What comes to mind when you think of copywriting? Sales and advertising, of course. But what if we thought about copywriting not as a discipline pigeon-holed into sales and advertising, but rather as a conversational, emotive, and more authentic way of communicating?
After completing Effective Copywriting Basics for Entrepreneurs, a free online course about copywriting, I started wondering about this. Yes, the course is about creating effective sales letters. But this style of persuasive writing and the focus on your audience transcends the sales letter. It seems to me like a great way to be a better communicator, and ultimately a better person.
If you think I’m making a ridiculous claim and copywriting is not so grandiose, read on!
How To Be Persuasive and Authentic
How will a course ostensibly about crafting an effective sales letter help me if I have no need for writing a sales letter? How does that even apply to being persuasive and authentic?
Here’s how to get there:
- Understanding and empathizing with your audience
- Focusing on the benefits to the reader
- Providing a clear path to success, and specific steps for the Next Action
Understand and Empathize
Whenever you want to influence the outcome through communication, think about copywriting! Maybe you want to send an email to colleagues asking for their availability so you can schedule a meeting. Or maybe you heard about a new restaurant and you want to convince a group of friends to try it out with you. Or maybe you want readers to join your mailing list and offer recommendations on which courses they find interesting and would like you to review (hint hint).
Focus on Benefits to Others
For example, before scheduling that meeting, think about your colleagues. Everyone is busy, so why would they want to attend your meeting? What benefit will they get? When you understand this and write accordingly, your email will be much more likely to receive favorable replies.
Specific Instructions
Also use copywriting principles in your call to action. In the scheduling email example, if you just ask an open-ended “What’s your availability?” question, you can bet that readers will be confused. Availability when? Today? Next week? Available for how long? What am I even committing to being available for?
Clearly a broad and non-specific request like that will not work. Instead, direct the reader in simple, concise terms using clear language. For example: “Reply to this email with two different times when you are available for a 30 minute meeting next Tuesday.”
You can think of even better options, too. The point is that improving clarity in your call to action is yet another principle of good copywriting.
Persuasive Yet Authentic
Furthermore, when you use copywriting to make your communication more effective, you communicate more conversationally. If you understand your audience and focus on benefits to them, you empathize and look for ways for both you and the readers to benefit. You can be your authentic self. None of these principles serve as tactics or tricks to fool the reader, or to get the upper hand, or somehow vanquish an opponent.
If you want your communication to persuade and influence, then the copywriting principles described in this course will give you the tools you need.
Editorial Aside
In the original draft of this review, I jumped directly from the intro to the “mechanics” of the course, describing the various parts of a sales letter. Then I stopped and thought about this through the lens of copywriting principles. As a reader, I would ask “So what?” I would want to know why I should care about the structure of an effective sales letter. What’s in it for me (WIIFM)? As the author, I realized two things:
- It works! I used what I learned in the course to improve my writing.
- I had to rewrite this review to address the benefits to the reader.
So how does Effective Copywriting Basics for Entrepreneurs show us how to write effective copy to achieve these benefits? Through two main areas of focus:
- Structuring an effective sales letter
- Tips for writing and evaluating copy
Structuring an Effective Sales Letter
The first part of the course walks through the components of a sales letter. The instructor describes each piece and offers copywriting examples that highlight best practices and illustrate the points.
The sales letter includes nine sections:
- A powerful and attention grabbing headline
- An opening paragraph that holds the reader’s interest
- Features and Benefits (usually short bullet points)
- Testimonials
- Guarantees
- An offer they can’t refuse
- Next steps (specific instructions)
- Closing that creates a sense of urgency
- Postscript (P.S.) with an upsell
The Formula for an Attention Grabbing Headline
Out of all of these sections, the course argues that writing your headline should take the most time, energy, and creativity. That said, the headline should also adhere to a formula of best practices which have been proven effective over time.
