Contrary to what many people think, copywriting is more than writing. It's about understanding how people think and behave, how to tap into their emotions, and how to convert them into customers.
Copywriting is the art and science of using the right words to inspire the right actions - words that resonate with your customers so deeply that they're ready to open their wallets and pull out their credit cards.
Copywriters know how to get inside their customers' heads, understand their emotions and desires, and communicate them in a way that gets results.
But how do you write copy that sells? In this article, I'll walk you through six crucial elements of writing persuasive website copy, email copy, or any other type of copy that sells.
How to Write Copy That Sells in 6 Steps
Yes, there's an art and science behind writing powerful sales copy.
And even though there's so much more that goes into it - from your writing flow to your call to action - there are six fundamental elements to writing copy that sells. If you implement them, you'll see your conversion rates improve almost instantly.
Let's dive deeper into each one of these elements and learn how to write copy that sells.
Step 1: Define Your Target Audience
You can't write sales copy unless you know who you're talking to.
If there's one golden rule of copywriting, it's this: if you speak to everyone, you resonate with no one.
If you speak to everyone, you resonate with no one.
Each business has its target audience it's selling to. Your product or service has been created to solve a specific problem your target audience has.
Knowing who they are will change how you talk to them and what words and phrases you use in your sales copy.
Just think about it: you won't use the same language or arguments to convince a 30-year-old mom to buy your product or service as you would a 51-year-old businessman in corporate America.
So, before you write a word of your sales copy, think about who you're talking to. Define your customer avatar - this is the ideal client you'll be writing your sales copy for from now on.
Step 2: Define Your Brand Archetype
I believe brand archetypes are something every marketer and copywriter should know about, but it's not talked about enough.
One of the first things you need to do before writing a single word of your sales copy is to define your brand archetype. This is an essential step because it will help you create a consistent tone and voice in your copywriting.
Moreover, it'll help you use the words and phrases that resonate with your target audience based on your - and their - archetype.
Brand archetypes represent your brand's personality based on the 12 human personality archetypes devised by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung.
They are crucial to understanding the emotional connection a customer has with your business, and they can be used to create content that resonates with them.
Your brand archetype is the dominant personality trait of your brand. You must understand this concept to write copy that speaks to your target audience and resonates with their needs, desires, and goals.
So, what are the 12 brand archetypes? Well, that's a topic for another blog post.
Step 3: Create a Storyline
Once you know who you're selling to and how to represent your brand's personality, the next step is creating a brand storyline.
Why? Because people love stories.
In copywriting, a storyline is how you tell your audience why they should use your product or service instead of the competition's offerings.
In his book, Building a StoryBrand, Donald Miller talks about the StoryBrand framework, which helps brands create a story to sell their product or service to their target audience. If there's anything you need to remember from this book is that your brand is not the hero - your customer is.
Your brand is not the hero of the story. Your customer is.
This is one of the most common copywriting mistakes many brands make in their sales copy - they position themselves as the hero of the story.
Meanwhile, you should place your customer as the hero and your brand as a guide helping the hero get through their struggles and achieve their goals. This is especially relevant for service-based brands, but it works just as well if you sell products.
For me, a good brand storyline is one that seamlessly takes your customer through the following stages that influence their final buying decision:
Show them their problem and emphasize with them.
Agitate their pain.
Present the solution.
Reinforce the effectiveness of the solution with a powerful success story and social proof.
Step 4: Present the Solution
More often than not, prospects who land on your website or receive your email newsletters know they have a problem, and they're looking for the right solution to help them solve it.
Presenting the solution is one of the 4 crucial steps of creating a brand storyline that leads the customer through the decision-making process.
But it's not just about introducing your offer and all its features. It's about convincing your audience that this offer is right for them - and you can do that by emphasizing with them and appealing to the emotional part of their brain.
Step 5: Lead With Benefits
The secret to converting your prospects into buyers isn't trying to win them over with a massive list of impressive features of your product or service.
In fact, your audience doesn't really care about the features - they care about what your product or service can do for them.
For example, when you buy a car with a built-in navigation system, you're not just buying the navigation system. You're buying the confidence of never getting lost again - and never having your partner scream at you while you're driving because you missed the right exit.
If you want to write copy that sells, think about what benefits your product or service delivers to your customers and what pain points it helps them solve.
Then lead with those benefits in your sales copy.
Step 6: Write Attention-Grabbing Headlines
Whether you're writing sales copy for your website, landing pages, or email campaign, it's all in the headlines.
According to many sources, 80% of readers never read past the headline. That's because people don't read. They scan.
And while your prospect is scrolling through your website and quickly scanning its content, the headlines are the first thing they'll see. And if they don't grab their attention, they won't feel motivated to read the rest of your sales copy and will likely just click away.
There's a science to writing headlines that convert. But if there's one thing I want you to remember about writing headlines from this article is to always lead with benefits.
It's Time to Write Copy That Sells!
Whether you already have an established brand or you're just getting started, learning how to write copy that sells is a vital skill to keep in your arsenal. Without good sales copy, you'll struggle to sell with ease.
As you can imagine, there's so much more to copywriting than the 6 steps I shared in this article (if there wasn't, everyone would be a great copywriter!).
But to me, these six elements are the foundation of writing copy that sells. And if you implement them well in your copy, they'll significantly impact your conversion rates. Happy writing!
*This blog post contains affiliate links. If you buy something through my link, I get a commission from the sale at no additional cost to you. You're just helping me keep the blog alive!
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