“LONG-FORM SALES COPY converts better or SHORT SALES PAGE is enough to sell my tripwire product?”, asked my client today.
Here’s what I told her:
**It** doesn’t really matter to the buyer.
Because..
1. The buyer is not here to measure the length of the sales page
2. The buyer is not here to count the number of words
3. The buyer is not here to admire the beauty of your design. If the design is fab, they’ll definitely admire it. But the sole purpose on the page is to **know** the product.
Your potential buyers are here to see if they’re:
1. Getting the right product – is it the right fit? What am I getting?
2. Is it worth the money – even if it’s a tripwire product
3. Who’s the creator? Is the creator credible?
4. What kind of results have past buyers seen?
5. What am I really getting if I buy this product today?
6. What will I lose if I don’t buy this product today?
7. What can I do with this product? The ROI?
8. What big worry can this product get rid of for me?
9. How much time can I save per week if I use this product?
What should you keep in mind before writing a Sales Page
1. What stage of the customer journey is my audience at? What are their major needs at this point?
2. What’s their biggest worry right now? What are their current roadblocks?
3. How are they looking at solving this?
4. List of product features + benefits
5. Prove your authority and credibility as the product creator
6. List of Frequently Asked Questions so that you don’t leave them frazzled at any point
7. Ample social proof to back up your claims and offer
8. What’s the purpose behind the purchase of a product like this?
9. Address the possible objections to buying this product
10. How can I speed up conversions and maximize sales?
Writing a sales page is not just about the number of words and the length of the page. It’s a multidimensional process that involves a myriad of moving parts to bring in conversions.
Is maintaining your business blog becoming a terrifying nightmare?
You know what the internet world calls a business owner with a stale blog? Non-existent 🙁
You have seen wrong writers, littered content calendar, that pressurizingly blinking cursor, the content marketing gurus who force you to take care of alt tags, meta descriptions and other robotic parameters you don’t understand and you think it is better to let it go?
Take a seat. I’ll be your blog-therapist for today. And in the end, I’ll leave you feeling good + a cheeky grin guaranteed!
You are tired of deception from the so-called “helpers”. You download all the free content creation calendars that promise you to take away your blogging woes.
But then, you end up staring at a blank worksheet that asks you the exact same questions … you have been digging the mud for??
And you graze your face exactly like that witch from a horror movie…That’s okay, swallow your snot. There is something more horrifying than this….that blank screen…it feels like your voice is being throttled. But sometimes, you go on a rampage and type out that entire paragraph like a solo engine taking test rounds around the station…and then when you read it, you press the backspace until you go back in time…to an intimidating-blinking cursor. Story repeats, yeah?
So, you make up your mind and you try to hire a “writer”…but, you end up scrapping all the work you were DELIVERED. You look at the chunks of kooky words that hang like your most ill-fitting garment catching dust. When you hit the sack, you are having nightmares where your prospects are barfing on your website. Eiks!
Forget all of this.
One fine day, you recover from all of this drama because it was a Sunday morning! You’ve had a fantastic week and now that you have an interesting incident to share with your audience, you decide to blog on your website. You grab your mug of fresh green juice and sit in the sun with your biz machine aka your laptop. All was good until you fall back trying to avoid the glaring sun … having no clue where to start, build context or structure your writing. Agghh, too much work! And you quit, right?
Or maybe you wrote it off that evening and then 11 months have gone by, your blog dons that stale blog.
If this is your story, there is help coming soon.
Look boss, I agree, you have challenges! You wanna go smash those sales figures, rock those goal-sy meetings, attend networking events, figure out the perfect funnel, grow your email list, hunt for the tech wizards who can set things up for you, go live on that podcast and the list never ends. You have A LOT on your plate!
But, are you putting your blog on the back seat because your time is TAKEN up?
Psst…aren’t you making a mistake big gun?
Tossing your blogging plan backward means you’re chapping up your business plan. Wanna know why? Here are 7 reasons (out of 119 reasons btw) to keep your blog active.
Blogging cuts down your sales time by 50%
Your blog is the place where your prospects get to know you, learn about your personality and identify your voice. It is where you show them who you are, instead of telling them what it is about you that they should know to buy from you. I mean, that’s what you do in a sales call, right?
By reading one piece of writing on your blog, your prospect has a registered impression about you. Now, it is up to you to build the tempo from here. A job well begun is half done? Obviously! You are already half your way through in winning that prospect. So, go blog darling!
Blogging gives you fodder to feed your social media profiles
You cannot go live 14 times a week to share your thoughts on social media. But, you can have blogs written to let the world (your customers) know, what your opinion on an issue is.
Now, why do you want to lose a stream of high-quality traffic just because you lack a blog?
Why do you want to send back those interested prospects to your competitors?
I repeat, why leave money on that frickin’ table?
Blogging makes you that money-making list
How else do you want to grow your email list? Yeah, you can tell me we have chatbots. But you know what? The chatbot is a vulnerable media. One click and poof, your messages are muted. You wanna talk to deaf ears? Nah…
I’d love to know if you have another method to grow your list (I am curious)
So, listen to me, get your blog up and going. Because honey, in that list is your money!
Nurture your authority. Earn respect as an expert
Imagine you are an authority figure or an influencer in your industry. If I meet you downtown and won’t stop admiring you and your work, how’d you feel? Mind=Blown!
