Remember this guy?

Our old English teachers may have taught us a lot at school, but for many the ghost of English lessons past has curbed their ability to write compelling and powerful copy.

Why?

Usually it’s because as soon as their writing starts to flow, a little voice mutters in their heads. It’s the voice of their old English teacher – “No slang! No sentence fragments! No Contractions! No colloquialisms!”

Well I’ve got news for you Mr English Teacher, these are all perfectly acceptable in the copywriting world.

Here are a few examples to illustrate:

Sentence fragments

Apparently all proper sentences should have a subject-verb-object construction. But in my opinion,  if they communicate complete thoughts, they are a perfectly acceptable tool for a writer.

“Get your copy of About the Home today. Full of tips and secrets. Why miss out? Buy yours today.”

Contractions and slang

Why can’t I use contractions? It’s perfectly acceptable in my book. As for slang – why not? If it helps communicate a particular message to your audience, go for it. Obviously, over doing it isn’t a great idea, but if you are writing to a particular market that readily uses slang, incorporating it within your copy will help you build rapport.

And…But

If you thought you couldn’t start a sentence with the conjunctions “and” or “but” – hogwash!!

I was interested to read in Fowler’s Modern English Usage that this particular prohibition had been ‘cheerfully ignored by standard authors from Anglo Saxon times onwards’ (Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Third Edition, p.52). Even Shakespeare used it in King John.

If it’s good enough for Shakespeare, it’s good enough for me.

Talking of Shakespeare, he also paved the way for splitting the infinitive:

Root pity in thy heart, that when it grows

Thu pity may deserve to pitied be

(Sonnet 142)

And of course, another famous example will be known by all the Trekkies out there:

To boldly go where no man has gone before

(Sounds a lot better than “To go boldly where no man has gone before”)

Ending a sentence with a preposition

If you still believe this, you don’t have a leg to stand on. If you did, you’d have to write “I you still believe this, you don’t have a leg on which to stand” – I prefer my version!

It is perfectly OK to end on a preposition provided it’s not redundant – so you can ask “Where are you going?” but not “Where are you going to?”

At the end of the day, if your aim is to write great copy that will get your readers’ attention and sells products – write conversationally. This will immediately build rapport with your audience, gain their trust and their cash.

One last thing, ditch your Thesaurus – over use could mean leaving behind good, clear English in favour of gratuitously overblown hyperbole.

Simple is the copywriter’s friend.

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Every freelance copywriter will know that every new project brings with it a whole new set of challenges.

Which is why it is vital that, before you start anything, you clearly understand the goals of your project. If you know where you need to end up, it will be a lot easier to get there.

One of the first questions you should ask your client is what is the purpose of the project?

For example, if you are writing a sales letter it is important to remember that what you are writing is going to replace a personal visit or face to face conversation.

Whereas face to face a salesman can make eye contact, gain clues from the customer’s body language and counter objections as they arise, your letter can’t do that so the copy within it has to satisfy any potential objections, engage with the reader, and convince them to buy. A salesman can run after a customer who’s about to walk and have another go – your sales letter can’t, so you have to get it right first time.

Therefore setting out your goals before you begin is vital. They could be anything, including:

• Making a sale
• Getting opt-ins for your email list
• Getting someone to open an account with you
• Increase a customer’s spending with you
• Renewing a contract
• Agreeing to a meeting

Whatever it is, make sure it is the goal that drives your writing and not your creativity.

Copywriters, like all writers, are creatives at heart so it can be very easy to allow your alter ego get the better of you.

How do you know if you’ve gone over the top? Simple, if you read it and it makes you smile; if you want to show it to everyone with a big grin on your face shouting from the roof tops ‘look how clever I am’, ditch it because you’ve most probably over done it.

Copy is there to sell – pure and simple. The writing should be almost invisible. I don’t mean so they are looking at a blank page but rather that when they’ve read it they think “Wow, what a great product I must buy it” rather than “that’s a great bit of writing, now where’s the bin.”

Staying focused is the key – never lose sight of your goals.

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What do the Spice Girls and copywriting have on common? Not an awful lot other than the girls know how to:

“Tell ‘em what they want, what they really, really want.”

Where as most of the sales writing produced doesn’t.

If you’ve tried to save money and produce your own marketing copy I can guess what it looks like. Let’s go through the process you probably followed. You’ve been involved with your product or service since day one. You therefore think it is the best thing since that fantastic Space Dust stuff that crackled on your tongue (I loved that as a kid, didn’t you?). It was you that smoothed out the wrinkles and tweaked until it emerged as a finished article. You are so close to it, your writing was all about its amazing features and what it does.

Am I right, or am I right?

Thought so. In a way you are right, your readers will (at some point) want to know about its features. But their primary concern is what it will do for them. And that’s where a freelance copywriter comes in.

