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6 Ways To Craft Killer Copy That Catapults Your Conversions

In order to survive, business owners, marketers and advertisers must craft exceptional copy.

Exceptional copy engages the reader, communicates a clear and relevant benefit, and ultimately convinces prospects to part with their hard-earned cash.

However, most people are aware of the above facts, and pour their resources into making their copy as exceptional as possible. Your challenge is to rise above their best efforts and create a superlative message.

With the above in mind, whether you are writing for your blog, website or marketing campaign, here are six ways to craft powerful killer copy that will increase readership and conversions.

1. Craft a Captivating Headline

A captivating headline is the foundation of amazing content that people will actually want to read. Your headline needs to speak to prospects and make them want to keep reading to learn more.

An ideal captivating headline will grab the reader’s attention and be memorable. Catchy headlines have a better chance of getting shared and read by a larger audience – helping drive traffic back to your website and attract new prospects.

There are several different types of techniques you can implement to help craft engaging headlines, including:

• Offer a ‘how-to’
• Identify and solve a problem
• Strike a note of controversy
• Ask questions

CopyPress have put together a list of the 34 best, worst and ugliest headlines. Here are our favorites:

• The Good: “7 free Apps That Can Make Planning Your Next Vacation Easy” uses key words that emphasizes benefits to the reader (i.e. free, easy).
• The Bad: “Monkeys Hate Flying Squirrels, Report Monkey-annoyances Experts” is simply too complicated to be effective.
• The Ugly: “Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after age 25″ shows that you should always reread your copy and ensure it makes sense.

2. Write a Gripping and Positive Introduction

Once your awesome headline captures the reader’s attention, you can’t just stop there. You must continue to maintain their interest by leading with a gripping introduction to convince prospects to continue reading the rest of your content.

The National Center for Biotechnology Information recently released information that indicated the average person’s attention span is eight seconds – which is one less second than a goldfish. That’s not a lot of time to capture your readers’ attention so your content has to be strategic, precise and have a positive and welcoming tone.

Adopting a positive and engaging tone will help readers gravitate more to your content and your site. According to Psychology Today, positive emotions toward a brand have a greater influence on customer loyalty and trust along with other judgements that are based on a brand’s attributes.

In your introduction, you should unleash powerful verbs and set the tone for the readers to get excited and be inspired by the copy. Positive and upbeat copy is informative and solution-based, a pleasure to read and contributes to a great overall experience for a customer.

3. Be Personable

You would probably purchase a product or service from a friend in a heartbeat. Why? Most likely because you trust them and relate to them on a personal level. You can establish a similar relationship with your prospects by being more personable through your copy.

People love personal anecdotes and informal writing. You have to admit, it makes the reading process more enjoyable. Exceptional marketing and sales copy is almost always conversational, and sharing a little personality can definitely set you apart from competitors.

It’s up to you how personal you decide to get with your content. You can share a brief story about the humble beginnings of your business or about a recent success or milestone you achieved and how you got to that point.

If you don’t want to share a personal story, you can still talk to the reader in a personal tone by employing these simple strategies:

• Use personal pronouns like “I” and “you”.
• Refer to them by name if possible.
• Always offer a way to interact with you – either by replying via the comments section or via social media channels.

4. Provide a Solution

You probably already know that you should be offering customers viable solutions and unprecedented value through every aspect of your business. Your copy is no exception.

While your copy should be informative, it should also offer up a simple solution. It should draw attention to goals that your prospects want to achieve and solve problems they may have. Stating the benefits and features of doing business with your company is not enough. You need to clearly spell out what you can do for readers and make it all about them.

Statistics and data are a great way to draw attention to problems or achievements. Then use your creativity to hook your prospects and offer an amazing and proven solution.

In 2013, Forbes released a list of words and phrases to help companies describe the solutions they can offer in order to drive traffic and conversions. Some of those keywords include:

• Affordable
• Convenient
• Easy
• Fast
• Guarantee
• Reduce
• Safe
• Time

5. Be Concise

Have you ever read something online and had no idea what it meant or what the author wanted you to do with it? Unorganized, lengthy and wordy content will only frustrate prospects and prevent them from ever wanting to read anything else you release in the future.

To make the reader’s (and your) life easier, organize your copy beforehand by creating an outline detailing the bottom line. Eliminate wordy phrases and sentences and try to be as direct as you can. Maintain your audience’s attention by getting to the point early on and establish a maximum word count for your copy to ensure it remains tight and concise.

6. Provide an Assertive Call to Action

Your call to action is almost as important as (if not equally important to) the headlines and headings you use when it comes to increasing your conversions. Writing killer copy is a great way to boost sales in a non-pushy way, but in order to do so your call to action has to be assertive. Otherwise, people will just read your copy, enjoy the content and move on to the next website, unaware that you wanted them to take a specific action.

Being assertive doesn’t mean you have to be rude or extra pushy. You just need to make your call to action as clear as day. Telling the reader exactly what they need to do and how to do it can actually help someone who may be interested but is confused about how they should proceed.

During your next campaign or the next time you draft some marketing copy, try a little polite assertiveness and see how it helps your bottom line.

Conclusion

One cannot understate the power of well-crafted copy, but you will need to master all of the above techniques to achieve the best possible results.

It’s crucial that you take your copywriting skills to the next level by:

1. Crafting captivating headlines.
2. Writing a gripping introduction.
3. Being personable.
4. Promising a solution.
5. Keeping your message concise.
6. Implementing a clear and assertive call to action.

