Does Your Copywriting Trigger What Makes Your Visitors Buy?

You study your website stats and see the amount of traffic coming through. Nice numbers. But when you compare your traffic against your sales, what do you get? A small fraction of 1%? Wouldn't you love to see those conversions grow? But how can you get them to buy?

The secret isn't some magic trick or tool. But your Internet marketing is just shooting into the dark if you don't know the needs that lead people to buy and how to focus your copywriting to tap those needs.

Two main needs drive all people no matter what the demographic: 1) a desire to expand their world and become more than what they are, and 2) a desire for safety. These needs conflict: the desire to grow leads us to head out into the unknown; self-protection leads us to circle the wagons and dig in against unknown dangers.

Each person strikes their own balance between these two contradictory needs. Understanding the way that different personality types balance these needs is the key to effective copywriting for them.

Methodical Personality Type

The methodical personality type balances strongly toward safety. They need facts, lots of details, to assure themselves that they are making the safest, most logical choice. Make no mistake, methodical personality types decide to buy based on their emotions like everyone else, but they feel a need to back up their desire to buy with sound intellectual arguments.

To get them to buy, your copywriting needs to help them narrow their choices. Avoid giving them too many options. They easily get lost trying to find the best option among a series of equals.

One option to offer, though, is between your plain product at a cheaper price or a more expensive price with lots of additional features. Methodical thinkers are much more likely to choose the more expensive version because it reinforces their image of being a wise shopper. And it changes their decision from deciding between buying or not buying into deciding between buying a more valuable deal or a less expensive offer. But either way, their decision gives you a sale.

Give them solid reasons to buy and buy now. Lead them through your sales process in an easy and non-threatening way. Give them the details they need to make themselves feel that they made a rational decision. They want their purchases to be well-reasoned and risk-free, and want to see themselves as smart shoppers.

Competitive Personality Type

The competitive personality type is less averse to risk, but still needs to feel that their purchase reaffirms the way they see themselves. They, too, consider facts in making their purchase, but rely more on gut feelings of how well the purchase puts them ahead of where they were.

The key to copywriting for this personality type is to recognize their need to see the way they define themselves reflected in what they buy. Recognize what types of self-images your product reflects and sprinkle your sales copy with words and phrases that help your competitive types see your product reinforce their self-image.

Cast a wide enough net in fitting your product's image to theirs, but don't try to cover every possible self image or you'll get too generic to appeal to any of them.

Gregarious Personality Type

The gregarious personality type seeks to feel connected to those around them. They are more willing to trust, more willing to venture into the unknown, but are hesitant to assume the full risk until others have proven that the path is safe. They respond especially well to copywriting that shows how your product has benefited others.

Catch their attention by talking about positive results that others have experienced. Testimonials of satisfied customers or pictures that show happy people enjoying your product also are important. Make sure your copywriting provides them with evidence that others have found your product worthwhile. They'll feel more comfortable taking their own risk with it.

Spontaneous Personality Type

The spontaneous personality type is the most open to exploration. They are the trend-setters, the early adopters, who blaze the trail for everyone else. They will take risks. But not unless you offer to fill the chief need for something better, something that will let them to grow beyond what they are.

Surprise them. Intrigue them with the unexpected and they'll make that leap of faith with you. Present them with the boring old status quo approach and they'll move on to something more intriguing.

Understanding what drives these four different types of customers is essential to copywriting effectively for them. In copywriting, as in clothing, one size most definitely does not fit all.

2 “Must Know” Copywriting Secrets that Guarantee Success!

Copywriters often disagree on whether a short sales piece with lots of white space is better or whether long and detailed is the way to go.  The long and short of the debate is this… what type of buyer are you targeting?

There are basically 2 kinds of buyers.

1. The Impulsive Buyer
This is the kind of guy with “places to go and people to see” and not a whole lot of time to do it in.  Typically, he’ll skim the headlines and subtopics, glance at the photos and captions, and make a snap decision.

2. The Analytical Buyer
This group of buyers believes that the proof is in the details.  They’ll read everything… including the fine print.

It stands to reason that successful copy will address the needs of both buyers…  regardless of length.  Let’s look at what you need to do to reach both buyers.

How to reach….

The Impulsive Buyer

1. Use attention getting headlines and sub headlines.
2. Capitalize of graphics that enhance your message…
Photos
Captions
Varying fonts and font sizes
Shading
Use Bold Headlines
Highlight with shaded areas or bullets


The Analytic Buyer

1. Use the headlines, sub headlines, and graphics for the impulsive buyer as guides.  Add the detailed information the analytic buyer needs under the proper heading, and you’ve got a winning marketing piece that is guaranteed to be successful

Inside knowledge of how your potential buyers react is the key to getting their attention… and extra income.  The fact that the needs of the impulsive buyer and the analytical buyer overlaps is a bonus for you, the copywriter!