A copywriter understands that to create great copy that sells, you have to understand what your reader wants to know. To give you a clue, it’s not about your company, your car, your staff or a list of features. They want to know what benefit they’ll get – what’s it going to do for them? Why should they spend their hard earned cash on your product?

As an example let’s take a pair of rugby boots, mainly because I seem to be buying them regularly for my rugby mad son. When we’re looking at boots, if there’s a pair that states:

• These boost are made from leather
• Their studs are tipped with titanium
• They are available in a range of colours

I can guarantee my son will wander off. But if the sales copy announced that by buying these rugby boots their game would improve dramatically and they would help him kick like Jonny Wilkinson, he’d be at that till faster that Usain Bolt.

Why? Because in his mind the those points are all benefits. He wants to improve his game and he wants to play like his hero, Jonny Wilkinson.

So remember, when producing sales copy forget about what you want to write about and concentrate on what your reader’s will want to hear. Just one word of warning – whatever claims you make, please ensure they are genuine and you can follow through with  them.

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Let’s get one thing straight from the start – a copywriter writes to sell.

Pure and simple.

Of course, their sale writing also has to be interesting enough to make someone want to read it in the first place.

That’s all well and good, but how can you ensure your reader will actually buy your product when they land on your website?

Well, there are no guarantees – everyone is different and their motivations for buying are different therefore no one can guarantee sales.

But what you can do to maximise your chances is to put yourself in your readers’ shoes. Imagine yourself browsing the web. You come across a web page. It looks quite attractive, it has some good images, the copywriting is persuasive but your not completely sold on  the fact that the product is for you.

What do you do next?

I’m guessing you go back to your search results and take a look at another site. Would you return to the first site you landed on? Probably not.

Therefore if your reader navigates away from your website it is highly unlikely they’ll come back. So to get your visitors to buy as soon as they land on your website you must create a sense of urgency to make them buy rather than wandering off to browse other sites.

How you can create a sense of urgency

One of the easiest ways of creating a sense of urgency is by including a time limited offer.

No one likes to think they are missing out on something whether it is a discount, free bonus, stock availability or even getting in quick before the price goes up.

If you hear there is a time limited offer on an item you instantly start to think that it’s going to sell out very fast – so it must be really popular – so it is the thing to have – the thing all my friends will have – I SIMPLY MUST HAVE IT NOW!

Below are a few illustrations of time limited offers:

• Get your order in now before August 11th’s price increase
• All orders before midnight on 13th July will get a 30% discount
• Place your order before October 10th and get your free bonus worth £25
• Order now while stocks last. After October 2nd we can’t guarantee availability for Christmas

Recognise some of them?

As I said earlier, there are no guarantees – just because someone lands on your website doesn’t mean they are going to buy from you. But if they are interested, the addition of a time limited offer will usually get them reaching for their wallet.

Give it a go and see what different it makes.

Sally Ormond – freelance copywriter (Briar Copywriting)

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What is the one marketing mistake I see companies making time and time again?

It’s all over their website, brochures, leaflets, email marketing – in fact every piece of marketing spiel they produce.

Give up?

They talk about themselves.

Who’s doing the buying?

I know you think the world of your company and its products and services, bit to be honest, your customers only care about what you’re going to do for them.

A few days ago a sales flyer appeared on my mat along with my post. Normally I don’t bother reading things like that, but this one was particularly colourful and had some good images on it which were quite eye-catching, so I thought ‘why not’.

After reading the first paragraph I realised ‘why not’ – the only thing I learned was that this particular window company had been in business a fair while, they had a great sales team (apparently), and that they’d won an award.

They had made one fatal mistake – they had forgotten who the flyer was going to.

It wasn’t long before I was fed up hearing about them. They were in all probability very good at what they did, but not once did they tell me how their product would benefit me. Why was their glass so much better than anyone else’s? What benefit would that bring to me?

Rather than getting a:

“Wow, what an amazing product, I must phone the company right away” reaction, they got a “so what?” reaction and their flyer was filed in the rubbish bin.

All they had to do was produce a flyer that concentrated on the customer. I want to know the benefits – will their product help save me money on my heating bills? Will it help block out noise? Does it have a lifetime guarantee? These are the things I want to know. These are the things that are important to me – the customer!

Why am I telling you this?

The moral of this short story is that no matter what form your marketing takes, your writing must be centred on the reader.

Make sure you lead with the important stuff. Information about your company can come later. Always, always think of what your customers want to know – and I can guarantee how long you’ve been in business won’t be top of their list.

Sally Ormond – freelance copywriter

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If you think of a piece of copy, the main elements that you’ll immediately think of are the headline, body copy and call to action.

These are all very important aspects of any piece of copywriting, but they aren’t the be all and end all. There are other elements that a freelance copywriter can use to get their message across to the reader.

