In this module, you’ll learn some specific copywriting tips, techniques, and shortcuts that you can apply in different areas of your copy immediately. Later, we’ll go into longer formulas that can be applied to sales pages and other, longer text.

Before You Start Writing

Copywriters get paid a great deal of money and the copy they write is usually quite short. This is because copywriters fuss over the wording to make it as effective as possible and spend a great deal of time on headlines. It’s also because there is much preparation and research that goes into copywriting before any writing actually happens.

Your copy needs to speak directly to your readers, so you need to know as much as possible about them.

Things you need to know include:  

• Demographics of your target market. This includes age, gender, income level, socio-economic background, geographic data, mobility (how they get around and using what), employment status, home ownership, and education level.

• Psychographics, or how members of your target market feel about things, and especially those related to making purchases or taking whatever action you want them to take. Demographics define who your buyer is. Psychographics define how they buy. This includes how they feel about money, family, health, relationships, quality vs. quantity, spending time, lifestyle, goals and plans, etc.

• Your readers’ purchase history. You need to know what and how they’ve made purchases in the past, so that you can effectively lead them to make another purchase from you.

• Emotions specifically related to your product or offering. You can think of this as the customer’s psychographics as they relate specifically to your offering or your type of offering.

• Language and tone. Good copy speaks to the reader in their own language. You have to know the language and tone your readers like and use. Write as if it’s one of your readers writing.

• Questions your readers are asking in their minds. Your copy can provide the answers. Whenever a person is considering making a purchase, they have some questions they need answered before they decide on the right product. They need a problem solved, so your copy should convince them that you offer the solution.

• Doubts your customer has about your offering. When a customer is reading your copy, these doubts are at the forefront of their mind and your copy needs to dispel them.

• The long-term goals of your reader. If you can identify how taking this action will help them get closer to their goals, you’ll see higher conversions.

• For web copywriting, SEO keyword research is usually important, unless you’re writing emails or other content that doesn’t appear in search results.

There are two other important things to consider in the planning stages before you start writing. One is to consider why people should buy from you rather than someone else. What makes your offering unique? What do you offer that no one else does?

Most businesses create a Unique Value Proposition (UVP) that defines what makes its offerings unique. If you’ve already done this, review your UVP and use your company’s unique qualities in your copy. If you haven’t already created a UVP, you should do so. It offers a great deal of benefit to your business.

The other consideration is the goal of your copy. For every piece of copy you write, there should be one particular action you want the reader to take. There should be only one desired action per piece of copy. Everything in the copy should lead the reader to take this one particular action.

Tips on Writing Great Copy That You Can Use Today

Before getting into specific tips, it’s important to consider grammar, spelling and punctuation. Your copy absolutely must use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Although the writing should be light and conversational in style, like a friend talking to the reader, it needs to use correct English. Mistakes will hurt your credibility and drive readers away.

If you have trouble with the basics of writing, you may want to sharpen your skills. You can take a basic writing course or ask a friend or colleague who is more skilled at writing to help you.

The copy you write should be conversational and simple, but should not talk down to your reader. As superstar copywriter David Ogilvy famously said, “A consumer is not a moron. She’s your wife. Don’t insult her intelligence, and don’t shock her.”

Treat your reader with respect and it will put you on an equal footing.

Writing Headlines and Subject Lines

As we discussed before, the headline (or subject line if you’re writing emails) is all-important. The wording here determines whether or not the reader will read on or open the email. Some copywriters recommend spending about half of your writing time writing and refining the headline. Again from Ogilvy, “It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money.”

The goal of the headline is to get the first sentence read. You don’t have to do everything in your headline and in fact, you shouldn’t. Rather, focus on grabbing the reader’s attention and getting them to the second line, where you can then lead them to read the rest.

Headlines don’t have to be long. It’s the quality that counts. Usually, brevity is a bonus.

Copywriters live by what they call “the four U’s” when writing headlines. These U’s are:

• Unique. Your headline needs to grab attention and draw the reader in, so it can’t be something they’ve seen before.
• Ultra-Specific. The more specific a headline is, the better it will grab attention. This is why “Earn more money now” isn’t a good headline. It’s better to say something like “Discover how I started earning $4,000 a month of passive income with this easy-to-set-up system.”
• Urgent. Add an element of timeliness to your headline. Tell your readers to take action and receive these benefits now. Emphasize how they simply can’t wait any longer. For example, “Stop losing customers today and take control of your sales.”
• Useful. Your headline should tell the reader how they can use your offer. It might say something like, “Grow your social media following by leaps and bounds, starting today.”

A good headline or subject line is also one that piques curiosity, like:

“10 Things You May Be Doing Now To Hurt Your Business.”

“Here Are Some Stats About Small Businesses That Will Surprise You”

“Do You Do This Ridiculous Thing When Nobody Is Around?”

“They Laughed When I Sat Down At the Piano – But When I Started To Play!” (This is one of history’s most successful headlines, written by John Caples for an ad campaign in 1926).

These headlines make the reader say, “Well, what is it?” and they’re more likely to check it out. If you pique curiosity well, your headlines will be irresistible.

