If you’re reading this, you’re probably looking for some answers on how to improve your copywriting.
Here are 7 fundamental things that can help you write superior copywriting.
1. Narrow down Your Audience
To create successful web copy, the first step you need to take is defining your target audience. Find out who they are and what they want. How can you do that? Check your server logs, as well as visitors and customers’ comments to get some answers. What page gets the most visitors and which is least interesting? When do you get the largest number of visits? Now that you know who they are, find out exactly what they want and give it to them. That is, write Web copy with your audience in mind.
2. Hammer down Visitors’ Attention with Your Arresting Headlines
Use headlines as a hammer to nail down their attention. Besides the title, compelling headlines are the first element in your web content that have the power to stop casual browsers on their track. A great headline hits the target by offering readers the information they are looking for in a nutshell, and promising to help them achieve their goal, whether it’s how to lose weight or how to create better copywriting.
3. Prove You Can Walk the Walk and Talk the Talk
Your readers are navigating an ocean that is swarming with similar offerings. The fish they find two strokes away might be more appealing, so if you don’t want them to click through the cracks, persuade them your fish is bigger, tastier and healthier. Can they trust you on your word? Well, it depends on how you put it. How can you make your fish look better and more convincing?
Put Your Fish in a Story
Storytelling is more effective than dry facts because people can relate to stories emotionally. A story will individualize your product, taking it out of anonymity. This way your fish won’t be just a fish in the ocean. It will get a name, and people will establish personal rapport with it. For instance, how many of you were familiar with a clownfish before Finding Nemo?
Let Your Visitors Know What Others Think about You
People feel safer when traveling a well-trodden path, so another step in earning their trust is featuring testimonials to show what others think about your product or service. To increase your trust capital, also provide your credentials and a guarantee.
4. Does Your Product Improve Your Customers’ Well-Being in Any Way?
Ask yourself this question when you write Web copy if you want it to be successful. When describing the features of your product, highlight the benefits it brings to your customers. People buy something to fulfill a need, to make their life better or easier.
5. Inject Your Web Copy with a Feeling of Urgency
To transform prospects into a buyers you need to give them reasons to act now, not later or tomorrow. In most cases, if you don’t manage to determine people to act on it immediately, you lose them. That’s why you need to give your readers the feeling that you’re heading somewhere, and that they’re riding with you. Before you get to the last step, when you actually tell them what to do by introducing a strong call to action, it’s important to build momentum by creating a feeling of anticipation.
6. Use a User-Friendly Format
Online reading is more like scanning, so you don’t want to give your visitors a hard time when reading your Web content. This is another critical aspect of quality copywriting and its importance cannot be understated. So, if you want people to get to the core of your content, pay attention to the format. It’s like pizza crust. If it’s too thick, no matter how tasty the topping, you’ll end up feeling you’ve been chewing dough and nothing else. Friendly format helps you avoid this effect and allows the reader to savor your topping.
7. On Your mark, Get set, Go!
After you took the trouble of following the first six steps, your effort will amount to nothing if you leave your visitors or prospects clueless. Okay, so we’re here, now what? You managed to grab their attention, convinced them you can help, improve, or solve something for them, in other words, that you haven’t wasted their time. But there’s one last step you need to prompt them to. It’s time you launched your call to action. Tell readers exactly what to do. If you want them to place an order or to subscribe, say it, and show them how to do it in the simplest way possible. The right call to action formula can persuade people to actually buy.
Copywriting gives you a unique opportunity to reach your potential consumers if you do it right. By implementing these seven guidelines into your copywriting, your content will improve, and together with it your chance to convert browsers into buyers.