To get your copy noticed it has to stand out from the crowd. There are so many marketing messages out there today, if yours isn’t conspicuous it will fade away into the background noise. But to help get your message noticed you can use three very useful tools:

• Subheadings
• Captions
• Call outs

Sub headings

When you were a child and chose a new book to read, if you opened the page to be faced by a solid page of text, did you put it back? I know I did. Solid text is not attractive – it looks as though it’s going to be hard going and therefore is unlikely to be read.

The same goes for your copywriting. If a reader lands on your website or picks up your brochure and immediately sees row upon row of text – they ain’t gonna read it!

The use of sub headings will make your text easier to digest. They will act as little sign posts, showing your reader what information is where so they can dip in and out at their leisure. It will also generate more ‘white space’ on your page which makes it more attractive to the eye.

Captions

Captions are the short pieces of text you’ll find that accompany a graph, photo or drawing. They serve 2 purposes:

• The identify what the illustration is
• The link the illustration to your copy

Linking it to your copy helps the reader make sense of your image. For example, if the image was of someone using your product, your caption would describe to the reader what the picture was showing. If it was a chart, it would explain its meaning – such as: 85% of people asked expressed a preference to Miracle Clean compared to the leading brand.

Callouts

Call outs help you emphasis pieces of information. They are great for when you don’t want to interrupt the flow of your text. Also, if the information is so important you’ll want to draw special attention to it.

To do this you can use: bursts, callouts and sidebars.

What’s the difference?

A burst is a colourful graphic that attracts your readers’ attention to a particular point. These can be used to show a special offer or perhaps to emphasize a special feature:

A callout is a section of text, often in a different font or colour, designed to come across as a  ‘stage whisper’. They are frequently used to give customer quotes, important information, or important reminders:

A sidebar is a box of copy which is set to the side of the main text area. hese are ideal when you need to include larger sections of text without it interrupting your main body copy. They are ideal for customer testimonials, quotes, shipping details, statistical information etc.

So as you can see, a copywriter has a number of tools available to them which can be used to create interest and hype around a product.

Using these three features will compliment your text and simplify your message. The result will be a clear sales message enhanced by eye catching features which will help convince your reader to buy.

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If you’re not a copywriter but want to write some sales copy, where do you start? Well, the best place is with your reader.

Your reader will be doing the buying so make sure their needs are placed before your own. That means forget great swathes of writing about how great your company is – your reader doesn’t care – and focus on what your reader wants.

But, there’s more to writing sales copy than creating benefits orientated copy. Even the way you structure your payment offers will have an effect on the number of sales you generate. I’m not talking about a choice of payment methods (cheque, PayPal, credit cards etc.), but whether you let them try before they buy, buy now pay later etc.

6 sales boosting payment options

You need to use as many techniques as possible to get people to buy from  you. Therefore it’s important to pay attention to details. Payment options are often overlooked because people believe that readers are already committed to buy by the time they reach your call to action.

But for many readers, your payment options could be the deciding factor. Therefore I have put  together a list of 6 suggestions that will help you boost your sales.

1. Try before you buy

This shows you are so confident in your product, you want them to get a taster before committing to buy. Give them a free sample or shortened version of your product. Make sure it offers a few benefits, but of course, they’ll need the full version reap all the benefits. Being able to use your product before buying will give them the confidence to buy the real thing.

2. They choose the price

Don’t worry, I’ve not gone mad. This technique involves listing your product and price, but also offering other products at a slightly higher price. For example, a basic software package, the enhanced version and the super-dooper version. Then your readers can choose the one that’s right for them.

3. Free trial

An old one but a good one. The main thing that prevents people from buying online is confidence. There is no human interaction with online sales and that often makes people overly cautious. By offering a free trial you are showing your confidence in your product and that confidence will rub off on them too.

4. Give them something back

Cash backs are very popular. At the point of sale, show that they can obtain a 10% cash back by returning a coupon. You’ll boost your sales and, most probably, there’ll be a number of people who don’t remember to send off the coupon.

5. Buy now pay later

The ‘buy now pay later’ offer will help you hold onto those customers who may not be able to afford your product straight away. Rather than letting them go, this offer will grab them, get them to buy now and pay for your product at a specified time.

6. Drip, drip, drip

As well as the buy now pay later option, you can enhance this further with paying in instalments. It’s an offer you frequently see used by furniture companies. For many people this type of offer is very attractive.

Of course, the method you use will be determined by your products/services on offer. Why not test one or two of the above to see what difference it makes on your sales?

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Being a great freelance copywriter isn’t all about putting your fingers to a keyboard and creating magical copy that makes everyone go “ooooo” and “arrrhhh” when they read it.

Actually that’s the last reaction you want. Your readers shouldn’t even notice your writing – it is the product or service you are writing about that you want them to focus on.

