Copywriting 101 – Creating Copy That Sells
Before you can create response-pulling copywriting for an effective sales campaign you must research your target market thoroughly. And effective market research requires that the copywriter have available as many intimate details about the target audience as possible.
The data must include demographic information as well as psychological and behavioral profiles of the prospect. Knowing the psychological trigger of your target market will dictate the words and the approach you use in your copy. Using this information effectively results in more sales.
While your words describe your offer to your prospect at your site, this future customer is making a determination whether you can provide them with what they want. If the prospect becomes comfortable with you it’s because the copywriting, the “words on the page”, made the customer feel that there was a connection. The customer is comfortable with purchasing your product because you offered the product in the way the customer wanted.
People buy what they need from those people who understand their unspoken agenda. When you speak to these hidden agendas, the words create a communication bond with your prospect. They feel that the person who is selling this product really knows them. The comfort level of the customer increases when you write copy that speaks to that hidden agenda. Because your approach was what they wanted, they believe what you say and they purchase the product.
The psychological profile data for the customers provides a road map to the uncovered psychological wants of your audience. Then you know the best words to use to position the product or service for that group of buyers. Copywriters understand that each word on the page must do something.
The best an dmost response-provoking words are not action verbs but power words written to elicit a specific response. There can be no fluff in good copywriting. Although the web has reduced the cost of advertising, the customer is more impatient and more jaded than ever before.
The copywriter’s bible instructs the writer to go direct for the jugular vein. Don’t try to amuse the customer and don’t try to be cute in the copy. Start your presentation with hard hitting, straight to the point words written for the specific purpose of getting that customer to purchase, and purchase today.
The data collected will provide behavioral information on your target audience. From this data the copy will address the precise desires of your market that will motivate the prospects
The premise is if you don’t provide what buyers need emotionally, then your sales results will suffer. The point of the copywriting must be to give buyers what they really want. What is perceived as a need is a logical predictable indicator that does not create good sales copy. The good copywriter provides what the buyer wants. The want is not so apparent and is a hidden desire.
Uncovering that hidden desire and using the words that speak to it requires painstaking research and the ability to use the words in a proper format that does not insult the buyer, but relieves them of their fears or problems, or satisfies their longings. Writing for a targeted buyer, there are specific words and phrases that will motivate them to act in the prescribed manner.
The copywriting that speaks to the wants is the emotional connection to the underlying desires, which the buyer usually does not articulate because most people are not aware of these hidden desires. If the copy does not address or understand the mind set of the audience, the copy cannot speak to or connect with their hidden psychological agenda of the prospect.
The sectors of your market will determine which words, emotional triggers or strategies that work best for different markets segments. The key for successful direct response copywriting is understanding what makes someone want to use or buy services and the exact approach these buyers respond to. This requires you to learn the needs, problems, and fears of the prospect before you write a single word of copy.
J.G. Hostlerberg is a top freelance copywriter working together with two other top hired-gun direct response copy pros to educate fledgling copy cubs in the art and science of copywriting. For killer conversion copy training, and hundreds of secret tips and tricks of the copywriting profession, go to http://www.copywritingshop.com/ and get signed up with our soon to be launched training, http://www.GoCopyThis.Com for the chance of a lifetime!
