Let’s talk about the skill that separates successful business owners from those who fail. It certainly is the most important marketing expertise and for many (including me) also the #1 business skill.
It’s the ability of writing persuasive copy. And this is not a “get rich quick scheme”. Copywriting is a serious expertise that can turn your business around and provide you with a comfortable income. For the rest of your life.
In 1905 advertising executive Albert Lasker was approached by copywriter John E. Kennedy with an intriguing note.
It read:
“I am in the saloon downstairs. I can tell you what advertising is. I know you don’t know. It will mean much to me to have you know what it is and it will mean much to you. If you wish to know what advertising is, send the word ‘yes’ down by the bell boy.” Signed, John E. Kennedy.
By that time, Lasker had been searching for a definition for advertising for over 7 years.
Kennedy suggested “Salesmanship In Print” and changed advertising forever.
This mini-series of easy consumable lessons will teach you the persuasive principles of copywriting. They complement our templates and insights to help you fully understand how to write Words That Sell.
Don’t be evil
Copywriting is the most powerful way to convince your audience to buy into your point of view, your big idea and ultimately your offer.
Fair warning! The persuasive principles you are learning inside ClosersCopy can be used for good or bad.
I trust you to learn these principles to do good. To advertise offers of pure value. Offers that solve a real problem and actually help your audience move forward.
Like Peter Parker’s uncle Ben famously said:
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
Quick Start
A good way to structure your copy is to think of it in terms of building blocks. Blocks that move your readers from one to another.
Think of a newspaper. At the top of an article is a big bold statement: The headline. Then the first paragraph, followed by the second and so on… It follows a clear structure to guide the reader. Advertisers model this approach to pitch their products and services.
Here’s the structure of a simple, yet very effective sales letter:
- Headline
- Pain Or Problem
- Amplification
- Solution
- Testimonial
- Offer
- Call To Action
1. Headline
Going back to your first building block: The headline. It’s job is to grab attention. And make them read the first sentence. Make them curious.
2. Pain Or Problem
Next, you are going to address the most critical pain or problem of your audience. The one your product or service solves.
3. Amplification
You continue to amplify and agitate the pain, to demonstrate the costs of not dealing with it right away.
4. Solution
Until now, you built rapport and proved a deeper understanding of their troubles. Use this momentum to introduce your solution, the end of their sufferings.
5. Testimonial
It’s time to back up your claims. You need to prove that your solution really works. Show results. Evidence that you can get the job done and make their lives easier.
6. Offer
Once you’ve proved that your solution worked for other people, you make an offer. The offer is your product or service combined with an (exclusive) price and possibly a surprising bonus, to reward fast action takers.
7. Call To Action
Lastly, you ask you readers to take action. Buy your product. Give you a call or sign up to a subscription. Many people shy away here. Don’t! It is crucial to let them know what to do next, if they want their problems solved: “Click here to sign up today”.
To get started, use the pre-written model inside your template library:
Sales Letters > Quickstart
Overcoming Writer’s Block
Remember your paralyzed self, sitting in front of your computer, staring at the screen, not knowing what to write. Staring, while the “blinking cursor of death” reminds you of the wasted seconds, minutes, hours…
That’s the writer’s block! The condition we all know and fear. You know, 10/10 copywriters experience it, regardless of their skill and mastery.
So, we need to tackle this!
Here’s a quote from poet and novelist Charles Bukowski:
“Writing about a writer’s block is better than not writing at all.”
– Charles Bukowski
The solution to writer’s block is to write.
And with ClosersCopy, writing has never been easier. You start with a proven template and simply polish it.
Having access to a library of copy templates gives you an enormous flexibility. You can choose from a diverse set of proven ready-made copy, without needing to dream up words and structures that may or may not work.
Because doing more of what worked is a key concept in marketing. Instead of trying to pioneer with your own untested and never seen before promotion, you can leverage what has been working for others, over and over again. This is what successful copywriters do, all the time. (They have “swipe files”)
Every once in a while, we need time away from the screen, to unloose the writer’s block. But, bear in mind that one of the cardinal rules of creative writing is to turn off your inner censor when working on that first draft.