Here are a few other things you can do with your headlines to make them more attention-grabbing:

• Asking Questions. Ask a serious question that your reader has rattling around in their head. It will resonate with them and they’ll want to see how you answer it.
• “How To”. Headlines and subject lines that start with “how to” are good because everyone wants to learn something new and improve themselves.
• Identifying the Reader. Like the question idea above, headlines that specifically reference the reader resonate and get a higher open rate. For example, “For busy parents who don’t have time to help with their kids’ homework, technology just got even more helpful.”
• Negative Superlatives. An interesting study by Outbrain discovered that headlines that used the negative superlatives “never” and “worst” outperformed those that used positive superlatives “always” and “best.”

These headline elements help in different situations. For example, it might not always be a good idea to identify the reader or use negative superlatives. Let the purpose of the copy guide you in your decision on which to use. For example, if the goal of your copy is to sell a product, it might be better to use a benefits-based headline rather than curiosity. Curiosity headlines are often better for content-based copy that you want people to keep reading.

Whichever type of headline you use, it’s very important that your copy delivers on the promise of the headline. If you’re offering benefits, deliver them or offer a product that delivers them. If the reader is going to learn something, teach it to them. Copy that doesn’t deliver on the promise of the headline doesn’t convert.

These tips for headlines and subject lines can be used anywhere you need to write a title. Your blog post and article titles, the first sentence of social media posts, press release titles, tweets, brochure titles and so on, can all be improved through these copywriting tweaks.

The “Magic Words” of Copywriting

Some copywriters say there are “magic words” for copywriting. These are words that fire up the brains of those who read them, and applying them to your copy can boost your conversions.

Examples of these supposedly magic words are – “free,” “easy,” “amazing,” “secret,” “trick” – and so on. While some studies have found that these words work, others have found that they actually decrease conversions.

The reason for this is that the success of your words depends on the target market for which you’re writing. There are definitely certain words you can use in your copy that work seemingly like magic to increase your conversions. Then there are words that resonate beautifully with one audience, but are a complete turn-off for another. You’ll learn what these words are over time as you get to know your audience better, but there is no set of magic words that works for everyone.

For example, while people in some target markets may respond well to “Discover the one easy secret to…” members of another market may hate it. For instance, if you’re selling a language learning product, your customers probably already know that there is no “easy secret” to learning a second language.

So, how do you select the right words for your market? You’ll know some of these words instinctively if you know your market well. Another way to discover these words is through research.

There are a number of ways you can research good words to use. You can look at popular, high-converting, and successful copywriting in your niche to see which words are commonly used. A more scientific method is to conduct split-testing. This means running two versions of the same copy to see which performs better. You can change only a few words and see which gets more conversions. If there is a significant difference in the conversion rate, you’ll know which wording works best.

It’s important to remember that while using these key words may increase conversions, you won’t get high conversions on the strength of these words alone. What the copy is saying to the reader is always more important than the wording used.

Copywriting Formatting

The formatting of your copy will play a role in whether or not it’s actually read or converts. Although different markets and audiences within markets respond differently to formatting and it’s a good idea to do some split testing here as well, there are some common guidelines that are good for any type of copy.

Put the Most Important Information at the Top

Since readers start at the top and work their way down, put your most important points first. The rest of the text should fill in the details.

Plenty of Headlines and Sub-Headers

Break up your text with headlines and sub-headers. If it’s online text you’re creating, remember that people tend to skim online even more than print, so your readers will be looking at the sub-headers first. Your sub-headers should follow the headline guidelines outlined above, as well as tell the reader what they can expect from the following text.

Use Short Paragraphs 

Large chunks of text should be broken down into short paragraphs. Long paragraphs are intimidating and hard to read. Remember that not all visitors to your site are avid readers. If some readers see a huge block of text, they’ll give up. There is no such thing as a paragraph that’s too short in copywriting. Make sure there is a decent amount of space between paragraphs so that the text doesn’t look cluttered.

List with Bullet Points

Like headlines, bullet points make reading text content online easier. When you’re giving your reader a great deal of information, it’s much easier for them to take in when in bullet point form; examples would be when summarizing benefits, describing features, or giving statistics.

Go Easy on Bold and Italics

Bold and italics can emphasize both words and phrases to make them stand out, but avoid overusing them. Too much bold or italicized text is distracting. Use both sparingly and only for the most important bits of text.

No Underlining

Avoid underlining any text in your copy. Underlined text looks like a link and it may confuse the reader. When you do have links, add them to text rather than writing out the URL.

Capitalization

In the past, copywriting was written in title case where the first word of every letter was capitalized (including determiners “the” and “a” and prepositions like “on,” “at,” or “by”). Today, many copywriters write headers and sub-headers as they would any other text, with only the first letter capitalized. For your text, go with what you feel looks best and is easiest to read. Avoid using all caps, even for just one word.

Fonts

All fonts should be clear and easy to read. Don’t use fonts that clash with each other or are too dramatically different. However, sometimes it’s good to use slightly different fonts for headlines and text so that the reader can easily differentiate. The golden rule is that you shouldn’t use anything that will distract the reader.

