Some people have written just one single page of great copy and ended up making a living from it for an entire lifetime and a very good living at that. That has to tell you that copywriting is everything.
You can have a great product, a great strategy, the right price and everything. But if you cannot reach your prospects with the right words you are toast. It is really as simple as that.
This should explain why the real pros spend so much time, energy and resources on the copy. Agora Publishing a $100 million company you may have heard about, spends so much time and resources on copy that it looks like they are throwing away cash. Well, the results speak for themselves.
Here are four common mistakes you will find in most copy intending to sell. Looking at it from another angle these are four terribly important keys to copywriting that will end up selling like crazy. If you correct, or get these four pillars right from the start, then you can turn around things dramatically.
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Emotions, Emotions
Even seasoned copywriters forget this one way too often. Humans are passionate, emotional beings and decisions are never made based on logic. It is all emotional and what we do is look for the logic when the decision has already long been made. You have probably heard this said too many times. So why is it that your copy has a weak emotional pull at best and none at worst?
Your logical appeal, no matter how good will never score with the customer if there is no emotional appeal. Indeed great copywriters will start with the emotional and then move on to the logic when they have already found a way to work up the prospects’ emotions.
Start by deciding what specific emotional appeal you want to go with. That will be the right emotion that will win over your prospect and turn them into a paying customer.
Apple is the perfect example of how powerful emotions can be when it comes to selling by appealing to an audience. Everybody still talks about the Apple Computers Super Bowl commercial. The rest of the hundreds of Super Bowl ads that have been run on the same slot over the years are long forgotten. And the Apple emotional appeal reigns to this day. How else would you explain “logical” folks going out of their way to purchase a much more expensive computer that will do less than an ordinary one selling at a fraction of the price? Today they are still long lines of very eager people waiting to buy whenever a new iPhone from Apple is released.
In your copy always focus on generating lots of emotional appeal all designed to create a desire in your prospects to buy.
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Why Should The Customer Care?
Every day you will see endless examples everywhere of features being emphasized rather than the benefits to the customer. When you make this mistake, what you are actually saying as a seller to your prospect is; I have this and that and so many other features, you need to buy. Features are all about you the seller. When in actual fact selling is all about the customer you want to make a purchase.
Why should they care? What will they benefit? How will it help them? How will they look in front of their friends with your product? What will people say about them? This is what your sales copy should focus on.
You will need to get into the shoes and the heart of your prospect because it is the only way to reach their wallets.
Somebody once said that the best way to learn to be a great copywriter is to do door to door sales. Not everybody can do that. But you can picture yourself on a buyers’ door and the skeptical scowl on their face as you write your sales copy and it will make a huge difference because it forces you to focus on them and what you can say and offer that will reach them and change that glare into a smile. The only way to do this is to dwell on telling them how they will benefit, how their lives will change and how it is all about them.
A great way to avoid listing features is to actually start by listing them first and then writing down all the benefits that accrue to the customer from each feature. In your final copy you can then list those benefits in order of importance; importance to the customer and not you or your technical department.
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Be specific 96.5% is better than 100%
Let’s go back to that skeptical look on the face of your prospect as you stand at their door. You can be sure that making general sweeping statements will not change the look on their face. Rather than say, “what I am selling is very good.” Be more specific and say; “Your neighbor Mrs Andrews got one of these a few days ago and I have just been to see her before she came here and she told me (something specific the product did for her).”
That would be what you would say if you were a door-to-door salesperson. In your copy instead of saying customers have improved their Internet speed 100% to exaggerate (just a little) on the 96.5 results you actually got in your tests, just say 96.5%. That is much more believable than a sweeping 100% which could easily be made up by anybody, anywhere sitting in front of a computer. Go on to say in your copy where the customer is located (at the very least, what State?) and details of what the situation was like before they purchased.
That is being specific and specific is much more believable. And believable is more than half the battle to sell won.
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Testimonials
What is the one secret, the game-changer, in the massive sales that Amazon.com achieves? That should be a no-brainer. It is the testimonials. Experiences from actual buyers are so powerful that it is an easier decision to buy on Amazon testimonials rather than down at the store actually holding the product in your hands and examining it carefully.
Testimonials say things you cannot say. For instance compare you saying your product is the best and a testimonial from a verified buyer saying, “this is the best product I have purchased so far.” Or “this product rocks!” Those are things you cannot say about your product. You cannot even get away with saying customers have said so to you.
Treat testimonials as gold and go out of your way to get them from your customers. And then liberally sprinkle them in your copy and see what happens to your sales.
Jay
I've worked for WooRank, SEOptimer, and working on a cool SEO audit tool called SiteGuru.co. Now I have build Linkilo and SEO RANK SERP WordPress theme. I've been in the SEO industry for more than 5 years, learning from the ground up. I've worked on many startups, but also have my own affiliate sites.
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