Here are 3 things I do to boost my creativity and come up with fresh ideas.
Take a walk. Experience your thoughts running free and unleash the power of your unconscious mind. You might get some bonus vitamin D (you need it, eager copywriter).
Eat some fruits. I feel like raspberries unlock unused brain power. I literally get new ideas every time I eat them. Isn’t that weird?
Play. Relax your brain and get a dopamine rush. Dopamine is known to break down the barriers of the ordinary and access a world beyond the senses (where your imagination resides).
Did you know that Ed Sheeran played with Legos when dreaming up his hit single “Shape of You”? Try it!
That’s all I ever needed.
AIDA
The AIDA formula is one of the most simple yet very effective frameworks to structure your marketing message, whatever it is.
AIDA is an acronym for:
- Attention
- Interest
- Desire
- Action…and it reflects the composition of your copy.
Here’s how it works:
Attention:
You start by grabbing your audience’s attention. In copy, the most obvious tool is the headline (check out our mini-lesson on headlines).
Interest:
You’ve got their attention. Now, you need to spark their interest.
This is the time to present the main selling points. Hook them with the best features and benefits. Explain how your products or services can make their life better, solve their problems.
Storytelling is a powerful tool to bring your points across because stories are relatable. You might want to check our lesson on “The Hero’s Journey” to learn more about storytelling.
Desire:
Now it’s time to paint a picture of success, “life with your solution”, to incite their desire. Make the audience want it.
Build trust by showing how your solution already helped others. Stick your finger in the wound and illustrate the cost of not dealing with it.
Action:
Tell your reader what to do next. You’ve got their interest and desire. They want your product. Tell them how to get it and keep it simple.
Don’t confuse your reader with too many options: “buy now or visit our homepage”. It’s simply “buy now”.
Don’t shy away from asking for the order. If you don’t ask, you don’t sell. All the work done to grab attention, build interest and desire would be in vain.
Aside from copy, we also use AIDA as a formula to run video ads on Facebook.
Attention:
I stop the user from scrolling through their feed. The first 3 seconds are the most important of the entire video.
Interest:
I call out one specific problem my audience has, to capture their interest.
Desire:
I provide the solution to overcome this problem, showing how easier writing copy with ClosersCopy is.
Action:
I finally ask the user to click on the ad.
First Drafts
It’s okay to write crappy, first!
This advice comes from Anne Lamott. In her 1994 book “Bird by Bird” she tells you to let go and don’t get hung up on your first draft.
She says: Give yourself permission to write crappy first drafts.
And the truth is… Every great writer does it! It’s the second or the third draft that leads to perfection.
If you are just starting out, focus on putting something together. Don’t worry, yet, how well or bad it reads.
Take some time off and let your brain process your writings. Revisit your copy and polish it: rewrite and reorder sentences, replace words with synonyms.
Add a few power and sensory words from our integrated databases… to make your reader see, hear, smell, taste or feel your words. To captivate your audience. Because, this is where the magic happens.
Headlines
The headline might be the most challenging part of your copy. Remember: If you can’t get the headline right, it really doesn’t matter how great the body of your copy is… Because no one will ever read it.
Grandmaster copywriter John Caples said:
“Even the greatest copywriter cannot save an ad without a good headline.”
Most of us don’t magically come up with something great. It’s a process: the more we write, the better we get.
One of the simplest headlines to start with is the “How-To”. It offers actionable steps in return for improvements.
Let’s illustrate the process.
Imagine your audience is quarantined (that’s tough, right ?). They want to learn how to make money online.
Your headline could be as simple as:
How To Make Money Online
Since you already know a little more about our audience, you can do better. How about:
How To Make Money Online During Quarantine
Better. It speaks to a condition your audience can relate to. They know you’re talking to them. It’s still a little vague, though… As a reader, how exactly am I going to make money?
Be a little more specific. Let’s try again.
Step-by-Step Guide On How To Make Money with Facebook Ads During Quarantine
We are now narrowing down our audience. You’re now talking to the media buyers that would be attracted and interested in this.
And that’s exactly what we want!
If you try to target everyone, you’ll end up targeting no one.
