Copywriting for the web

So what is ‘copy’?

Simply put, it is salesmanship in print! Think about it, for any organisation, be it a business selling goods or services at a profit, or a charity looking for donations, or even a school trying to get volunteers to help out at the annual fête, selling is a key part of the process.

Surely selling is getting someone to buy something?

It is, but it does not have to be related to goods and services, charitable donations or even getting someone to volunteer their time to a good cause. Selling can be applied to just about anything in life. Selling is the process whereby one party, lets call them A, seeks to persuade another party, B, to do something that, if left to their own devices, party B would not have done.

This may be simplistic, but when you boil it down to its pure essence this is all selling is: the art of persuading someone else to do something and it’s such a powerful and valuable life skill. If you can master this skill then it will help you in so many ways throughout your life, both in the work and home environment.

What’s the ‘optimum’ way to persuade someone to do something?

This is a perfect way to approach the ‘challenge’ of creating effective sales copy…

If your objective was really important, and you simply had to persuade someone to do something, you would almost certainly seek a personal meeting. At this face to face meeting you would do everything possible to persuade the other party round to your way of thinking, and seek to have them agree to do whatever it was you wanted them to do, wouldn’t you? And can you think of any better way of achieving your desired outcome than through a face to face meeting?

Have you ever noticed some people are much more persuasive than others?
If you could find someone who wanted the same outcome as you, someone who is an absolute genius at getting other people to understand, and to desire the same outcome, wouldn’t you want them to help you? To either tell you how to do it, or better still come with you and help persuade the other party round to your way of thinking?

OK, now you are on a mission to get someone else to do something but it is simply not possible to do it in a face to face meeting, and that other ‘genius’ is not available to come with you, what are the options…

Well this should be the start point to writing your sales copy, this is the situation:

• You cannot do it face to face, so you have to use the written word, (copy)
                                                   and
• Your ‘genius’ cannot help you, so you have to do it yourself.

What is the next best thing you can have to help you maximise your chances of success?

WRITE EFFECTIVE SALES COPY TO MAXIMISE THE PROBABILITY THAT YOUR READER WILL DO WHAT YOU WANT THEM TO DO…

There are a few relatively straight forward steps you need to follow in order to ‘construct’ your sales copy:

• Be clear in your own mind about who you are writing to
• What key benefits are you going to offer your target audience?
• Why should your target audience do business with you?
• What is the major problem your product or service solves?
• Why would they not do what you are going to ask them to do?
• Reverse the risk ~ this is absolutely critical
• What’s the deal? What is it that your audience will get if they respond?
• Catch their attention and draw them in to look more closely…
• Once they start, you have to keep your audience reading right the way to the end
• Awareness, Interest, Credibility, Desire And Finally Action (AICDA)
• Make it easy… WAYMISH
• Test and measure, and keep testing and measuring

Now whilst the guidelines above have been written with the specific objective of helping you to make sure you get the most our of your website, the general advice that follows can be applied to just about any items of ‘sales’ material you write. You can follow these  for almost any scenario where you are seeking to persuade the recipient to actually ‘act’ in some way as a result of having read the content.

Workshops are run on rotation every Wednesday at 4pm

To find out more or to reserve your place on the next Website Copywriting Workshop click here and one of our team will contact you, or call 01865 920 003 now.