Every copywriter sooner or later gets a brief to write competent sales copy about a service, a product, or a company as a whole. And it usually happens sooner rather than later, since this type of content is quite popular these days. And such articles have just one job – to sell!
Not to inform, not to advertise, but to trigger an irresistible urge to call, place an order, click the "add to cart" button, and, without fail, "buy". And how many future sales you make depends on how seriously you approach preparing for and carrying out this task.
What do I mean by "preparation"? First of all, forget that you're a copywriter/journalist/PhD in philology with a mountain of publications, and become an internet marketer for a while, plus a bit of a psychologist. There's no other way! Knowing the basics of syntax and punctuation is unlikely to help you sell snow to Eskimos. But you'll have to. And sell it so well that they not only buy it, but bring their friends along too.
To do the job well, you first need to master the principles of selling online, get familiar with the needs and interests of your target audience, and immerse yourself in the real competitive advantages of the product on offer. Imagine that you are the buyer. Think about what would make you say: "Wrap it up! I'll take it!" Believe in the uniqueness of the product you're advertising. Only this way will you manage to turn the task of "making someone buy" into the result of "making a competent offer". After all, who likes being pushed into something, even if it's something they genuinely need? It's much more pleasant to feel that you're choosing the product yourself.
The key here is to stay ahead of the game. This is where your newly acquired psychologist's skills come in handy. When working on a piece of sales copy, you need to anticipate all the internal objections, distrust, and doubts a potential buyer might have about the purchase, and pick the right tools to neutralise them. Keep an open, trusting dialogue with the customer, and never, under any circumstances, doubt the buyer's intelligence. Gone are the days when the resourceful Lyonya Golubkov preached from TV screens about a new fur coat for his wife, and people lined up for the coveted shares. No veiled hints or phantom promises! The text should be simple, clear and to the point. In this format hardly anyone will appreciate your skill at building elaborate participial clauses a paragraph long. So don't write a two-volume scholarly treatise on how functional the new "Moulinex" meat grinder is. Your text is aimed at housewives who have laundry, cleaning, ironing, kids to pick up from school, and a hungry husband coming home from work – and you're making them spend an hour hunting for familiar words and telling them things they already know better than you do.
Writing promotional sales copy is a purely creative process. There simply can't be any strict framework or absolute algorithm for building the text – rather a set of recommended guidelines, following which will help you create quality sales content.
Let's talk about the 10 main universal rules for writing an effective piece of sales copy. To do this, you'll need to:
- Grab attention. By any means imaginable and unimaginable. Distract the reader from their endless search for the information they need and rivet their attention to your article. The simplest solution is an intriguing headline. If, in your opinion, that's not enough, bring out the heavy artillery – "juicy" images or infographics. This approach is especially relevant for one-page sites.
- Diagnose the problem. If you did your homework diligently and prepared before starting to write the article, then identifying the target audience's main pain points won't be difficult for you. Describe the existing problem your product is meant to solve vividly, as if it were your own. Show understanding, give examples from personal experience. This psychological trick is fairly well-worn, but effective and reliable, like a guard dog. The main thing is to build a sense of trust with the potential customer, since you've faced the very same unpleasant situation.
- Point to the solution. Everything's obvious here. Only after the customer orders/uses/applies/consumes your unique product will the scars fade, the mother-in-law move out, the money flow like a river, and the holidays come three times a year – and not just anywhere, but to the Maldives.
- Prove effectiveness with positive reviews. Don't skimp on testimonials. Now's the time to switch from the "salt in the wound" trick to the "honey for the heart" tactic. Treat the reader to happy stories of the product being used successfully. For extra reassurance, you can "finish them off" with statistics, quoting an impressive number of "people who've already used it".
- Highlight the benefits. Besides the undeniable merits of the product being advertised, every customer wants to know what benefit this purchase will bring them. Because it's not enough to buy black patent-leather shoes just so you don't have to go barefoot. You also need "every guy around to freeze in place, and the weaker ones to just collapse, collapse, collapse, and stack themselves up in neat piles!"
- State the offer. Now you can boldly untie your sack of gifts and pull out, one by one, "affordable prices", "favourable terms", "free delivery", "bonus gifts", and "no upfront payment". This is the main part that everything was building up to. After the reader has had a chance to feel a bit down about their troubles and happy about someone else's success, it's the perfect time to inspire them with the chance to invest in solving their own pressing problems – on such favourable terms, and almost for free… if only I had it so good!
- Emphasise the negative consequences of turning down the proposed solution. This is just in case. If it turns out the potential customer is hard to inspire, you can, armed with a calculator, tell them a scary story about the percentage of money/health/customers they stand to lose by turning down such a generous offer.
- Back it up with guarantees. Nobody likes taking risks, especially when it also means paying serious money for it. What if they don't like it/it doesn't fit/it doesn't help? If you want to sell, take the risk on yourself! The customer needs to understand that they can always "back out" and get their "hard-earned money" back.
- Prompt to action. In this part – use plenty of imperative verbs, ideally combined with some kind of limitation (the promotion period, the quantity of stock, etc.). This simple trick minimises the time spent thinking it over and effectively fights off any remaining doubts.
- Just dial the number and order right now! The first 50 callers get a 30% discount!
- Last day of the promotion! Buy 2 for the price of 1 today and get another half as a free gift!
- Become the happy owner of this miracle gadget today! Promotional stock is limited!
- Issue one last final warning. This is the last chance to get across to the reader the point of your whole piece and explain in plain terms that burying your head in the sand isn't the answer, that problems need to be solved, that the money won't earn itself/the cellulite won't disappear/the mother-in-law won't move out on its own. Of course, you can leave everything as it is – it's simpler, more familiar, more comfortable (except for the mother-in-law) – or you can pick up the phone, place the order/call/buy/apply it – and everyone will be happy.
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