Depending on your audience, there may still be a problem with this headline. It may evoke negative emotions.
After all, who likes to be reminded of being quarantined?
So let’s be a little more subtle:
Step-by-Step Guide On How To Make Money with Facebook Ads from The Comfort of Your Home
Might be worth A/B testing!
See, writing copy is a process. You don’t magically come up with a headline. You iterate over your draft and polish your copy to perfection.
Sentences
Copy should be relaxing to read.
According to copywriter Joseph Sugarman, the first sentence of your copy should be short, almost incomplete.
A short sentence is more likely to draw your reader in because its visual appearance doesn’t overwhelm them.
The ideal word count for a sentence is between 10 and 16 words. Check to meet this range for most of your sentences.
Bear in mind, the longer your average sentence is, the more educated, sophisticated and formal your voice is perceived (could be useful to build authority).
Shorter sentences and daily language will make you sound conversational, warm and down to earth (useful to build trust).
However, to influence your reader’s speed and make your writing more interesting, play with the length of your sentences. This way you create a rhythm, a music to your copy which makes it more pleasurable to read.
Use the integrated Sentence Insights to check the length of all your sentences.
Opening
The opening comes right below your headline. It is the beginning of the body of your sales letter and the second most important element. It should be short by nature, around 16 words and too easy and compelling not to read.
It’s a teaser of what’s to come. It gives context and meaning to the headline. It could be the promise, especially, if the headline is extremely short.
It should build enough curiosity to make the reader dig deeper. Like a movie trailer, it shows the big idea without revealing everything.
It also sets the criteria for whom your sales letter is intended: people who abandon your offer after reading your opening are either not “in market” or you failed to address them.
Check out the Opening section of the Ultimate sales letter template to get your hands on different opening ideas.
Let’s get nerdy: Measuring how far your audience scrolled or how much time they spent on your landing page gives evidence how good your opening is. (Feel free to contact me if you need a script that measures scroll depth and time spent. Please note: You need a developer to implement it.)
Risk Reversal
An easy way to make an offer irresistible is to take all the risk off of your audience’s shoulders and put it onto yours.
Here’s a real life example that happened to me in August 2020.
I was looking for help on a video ad I wanted to produce (my video editing skills are fairly limited)… I stumbled upon a video editor who had a few good samples but no testimonials or digital footprint.
Can I trust this guy?
After explaining the task, going back and forth I was still quite unsure if he could do it . And, he was asking for a good amount of money, that I was willing to pay if delivered properly. I hesitated… and while I was weighing my options, he sent me a note.
It read:
“I really want to work on this project and I am 100% confident that I can do it. Let me put in some hours and send you a first draft within two days. If you like it, we have a deal. If not, you’re off the hook and you can keep the project for free.”
This was irresistible! All my concerns were crushed. What can I possibly hold against an offer like that?
Admittedly, it also reminded me of how I closed my first-ever business deal. But, it wasn’t nostalgia that disarmed me.
My video editor reversed the risk. From my shoulders onto his.
Bear in mind, for him it was easy to take the risk, because there was no risk at all, he knew he could deliver. At extremes, he could lose a few days of work, but on the other hand gain a new client, with great retainer potential.
I’ve hired him for 4 more projects, in 2020 alone.
No brainer.
Overcoming Obstacles
No matter how great your offer is… people will abandon it if you leave their questions unanswered.
If you’re lucky, a few will look up your email address and ask… But most won’t!
“Obstacles” is what we call these unanswered questions. It’s the things that prevent them from buying right now.
It may be as simple as “will it work for me?” or as complex as “does your copywriting solution work for a manager of a tiny italian motel who targets hikers?”…
Disarming your audience on the simple obstacles is more straightforward. A few common questions you need to address, regardless of your offer, are:
- Will this work for me?
- Has it worked for someone else?
- What happens if it doesn’t work for me?
- Can I trust this seller?
…and you can easily address these simple obstacles:
- Offer a sample, a demo or an onboarding call to introduce your product / service.
- Provide written and/or video testimonials from previous satisfied customers to prove that it worked.
