Sales copy and the way it is crafted is a crucial component of your revenue-generating strategy. Many sales professionals think that design alone sells a product or service. This is far from the truth.
Great sales copy is essential for closing the sale. Sales copy helps your audience make an educated decision, and it highlights the benefits of their investment. What they read in your sales copy makes them feel comfortable and confident in their decision to buy. Despite your knowledge in sales, and your passion to write compelling sales copy, you might find it difficult to write copy that is persuasive enough to generate revenue. Picture this: You sit down in front of your computer screen with a blank page. After many hours of writing and editing, you finally create a piece of sales copy that you are proud of. After a week of running the copy, you learn that your marketing campaign has failed, and you must start all over.
This happens to all of us. Look at marketing guru Gary Vaynerchuk, for example. He is a modern-day marketer who is no stranger to failure. Through many years of hardships and failed campaigns, Gary’s ambition has helped him to build an empire around content creation. Gary Vaynerchuk once said, “I’m always looking forward. I spend very little time looking backwards”. Gary’s story is proof that you can be successful with the right tools and substantial guidance. In this article, we will cover 10 simple ways you can generate sales copy that generates revenue.
1. Identify Your Target Audience
Identifying your target audience is the first thing you must do before you start writing any sales copy. You need to put yourself in your consumer’s shoes and take the time to truly understand who they are, and what they need. If you’re unsure of who your target audience is, ask yourself these questions: Who has a need for my product or service? What problem are they trying to solve? How can I help them overcome these problems? Do they have any goals they are currently trying to reach? Writing great sales copy is 80% research and 20% writing. Once you have defined your target audience, you can then start narrowing it down even further by identifying their desires, interests, age, etc. By doing this, you are setting even more parameters for your sales copy to ensure that your message can connect with your audience on a personal level. Imagine that two different prospects have just read your sales copy. Here are their responses: Prospect #1: That sounds interesting. Prospect #2: Where can I buy this? It’s clear that you want all of your prospects to respond the way that the second prospect did, but why did this happen? By writing sales copy that is personalised, you will create real, emotional reactions that will encourage your audience to take action. It doesn’t matter if the first prospect praised your product for the rest of their life. Without an emotional connection to the product, they will never reach for their credit card and make a purchase. Research can feel quite overwhelming at times. With so many different variables, you might not know where to start. This is why many copywriters use social media analytics to help them conduct research on their target audience.
2. Research Using Social Media Analytics
Social media is a simple yet effective way to help you understand who’s interacting with your content, even if they are not yet customers. Here are three platforms you should research and conduct analytics on:
With an active user base of 1.62 billion people, Facebook provides you with a detailed review on how people interact with your content which will help you improve your reach over time.
LinkedIn is the world leader in B2B social networking. Its dashboard shows you a comprehensive summary of the month, including visitors, impressions, and particular trends you should take note of.
Instagram provides you with insightful tools that help you to learn more about your target audience's demographics, interests, and app usage. The advantage here is that the information is easy to understand, and located directly at your fingertips. With these three platforms, you’ll have no problem generating sales copy that generates revenue. The information provided is clear, concise, and easy to comprehend. With your target audience defined, the next step is to define the goal of the sales copy.
3. Define the Goal of Your Sales Copy
If you want to generate sales copy that generates revenue, you must clearly define what your specific goals are. For instance, do you want to sell a particular product, a bundle, or a high-ticket item? With this information, you can use your sales copy to encourage your audience to move toward the desired action. Eugene Swartz, copywriter and marketing guru said, “Copy is not written. Copy is assembled”. Many professionals also define their goals in terms of conversion rates. However, they run into a massive roadblock along the way. Picture this: You’ve just placed your sales copy on Facebook and it is doing exceptionally well, you’re getting hundreds of sales and gaining a lot of traction. After two weeks you see that your sales are slowly beginning to drop, and your ad is not getting as many views as it used to. Frustrated by this, you start spending more money pumping out more of the same advertisement but it’s not succeeding. What are you doing wrong? Facebook ads experience something known as ad fatigue. Just because an ad is successfully working today, this doesn’t mean that it will work one month from now. Because sales copy is not static, it’s something that must evolve with your target audience over time. You simply cannot just create one ad and be done with it. This is why it’s important to define your goals early on. Once you have defined the goals of the sales copy, the final outcome of your research is to create an offer no one can resist.
4. Create an Irresistible Offer
One of the biggest challenges businesses face today is that they all sound the same. They differentiate themselves by racing to the bottom and competing on price. This is not how you create an irresistible offer. You have to take a step back and think about what your audience truly wants. When you defined who your target audience was, what did you learn about them? Do they have a secret craving, are they sick and tired of something, are they overwhelmed by something? With this information, it’s easy to write sales copy that generates revenue. Two examples have been provided below: Example 1: Book an appointment with us today, our services are great and our staff is friendly.