Start with an attention grabber. The course lists words to start your headline with, such as:
- Discover
- The Amazing Secrets of…
- Introducing
- Unlock
Having grabbed the reader’s attention, the goal of your headline is to get the reader to read the first sentence of your copy. So the course suggests you want to appeal to the reader with a headline that includes one or more of the following:
- Self-interest (aka WIIFM)
- News
- Curiosity
- Quick and easy
Appealing to the reader’s self-interest answers the “What’s In It For Me?” question. News is something the reader does not know about yet (make sure it’s actually newsworthy!). Curiosity headlines invoke a secret that suggests the reader can get/have/generate something they want. Quick and easy headlines are appealing because everyone is busy and would like such a magic solution to whatever their problem is at the time.
The best headlines combine two or three of these criteria. Here are a couple of examples I came up with using this methodology:
- “Unlock Your Inner Magnetic Personality with these 5 Simple Techniques”
- Combines Self-interest + Curiosity + Quick and easy
- “Introducing the Boomerang Selfie Case for Your Mobile Phone. To Get a Great Photo, Throw Your Phone Away!”
- Combines News + Self-interest (selfie-interest?)
Writing Effective Copy for Your Opening
If your reader continues on after reading the headline, great! Now it is the job of the opening paragraph (opening sentence really) to cement the reader’s interest, so they will keep reading.
If/Then Statements
Use these to define a problem and a solution in a single sentence.
Questions
Entice the reader to read further by asking a question they are already wondering about. Notice the questions in the opening to this review? If you are reading this, then it worked! Another point for copywriting! One note of caution, the course suggests not asking broad yes/no questions, as this lets the reader quickly make a decision and leave.
Shockers
These statements are borderline offensive on purpose. For example, “Your lawn looks awful!” These get interest, but if overused will quickly lose their impact.
In addition to these hooks, remember the fundamentals of effective writing, such as using active voice.
Know the Difference Between Features and Benefits
Your persuasive opening has successfully locked-in your reader’s attention. The next section of the sales letter lists the features and benefits of your product or service. The course suggests these are in short bullet points.
The key thing you want to understand is the difference between Features and Benefits. As the instructor points out, it is all too easy to list a bunch of features, since you know all about your product or service, even if those features mean nothing to the reader/prospect.
How do you tell them apart? Ask the question: “So what?”
For example: “The gym is open 24 hours a day”. So what? What does that do for the reader? On its own, that statement does not do anything for the reader. This is a feature.
If you have done your research and know your audience and the problem you are solving, you should be able to take this feature and turn it into a benefit.
Follow These Rules When Using Testimonials
Testimonials serve as a form of social proof; evidence that the reader can trust you and your product or service. As the course points out, these are the next section in the sales letter for good reason: testimonials are a tool for reinforcing and relating your narrative (the story/pitch in your sales letter). But that story/pitch/narrative must be told first. Additionally, you should never open a sales letter with a testimonial.
Guaranteed.
A guarantee in your sales letter is the next component which builds trust with your reader. It should also serve to reduce risk for your reader, so they feel more confident spending money with you.
The course is clear that you should never lie, stretch the truth, or use meaningless language in your sales letter. Guarantees are an area where this advice is most often ignored or violated. In particular, the much overused and meaningless “Satisfaction Guaranteed”. Instead, offer a concrete and meaningful guarantee, such as 30-day money-back. Offer a longer guarantee for even greater impact (60 days is better than 30).
Is It Really An Offer They Can’t Refuse?
“An offer you can’t refuse” is a distasteful, overused phrase. What the course suggests is more specific and actually useful. Your objective is to make your offer a priority for the reader. You want the reader feel like it would be stupid NOT to act on the offer.
One good way to do this is to compare costs with alternatives. The instructor provides an example to make this more clear. If you want to sell a training course online, compare that to attending the same training in a live seminar. Instead of spending $5000 + travel, hotel, and food costs for the seminar, you can get the same materials, including the Q&A sessions, for only $695. It is cheaper, plus you save those travel and expense costs. On top of that, you can review the material over and over, anytime you want, compared to only seeing it once during the seminar.
