6 Copywriting Tips for Customer Conversion

Before my gig here at V12 Group, my previous employer had spent his lifetime writing copy for hugely successful direct marketing campaigns ranging from print ads, mail and DRTV and he always used to say, “Where were you when the page was blank?”

This was his reply after a client ripped apart a copy deck that needed major revisions which he didn’t necessarily agree with. That phrase sticks out in my head every time I work with a client who is adamant on adding copy that doesn’t belong in a prospecting email. I suggest clients reserve long ‘selling’ copy on a landing page (within the client website) and then use the tips in this post to create a killer page–and make it as long as you’d like.

Good copywriting is your website’s secret weapon for customer conversion

Source: Scott Fox

Attracting and converting website visitors is the key to your success online. Writing effective copy for your web site and marketing materials is an under-appreciated way to do this.

When building a website business most people make the mistake of focusing only on the technology. There are so many decisions to be made about servers, hosting providers, shopping carts, ad systems, content management, etc. that many people mistakenly de-prioritize copywriting.

But it’s not enough to put the appropriate search engine keywords on your webpage and string them together into quasi-English sentences. If that’s all that you do, you are missing a major opportunity.

Instead, you should look at the text on your website as a principal weapon in the war to attract and convert customers. This includes the text that displays on your homepage, on your interior pages (landing pages), in your navigational menu entries, in your newsletters, and even in your ads. Each of these uses of text is an additional opportunity for you to communicate your marketing messages.

Copywriting is also important because it has two audiences: human website visitors AND search engine crawlers. It’s your job to make your website copy as attractive as possible to both audiences. Humans will reward you with sales and search engine robots will reward you with better search engine ranking.

Six Copywriting Success Strategies

While the technical issues and design of your site are clearly important, I’d suggest that you also be sure to devote copywriting resources as follows:

1. Sell Don’t Tell: Customers are not interested in your point of view on your product. They don’t care about all the fascinating features that your team worked so hard to include. What they are interested in is how the product can help improve their lives. This means that your copy should focus on the benefits to them, not on the features which you or your team might be most impressed with yourselves for creating.
2. Appeal to Emotion?!: The most successful copy touches the potential customer personally or emotionally. You want to catch their attention by appealing to their own self-interest and in as dramatic a fashion as is appropriate for the context. In other words, people are self-interested — so your copy needs to answer how your product or service will make them feel better about themselves. How does this product make my life easier, help me make more money, look better, lose weight, etc.
3. Headlines are Important: Spend extra time boiling your message down to its key components. Eye-catching headlines are your best chance to catch the eyes of passersby. While colors, font size and placement can all help attract the eye, too, it is the few critical words contained in the headline that ultimately attract clicks. (This is especially true in the plain text “subject” lines of email marketing pieces.)
4. Call to Action: Even the best writing will fail to help you reach your conversion goals if it does not include a call to action. Determine what action you want the visitor to take before you even start writing. Then be sure to finish your copy by posting a link or offering another specific next step for them to pursue the goal you have driven them toward.
5. Add Testimonials: Nobody likes to be alone. Especially in the anonymous online world customers appreciate companionship and validation. Collect and post testimonials from other customers to help provide them with the reassurance that they crave. This simple tool will help them to help you reach your conversion goals quicker.
6. Make It Lively: Save the boring, clinical, lawyer-speak for your next deposition. In a world of a million channels, you need to think like an entertainer. There are many ways to do this – you can use humor, sarcasm, controversy, drama, or photos and video to make your site feel alive — even if you only update it occasionally. Even the most formal or boring topics can be presented in an engaging manner. Your copy is a key ingredient in that mix. Additionally, because search engine rankings increasingly depend on other site’s linking back to you, it’s important to offer content that others will take note of and link back to.

If all of this attention to prose sounds like more verbal gymnastics than you’d like, the Internet can help. Copywriting duties can be easily outsourced online. You can find copywriters on a contract basis using online professional services web sites or project marketplaces such as Elance.com, GetaFreelancer.com, or even by posting on Craigslist.com. Figure on paying anywhere from $20 to $200/hour for most copywriters, depending on their expertise level. (V12′s Creative Division also offers copywriting services for email marketing so call us)

The goal of your website (or landing page) is to attract and convert customers. Following these guidelines will help you create compelling copy that builds your business, too. It’s easy and often fun to get caught up in the technical or design details of your e-commerce web site, but remember, there are many simple and even ugly web sites that make plenty of money online. That’s because their message (as presented in the copy) successfully attracts and converts customers.

If your copy presents your products in an interesting way with the customers’ needs first in your mind, you will make more money online, too.

Image credit: healingdream