What makes you want to buy something? How can you be sure your customers are going to buy it? As a small business owner or entrepreneur, you need to make sure your business is running as smoothly as possible and making the most sales. Keep reading for some copywriting copy tricks that will help boost your sales.
1. Write a strong headline
Make your headline a magnet for customers. It pulls in eyes and makes them click. But it also does a lot more. Think of the headline as the most important part of your message in the overall marketing mix. A well-crafted headline is an important marketing tool because it will cause people to look twice, read on, think about it and talk about it!
2. Use subheaders to add continuity
Subheads provide continuity to your sales page. They allow you to break up the monotony of long paragraphs and keep your reader engaged.
Subheads also give you the opportunity to reinforce a key point or benefit, while providing structure and context to your sales page.
The best subheads do two things:
Reinforce the headline by providing further proof of the headline’s promise
Give a sneak preview of what’s in the section that follows.
Do you want your reader to take a certain action? Tell them what you want them to do in the subhead. Use actionable verbs like “buy,” “order” or “get.”
3. Include testimonials
Nobody wants to play guinea pig.
If you want someone to buy your product, they want proof that it actually works. You could write a long-winded explanation of all the benefits and features, but a simple testimonial or two can be far more powerful.
What’s more, this technique is quick and easy for you to implement — just ask your existing customers what they think!
According to Nielsen Norman Group, 95% of people read online reviews before making a purchase. This means that it’s critical for you to include testimonials in your sales copy to build trust with readers. Testimonials also provide social proof that other people have purchased from you before.
4. Add a sense of urgency with time-sensitive offers
“Get 50% off and free shipping… but only if you order within the next 24 hours!”
You can see this trick in action in the Facebook ads of many eCommerce stores. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book, but it still works.
Time-sensitive offers create urgency, which can make hesitant shoppers more likely to purchase. If they don’t buy now, they might miss out on a great deal!
Here are some examples of the different ways you can use time-sensitive offers:
Limited quantities (“Only 10 available”)
Limited time (“Offer expires on June 30th”)
Limited time + limited quantity (“Offer expires on June 30th or when we run out of stock”)
Time-sensitive discounts (“Buy today, save 50% off!”)
5. Add scarcity to your offer
The first instinct of most people when they see a great offer is to procrastinate.
It’s human nature.
The fear of missing out (FOMO) and the fear of making a mistake are the two biggest psychological motivators for humans.
If people think they can get the same deal tomorrow or next week, they’ll wait. If they think they’ll find another deal from another provider, they’ll also wait.
But if there’s an element of scarcity in your offer, it will help you boost your sales immediately.
The best way to add scarcity is to offer discounts with a deadline. For example, you can say “The first 100 people who order will get 50% off.”
This simple trick will cause more people to take action and make a purchase.
6. Use social proof to boost your credibility
Social proof is simply the way that people look at other people as a guidepost when they don’t know what to do or who to trust. That means that if somebody is trying to make a decision about whether or not they should buy something and they come across your blog post where there are comments from other people saying how great it is, then they might be more likely to buy too.
You can leverage this by ensuring that you have plenty of comments on your blog posts and asking friends and family members to comment on things too. You should also use testimonials wherever possible.
These could be tweets, emails from happy customers or video testimonials.
7. Pull at their heartstrings with emotional copywriting
Many marketers make a crucial mistake in their copywriting. They focus on the features of their product or service, instead of its benefits.
But there’s a far more significant problem with this approach.
Successful copywriting isn’t about how your product or service will help customers. It’s about how it will make them feel.
Emotional copywriting taps into that most elusive of concepts: the human soul.
It’s not something you can learn from a textbook or memorize from a list of tips and tricks. But you can use these five clever examples to guide your own emotional copywriting efforts and help you drive sales.
8. Don’t be afraid to use humor
People buy from people. If you’re not someone they want to deal with, your product won’t sell. When you use humor, it humanizes you and makes the reader more likely to trust what you say.
Humor works especially well in copywriting. You don’t have to rely on it. A little goes a long way — if a joke or two doesn’t make sense, don’t use it. Just be confident in your ability to sell and use humor to break the ice.
9. Get the “I” out of your copywriting (or not).
If you’re like me (and most copywriters), you have a love-hate relationship with the word “I.”
On one hand, it’s an honest and straightforward way to communicate with your audience.
On the other hand, when used poorly, it can seem self-centered and unprofessional.
However, in a recent study, ConversionXL analyzed over 300 ecommerce pages for their use of personal pronouns. The results were pretty surprising:
Pages that used the first-person pronoun “I” had a 4% higher conversion rate than those that didn’t use any personal pronouns at all.
Pages that used “we” had a 3% higher conversion rate than those that didn’t use any personal pronouns at all.
Pages that used the second-person pronoun “you” had a 1% lower conversion rate than those that didn’t use any personal pronouns at all (not statistically significant).
10. Use numbers everywhere
People think of themselves as individuals. But when it comes to buying, they tend to think in groups.
This is why you’ll see articles titled “The Top 100 Ways to Improve Your Productivity” rather than “101 Ways to Improve Your Productivity”. Or “3 Secrets to Great Copywriting” rather than “4 Secrets to Great Copywriting”.
Numbers are a quick and easy way to establish authority, because they make you seem like an expert in your field. And people like buying from experts.
List items with numbers where possible.
You can also list individual items because that looks like a lot more work was put into the list. And people will probably spend longer reading it (which means they’ll read more of your sales copy).
11. Create curiosity
Copywriting is the art and science of writing words that persuade people to buy your stuff.
You can’t sell if you don’t have words on the page. You need to use the right words, in the right order, in the right place.
It’s not rocket science, but it is a skill. The good news is you can learn it.
Here’s my top pick …Curiosity!
The first thing you want to do with your copy is get them interested enough to read more. So how do you get attention?
Curiosity is a powerful tool — we simply can’t resist finding out more when something piques our interest.
Use curiosity-inducing statements to compel your readers to carry on reading, grab their attention and make them hungry for more information.
12. Use Power Words
Power words are persuasive, descriptive words that trigger an emotional response. They can help your readers visualize what you’re selling and help them understand why they need it in their lives.
You can use power words that trigger positive emotions or negative ones. For example, one of the most common power words used in marketing is “imagine.” This word triggers readers to think about what they want or wish they had—and then encourages them to get it by buying your product or service.
Negative power words can also be effective. For example, if you have an online security company, using the word “hacker” will likely trigger a sense of anxiety in many readers who will then buy your service to prevent hackers from accessing their information.
Final Thoughts
With these copywriting tricks you’ll be able to sell your products more effectively, whether they’re physical or digital. I encourage you to try them out and see how they work for you, and who knows? If your sales are increasing as a result of these ideas, perhaps it’s worth putting them into action with other products as well.