Have you heard of the term: “Copywriting”? Wikipedia defined it as: “Copywriting is the use of words and ideas to promote a person, business, opinion or idea. Although the word copy may be applied to any content intended for printing (as in the body of a newspaper article or book), the term copywriter is generally limited to promotional situations, regardless of the medium (as in advertisements for print, television, radio or other media).
The purpose of marketing copy, or promotional text, is to persuade the reader, listener or viewer to act—for example, to buy a product or subscribe to a certain viewpoint”.
In the online marketing world, copywriting is used extensively to promote blog readership, get opt-ins for list building and to monetize your prospects.
If you truly wish to be successful in your online business, you’ll have to learn the ropes of effective copywriting so that your readers will love you.
Thankfully, good copy writing practices is a learnable skill.
Intro
Back in the day, the best “copywriters” were the great businesspersons of the olden days who knew how to sell anything to anybody. While people possessed powerful weapons, their most powerful weapon was their pen (or tongue).
Today, modern entrepreneurs are making a killing using copywriting techniques in their businesses. Bear in mind, selling things online is a lot harder than selling things offline because you lack the sincerity of voice and body language.
However, if you know how to tap into the power of copywriting to excite the emotions of your customers, you’ll be laughing your way to the bank.
The Basics
-Website content
-Blog posts
-Landing Pages
-Email Marketing
-Sales Pages
Remember, the ultimate goal of copywriting is to get your readers to perform your most desired outcome. E.g. making a purchase or signing up into your mailing list.
Therefore, it’s very important that you determine what your desired result is before you embark on your copywriting crusade. Clarity is power so it’s important to know what you are after so that when you write, things will go the direction you want it to go.
Okay, let’s look at some basics. Bearing in mind that we want our readers to perform our most desired result, we also can’t be too forceful. Here’s rule number one:
Keep it casual
You want to be seen as a friendly person who is also an authority figure in your field and not like a blatant salesman. The latter will cause people to dislike you can treat you as spam.
The next thing you must know is that some rules are pretty illogical. But one thing that makes sense is this, good practices have been tested and proven (split-tested) by top online marketers for years, so rather than trying to re-invent the wheel, follow what works and reap the rewards!
However, I strongly encourage you do a little split testing of your own as well. Eliminate things that don’t work and duplicate or multiply things that do – that is the surefire way to success!
Next up, we’ll look into one of the most important components of a good copy – headlines.
The headline has to be eye-catching and bolded to immediately get your reader’s attention. The sub headline will reinforce the message of the headline.
Here’s an important thing to note: You should never use FULL caps for your headline. Only use it when necessary.
“IMAGINE WHAT THIS WOULD LOOK LIKE IF THIS WAS ON THE TOP OF YOUR WEBPAGE!!!”
It looks like someone screaming at you – Who would like that? Also, full caps looks spammy and nobody nor Google would like that.
Also, headlines has to use eye-catching words which can instantly excite the emotions. Have you ever seen magazines at a newsstand? The headlines usually sound catchy and uses words which excite curiosity and emotions with topics like sex, money and drama.
Ask yourself, what niche are you in? What words can you use to excite emotions and create drama in your niche?
Back in the days, many businesses use something called “Unique Selling Point” or “Unique Selling Proposition” to differentiate themselves from their competitors to rake in more sales.
While that is very important, in the online world, we have something additional called “Emotional Selling Point” – Which is the ability to tap into the emotions of your readers so that you can make them carry out your most desired action.
Here’s an example of an emotional selling point:
“I knew what it was like struggling as a new marketer, learning how to draw traffic to my website. Sometimes, I even had a slice of bread a day because I wasn’t making much money from my online business…”
This classic example relates the hardship faced by the marketer to the person reading the sales copy, who is probably facing the same problems he once faced.
Emotional selling points also deal a lot with powerful emotion stimulating words. For example, in the make money online niche you would use words like: “time and financial freedom, free from the shackles of 9-5, quit the rat face”.
These terms are emotional terms related to the niche that people can easily relate to and connect with. In short, if you wish to use ESPs effectively to market your business, ask yourself these two questions:
1) What niche are you in?
2) What kind of words/stories/situations that people in your niche can identify with?
Once you have determined the answer to these two questions, you can try and brainstorm as many ESPs as possible that you can use in your sales copies or marketing content.
The call to action is probably one of the most crucial components of any piece of content. The first thing you must do is determine what is your most desired outcome that you wish for your customers/prospects to carry out.