10 Things You Should Expect From Your Website Copywriter

As websites and electronic commerce are becoming more and more common, business owners and marketing managers are realising that quality web copy is every bit as important as impressive design. And with the ever increasing importance of search engine presence, the role of web copy has never been more critical.

But in such a relatively new field, customers are still coming to grips with what they can expect of their website copywriter. The question a lot of people are asking is, “How do I know I’ll get what I pay for?”

Before engaging a website copywriter for your next project, ask them whether they’re able to provide you with the following ten essentials…

1) Fixed Quote

A lot of website copywriters will tell you they only work on an hourly rate. They’ll cite varying requirements, rapidly changing technologies, greater incentive, the risk of customer indecision, and a host of other reasons why they can’t provide a fixed quote. But don’t be fooled. You have a right to know what the job is going to cost you. If a website copywriter won’t give you a fixed quote, think twice…

2) Contract of Works to be Completed

Just as important as a fixed quote is a signed contract. It may not be drawn up by a lawyer, but a written and signed document outlining the works to be carried out, and the cost of those works is essential. If a website copywriter is reluctant to provide a written, itemised quote including estimated number of words, you have to ask yourself why.

3) Timeframe

Always ask how long your job is going to take. If you’ve already had a go at writing your own web copy, you’ll know how time consuming it is. Never make the mistake of thinking the job will be done in a day. Granted, a professional website copywriter will be very efficient in crafting your copy, but no matter who the writer, a quality product requires time. And on top of writing time, remember that you’ll have to review and provide feedback on everything they write. In a lot of cases, it’s the review phase that takes the most time, so make sure you try to set some time aside, otherwise you’ll find yourself the bottleneck!

4) Plan of Attack

Try to get some idea from your website copywriter about how they plan to approach your project. Don’t be fooled into believing you have to hand over the dollars before they’ll reveal their plan of attack. You have a right to be comfortable with their approach before you engage their services. Will you receive individual drafts of every page, or a single draft of the entire site? What format will you receive the finished product in? How many review iterations do they anticipate?

5) Samples

A lot of ambitious web service providers of all types are calling themselves writers these days. They offer copywriting as a specialist service, but don’t engage a specialist to complete the work. Always ask to see samples of their previous copy. Read it thoroughly and ask yourself, “Does this copy convey benefits?”. Pretend you’re the intended audience and ask “Does this copy answer the questions I need answered before I’ll buy?”

6) CV

Most copywriters’ websites will give you a very high-level overview of their business and the services they offer. Some even offer samples. But very few offer a professional biography of their writers. If you’re not happy relying on their website as your sole source of information, ask for a copy of their CV. The things you’re looking for are a professional history in writing, and preferably some tertiary education in the same.

7) Testimonials

Perhaps the best indication of a website copywriter’s ability is customer satisfaction. Don’t be afraid of asking for customer testimonials. A good website copywriter will be proud of their testimonials – so proud, in fact, that they’ll be offering them without you even asking. Look for testimonials from companies you recognise and/or can verify. Anyone can get their great-aunt write them a testimonial. Some will even write their own. If you really want to be sure, ask for contact details so you can give the customer a call and hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.

8) SEO Copy Skills

Approximately 80% of all web traffic comes through search engines, so it’s essential that your website copywriter has proven experience in SEO copy. Ask them their general approach to SEO copy. Do they normally perform the keyword analysis themselves? How do they know when they’ve used enough keywords in enough of the right places? Can they show you a high ranking site they’ve written the copy for? What steps do they take to avoid diluting the effectiveness of your primary keyword phrases? Will their SEO copy change the text links on your pages? (It should!)

9) SEO Copy at No Extra Charge!

Never be fooled into paying more for SEO copy. If you’ve already performed your keyword analysis, and you know where you want your keyword phrases used, writing of the copy should take no longer than usual. I’ll say it again… SEO copy is not an extra – it’s how web copy should be written! Do not pay extra for it! The only things you should expect to pay extra for are keyword analyses, adding the HTML code for unmarked text links, providing guidance on site structure, sourcing of inbound links to your site, etc. SEO copy by itself should cost no extra.

10) Writing Experience for Online Media

Writing for an online medium is entirely different to writing for print. Readers have different requirements and objectives, and reading conditions are very different. Make sure your website copywriter knows how to cater to these differences. Ask them to recommend a maximum page length or word count per page. The correct answer should include some comment on the trade-off between the problems of scrolling and the need for a high keyword count for SEO. Ask them whether they prefer long sentences or short (and hope to hear “short”). Ask them whether they will include lots of text links within the main body of the copy, and if so, will they appear as regular links (colored and underlined) or will they be unmarked.

