Hey, I’m a copywriter so I know exactly what my audience wants, right?

All they want is an incredible offer and they’ll be putty in my hands.

If real life was like that it would be amazing and my job would be very easy. But sadly in the real life creating copy that sells isn’t quite that easy. Sometimes there is a problem with your sales pitch—they simply don’t want to buy your product.

You can’t lead a dog of a tablet…

Well that’s a well known saying in my house anyway.

I have two dogs—one very large chocolate Labrador that’ll eat absolutely anything you give him, and a Springer Spaniel. The latter is not the most intelligent animal in the world but when it comes to identifying medicine he’s a real Einstein.

Try and put the tablet in his food bowl and he’ll eat round it; put it inside a lump of cheese and he’ll eat the cheese and spit out the tablet.

So, use your imagination here and think of the dog as a customer and the tablet as your offer (come on, hard to imagine but try), you’ll have to tailor your sales pitch to him in order to get him bite.

The only way to get him to eat is by disguising the ‘offer’ (or tablet) by grinding it up and sprinkling it on a piece of bread thickly spread with Marmite. Now when he’s offered it he eats it (and practically takes your hand off too).

The moral of this rather doggy story is research your market.

At the end of the day if you tailor your pitch to your audience you’ll end up with a loyal customer base. But don’t be upset if you don’t always manage the sale. No campaign will have a 100% success rate as there are too many other factors out there that will have an impact on your conversion rate.

If you are scratching your head trying to come up with the answer to that question, I can confirm it is not…

“Once upon a time…”

(Just in case you were wondering)

Copywriting is sales and marketing writing. It is designed to persuade the reader to buy a product or service.

But when I asked ‘how does copywriting start?’ I was thinking more about the process a copywriter goes through.

So what do you reckon?

• Copywriting begins when you start writing? Or…
• Copywriting begins when you get an assignment?

It begins from the very first phone call, email or conversation with your client. The process of copywriting begins well before a word is written.

Start from the beginning

When you win a new client, if you pick up the assignment, read it and then start writing – you’ve missed the point. In fact, you’ve not just missed it, you’ve over shot it by a mile.

Before a single word is written, the real work begins when you take time to get to know your client, their business and their products/services. If you don’t fully understand their business how can you persuade a reader they are the right company to deal with?

You need to begin by thinking about:

• What is the product or service?
• What does it do? (the main benefits for the customer)
• What makes it different from competitors?
• Why is it desirable?
• What is the company’s ethos?
• What language and voice is associated with the company?

There’s more…

Once you’ve taken time to fully understand the company and its product/service, you have to turn your attention to your customers. We all have different motivations for buying things, so a firm understanding of what makes your target audience tick is essential if your copy is to persuade them to hand over their credit cards.

You will need to consider:

• Who they are?
• What they are looking for?
• What is going to make them buy?

Why you need to know this

Too much copy out there calls itself sales copy when really all it does is generate self promotion. True, your reader will want to know who you are (mainly so they know they have landed on a website that is relevant to their search) but they are more concerned about what you are going to do for them.

Effective copywriting is about knowing and understanding your product and your customer. Once you have a clear understanding of these, you will have a wealth of ideas to draw on for your copy.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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

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.

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?

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?