Different components of your business would usually require a different sort of desired outcome.
Blog – Comments
Facebook page – Likes
Landing page – opt ins
Emails – Click throughs
Sales pages – Purchases
These are the common types of results you would typically want. So once you have determined that, your call to action must be worded or shaped to facilitate that kind of action.
For example: For a blog setting, a good call to action would be – “If you liked this post of have any ideas of your own, please comment down below!”
As silly as it may sound to literally tell a reader what to do, split test studies have shown this to be really effective. So the best way to achieve results fast is to model what others have been doing which works and eliminate things that don’t work!
To give another example, if you wish for prospects to make a purchase, you might ask them to “Snap up your copy before it runs out!”
Note that I’ve added a simple scarcity factor (one of the extra marketing nuggets often used) by claiming that it will run out if you don’t act now.
Adding scarcity factors or time sensitivity to your call to actions often result in high conversions, so don’t forget to include it in whatever you do!
Finally, you must bear in mind that the success rate of the call to action is not solely the result of the words of use in the calling, but how you put together different components of your sales copy such as ESPs, handling objections and showing the benefits.
Handling objections is an integral skill to good sales copywriting.
Objections
Whenever a person reads a piece of sales copy, many questions would pop up in his mind in attempt to “protect” him from “losing his money”. This is a natural behavior, and if you know how to handle these objections effectively in your copy as they emerge, you will be reaping in massive rewards.
Here’s a couple of commonly used techniques for handling objections:
1) Testimonials
Social proof is something almost everyone looks for when they wish to buy a product. The more convincing and authentic the testimonial seems, the more they will believe the product is good. Try to include testimonials with snapshots of the buyer, or use video testimonials – even better.
2) FAQS
Having a frequently asked questions section helps greatly in overcoming any objections that appear. Here you can address all the common misconceptions that may sprout up such as how to use the product, for whom is the product right for and price concerns.
3) Post scripts (P.S)
P.S or Post scripts have been used extensively in sales letters to boost conversions. Before clicking the “Add to cart” button people will usually have a final line of defense which prevents them from making the purchase. If you have a couple of post scripts ready, you can give them that final nudge to make the purchase.
4) Good reasons to buy
A personal favorite of mine, this section gives your readers a couple of good reasons to help them rationalize their purchase and greatly boost your profits.
Incorporate these great tools for handling objections in your sales copy and you’ll soon see a soar in your sales!
Copywriting Mistakes To Avoid
Everyone makes mistakes in their marketing career. This section aims to help you bypass the whole “experimental phase” and avoid the biggest mistakes ever made in copywriting.
Errors
Mistake #1 Selling before first demonstrating value – Before you blast your subscribers with offers, you must always give them tons of free value and establish a genuine relationship with them.
Mistake #2 Wrong text alignment – As a general rule of thumb, words should always be aligned to the left, indented inside slightly and not have too long a word line. This is to prevent a break in the continuity of your visitor’s reading flow. (from left to right)
Also, images should be used sparingly, only if its directly relevant to your sales copy and should be aligned to the center.
Mistake #3 Sounding too formal – Let’s face it, if your pitch sounds too formal, you’ll come off as sounding like a sales robot. For goodness sake, throw in some human
factor and speak with a casual tone. No one likes to be hard sold, so if you can connect with your readers in a more informal tone so that they can identify with you, you’ll be more likely to make that sale.
Mistake #4 Wasting your reader’s time – Basically, to write a good copy, you should only be adding things which contribute to the sale and removing things which do not. Your reader’s attention is very precious so if you manage to catch their attention, make it count. Don’t bore them with useless stuff.
In short, if you avoid these mistakes and diligently practice copywriting methods as shown above, you’ll get better and better in no time and make more sales.
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Wrapping Up
The ability to sell from your words and make huge profits is an art. Thankfully, It is also a skill that can be learned and honed. Your job as a marketer is to diligently practice these methods on a daily basis. The more copy you write, the better you will get and soon you’ll be able to churn our high quality sales copies with ease.
Don’t be discouraged if your sales copy doesn’t not convert well the first time. Keep tweaking your copy and remove out the things that don’t work and replace them with things that do. Split testing is the key to mastering the art of copywriting.
The better you get, the faster you get too. With more spare time at hand, you can focus on other parts of your business to bring in more profits to yourself.
All the best!
To your copywriting success,