April 17, 2010How to write sales-focused copy

I’ve written before about the difference between professional copy, and copy you’ve just written yourself. “Everyone who can speak English and read and write thinks they can be a copywriter,” I said. But they can’t. The question is — why? What does a professional copywriter do that you don’t?

A good copywriter writes sales-focused copy.

What does that mean? Well, here’s an example. Client A comes to me with Product A, and it’s the best product ever (so he thinks). He’s already come up with a great description of Product A to use on his website. But nobody’s buying.

Let’s call Product A Product Awesome. I’ll let you make up your own mind what Client “A” stands for. Client A says something to me like this. “Product Awesome is the most awesome thing at what it does ever, it’s like an iPhone and an iPad and a can opener all in one and it can also walk your dog. Everyone should want one!”

To which I reply, “Great. So why isn’t your copy telling people why they need this product.”

I’m usually met with blank stares from my client or the simple, weak reply. “Because it’s awesome?” they ask.

Great sales copy has to convince people they need your product.
Just because you think it’s obvious why your product is great,
doesn’t mean everyone else does.

So that’s lesson 1. A good copywriter’s job is to convince, not merely to explain.

Here’s lesson 2. It’s the exception to lesson 1.

A good copywriter knows when to back off. When to stop with the hard sell.

Client “A” comes back to me with his revisions. Based on what I’ve told him, every other line in his copy is now “buy my product! buy my product! buy my product!” — Client A has failed again.

Calls to action are worthless unless you give your customer a reason to call.

I like to use what I call the Jay McInerney approach. One of my favourite books, Bright Lights, Big City, employs a second person narrator. In other words, “you.” Take a look at the opening paragraph –

“You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, but the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge… All might come clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder. Then again, might not.”

And so it goes on. But wow! What an opening paragraph! Instantly, the narrator puts you in his shoes. And that’s the second secret to sales focused copy.

You need to put yourself in your customer’s shoes.
And you need to make your customer imagine himself using your product.

In fact, using the second-person is one of the strongest sales copywriting techniques. “It’s three am. You’re getting tired. You need a can of Red Bull” etc…

Empathizing with your reader and showing you understand his needs is a better tactic than the hard sell. When Client A comes back to me with copy that reads “buy this product! buy this product! buy this product!” he’s getting it wrong. You is a meeting of “I and He”. It is a merger of writer and reader. It’s the best way of selling subtly. In short, you’re showing your reader why your product is awesome, not telling him.

The third secret to successful copy really separates the men from the boys. Or, more accurately, the professionals from the amateurs. It’s knowing when to break the rules.

In some circumstances, describing a product will sell it better than trying to convince the reader to buy it. Sometimes, trying to empathize with the reader will seem cloying and sickly. Between one in ten times and one in a hundred, you’ll actively repel a reader using the above techniques.

A good copywriter writes copy for a large number of different products and services. You may think you know your audience, but without the experience of knowing what works and what doesn’t, reading the best “rulebook” in the world will still leave you selling short.

Experience is the only way to get better at writing good copy. It can take years before you write instinctively, rather than writing to the rules. That’s why great copywriters can command large sums of money for doing what you think you can do — write simple words in plain English.

You’ve got two choices. Either take a couple of years to learn how to write persuasively, or pay someone else to do it this week. Faced with this choice, most clients choose to pay someone to do it for them. But that’s not the best way to good copy, either.

Don’t employ. Collaborate.

I’ve found I work best with clients who write well, who know their product and their audience, but who need a second opinion. I love working collaboratively. That’s the very last secret to writing good copy. Don’t employ a copywriter and then expect him to know everything about your business. He knows nothing except how to sell. Write well about your own business and then give it to a copywriter to turn into sales-focused copy.

When you hire a freelance copywriter, you’re not really employing a writer. You’re employing a translator. You’re asking a professional to translate what you know (“my product is awesome”) into something your audience can understand (“his product is awesome, and here’s why. Can’t you just see yourself using it around the house now?”).

A good copywriter takes what you want to say and finds a way to say it better.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 17th, 2010 at 12:22 pm and is filed under Advertising, Blog, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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