Stay Simple

If you add fancy features to your copy, you’ll distract the reader. The reader’s browser also may not be able to load video and other types of content. Keep extras to a minimum so that your text and its message is at center stage.

Strip It Down

Eliminate anything from your copy that doesn’t help it lead the reader to taking action. Remember that your copy and its formatting should lead the reader from the headline straight to the action you want them to take.

Use Pictures

Pictures are good for copy because they break up the text and provide something visual to look at, but also because they can help to drive your points home. Use pictures to show rather than tell your message in action. Think of them as visual landmarks that draw the eye to the accompanying text.

Emphasize the Call to Action

Use formatting to emphasize your call to action, making it bigger, clearer and more visible than the other text. As the reader reads your text, they’ll notice the call to action and they may take it even before they’ve finished reading (or if they aren’t going to finish reading).

Adding Social Proof to Your Copy

Social proof is very powerful in copywriting because it lends you credibility. Social proof isn’t you telling the reader about your company. Instead, you’re letting someone else do it. A neutral third party telling the reader about your offer proves that it has value.

Types of social proof you can use include:

• A testimonial is written by a happy customer and tells potential customers what they can expect if they take you up on the offer. Your testimonials should have pictures so the reader knows they’re real.

• An endorsement is essentially a testimonial, but it’s given by a big name or thought leader in your niche. Of course, an endorsement is harder to get, but reach out to leaders in your industry and try. Good endorsements really boost conversions.

• Awards and Certifications. If your business, products, or offer have received any official awards or certifications, you can add these to your copy to remove customer doubt.

• Customer Reviews. Adding customer reviews to your copy lends you a great deal of credibility. Surprisingly, many have found that small amounts of criticism in an otherwise good review can increase conversions. This is possibly because they look honest, as opposed to reviews that are 100% positive.

• Social Media Proof. You can install an add-on to your site that shows your social media likes, comments and shares, such as social media share bars.

• Customer-Generated Content. Ask your customers to make images or other content. For example, ask them to send in images of them using your content.

• Install a Counter. Install a counter showing how many people have already taken action (buying, signing up, etc.). Make it a real-time counter so that if someone takes action while the prospective customer is reading, they’ll see it.

All social proof should be genuine. Don’t buy fake testimonials. The best way to get genuine testimonials is to reach out to customers who tell you they enjoyed your offering. Reach out to them at the time when they tell you this because this is when they’re most likely to write you a testimonial.

Testing Your Copy

The above guidelines are general guidelines, but as we’ve discussed, every market and audience within a market can be wildly different.

This is why you need to test each aspect of your copy. You need real, objective data directly from your visitors and readers to tell you what works and what doesn’t.

There are several ways to gain this data, which include:

• Split testing (also called A/B testing). As mentioned before, this means running two identical versions of your copy with one element changed. You can see which performs better, and this tells you what changes to make. You can split test virtually any element of your copy, but the most important are headlines, sub-headers, the wording and design of your call-to-action, web form placement and text, images, and your offer.

• Site analytics. Site analytics include data about what visitors do on your website or what recipients do with your emails. If, for example, visitors aren’t staying on your site for long, this means your headline is weak or the text doesn’t deliver on its promise.

• Direct feedback from visitors. Visitors will sometimes give you feedback unsolicited, but you can also ask people for their feedback.

• Peer review. Finally, a good way to improve your copywriting is to ask another copywriter to read it. You can do this on a webmaster forum like the Warrior Forum or a copywriting forum.

Cleaning up Your Copy

Once you start writing, it will take a while to get into the habit of writing clearly and concisely. Here is a checklist to help you when you’re editing what you’ve written to refine.

• Remove anything that can be taken the wrong way. Copywriting should be clearer than clever. If the point could be missed, it will be. Clever writing is great, but first and foremost it should be concise.

• Change passive voice to active voice. Passive voice is weak and should be avoided at all cost. Don’t say, “A new design was created.” Instead, say, “We created a new design.”

• Read your copy aloud. This will help you spot things you otherwise wouldn’t have. You’ll also make it more conversational if it’s too formal-sounding. It should sound like you’re talking to a friend. If possible, read it aloud to someone and get their impression.

• Give your copy the “so what” test. For every important point, ask yourself, “so what?” This will help you get more specific and shift the focus to the benefits of the reader.

• Adjectives and adverbs can weigh down prose. Eliminate as many adjectives and adverbs as possible. Leave only those that are truly necessary. Use them sparingly and they’ll have a stronger effect on the reader.

• Pay especially close attention to verbs and use as many “action verbs” as possible.

• Don’t use words that describe uncertainty like “maybe,” “may,” “might,” “could” or “perhaps.” Change these to more direct and certain words like “will.”

• Cut out jargon or technical terms. Write so that your target audience will understand and eliminate anything that may not be understood.

• Watch out for hyperbole. Don’t make exaggerated claims. Your copy needs to be believed by the reader. It also needs to deliver on its promises.

• Cut anything that doesn’t help you reach your objective.