With this offer, there is a lot of ambiguity. Don’t you think your target audience would be left with many unanswered questions after reading this? Example 2: When you book today, you receive a free consultation and a $25 gift towards your first appointment.
With this offer, it goes without saying that it’s a no-brainer. This one is much more irresistible. There is a strong guarantee and an opportunity to save $25 on your first appointment. When the offer is more specific, more people are interested. When you create an irresistible offer, your target audience’s logic goes straight out the window. It’s this emotional connection that drives their action and encourages them to buy.
5. Create Compelling Content
You have now defined your target audience, identified the goals of your sales copy, and have created an offer that no one can resist. You’re now ready to begin writing, but there’s just one problem. Your page is blank. You sit and stare at the blank page for hours with no progress. Finally you get your first sentence down, and it sounds terrible. Can you afford to spend this much time creating this sales copy? What if it fails, and you have to start all over?
Creating great sales copy is hard work!
6. Have a Strong Call To Action
Now that you’ve done the research required, defined your goals, and created compelling sales copy, the next step is to write a strong call to action.
Do you want your audience to: Click on a link? Book a call? Set up an appointment? Purchase right now? Share with a friend?
Whatever you decide, make sure that it’s simple and clear to do. Procrastination is extremely common. People love to put things off to a later date. This means the average consumer is less likely to read your copy and buy it now, and more likely to think to themselves, Maybe I’ll buy that tomorrow.
So, you need to be extremely precise on exactly what you want them to do. Unless you give your audience a concise reason to act now, they will most likely postpone their buying decision until a later date. Think about the number of times you have signed up for something. Do you have a Spotify account, Dropbox account, or Netflix account? Each one of these platforms earned your business because they had a compelling sales copy tied to an effective call to action. Why do you think you chose to sign up for those services when you did? It’s likely because the platforms created a sense of urgency with their call to actions.
7. Create a Sense Of Urgency
Creating a sense of urgency is a very simple characteristic you can add to any call to action. If you do create a sense of urgency in your sales copy, even procrastinators will buy now.
If you want to add a touch of finesse to your sales copy, here are four ways to create a sense of urgency: Limited Time
A limited time offer entices the reader to make a purchase from you during a certain period of time. The limited time offer motivates them to buy now.
Limited Quantity
A limited quantity offer tells the reader that once you are sold out of a specific product, there will be no more left.
Exclusive Event
An exclusive event offer lets the reader know that this product is a special or premium product offered by the seller.
Price increase after 24 hours
A price increase tells the reader that your product or service will go up in price after 24 hours. Richie Norton, author and entrepreneur said, “Urgency makes the difference between practitioners, proclaimers, and procrastinators” By adding a sense of urgency to your sales copy, you are amplifying its purpose, and improving your reach to your target audience. The final step to generate sales copy that generates revenue is to leverage customer testimonials to strengthen your social proof.
8. Strengthen Your Social Proof
So you’ve done the research, defined your goals, crafted a strong call to action, put together compelling copy, and created a strong call to action. Your sales copy is looking great, but what do you do if your target audience is still on the fence? Have you ever purchased a product or service online because a friend recommended it to you? Or have you ever ordered food from a restaurant because it received a 5 star review on Yelp? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you understand what I mean. Social proof is a fancy way of saying that your target audience will make decisions based off of what other people are doing. This makes sense, right? This is why having a customer testimonial at the end of your sales copy can have a huge impact on your brand’s image. Most customers will read online testimonials and reviews first, before buying. Customer testimonials build a tremendous amount of trust with your audience. They help people to feel safe when connecting with your brand. With a testimonial, any customer gets to experience you in action before they risk any of their time or money. Used correctly, customer testimonials can strengthen your social proof, increase your conversion rates, and promote your products and services. There are a variety of ways to add a testimonial to the end of your sales page.
9. Add Customer Testimonials
Adding customer testimonials helps you close that sale. You can even add customer testimonial quotes into your sales copy. The customer testimonial at the end of your sales page does not have to be very long. If you’ve received a thorough review from a customer, here are five ways you can present their testimonial:
1. Use a Video
Ask your customer to record themselves saying their testimonial, you can then add it to the bottom of your sales copy.
2. Tell a Short Story
Turn the testimonial into an engaging story. Since humans are emotional creatures, they will be more engaged when you tell a story.
3. Use a Quote
Take a powerful line from the testimonial and turn it into a quote. Make sure you add the customer’s name to show its legitimacy.
4. Provide a Link
If you want to show off the entire testimonial, show the audience the first two sentences and then link them to an external website to read the rest.
5. Address any Myths
Use the testimonial to leverage any myths about your product or service, this will help combat any negative reviews. You are producing content on social media after all. Use this chance to get real world feedback onto your sales copy. This will help you to earn more business, and more customer testimonials.
I Hope this helps you
Happy writing!
If it all gets too much
Get in touch with me, and I'll take the strain.
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Claire
Writing words that sell