Winning sales is the goal of all marketing people and it’s highly likely that you will once you understand how to create persuasive sales copy.
In this article we are going to look at what you need to know about being persuasive and how to apply that to your copy to make sales.
As usual we’ve got the take away steps for you to follow at the end of the article so that you can create your own sales copy persuasive at a professional level.
Knowing how to communicate persuasively is what will make the biggest difference when it comes to the success of your sales copy. In this article we are going to look at how to be persuasive and then how to apply that to your copy.
Elements of persuasion
Knowing what it takes to persuade people in writing is what will win you the sales that you are looking for and it will also improve your copywriting immensely. Let’s look at what you need to know and do:
– Know who your audience and target market is
– Craft your message about the reader, about what he is interested in, not about what you like or want
– Make it clear and easy to understand what benefits he will receive in exchange for doing what you recommend
– Provide supporting facts for your ‘argument’
– Stick to one idea at a time. It will keep your reader on track and you’ll deliver a more powerful message.
Who is your audience?
When it comes to marketing the first step always has to be to understand more about your target market.
It’s vital that you understand who your target market is, and what makes them tick. Without considering the answers to these questions, you’re going to find it very hard to be able to make the sales that you are looking for.
– Where do your target market live and what is their average income?
– Are they male or female?
– Where do they hang out in their spare time – both online and offline? What television programs do they watch and what are their hobbies?
– What is keeping these people awake at night? Is it their business, the safety of their family or the fact that the neighbours have an excellent looking lawn and theirs looks like a piece of scrub land? Or…..?
– What current trends are affecting them right now? Have government policies been put into place that are squeezing these people financially for example. Is there anybody who they are angry with and if so, what are they angry about?
– Has somebody been trying to rip them off in the industry or is there a huge supermarket who wants to build just down their street and it’s going to negatively impact their street parking?
– What frustrations are they met with on a daily basis? You’ll need to name three of them to get into their ‘thinking’.
– What do they secretly desire? To look good in front of their neighbours? To look better than a colleague or a competitor?
– What language do these people use?
One of the ways to get into the minds of your target market is to read the same publications that they do. You’ll be in the know when it comes to current trends and what is influencing their buying decisions.
Craft your persuasive sales copy for your reader
This is where many people go wrong. They start writing with themselves in mind. They want to convey the message about how great their company is but that is not what the readers wants to hear about. They want to see clear benefits of why they would use a company.
Let’s look at an example for a moment – supposing that your offer was a service to fix baker’s ovens. You would need to write your copy so that it empathizes with the problems that bakers suffer when their ovens are out of action.
They’d be likely to experience:
– Frustration at their oven not working and not being able to manufacture their products to sell – ie bread
– Frustration at relying on the engineer to come to fix it – will he turn up when he says that he will?
– Frustration waiting for parts – depending on the model they could take a week or more to arrive
Ideally your service would be able to offer a solution to all of these frustrations. Your engineers would arrive within the hour or they wouldn’t pay, they would also arrive with a variety of parts that you keep in stock so there’d be no more waiting for parts to arrive.
Benefits – Why he should do what you are suggesting?
The benefits need to be spelt out clearly so that the reader can imagine what life would be like if they bought your offering. ‘Spelt out clearly’ means that they need to be appear tangible to him in a way that he can relate them to his own individual circumstances and clearly see the gain.
Communicating the benefits clearly is the big hook for your consumer, it’s what will be the only reason that he is going to buy from you – so help him see the outcome of doing that. It’s what is going to put the ‘persuasive’ into your sales copy.
Provide supporting facts and evidence for your ‘argument’
Building trust and credibility is essential when it comes to selling. Without your evidence you’re going to have a pretty hard time convincing people to buy your offering.
Using numbers works particularly well and for some reason, precise and odd numbers work better. They confirm that it’s the quirky results from an actual piece of research. Or course whatever you write will need to be true and verifiable.
Most consumers buy on emotions, so your copy should be written with that in mind. However, it’s essential that you provide some statistics, photos and testimonials that will confirm to the buyer that he is in fact making the right decision when it comes to buying your offering.
Stick to one message at a time
Presenting one message that has the support of a lot of evidence is going to be way more powerful than presenting several messages. You don’t want to dilute your message or confuse the readers. Stick to one message, provide them with the benefits and the evidence and then give them a clear and direct call to action.
And keep it simple
Humans are naturally lazy. They don’t like anything complicated, they don’t want to and won’t put the work in themselves and you really do have to spell everything out for them.
Don’t expect them to start imagining how your product or service is going to help them. You need to list out the benefits for them. You also need to convey that information in a way that is easy for them to read. Your formatting should contain:
– Bullets
– Short sentences
– Short paragraphs
– Add a capital letter to the beginning of each word of your headline
– Simple explanations
– Vision friendly fonts
– Make it easy to purchase by offering telephone number, fax, email, shopping cart etc.
– Make it easy for the consumer to afford today – you could offer installments, take credit cards or even buy now, pay later options
– Use black writing on a white background
– Use language and words that can be read by a high school student
Websites that use less than graduate language actually perform better than those with complex language. At the end of the day, the average IQ is 100 – not even 130! Writing in a highbrow style is only going to be suitable if the people that you are selling to are highbrow themselves.
f you are selling to the general public, then be sure not to exclude potential buyers and prospects through the use of your language.
If what you are selling is technical and you are selling it to technical people, then they will be looking for the technical details in the language that they are accustomed to.
Your language style needs to match that of your target market.
Understanding how to persuade people and how to apply that to your copy is going to get you the sales that you’re looking for. Follow through our steps to apply it now and create your own persuasive sales copy.
Action Steps to Take to Create Persuasive Sales Copy
1. Write a list of the type of people who would be interested in your product or service. Where do they live, what is their average income, which publications do they read and where can you find them when they aren’t working. If you are selling to a business you’ll need to know about their industry.
2. You also need to know about what the concerns are of your customer and how your service or product will solve a problem for them.
3. Craft your message in conversational tone using You, You’re and Your as part of your content. Only use one message so as not to dilute it and don’t write about yourself write to your client and about him/her and the benefits to them of your offer..
4. Spell out the benefits to the reader of buying your service or product. Which headaches will they no longer have to deal with, what will they gain, what will life be like once they have your service or product.
5. Add supporting statistics and facts regarding your product and the industry/topic area. Use testimonials from other happy customers and pictorial proof in photos and video to back up your claims.
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