What other techniques can you use to improve your copy and increase conversions? Please let us know in the comments below.

5 Ways to Dominate Email Marketing

It is no secret that Amazon has set the bar with effective email marketing tactics. The leading online retailer takes a unique and customized approach with their marketing strategy, allowing the company to dominate email marketing in every aspect.

Even though the company, founded in 1994, didn’t become profitable until a decade later in 2004, Amazon still managed to pull off a net revenue of $88.99 billion last year. While the variety of products and services available – such as Amazon Prime, Warehouse Deals and free shipping – have contributed a great deal to the company’s revenue, their flawless email marketing strategy has helped boost sales consistently and secure a loyal customer base.

Whether you own an e-commerce-based business or not, there is definitely a lot to learn from an industry leader like Amazon. In this post we’ll show you five ways to dominate email marketing by adapting key techniques from Amazon.

1. Track What Visitors Do

With a company as large as Amazon, you’d think they wouldn’t bother to keep tabs on every little detail concerning their rather large customer base. Let me tell you – it would be a huge mistake if they didn’t take advantage of this opportunity to learn more about customers.

Amazon closely tracks what visitors and customers do on their website in order to obtain valuable data to help them appeal more to each and every customer. Amazon monitors everything from customers’ gender, birth date, and search terms to how long they take to shop, what products they view, their repeated purchases and so on. This helps them create relevant email messages that will resonate with customers and prompt them to take action.

You can get to know your customers and clients by collecting data as well. Even if you don’t have access to all the fancy programs Amazon may use, you can still send out surveys to gather basic information from people. You can also utilize Google Analyticsto monitor various things on your website, including what people are viewing, the time of day they’re browsing and possibly their metropolitan area.

2. Send Personalized Messages

Once you’ve collected specific information about your customers, you’ll be able to create personalized messages as opposed to generic standard emails. If you want to have the same effective marketing edge that Amazon has, it’s crucial that you personalize your email messages to appeal more to customers.

Amazon sends out routine emails that address customers by name and recommend relevant products to them based on their searches and purchases last time. The email offers a clear solution to a problem or need the customers may have never known they had.

Let’s say you were browsing on Amazon for a watch and couldn’t decide on what you wanted or whether you even wanted to make a purchase. Amazon quickly sends you a personalized email with various suggestions based on your age, gender, price range and other demographics. Suddenly, being receptive to their attentive behavior and assertiveness (in regards to helping you find what you are looking for), you decide to move forward with the purchase.

Even if you don’t own an e-commerce store or sell physical products to consumers or clients, you can still benefit from creating personalized messages.

3. Follow Up

Amazon tends to follow up and keep tabs on users often. If you’ve ever poked around on the site and later abandoned your shopping cart you’ll know what I mean. Each time a user fills up a shopping cart but doesn’t place an order, Amazon will send a personalized transactional email that offers to assist the recipient or encourages them to complete their purchase.

This strategy may be more effective than you think. Reminding potential or returning customers and clients of your products and services in a non-pushy way can easily reel them back in. Utilize the data you collect about your prospect’s habits, needs, and interests. If you can offer a cold prospect a helpful solution, or just give them a friendly reminder, you’ll be able to maintain your customer base and keep your audience engaged.

4. Reflect Your Brand with the Right Email Template

When you receive an email from Amazon, their brand is always prominently displayed – from their logo and font to the color scheme and overall template of the email message. The email template is usually almost a direct replica of the actual website’s design template. This helps people know immediately who is emailing them, and begin to trust the brand. This is turn means they become more receptive to receiving marketing emails from Amazon. By focusing heavily on this type of consistency, Amazon remains true with their brand in everything that they do.

If you want to build up your brand and establish this type of consistency with your marketing emails, you can certainly follow this company’s lead. Start by creating an email template that is responsive, and matches with the color scheme and theme of your website. Make sure your company logo and name are prominently displayed at the top of each message. You’ll also want to carefully choose a font that coincides with your brand, along with high quality images and graphics to help engage readers.

5. Create a Sense of Urgency

Do you leverage the use of a call-to-action to create urgency in your marketing emails? Amazon does this all the time. It seems like the company is always offering some limited time deal or holiday special.

Some of their messages even include a timer that counts down until the expiration of the offer. You don’t have to go to those extremes, but by creating offers that expire, you will create a sense of urgency among your clientele and potentially increase profits and email conversions. If your prospects think your product or service will be around forever, they will not be motivated to buy and take advantage of the quality and value you can provide.

You can create a sense of urgency by offering time sensitive deals using your products and services. Use keywords and phrases like:

• “Reserve your kit today while supplies last”
• “This offer only comes around once a year”
• “Savings you can’t pass up”
• “Memorial Day weekend sale”
• “Today is the last day”

Just think about how many times you’ve made a purchase or signed up to receive an offer after you found out it would only be around for a limited time. Scarcity makes people contemplate their purchase decisions more than they normally would, due to fear of missing out on a good opportunity.

Conclusion

When you want to learn how to master something, you should look to the expert in that field. When it comes to successful email marketing, Amazon has definitely earned its reputation as an expert industry leader as a result of implementing all the points mentioned above.

A key takeaway we could all learn from Amazon is to not be afraid to email your audience and personalize emails by tracking visitors’ habits and behavior. Tracking your audience’s habits will only help you improve your products and service by increasing your relevancy to particular customers.

How do you plan to implement any of these email marketing tactics? Let us know in the comments below!