Give Specific Instructions in Your Call To Action
If the reader makes it this far in your sales letter, it is time to provide them with next steps. You can easily stall momentum and lose the sale if the reader, who is interested in making a purchase, does not have clear instructions for how to proceed.
I recently read the book FU Money by Dan Lok, and he levelled this complaint about many business books. Too often, he says, books get the reader all excited and energized, but fail to provide instructions on what to do next; specifically what next step to take to get started. Dan Lok is an excellent copywriter, so you can see where he is coming from!
The importance of this section cannot be overstated. You must have clear, specific instructions in your call to action. This applies to sales letters, landing pages, emails, and practically every form of communication where you want someone to do something.
The course instructor suggests directing the reader like a military commander: simple, comprehensive, and clear statements.
- Not this: “Call now.”
- This: “Call 123-456-7890 and tell the operator to place an order for Product X.”
Closing With a Sense of Urgency
Not only do you want your reader to know exactly what steps to take, you want them to take those steps right now. If the reader feels a sense of urgency about acting on your offer, they are more likely to take action. If you leave the reader without this sense of urgency, they might think you have a good offer, but decide to set it aside and get back to it later. As we all know, “later” never comes. So you want them to take action immediately.
One way to do this is with a time limit. The instructor cautions that if you are going to do this, be very certain that you mean it. If you say the price only lasts for X amount of time, make sure the price changes correctly after that time expires. Ignoring this caution is a surefire way to lose credibility with your customer very quickly. How many times have you seen a “limited time offer” that was completely fake? Did you jump on those offers?
P.S. Your Upsell Goes Here
At the end of the sales letter you have a reader with their credit card in hand, primed to make a purchase. If you have complimentary products or services that also help to solve the customer’s problem, you have an opportunity to present those additional “upsells” in this postscript section.
Tips for Writing and Evaluating Copy
The next part of the course discusses a number of tips, tactics, and techniques for writing effective copy. The important takeaway for thinking about copywriting more broadly is that copywriting is personal and conversational. Try to write the way people speak, as if you were standing there with your reader.
I will refrain from reproducing these tips in any kind of list in this review. I find lists of tips too high level and not very instructive. You skim over lists like that and maybe you think “Oh, that’s a good idea!” for a few of them. But since there’s no thread, the tip is forgotten within a few minutes and you never benefit from it.
Instead, I encourage you to go take the course (it is free!) and listen to the discussion for each tip. Then you can download my Course Guide below for a list of these tips as a reference.
One way for any aspiring copywriter to continuously improve their skills is by reading and evaluating copy. The course instructor talks about saving good copy for future reference. They also provide a set of criteria for evaluating copy, so you can look at it more critically. Some of these criteria include:
- How they use headlines and subheadings
- How they define their audience
- How they work their product/service into a narrative involving that audience
Conclusion
As you can probably tell from the length of this review, this course really got me thinking about copywriting. I believe it was the instructor’s use of copywriting examples that made the material more concrete and impactful.
Then I started thinking about the subject more broadly, reaching beyond sales letters and advertisements.
Copywriting is about storytelling. It is about painting a picture for your reader. It is about understanding your audience and communicating that understanding in clear, direct language. It is about empathizing with the reader. A successful copywriter can articulate the reader’s problem better than they can.
In short, copywriting is about being a better person.
Even in a sales letter context, you know that your product or service will help the reader solve their problem. Copywriting is about leading the reader on a journey to discover that connection for themselves.
Do malicious people use the power of copywriting to lie, to manipulate, to sell false hope and fake products or services? Of course. Copywriting is a powerful tool. It can be used for good or for evil. Choose your side wisely.
And for a handy reference that is much more concise than this article, download my Course Guide by clicking on the big button below!
P.S. Another classic resource on copywriting, a book on my recommended reading list, is The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy. It provides more coverage of this same topic, including more examples. While not brand new, the information is timeless. Once you understand this stuff, you will start to see copywriting everywhere!
