If you’d like to know how to use your competition’s own products and services against them -- while adding an extra layer of persuasion to your sales letters and ads -- then this article will show you how.

Look, as much as you may not want to acknowledge them, you have competition. If you don’t, if you somehow found a virgin market nobody else on the planet knows about, then you will some day and this will apply then.

But the point here is you have competition. We all do. And one of the things most of are tempted to do in our ads is ignore them and act like they don’t exist.

Sometimes that’s a good idea but, as you will see, you can also use the existence of your competition to your advantage in your copy.

How?

Simple: You acknowledge them...and then invalidate them.

In other words, you come right on out and tell them about your competition...followed by why they should choose you over them.

For example, here’s a piece of copy from an ad running right now teaching people about street-fighting:

"You’d be much better off learning ’tournament’ based martial arts - like Brazilian jiu-jitsu, karate, tae-kwon-do or even boxing. Where you’ll have a referee and lots of ’rules’ to make sure you don’t injure yourself or anyone else..."

In this case, the ad completely invalidates the competition for people who want to learn hard-core fighting, and not just "martial arts" or other sports-related fighting skills.

And if you really want to add some power to your copy...boldly tell your readers to compare you to the competition. You can use it in your body copy and even in your guarantee by saying something like:

"Try our widget. If you don’t think it absolutely blows away the widgets sold by Company X, return it for a full and immediate refund..."

Do you see how this works?

You are actually using the weight and strength of your competition’s product or service against themselves.

Instead of trying to pretend you have no competition, you actually come right on out and declare they exist...and then spin it into yet another reason for people to buy from you.

Ben Settle is an expert copywriter and direct marketer. If you liked this article then check out Ben’s website at http://bensettle.com -- and get your hands on over 500 pages of advertising ideas, strategies and tactics just like this one -- as well as rare swipe file ads and hot marketing information not easily found anywhere else.