In today’s highly competitive online marketing ‘space’, one critical factor for success is to consistently produce quality content. You first need your copy to attract your visitors and then ultimately to convert those visitors into leads and buyers.
It is not easy to consistently produce powerful, high-quality copy. These 12 copywriting tips will help you, when you are writing any form of online content, from blog posts, to lead pages to E-mails.
1. Refine your headline
On average 5 times as many people read the headline as read the body.
– use simple headlines
– remember the 4 U’s: Urgent, Unique, Useful, Ultra-specific
– give readers a ‘real benefit’ – a benefit of the benefit!
– paint a vivid picture or stimulate an intense emotion
– put yourself in the place of your readers. Have you considered THEIR interest first? Have you answered for them the question “what’s in it for me?”
2. Simplify your content
Make your message clear and concise, so that your audience understands your offer and it’s benefits as quickly as possible. Don’t try to be elaborate, clever or overly funny with your language.
3. Give your audience what they want
Consider EXACTLY what need you are filling for your audience and give it to them!
One way to ensure this is through your language. Where appropriate, use the word ‘you’ instead of the words ‘we’ and ‘I’. Your audience is not interested in what something has done for you personally, they want to know what the benefit is for THEM!
4. Tell a story
There is a lot of truth behind the saying ‘facts tell, stories sell’
One famous story if of a young copywriter who sat down in 1926 to write an ad for the U.S. School of Music.
The ad was to sell home-study courses for hopeful musicians. He could have used a simple benefit headline, like ‘Master the Piano at Home in 30 Days – Without a Teacher!’
But he didn’t, instead he dug deeper. He knew that mastering an instrument is hard work, and that the real reasons people do it, is to be popular, to win their friends’ admiration and envy, and to find happiness. His headline was ‘They Laughed When I Sat Down At the Piano But When I Started to Play!’
5. Have a purpose behind everything you write
Don’t just create content for content’s sake. Always have a purpose. It might be to generate leads, build your brand, create a sale or another purpose, but you must first consider the purpose of each piece of content before you create it.
6. Speak your ideal customer’s language
Don’t try to be elaborate or clever. Speak in your customers’ language. This helps you connect with them and to develop the all-important ‘know, like and trust’ factor!
7. Use active voice
Passive voice makes you sound weak and reactive, while active voice takes charge.
For example, the passive sentence ‘Over 300 people have been helped by our product’ is much stronger in the active voice: ‘We have helped over 300 people with our product.’
8. Replace the words may, hope, could, perhaps, might, hopeful and other similar ‘hopeful’ words with commands, such as will, can and do etc.
9. Back up your claims with facts, statistics, success stories and testimonials.
10. Incorporate the fundamentals of persuasive copywriting
According to “America’s Top Copywriter” Bob Bly, the fundamentals of persuasive copywriting are:
Gains attention
Focuses on the customer
Stresses benefits
Differentiates you from the competition
Proves its case
Establishes credibility
Builds value
Closes with a call to action
11 Lead with strongest point
Not many people actually read something all the way through. The majority of people only read the beginning, so make sure you include your strongest point at the beginning.
12 Include a strong call to action
If you don’t specifically ask people to do something, chances are they won’t do it. All your content: blog posts, E-mails and landing pages should close with a call to action. Your social media posts should have a call to action where appropriate. Always make sure you are offering something your particular audience will want.
Copywriting remains an essential part of the overall formula for success online. If the copywriting of your blog posts or landing pages and E-mails is something you find difficult, then I suggest you take a look at this course by master copy-writer Brian Fanale: [http://thecopywritingmaster.com]
-Angela Boswell
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P.S. – MLSP Co-Founder Brian Fanale was speaking at a marketing event in San Diego this past weekend, and he created a 5 minute video sharing his #1 takeaway from a full weekend of ‘advanced traffic strategies.' Check it out here: http://blog.myleadsystempro.com/automate-your-facebook-custom-audiences
Good info and tips. I’m going to keep these in mind more as I write. I think sometimes it’s easy to “write for yourself”, but maybe not as beneficial to my audience. Thanks for the reminder.