Writing “invisible” sales copy is quite an art.

Can you hear me?

Have you noticed how many sales messages you are faced with every day?

From the moment you crawl out of bed you are bombarded by messages. They are on the news, the radio, buses, TV, in emails, on the internet….I could go on forever.

Your sales message has to break through all that background noise and grab your readers attention. It has to cling to them and convince them your product is the one they’ve been waiting for. And it mustn’t let go until they’ve handed over their credit card.

What’s your creative muse?

Generating a creative flow can, at times, be like pulling teeth. Just because I’m a copywriter doesn’t mean creative ideas are constantly flowing from my finger tips – I wish!

Everyone has their own way of stimulating creativity – it can be anything from reading other websites within your clients industry to more extreme measures. Next time you’re stuck for ideas try one of these:

• take your dog for a walk
• work out at the gym or go for a run
• read a book, magazine or newspaper
• just write – nothing in particular, just anything that comes into your head. And keep writing.
• imagine yourself as the reader, think about what they want to know
• have a change of scenery and work somewhere different – try outside if you can
• brainstorm keywords and produce a mind map of your product or service to generate new and interesting ideas

Everyone has a different way of coping with creativity lulls – what’s your favourite technique?

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Can you write in such a way as to create an emotional bond with your reader?

Now there’s a question for you. You can probably guess that I am going to say “yes you can” otherwise this will be one of the shortest blog posts in history!

Building rapport with your customers is something that requires a bit of work and a lot of thought. I wasn’t born a copywriter, this was one of the many skills I have learned. It’s easy to connect with someone face to face, but when it comes to the written word things get a little trickier.

Show you care

“Hey. I’m hired to write sales copy not get emotionally involved with my readers.”

Well if that’s your attitude then perhaps copywriting isn’t the career for you. A copywriter is a sales person – they just sell through words rather than customer interaction. If your copy doesn’t sell, you’re not doing your job.

If you still don’t get it, think back to all the sales people you’ve come across over the years. Some would have been helpful and bent over backwards to help you; others would have been disinterested. I bet I know which one you bought from!

By showing you they understood your concerns they built rapport with you. You began to trust them because they could see where you were coming from. They weren’t pushy; they listened, they gave advice and they took your order when you were ready to sign on the dotted line.

Find out their concerns

Of course, before you can create sales copy that shows you understand their concerns, you have to work out what their concerns are.

Put yourself in their shoes – you don’t have the luxury of being able to ask every customer, but what you can do is research to discover the most common issues.

For example, if you are writing sales copy for a bouncy castle or soft play company you know you can tune into the concerns of parents – is the equipment safe? what tests have been done? does it come up to recognised industry standards?

It only takes three little words

The fastest way to build rapport within your copywriting is by using three small but very powerful words:

“As you know…”

For example:

Dear Mr Brown,

As you know, it takes more than a good grasp of politics to be an effective Prime Minister…

As with all aspects of sales writing, it will take practice to master this. It’s almost a conspiratorial way of writing – you are whispering to your reader, telling them that you both understand this, they are intelligent and have a good grasp of the requirements…

Flattery will get you every where – especially when you are trying to sell. Confide in them, make them believe that you understand their fears and that they know how to overcome them.

Try it out in your next sales letter – see how you get on.

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How does asking questions strengthen your copywriting?

Humans are naturally curious creatures. From an early age we learn to questions – why? If you have children you’ll know what I’m talking about!

If you were in a sales position with your customer physically in front of you, it would be easy to keep their attention. You can maintain eye contact, you could take them to a side room to chat undisturbed, you can use body language and intonation.

But what happens when you’re not in front of your customer? What happens when you have to communicate to them via a brochure, website or sales letter?

Don’t panic – it can still be done. As a freelance copywriter I use a simple technique to stimulate a ‘conversation’ with reader even though you are not physically with them.

Question time

Asking questions is the best way to get a conversation going. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to write in this style before. If not it can seem a bit contrived but bear with it because the results will be worth it.

If you ask your reader a question they will come up with an answer – because it’s human nature.

There are all sorts of questions you can ask within your copy:

• Closed – these are the ones you are likely to answer yes or no to. The best time to use these is when you are trying to close a sale because they force the decision process.
• Open – these have no fixed answer. Once asked your customer has conversation control. People love to  talk about themselves so asking this type of question can provide you with a lot of information.
• Limited – these engage people. A limited questions gives a choice e.g. do you prefer PVC or wooden doors and windows? They can be a good precursor to introducing more open question.

It can take a bit of practice writing in this ‘open’ style but it’s worth persevering.

If it helps, imagine your customer is sat in front of you while you are writing. What would you ask them to get them to reach a buying decision? Use your imagination – you might surprise yourself with the results.

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