5 Steps To Help You Write Sales Copy That Sells
The difference between success and failure online is being able to write sales copy that actually makes people want to buy your products and services.
Well-written copy can make or break your marketing efforts. While copywriting comes naturally to some people, it’s a foreign landscape to many and they don’t know how to explore it. And the few who have mastered it are usually the proverbial cream of the crop.
Well-crafted and effective sales writing doesn’t beat customers over the head, nor does it need to have bold typeface and capitalization. The message should be able to stand on its own without too much over-exaggeration and fussy design elements.
Here are 5 steps for writing sales copy that sells.
5 Steps To Write Sales Copy That Works
1. List Your Product’s Benefits
The first step of copywriting is outlining your product’s benefits. This is the groundwork for your marketing campaigns.
A benefit is the value of your products or services to your customers. It’s what your product can do for your customers or how the product can make your customers’ lives better. So, before creating your copy, start by putting in words the reasons why your product is the best in the market and better than what your competitors are offering.
The key to writing effective copy is fully understanding all the benefits of your product. This is the only way you’ll make sure that your customers know how your product can meet their needs. By exploiting your product’s benefits, you’ll be able to create copy that your audience can really relate to.
FREE Download: 5 Step Content Strategy2. Explore Your Competitors’ Weaknesses by Listing Your Product’s Features
To write compelling and persuasive copy, you must know what sets your product apart from the pack. Start by listing your competitors’ weaknesses. You can do this by comparing your product’s features against what your competitors are offering. This will help you tell your customers why buying your competitors’ products would be a huge mistake.
By conducting extensive research on your competitors, you’ll understand the products or services they offer. Then, list down the features of their products that are inferior to yours. Go all in and tear the competition apart. However, be realistic in your comparison. And make sure you can support your claims if you’re challenged.
3. Understand Your Audience
You’re not creating your ad for every single person in the world. Each ad has a specific audience that should see it, and it’s your job to find the right placement to make sure your target audience sees your ad.
To make sure your ad reaches the right people, take your time and research your audience thoroughly. In most industries, 20% of customers are responsible for 80% of sales. This 20% represents your best customers. Thus, it’s your job to determine who that 20% is.
Test your customers and create a demographic profile of your most valuable ones. Several attributes can help you create a demographic profile of your best customers. These include:
- Age
- Gender
- Ethnicity
- Family status
- Occupation
- Income
- Education level
- Interests
By knowing who your audience is, you’ll know their pain points, desires, and needs. And this will help you write sales copy that will make them want to buy from you.
4. “What’s in it for me?”
There are many reasons for creating marketing copy. However, before you start creating your copy, you need to fully understand what you want to achieve with it. This is because the copy you create for each ad or marketing piece will vary depending on your goals for each campaign.
For instance, marketing campaign goals such as generating leads, communicating a special offer, or raising awareness will influence the copy you create.
Your copy must inform your customers how your product or service will make their lives easier, make them feel better, help them save money, help them save time, etc. To achieve this, you have to build on the work you’ve done so far by listing your product’s features, benefits, and what makes it different from your competition. And you must specifically describe how your product will directly affect the lives of your target customers in a positive way.
Here, list all the answers to your target customers’ question, “What’s in it for me?” If you’re paying for ad space, don’t waste your money by placing ads with ineffective copy that doesn’t clearly tell your customers what they’re getting by buying your product or service.
5. Gather Images
Images help customers to instantly understand a situation or a benefit. They also make your copy more exciting to read. Using images makes your copy memorable. So before creating your copy, gather images that you’ll use to emphasize your product’s benefits.
Free Checklist: 5 Step Content Strategy
It’s not difficult to write sales copy for your website. If you do your prep work and research, your copy will be successful. Don’t be afraid to take risks and learn from your mistakes, but don’t waste your advertising budget either. By doing the prep work first and thoroughly completing a sales copy template, you’ll have a working document you can use to produce your copy now and in the future.
Download my free checklist, The 5 Step Content Strategy and discover the sales copy formula used by the most successful bloggers and online entrepreneurs. By spending some time upfront to create a first-rate copywriting outline, and you’ll reap the benefits later with an increase in sales, profits, and a higher ROI.
