Utilizing Swipe Files - Among the Best Internet Marketing Strategies For Business Writing

If you were an early pioneer, working your way "out West", and you learned that a team of explorers named Lewis and Clark had already forged a trail all the way to the Pacific Ocean, would you ignore this information and try to make a go of it on your own? Probably not. Might you go so far as to deliberately seek out their knowledge and benefit from their discoveries? Definitely! Now apply this concept to the world of internet marketing strategies, and you have the beginning understanding of "swipe files".

In the internet world, our pioneers are just 10-15 years old, and just like in those early times, the dirt paths have evolved into super-highways. If you want to get from point A to point B in today's online environment, you have to collapse time and develop strategies for shortening the learning curve of the last few years.

OK, so what are swipe files and how can they help you leverage your marketing communications? On the information superhighway, you can't just rely on your own resources and knowledge to compete. You actually need to have a system to collect, or swipe, the cream of the ideas from your competitors and other brilliant people on the net...and enhance them with your personal skill set.

Establishing a swipe file system involves 3-steps: 1 Search the internet for good copywriting relevant to your marketing purposes; 2 Identify the most useful internet marketers in your niche and go deeper to explore their writing samples...by being both a prospect and a customer; 3 Store on your computer what works for you and later apply it to your own business.

Here are some examples of swipe file categories and how you might use them.

Email campaign swipe files.

This is where you join the email list of a competitor, or someone whose system you want to follow. The purpose is to study the sequence of emails they send to their list. How often do they send emails? What is the interval between writings?
Does the voice of the email change when an offer is being made?
These are all aspects from which you can learn.

Web pages, Sales pages, Opt-in pages.

If you save to your hard drive these pages of the marketers in your niche who are successful, you are gathering good ideas for your own copywriting. Load the most successful of these pages into your HTML editor and then modify it for your message and style. This creates a highly leveraged internet marketing solution. Never start from scratch. That's re-inventing the wheel. And never plagiarize.

Headlines, Transition phrases, Power words.

If something catches your eye, it will probably be attractive to your audience as well. It's all in taking the time to setup an efficient system to store, and later find these, on your hard drive.

Resources you may want to utilize in the future.
Examples are training courses you may want to take, free offers for downloads, or membership trial offers

Sales Process flow.

Setup a folder on your hard drive under the name of a leader in your niche. Then, as you find examples of their content on the internet...sales letters, courses, webpages...save those pages under that folder. Then, when you're ready, go back to the folder and study your competitor's copy. This will help you formulate your own strategies.

As soon as you begin putting these tools to use, you'll be amazed at the time you save as you continue to fine-tune your personal strategies.