Copy is everywhere. It’s the text on your landing page, the content of your promotional emails, and the words on your introductory brochure. If you produce something with the goal of driving sales, the words you use are copy. It’s meant to draw in readers, and it’s how most businesses today talk to their customers.
And when it comes to reeling in users and converting them, it’s all about the copy. The following are 10 tips for making your copy more effective in driving conversions on your website.
1. Figure out who your audience is
Sales happen when you identify a need and meet it. Effective copy highlights that need and explains why the featured product or service is the best solution. First, though, you need to know who you’re addressing.
To determine who your audience is, try creating several user personas. This means doing some research, finding out what groups of people are using your product, and figuring out what they have in common. Consider some of the following characteristics and how they might apply to your hypothetical customers:
- Socioeconomic status
- Job title and industry
- Marital status
- Age
- Location
Once you determine a few unifying traits among your audience members, you can then create several personas to target. For instance, say you run a company that specializes in high-end crocheted baby blankets and patterns. There are a variety of possible user personas for your products. One might be Daniel, a new millennial father looking for a high-quality blanket for his infant daughter; or Elise, a grandmother and crocheting enthusiast who wants to get her hands on a new pattern for making Christmas gifts.
For this product, it wouldn’t make sense to have a user persona like Roger, current student and president of his university’s Delta Chi chapter; or Lorraine, a stay-at-home mom focused on helping her teenage kids apply to college.
Although fictional, these personas represent your customers and help to humanize the people you’re trying to sell to. And knowing who your audience is makes targeting them easier—you’ll be able to write better copy that’s tailored to their needs and expectations.
2. Be conversational—use “you” and “your”
Which of these statements feels more personal to you?
- When a contractor picks up a widget, he or she needs to trust that it won’t break. Acme Widgets stand up to hard use.
- When you pick up a widget, you need to trust that it won’t break. Acme Widgets won’t let you down.
There is very little difference between the two, except that the second option speaks directly to the reader. And yet, it instantly evokes a closer connection. That’s the power of the second-person point of view—that is, writing “you” and “your.” Addressing your reader directly helps to close the distance between them and their computer screen.
For some inspiration, take a look at Rover, a pet care marketplace for dog and cat owners. To describe its available services, Rover could have simply listed its main offerings: dog boarding, house sitting, dog walking, and so on. However, it goes above and beyond to connect with its audience by including an additional line describing each service.
Image source: Rover
What exactly makes this effective? Just about everyone knows or can at least deduce what services like “dog boarding” and “dog walking” are, but these extra lines of copywriting add a personal touch. Perfect if you need overnight pet care and Whenever your dog needs a walk. By incorporating a second-person point of view, the emphasis is on you, the reader, and meeting you (and your animal’s) needs.
3. Include quantifiable facts
Imagine that you’re developing a new marketing strategy for your B2B company and you’re interviewing different content platforms. The two companies you’re looking at give you the following pitches. Which is more convincing?
- Content marketing is an important investment in today’s market.
- Content marketing costs up to 41% less than paid search. In addition, after three years, that piece of content will have generated over 300% more leads than paid search.
Chances are you’re much more likely to trust the second company with your business. Why? It includes very specific facts and figures. Facts are convincing because they’re verifiable and concrete. But be careful—you want them to be your support rather than your main message. Too many facts will make your copy sound dry.
4. Emphasize action
Conversion is action. If you want more people to buy, subscribe, or contact you for more information, don’t wait until the call to action to bring it up. Inject action verbs and phrases throughout your copy, particularly those that make the reader envision doing or achieving something.
That doesn’t mean simply describing the product or service in action terms, as in “This widget is the fastest on the market.” It means painting a picture of its use and how it impacts you, such as “With this speedy widget, you’ll produce 30% more doohickeys than the average company.”
Do you see how the second sentence’s use of the verb “produce” inspires action? Other similarly effective verbs include:
- Launch
- Drive
- Create
- Innovate
- Grow
- Explore
For an idea of how action words resonate more vividly with readers, take a look at SpaceX’s About page. Count how many active verbs it contains in its 31-word description.
Image source: SpaceX
Designs, manufactures, launches, revolutionize, enabling, and live—that’s nearly 20% of the text! Not only that, these verbs inspire more awe and admiration than if the copywriter had simply written, “SpaceX makes rockets with the goal of moving people to space.”
