Customers are pretty much fed up with hearing how amazing your company is and how fabulous your new product/service is. It’s pretty much taken for granted that every business will proclaim itself to be the best so customers tend to ignore such statements. A brilliant variation was achieved by Avis who came up with a slogan which more or less admitted defeat to Hertz but still managed to sound awesome: We’re #2, we try harder. Apparently, Avis is now #3 so they had to come up with a new slogan since we’re number #3 because we didn’t try hard enough isn’t particularly catchy.
To make the sale or at least push customers further down the sales funnel, you need to use the copywriting secrets of the pros and that’s what I’m going to show you so keep reading!
Be An Emotional Vampire
That’s right; you need to feed off your target audience’s emotions like Vlad Tepes feasted on blood. As I’ve mentioned in my four part psychological warfare series, people are massively influenced by their emotions. You may think you’re buying with logic but you end up justifying your purchase with logic; it’s still emotion that wins the day.
According to Descartes’ Error, a book written by famed neuroscience professor Antonio Damasio, people with damage to their pre-frontal cortex have difficulties making even the most basic decisions such as what to eat for dinner. This is because the pre-frontal cortex is associated with our emotions. Though these individuals can still come up with logical reasons for any decision, they struggle to pull the trigger so to speak.
If you focus on logic when writing copy, you’ll make few sales. You need to tap into people’s emotions to the point where they must have what you sell. This is HUGE in the technological world where companies like Apple manage to dominate the marketplace despite being nowhere near the best device from a technical standpoint.
Apple is superb at infusing customers with the desire to own one of their products. People actually queue for hours to purchase the latest iPhone, iPad or whatever contraption Apple comes up with. You can wait a couple of days to make the purchase but tens of thousands of people queue just so they can be among the first to own it.
This is amazing but during Apple’s advertising campaigns, they appeal to people’s desires to be the ‘first’ and no one wants to be behind the times, do they? Apple are basically saying ‘you suck at life and are a loser if you don’t have the new iPad because it’s awesome and only lame people don’t have one.’ That’s pretty effective.
Specificity Rules
Making generic claims or providing basic information about a product/service is a recipe for disaster. Which headline is more effective?
• We can triple your conversion rate
• Thanks to the [insert feature here]; you can increase your conversion rate by 186%!
The first headline actually offers more at 200% but the second headline is specific. Ironically, customers believe specific figures are less likely to have been made up! You can say users of your product have earned $148,764 each on average and it is more likely to be lapped up by your audience than if you tell them people have earned $50,000 on average even though the first figure is actually far less believable.
This also goes for the overall claims you make for your product. You don’t say ‘this product helps you sleep’, you say ‘scientific research shows this product helps users get an average of 114 minutes of extra sleep every night.’ As an insomniac, that’s something I can support!
Accentuate The Benefits
Virtually every copywriter who has ever written sales copy knows you need to talk about the benefits of the product instead of the features but it is still something alien to many ad men. It is all too easy to lapse and simply list the features in a boring and bland format. The thing is; customers don’t care if your product gives them instant notifications or a crisper picture, they want to know why this is good for them.
Always begin your copy with the benefits of what you have to offer. Great copywriting is a gradual process; you lure people in with your compelling headline, show them why they need your product and then you show them how to make the most important purchase of their lives. By all means list the features of what you’re offering but only after you’ve explained the benefits.
Now you understand a few copywriting basics, perhaps you’ll be able to add a few zeros on to your profit margin!