Professionally written copy can mean the difference between a great looking site and a great looking site THAT EARNS YOU MONEY.

Choose your website copywriter carefully.

Copywriting as a Job

Within this article today we will look at what copywriting as a job has to offer.



Copywriting does have a great deal more flexibility than many jobs.  You do not need to worry about keeping set hours usually because the focus is upon you writing good copy.  This could allow you to live a full life in some ways because you can plan some events around the fact that you can make up more time in hours on certain days if something comes up.  This is something that many jobs such as banks or restaurants are not able to do.

Copywriting as a job also offers a great workplace environment.  Many copywriters work within an advertising agency, which can be a great place to work.  You often have many other creative people and there you can bounce ideas off of one another and these people often have high energy which you can feed off of.  This can be a great group of people to work with because you will often find that you are challenged due to the intelligence and creativity of this group of people.

There are many different sizes of advertising agencies see you could decide to work for a smaller advertising agency if you like a close-knit group of people or you could work for a larger advertising agency if you want more competition.  This could be structured according to how your mindset and makeup are.  There is a great deal of flexibility within your workplace environment as demonstrated here.

Writing good copy can be very challenging so you will find that this job will never grow boring.  If you work at an advertising agency, you often will have many different types of clients so the work that you do every day can change.  This is good because you'll get a great variety of different things they would never get bored.

Copywriting as a job offers great benefits to you no matter how you look at it.  You are able to make very good money, considering that the average wage is right around $60,000.  If you are able to establish yourself as a master copywriter, you can obviously earn a great deal more money than the average salary.  The workplace environment often will be crackling with creative energy and the flexibility that you will have from the job is more than most other jobs can offer.

How To Get More People To Trust What You Say

One of the biggest challenges you need to overcome in order to create more sales in your business is getting people to trust what you say.  Now you may very well have a great deal of integrity and be very trustworthy when it comes to your business (and I'm sure you are).  But do your customers know that?  And how can you make sure that they do?

'Lack of trust' is a big problem in advertising.  You probably don't realise how many customers DON'T believe what you say or claim in your advertising.  In fact, the best rule of thumb to go by is that NO ONE BELIEVES YOU.  We often see on TV current affairs shows, people who get ripped off by businesses.  And it might only be 1 in 1000 businesses in that particular industry, but of course, it's that one that will always get the headlines.

Then the general public sees this and makes a broad judgment on that industry to protect themselves, and then they become wary of every business. So it's not enough to just tell people that you have this fantastic, well-respected

reputation... and so, therefore, you're the company to choose. It just doesn't work that way anymore, you need to go much further these days.  Here are two powerful tips that will have more people trusting what you say.

1. People believe more of what other people say about you...
than what YOU say about you.

If you were to tell me that you are the best basketball player in your state, that you score more than everyone else and hand out more assists, I would have a fair bit of scepticism as I haven't heard anything about you.  But if 10 people came up to me and say stuff like, "Have you seen this guy?  He scored 40 points last week!  He was simply amazing.  Plus he handed out 12 assists, he was on fire!"  then you can see that makes it more readily believable right away.  So go to your customers and ask them for their opinion of you.  Get them to write down the wonderful experience they had dealing with you, then you can use it to show others why they should do business with you!

There is however, good and bad ways of writing a testimonial, so I'm going to tell you the best system to use.  It goes something like this - 'once I was lost, now I'm found'.  For example, if you're promoting a weight loss program, tell people how your customer 'once weighed 180kg, and just by eating this amazing fruit bar, I lost 80kg in 2 months!'  That's just an exaggeration of course, but just to illustrate the point.  Plus, you should always include the full name and suburb, and if possible a phone number.  The more information you provide the more realistic it is, and therefore more believable for your customer!

2.  Simply guarantee what you do.

You are required by law to guarantee your product or service.  If something doesn't work, or breaks, or goes wrong, 99.9!  A guarantee takes the risk off the customer and puts it on you, and if your customer knows you're prepared to take the risk then they'll feel more comfortable doing business with you.

The reason most business owners will keep their guarantee hidden is that they are worried about their customers taking advantage of them.  Let's say you're getting a very low return rate now like 1, and by offering a guarantee it goes up to 6%.  So your returns go up by 3 times, but by doing so you also triple your SALES, doesn't it then make financial sense to offer that guarantee up front?