- Write a bulletproof guarantee that takes the risk off of their shoulders.
- Show that you are a valid business. With legal responsibilities. (Yes, people check your legal and terms pages!)
On the other hand, the complex obstacles are harder to address. You need to join the conversation that’s taking place in your customer’s brain, to find out what is holding them back from taking action.
Here are two things you can do to capture the more complex barriers:
- Survey your audience and ask why they didn’t perform your intended action (for example, why didn’t they buy?). Incentivise their response by offering a freebie like a coupon or a free guide. Show that you value their time and opinion.
- Make it easy for your audience to contact you. Include a contact form on your sales page. Don’t ask them to fill out extreme long forms. Don’t ask for a minimum character count. Don’t include hard-to-solve captures. Some people may just want to submit a single word like “Price”… And that’s already good enough for you to follow up.
Once you’ve gathered data, you’ll see that some obstacles you haven’t thought of, are repeatedly coming up. It’s time to add these obstacles to your sales page, possibly as inside the FAQ.
Sensory Words
We use sensory words to activate our audience. To grab their attention and get them involved.
Sensory words describe how we experience the world. How we smell, see, hear, feel or taste something.
People think of themselves as rational beings. However, when it comes to making decisions, deeper parts of the brain are activated. Parts that respond to emotional stimulus.
Sensory words are used to stimulate these parts.
Here’s an example:
Without sensory words:
5 Ways for Turning Unprofitable Ads Around – A Practical Guide
With sensory words:
5 Tips for Turning Money-Burning Ads Around – A Tantalizing Guide
We’ve databased all sensory words, ready for you to look up, scroll through and apply to your copy.
Power Words
When you’re writing the first draft you’re focusing on getting your message across.
To make it powerful, you should start to look for those weak, lifeless words and replace them with some ridiculously effective and maybe less obvious ways to express your ideas.
Let’s have some examples:
weak: cost effective
powerful: dead cheap, inexpensive
weak: impactful
powerful: striking, mind blowing
weak: reliable
powerful: rock-solid, ahead of the game
Enter “power words”…
Shrewd copywriters are well known to sprinkle some “power words” to grab attention, spice up content and compel their audience to take action.
They are called “power words” because they are so persuasive that people simply can’t resist acting upon them.
Basically, these are emotional words packed with persuasion. They can make us feel greedy, scared, safe, encouraged, curious, aroused, angry, happy and inspired…
They take advantage of:
- the human natural tendency to want more
- our aversion for loss and scarcity
- how the things we buy make us look
- to build trust with our customers
- stir in the fear of what might happen if we don’t take action
- fire up the intense desire for some products or services
We want the audience to be gripped by an unshakable desire to click and read more. But like with everything, don’t overuse them, if it breaks the reading flow and makes your copy look exaggerated.
Before you go, let’s have a look at a few headlines:
- Common Mistakes When Trying To Lose Weight
- The 7 Dumbest Mistakes You Can Make When Trying To Lose Weight
- Things You Didn’t Know About Carbs
- 7 Odd And Bizarre Facts About Carbs You Probably Didn’t Know
- Interesting Facts About Intermittent Fasting
- 25 Unbelievable Facts About Intermittent Fasting That Might Surprise You
If interested in the subject, which one would you click on? You see what I mean? And that was so easy to achieve, I hope you agree now.
Lookup the integrated database to find inspiration from 30 different categories, packed with powerful words that vivify your copy on the spot.
Making Copy Flow
If your audience finds your copy hard to read, they won’t bother to read. They will ignore you and your sales pitch. Regardless of the hours you’ve put in crafting it.
Here’s a technique that makes your copy flow. It just takes a few minutes but makes your copy 10x better.
It’s called “On Your Feet Out Loud”:
Here’s how it works:
You stand up and read your copy out loud.
You’ll catch and correct missing words and punctuation, identify and rewrite long-winded and complicated sentences…
It’s dead simple and it only takes a few to minutes to make your copy flow.
Try it. You’ll be delighted.
PS: Credit where credit’s due: This technique has its root in practicing public speech and I discovered it when studying the work of grandmaster copywriter Ray Edwards.