No matter how well optimized and well-functioning your site is, or how attractive its design features are, your site’s ability to make conversions depends on how effective your copywriting is. So important is the skill of copywriting, that writers who are capable of creating words that sell make thousands of dollars for creating a single sales page. Many online business owners choose not to hire professional writers because of these fees; those who attempt to do their own copywriting often end up very disappointed with the results. This series of articles will provide you with the basic principles which are required to create effective copyrighting.
Principle #1: Connecting Your Offer with Your Audience
No matter how good your copywriting skills are, it's essential that you have a clear picture of who your audience is and how your product is going to add value to their life. This can be accomplished by proper market and keyword research and even by creating mock ads to test whether or not your product is going to be popular before you actually create the product. This step is so important that if you get it wrong none of your other copywriting skills are going to matter. So before you begin your copywriting process, be sure that you have a strong connection between your offer and your audience and that you understand who you are talking to.
This is where social media can really come in handy. Having a business profile on the top social media platforms allows you to interact with your audience, build your audience, and check up on your competitors. You can find out what’s trending in your industry by performing a search, and even test out starting a new trend on the topic you want to try out. Before you waste your money and your time, check out what your targeted audience is talking about, and then jump into the discussion with something new and fresh they will love.
Principle #2: Brainstorming Your Sales Copy
One of the biggest reasons why any kind of writer becomes paralyzed by “writer’s block” is the failure to understand how the process of writing works. The Writer Earnest Hemingway once said: “My work habits are simple: long periods of thinking in short periods of writing.” The same is true when writing a sales letter. Instead of down trying to complete a finished and polished copy on the first take, spend a considerable amount of time brainstorming and writing down (or typing) everything that comes to mind about your product your offer.
These ideas don't have to be organized, in fact, the more you try to organize them the more it will interrupt your creative process. The brainstorming process is much like thinking out loud, only instead of speaking her thoughts, you type them. This will give you enough creative fodder to begin crafting a strong sales letter.
Tip: Keep a notepad by you at all times, or even a voice recorder. Many times thoughts come at inopportune times, and when we get to a place where we can jot them down, they are gone, or at the very least unorganized and missing the point that you were so excited about.
Principle #3: Structuring Your Sales Copy
Many beginning copywriters have problems determining exactly how long their sales copy should be. The problem with this type of approach is that good writing is almost never created according to the rules of how long or short it should be. Instead, good writing begins with a strong structure such as an outline for a book, or a format for a sales letter. There are two popular types of structural concepts which are used in writing sales copy, both of which can be very effective for building a sales letter or website copy:
AIDA Structure: this structure is simpler but less thorough for helping a person to construct all the components of the sales letter. This approach often works best for inexpensive offers or offers which involve a free product in exchange for the customer's contact information:
- Attention: This section of the copy gets the attention of the reader and identifies the problem which would be solved by the product.
- Interest: This section talks about features and benefits, with an emphasis on how the benefits are going to solve the customer’s problem.
- Desire: This section uses testimonials, statistics, and facts in addition to strong emotional words in order to generate a desire to purchase.
- Action: This section gives details about the offer: bonuses, descriptions of the value of the product compared to the actual price as well as a call to action which uses urgency to compel the customer to buy now.
Seven Part Structure: this structure makes it much easier to organize the sales letter into compartments and streamlines the writing process. This approach often works best for offers for more expensive products or complex products which require more explanation:
- Attention: the sole purpose of this section is to grab the customer’s attention.
- Problem: this is the section where the problem is which the product is going to solve, often accompanied by emotional language which describes the pain caused by the problem.
- Solution: this section is where the solution of the problem is sold to the customer, but before the actual product details are revealed.
- Product: this section includes just enough details about the product to give the customer idea of what they are purchasing, while still leaving them curious about many of its features.
- Proof: this section consists of product testimonials as well as statistics and facts which support the claims made by the product. This is also where potential objections are dealt with.
- Offer: this section justifies the price of the product and offers limited-time bonuses as well as overcoming the customer’s desire to delay the purchase.
- Action: this section tells the customer four things: what to do next, what will happen when they do it, why they need to do it (by reminding them of the benefit) and gives an additional PS at the bottom of the letter to remind them of the urgency of the offer.
Once you have chosen the outline for your sales letter, the next step is organizing the ideas which you came up with during your brainstorming. The easiest way to do this is to create a file with either four or seven headings (depending on the type of structure you used) and paste ALL of your brainstorming ideas under each one of the headings.
So you should have either four or seven headings in your file, each of which contains ALL of your brainstorming ideas underneath them. Once this is done, you simply go through each section of your sales letter and delete the brainstorming ideas which do not support that particular section. Now you will have all of your rough ideas organized according to which section of your sales letter they belong to.
This will make it easy to progress to the next stage of writing your sales letter.
Tip: If you find that one topic may have a large amount of information, don’t scrap the important meat to your story, instead create another heading and split it up. Readers love headers, it makes it easy for them to scan the content for important points, and then take the time to read it in detail.
