized your advertising copy to get the maximum number of sales.
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