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7 Copywriting Hacks Designed to Give Your Business a Boost
11:29 AMCopywriting is an art, but it’s not the same art as writing fiction. To get the results you want, you need to know how to craft your blogs and posts so they draw customers in. Are you looking for bigger conversion rates? Then you’ll need to work on your copywriting.
Here are some of the best hacks to get the most from your copy.
1. SOUND LIKE A HUMAN.
You. Are. Not. A. Robot. Affirmative.Please don’t talk like one. When we talk face to face, we have no problem saying things in a casual tone. But whenever people sit down at a computer to write copy (for webpages or emails), they tend to go all formal, like this:
All of that could’ve been much easier said (and easier to understand) if it was written more casually, just like the way you speak. In different industries, the tone of voice for your copywriting may vary. However, keeping things slightly casual reduces confusion and is more efficient than long-winded and vague language.
2. DON’T BORE YOUR COLD-EMAIL PROSPECTS.
Bob likes football, telling dirty jokes and drinking beer. However, when a salesperson tries to cold email Bob, he or she ends up sound like a boring robot. This leads to unread or deleted emails.
The problem is a lot of salespeople tend to formalize their emails to look professional. Neville tells me that he actually tested this in many industries (including banking and business-to-business sales), and found that a “casual tone” always outperforms boring emails.
For example, in these B2B email templates from inside Yelp, two versions were sent out to potential customers: A boring email and a casual-sounding one.
Yelp boring template email results:
- 50 sent
- 33 opened
- 1 response
- 3.33 percent response rate
Personalized template results:
- 50 sent
- 35 opened
- 4 responses
- 11.43 percent response rate
Whoever says “I can’t write casually because I’m in a market that doesn’t tolerate it” should just look at those results. It was initially worrisome to have salespeople sending out such “casual sounding” emails, but when results went from 3.3 to 11.4 percent, everyone changed their minds.
What would happen to your business if you tripled your response rate overnight?
3. DON’T TRY TO SOUND LIKE A BEHEMOTH COMPANY IF YOU’RE NOT.
What a lot of businesses fail to see is that the cliche taglines come from billion-dollar companies that have been around for decades. Rather than trying to be clever, you need to be clear. Here’s how to create a tagline using a three-step process for creating one that sound more descriptive:
- Dump out your entire business in a few sentences.
- Trim it down.
- Trim it down some more.
For example, using this three-step process, here’s how Entrepreneur.com would make a tagline:
- “Entrepreneur.com creates articles, videos and other resources to help motivate, teach, celebrate and put entrepreneurs on the path to success in the business world. We have been doing this in various formats since 1973.”
- “We create media for entrepreneurs to help teach and celebrate them and showcase other entrepreneurs. We’ve been doing this in various formats since 1973.”
- “Inspiring, informing and celebrating entrepreneurs since 1973.”
This “trimming down” process works with all your copy. Whether in an email, a web page or a magazine, it’s always helpful to not try to be too clever. Don’t try to “sound big” because it always results in a vague and boring copy. Trim your copy down to its basic elements, and remember: Copy that’s simple and casual sounding is simple and easy. Copy that’s too clever is bad and confusing.
4. Amplification and aspiration
The next step in the process is to magnify the potential customer's problem while also appealing to an ideal future state that he or she can achieve.
Amplification and aspiration "are usually the most neglected step in the process because it can be perceived that you're using fear as a motivator," Edward told me. "But in reality, before you can paint a picture of paradise for a potential purchaser, you have to fully lay out to the reader the consequences of not solving their specific problem."
Ultimately, buyers must believe that they not only want but need your product, service or offering. Effective copywriting forces them to ask the question, "What does it cost if I don't solve this problem?"
5. DON’T WRITE HEADLINES THAT ARE “CLEVER.” WRITE HEADLINES THAT ACTUALLY SELL.
Legendary copywriter Joe Sugarman would talk about headlines like a “slippery slope”:
- The job of the first line is to get them sucked into the second line.
- The job of the second line is to get them sucked into the third line.
- The job of the third line is to get them sucked into the fourth line.
In this article about headlines that sell, you can see samples of how to make headlines such as this, including this easy headline formula:
[End result they want] plus [time period] plus [address the objections]
A simple formula such as this can help you write much better headlines. Even for “boring” topics, this formula can really spruce up a headline. For example, if we’re making a case study for a seller of concrete:
[Get your concrete poured for under $45/yard] [in 3 days] [without it cracking]
Try applying this formula to something you’re selling. Use it as the title of a webpage or an email subject line.
6. WHEN YOU SELL, DISGUISE IT AS AN “ADVERTORIAL”
No one likes being explicitly sold to. It turns people off. That’s why you should sell by using this formula:
- 70 percent: Giving good information
- 30 percent: Selling
This way the person gets awesome information from you, plus you get to pitch them a small sale. This is much like how you would write an advertorial.
Typically, people don’t like reading a sales pitch, but if it contains a ton of great information, they won’t mind. This style of mixing great info with the sales pitch is one of the best ways to make people pay attention to your sales pitch without getting turned off by it.
7. Get To The Point
Once your reader has been brought in by your headline and is now on your website, get to the point. Make sure you deliver on the promise of your headline in the very first line of the post. If your reader has clicked through and doesn’t see what they came for right away, they’re going to just click away.
Think of that first sentence as your abstract, or declaration of what that post is going to do. The rest of the post is then designed to flesh out your argument and give readers the real meat they’re looking for.
Hopefully, some of these tips get you writing differently and leads to a boost in sales.
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