How To Get More People To Respect Your Value

Doesn't it suck when people don't respect the price you charge?  When they always want a special deal?  Well guess what?  It's probably YOUR fault!  When people ring around for quotes on price, and it happens a lot with Yellow Pages directory ads, they'll ring 2-3 businesses usually.  That's what everyone has been 'trained to do as consumers, and it's the ads that force them to.  How?  All the ads look the same!

Just think about when you need a service, say your lawns mowed.  So you open the yellow pages and look up lawn-mowing, and there are dozens of ads with people wanting to mow your lawn.  So who do you choose? Whoever is cheapest, right?  And why?  Because all the ads look the same, so there isn't anything that makes one business different from the next.  And if that's the case, the only difference comes down to the price!

It makes sense really, because if all the ads look the same then PRICE can be the only difference between them, right?  So if the ads for each industry are virtually all saying the same thing, can you understand that you're educating your market to base your value on price?  Then what you need to do is create a unique selling proposition that will make you STAND OUT from your competition.

Now let me explain what a unique selling proposition is and how you can get one for your business.  Every day we are subjected to about 4,000 to 5,000 advertising messages, so we all need to do work a bit harder to stand out from the crowd, and that's what the USP will do for you.  It's that CORE reason that someone should buy from you.  And here's a great tool for finding your USP in half an hour.

Grab a piece of paper, and draw a straight line down the middle.  On the top of the left-hand column I want you to write "You know how...."  And here is where you write down all the things that your competitors do badly.  Now we are just building a list, so don't be critical of what you're writing, or how you write it.

At the top of the right-hand column write "Well what we do is..."  And here you write down all the things that you do that are great, basically laying out ALL your cards.  Once you've done this, you should have a list of what your competitors do and all the things you offer which are different from them, and this is what you base your Unique Selling Proposition around.

And if you haven't come up with anything from this exercise, then you need to create something to be different!  Once you have a USP, then turn it into a statement everywhere your advertising goes, as a reason why someone should do business with you over anyone else!

Another great way to make sure your customer is happy to pay extra for your business is what's called 'dollars for cents' copy.  We all love a bargain, right?  What this means is to throw in so much value it's not funny.  Say for example you have a $99 product for sale, and you throw in $300 worth of free bonuses, you'll make sure the customer comes out way in front in terms of value.  So they are paying you just 'cents', but getting 'dollars' back in value.

The key with this method is to make sure the bonuses you throw in are low cost to you, but high perceived value to your customer.  You could offer a free report, cd or dvd, any type of information products like this are quite inexpensive to produce, yet the information contained within could be very valuable to your customers.  This makes the buying decision so much easier when your customer is getting much more value than what they are paying for.  This is one technique you should always strive to use, and it can literally set your sales soaring!

How To Get More People To Read Your Ad Til The End

Obviously, if you're paying to advertise your business, you want people to read your whole ad, so they know what you're offering and can make an informed decision about whether to do business with you, don't you?

  Here's a few ideas you can use in your advertising to keep your reader interested:-  conversational short sentences, subheadings, break up long text into short paragraphs, using bullets to speed the reader through your copy, problem-solving copy the reader identifies with, talking in "What's in it for me?" terms, educational copy, and not revealing price til the end.

Firstly, you need to be aware of the WIIFM (what's in it for me) concept.  What that means is you need to constantly tell your customer what's in your ad for them, because if they're reading your ad it's only to find out something that they want to know about.  YOUR ADS NEED TO BE THE ONES THAT REWARD THEM (while your competitors' BORE them).  This also means you should understand the difference between benefits and features.

Let's say you sell a colour TV with a 90" screen - that's the feature.  But the benefit of this is that the screen is so big that it makes your lounge room feel like a cinema!  That's the benefit, ok?  Let me now introduce you to two powerful words which will automatically suck out the benefit of any feature;

"WHICH MEANS"

In the example above, in order to put it into WIIFM terms, you could put it together like this -  "This sensational TV has a whopping 90" screen, which means you can virtually turn your lounge room into a cinema!".

Another powerful tool you can use in your copy is bullets.  Why?  Because you can package up your most exciting and riveting benefits into short little bursts.  In fact, the effect of bullet after bullet of really amazing benefits can actually cause nervous tension in your reader.  They can get so excited that they literally can't read any more and go straight to the ordering details.  That's how powerful they are!

Here are some examples of how intriguing bullets can be in your advertising (then you can just adapt them to your own business)

* Why the advertising you're probably running right now is wasting you thousands of dollars, and what you need to do to turn that loss into cash

* How to get movie and TV stars to help you sell your product or service

* How to get hundreds of prospects to seek YOU out

* The one mistake 99% of businesses make which loses them tons of credibility... and thousands of dollars in sales