Online Words That Sell – Part One – Chris Cardell
There is a famous marketing saying that goes, “Copy is Salesmanship in print”which means you can’t always be in front of the customer personally, so your writing has to do the selling for you. It never ceases to amaze me that so many Entrepreneurs are happy to spend a lot of money on designing a pretty website, but when it comes to communicating with the customer, it all falls apart.Good copy is not hard to write. But it can make the difference between a sale and a customer walking away forever. There are so many skills required to run a successful business, but one of the most important is being able to sell with words.
If you absolutely hate writing or would rather pay someone to do it, that’s fine, but you’ve still got to make sure they cover the 10 elements of Copywriting that Sells.Here are the first five:
1) Who is your customer? Many Entrepreneurs cannot tell you in one sentence who their typical customer is. It’s impossible to write good copy if you don’t know everything about your customer and can speak their language. You wouldn’t speak to a mechanic the same way you speak to a Beauty therapist. You want to sound genuine and authentic. The best way to do this is to know your customer – their needs, worries, fears and concerns. You can use surveys and polls to get this information.
2) Find the Ouch Point. Every customer has an ‘ouch point’. This is the big problem that they want to solve. It could be monetary, physical, emotional etc. Once you find the problem, provide a solution and make that a theme running through your copy.
3) Write a Powerful Headline. This is the most important part of your copy. You need to grab the readers’ attention before they click away. Be bold make sure they know you are speaking to them. Now is not the time to be vague or abstract. Don’t forget to use your keywords in your title and through your copy. Top copywriters often write hundreds of versions of a headline until they get the right one.
4) Tell your Story. People buy from people they know, like and trust. Let your personality and character shine through. If you have an interesting story about how you got to where you are, TELL IT. Customers want to know that you are real, flesh and blood with imperfections just like them. It breaks down barriers, which drives sales. And don’t make the mistake of thinking that because you sell something straightforward, you can’t be a personality in your business. In the current economy,you have no choice. You MUST stand out from the crowd.
5) Use the word ‘YOU.’ This is a great test of the effectiveness of your copy. By using the word ‘You’ throughout your website and emails, it forces you to have a conversation with the customer and it ensures that your words are about them, not you. The biggest mistake on websites is copy that is all about the company that owns the website – and ignores the needs of the customer