By communicating its mission so evocatively, it’s perhaps no surprise that SpaceX has raised over $2.25 billion in venture capital. More lively and active copywriting touches people and stirs them into action.
5. Be simple and concise
You have just seconds to convince a visitor on your website that you’re worth sticking around for—but you won’t accomplish that if your writing is overly long and complex. After all, most web users read 20% of a page’s content and that number tends to vary inversely with the amount of content on a web page. In other words: The more you write, the less people read.
Consider the difference between these two articles:
Images source: Popular Science and JAMA Psychiatry
On the left is an article from Popular Science, a quarterly magazine dedicated to sharing new developments in science and technology. It describes the findings of a study published in the medical journal JAMA Psychiatry, captured in the screenshot on the right. The two articles cover the same subject, but can you see the difference in length and complexity?
Granted, the two websites have different target audiences—one appeals to the general public and the other targets academics. However, that in itself should tell you how to write for mainstream audiences. Like Popular Science, use simple, straightforward language to communicate your point to readers and delete excess words that don’t enhance your message or add value for your readers.
Other Articles From AllBusiness.com:
- The Complete 35-Step Guide for Entrepreneurs Starting a Business
- 25 Frequently Asked Questions on Starting a Business
- 50 Questions Angel Investors Will Ask Entrepreneurs
- 17 Key Lessons for Entrepreneurs Starting A Business
6. Write with SEO in mind
As technology advances and designers learn more about how people search, search engine algorithms shift and change their priorities. You used to be able to optimize a page just by using your target search term as much as possible, but those days are long gone. (Now it’s called keyword stuffing, and it’s a major no-no.)
Today, Google wants high-quality content that resonates with readers. To create content of this caliber that’s also optimized for search engines, you need to:
- Determine what your customers are searching for. Then write copy that addresses those search terms. Solving users’ search queries is Google’s ultimate goal, meaning there’s no point in trying to be sneaky and create misleading content, e.g., writing blog posts about topic A and hiding advertorial content about topic B in them.
- Naturally integrate keywords into your content. As mentioned earlier, trying to maximize the number of instances of your keyword through keyword stuffing will do more harm than good.
- Write an enticing meta title and description to draw your users in. This information is what users see when browsing search engine page results. It’s ultimately what makes the difference between a reader clicking on your website versus your competitor’s.
- Link internally to other relevant pages on your site. This will make it easier for users to explore your site further and thereby increase time on site.
- Include social share buttons in your content. Doing so makes your content more shareable and can quickly translate into more visits and page views.
- Take a look at what your competition is doing. What are they writing about? What words do they use? Use your rivals as a benchmark to make your content even better.
Note that these best practices are only a few guidelines; SEO is a whole industry that encompasses much more than a handful of bullet points. That said, these tips make a good starting point and guide for optimizing your website’s copywriting for more conversions.
7. Write compelling headlines
According to industry pioneer David Ogilvy, for every five people who read a headline, just one reads the body copy. Though a rather dismal statistic, this speaks to the importance of having strong headlines in order to entice readers to click.
With that in mind, you can make your headlines more effective by following these four tips:
- Tell the reader what he or she will gain from the product, service, or article.
- Include your target search term.
- Be specific.
- Tug at the reader’s emotions.
For example, check out the headlines on the website of media company Romper. Romper attracts its target audience, millennial moms, by crafting its headlines with these tips in mind.
Image source: Romper
For instance, “Why Children Love Orphaned Characters & Parents Hate Them” is far more vivid and specific than the headline alternative “Why People Have Different Opinions on Orphaned Characters.”
In a similar vein, “11 Responses For the Jerk Judging Your Picky Eater” tells readers exactly what to expect (11 responses) and evokes emotion (the “jerk”) along the way, connecting with any parent who has felt their child being judged.
8. Leverage social influence
Humans are social creatures. If another person recommends something to us, even if it’s a stranger writing a recommendation on the internet, we tend to trust that more than we would trust a traditional advertisement. In fact, feedback from others holds so much sway that 94% of online shoppers report avoiding a business if they’ve read a negative review about it.
Why does this matter? You can use social influence to your advantage in your copy, specifically by:
- Adding customer reviews to your landing page
- Creating a dedicated “customer testimonials” page
- Adding new reviews on a regular basis
- Including an occasional bad or mediocre review
Yes, that’s right—some neg
from neb biz feed 1 http://bit.ly/2Rb1SGz
via Nebula Biz Local Loans
No comments:
Post a Comment