Copywriting is the art of linguistic prowess that ‘sells’ you something without you even knowing you’re being sold to. It pulls on to the strings of your heart like a guitar and plays the most wondrous tune that serenades your senses, whilst activating the ’emotion’ responding part of the brain.
Powerful copywriting is the trickery of persuasion that makes an audience fall in love with the unique value proposition of your product or service, making them sway to the soothing delights of passion that starts to captivate their very being with every word read. By the end of it all, they are as warm and delicious as a satisfied buffet-eater at the end of a chocolate fondue desert. Just the way you are salivating right now to these words! =)
And that’s where the money is!
I’ve seen so many talented entrepreneurs with immense potential who sadly overlook the importance of strong, persuasive, and relevant copywriting + content creation!
Usually, it’s one of 3 reasons:
1) They ‘think’ they are good writers and hence can write their own landing page, sales or marketing copy etc.
2) They think their product / service is awesome, hence their target audience will not be affected by the lack or presence of a good copy.
3) They think paying $$$ to a freelancer is not a good investment ( because of point # 2 )
Reality check: “Writing” and “Copywriting” are two completely DIFFERENT things! Being a great or bad writer has nothing to do with the ‘science’ of copy and vice versa.
>>> Look up some of the HOTTEST selling products online; products whose sales pages contain plain English but COMPELLING copywriting techniques, enabling them to sell like beasts! <<< FACT!
Here are a few personal tips from your favourite neighbourhood superhero Acepreneur on how to structure your copy – whatever it may be:
A) Exploit your product’s benefits
Talk about what your product does, how it solves certain problems. Do not waste time on what the product ‘is’; copywriting is about creating a narrative that makes your audience believe in the depth and substance of the benefits that they can get from purchasing your product or service. Highlight the benefits in your language and keep the copy customer-centric; focusing on the audience’s pain-points and how you are the inevitable answer to all their woes!
B) Exploit your competition’s weaknesses
Your competition’s weaknesses are your strengths – automatically. And your strengths are your opportunities to cement yourself as a higher more powerful authority over the competition. Research, spend hours studying your competition, their business, their marketing model, their audience and most of all their products and services.
C) Know your audience
You’re the gladiator of your dreams; showcased for a duel in front of thousands of chanting spectators. They only want one thing and one thing only. Action! How do you acquire this knowledge? Whether it’s people who know you or people who don’t, existing customers and prospective leads both imperatively require that you know whom you’re selling to.
Writing a compelling sales-copy without learning who you’re pitching it to, is like spending time, money and effort on a plane ticket without knowing the destination. There are tons of online resources and readily available tools that allow you to capture market data analytics, research trends, and polls, which you can easily leverage to understand whether your product knowledge, service offering and target audience are on the same keel or not.
D) Communicate the “W.I.I.F.M psychology” (What’s In It For ME?)
We have already established that emotions are powerful buying motivators. Now, leveraging successfully those emotions via story-telling is literally half the battle done! We also established that everyone has problems and no sane person would want to live with those problems. Sane people want solutions. Thus, playing on the emotion of ‘independence’, make your audience imagine a life without ‘The Problem’!
By the same token, fear is a threat to an individual’s sense of independence. Fear carries a naturally negative connotation and is therefore not mentally decoded as a positive emotion. Thus, fear can be employed as a motivating factor. How could you use fear in an effective sales-copy? You communicate to your audience that without your product or service, their problem will stick to them like a leech and never go away. Make them realize that what you have to offer, is a unique opportunity to make their lives easier. Forever!
E) Focus on the usage of “you”, not “we”
Using the ‘you’ approach is more individualised, personalised and humanistic. It makes the audience feel you are communicating directly to them – individually as opposed to collectively.
F) Avoid T.M.I (Too Much Info)
No body likes reading through a 500 word novel when the same goal could have been accomplished by a mere paragraph. Audiences have short attention spans; make this assumption right from the start even before writing the first word of your copy. Make the information accessible, easily readable, visually friendly and logically sound. Don’t over complicate things.
G) Include CTA ( Call to Action)
A catchy, visually stimulating CTA goes a long way!
An emphatic, strong, effective and stimulating call-to-action is everything. Everything! It is the point where you’ve brought your audience through a labyrinth of ups and downs, and now you must live up to their expectations with a final, daunting act of fortitude!
This is where you use riveting action words, compelling phrases and value-centric imagery to urge your audience to take-action; click, download or buy your product or subscribe to your service. This is where the ‘hand-shake’ takes place, a transaction is made and you become a little bit more of an entrepreneur at that very moment, than you were yesterday. Congrats!
However, when all is said and done, it is imperative that the transaction process is the easiest part of the sales-copywriting. It has to be made utmost easy for the audience to implement the call-to-action and thus give you that sale.
A call to action is the money shot. It is the bread winner of the entire copy. Whether you’ve CTAs sprinkled nicely throughout an entire Sales Page or right at the end – bottom line is that it has to be compelling enough to inspire the readers and incite action!
H) Cover Yourself ( Disclaimer, Refund Policies etc)
Now, if you’ve addressed the previous steps without loose ends, then assume that your audience is already primed up and convinced of your product or service’s unique value proposition. Thus, your most triumphant act at this point is to make their transition from ‘audience / lead’ to that of a ‘customer’ as smooth and bump-free as possible.
This is where covering your butt comes into play. Ensure that you do not leave your customers clueless with regards to their newly made purchase. Effectively implement disclaimers, refund policies etc in your copy to avoid sticky customer service situations or refunds.
I) Proofread!
Nothing is more funnier than a copy that sounds like a 5 year old wrote it. Grammatical mistakes, sentence structure errors, spelling debacles, paragraphing goof ups ( and the list goes on ) are all poison! Audiences are a very judgemental species; one spelling mistake can put off the mood and make you seem like a crass, unprofessional git with the intellectual capacity of a beef burger.
Avoid it! Proofread, proofread, proofread!
Hope this helps 🙂 Don’t be afraid to comment / ask any questions you may have!
Checkout the Ace website for more goodies on copy and content : www.acepreneur.net