That’s why, grow your authority. And this is a no-brainer. Come on, you are an expert already, and that’s why you are running a business. IT’s not just about someone admiring you. It’s the recognition that fetches you reputation. Your reputation is everything when you’re in business.
I’ll show you 5 easy ways to build authority…right here, right now
Recommend products you use (clink clink..already making money from affiliate marketing? Nice uh!)
Give your audience helpful tips that they can ACT upon (they’ll thank you forever and feel indebted to you even if they are paying money to get your secret tips and saucy advice)
Get yourself featured on elite publications and look at how clients swarm your doorway. (In case you don’t know, check out my piece on the prestigious Thrive Global that got me 3 new leads within a week of posting it)
Make powerful connections and flaunt them. This isn’t hard at all. All you have to do is one round-up post on your blog featuring influencers from your industry and you have an invaluable network in your back pocket.
Once you do these 4 steps, you become a “credible source of valuable information” naturally. You become more authoritative.
Now, all you have to do is, share information + ideas consistently.
Blogging brings Traffic + SEO
If you have a website and do not want traffic, you are mad. I mean, not you you..come on you obviously want traffic. Imagine leads come and land on your website and they head to your services page and end up hiring you. All because you shared a blog post of yours on social media. And, if you have kickass copy + a fantastic funnel, nobody can stop you from building your list, growing your biz and making a ton of money.
Plus, there is a lot of noise out there. You can cut through that noise by talking to people in your voice on your blog, on your uncluttered space. So, my dear, get a blog!
Tip: If you need more information on SEO, check it out here.
Strike conversations with your clients over a blog post
Your blog can act like an intense knowledge dissipating FAQ repository. The information can itself act as sales objection tackling mechanism which puts your prospects in your pipeline. Having your would-be clients in your digital vicinity is cool, right?
Also, who doesn’t want an opportunity to talk to clients isn’t it?
Offer YOUR solutions (services) to your clients’ problems (opportunity)
Imagine talking about a meeting in your office that sped up productivity that leads to you landing a high-ticket client. If you talk about those innate occurrences and unique experiences, you are making your clients believe you are a real, working breathing human being. And they trust you enough to buy from you.
Quick Recap
To conclude, your blog is not just beneficial for your business, it is your creative asset. It helps you capture your voice and your reader’s attention.
Your blog is the virtual bridge that connects you with your customers. If you want to resonate with your clients, build your personal brand, grow your authoritativeness, drive traffic to your website and benefit from all of the other advantages it comes with, get your blog running.
P.S: If you are totally convinced that your blog has to have a game on but you do not have the time or capacity to maintain your blog, click here.
Content is the endocrine system that creates the image of your company. Content is what makes your company a brand.
Pick any big name and you know about it because of the reach the company has had. This kind of outreach is a product of consistent content marketing efforts the brand has invested in to reap the benfits of consistent lead flow in the long term.
But creating on-brand, value-based, educative content is not an easy affair. It takes months of planning and consistent creative efforts to come up with content your audience revere.
Employ these 5 essential strategies to create timeless content that attracts your best seeker.
If you want to make your content an experience, it has to be unique and individualized.
To make it unique, use excerpts from your own business interactions. Talk about events that occurred between you and your clients. Narrate de facto episodes and instances in your content.
The one thing people can’t steal from you is your experience. It’s exclusive to you. Now, how do you apply this idea and use it to your advantage to create content?
Talk about your work process that highlights the direction your prospect is hungry for. When you highlight your work process in a blog or case study or any of your company marketing material, you’re instantly checking off objections in your audience’s minds by:
Feeding their curiosity – by giving the exact steps they’ll be walked through during your work process
Eliminating anxiety – by mapping out clear directions
Establishing authority – clear processes are a result of the experience that comes from the learning you’ve applied from your failures
Content that connects relieves your audience and builds their confidence because they now believe they’ve found the solution they’ve always wanted. It’s like going to meet your audience at a point where they are, instead of asking them for directions.
Banking on the not-so good-things
You can bring your negative experiences and present them as valuable lessons. To show you how – nobody knows about the challenges you have faced in coming up with the robust system you have now. I am sure you have learned your lessons from this. Turn this experience into a shareable excerpt that instills trust and confidence in your readers.
By talking about these learnings, you demonstrate your openness. Plus, you are bringing a real story that has lived with you. Real stories are charming because everybody wants to know what happened to your product/event/client meeting at the end. That’s what it means to show and not just tell.
Help your content with the what happened angle and you will be, remembered.
Create content that is easy to use
The web is filled with beaten content. It’s either overused or still greasy.
Starting your headlines with facts and figures used to be a thing where an average writer would stick an unimportant stat in the headline just to make it more believable even though the headline never explained how it was beneficial. And when you do that, you almost never convince your reader to actually click on the headline. All your effort goes in vain.
Easily consumable content is:
Clear and concise
Beneficial
Visually appealing
Actionable (not just inspirational)
The great content overwhelm
Let’s talk about the other face of marketing – Content Fatigue
Do your readers a favor, save them that unwanted stress! If the gurus tell you to write a minimum of 2000 words and the content you are creating doesn’t stretch that far, then do not write 2000 words just to keep up with a random rule.
Write for your readers, not for rules.
Creating flubby-dubby conundrums or writing lengthy unwanted stories, stuffing images unnecessarily, throwing in stats at the drop of a hat makes your content forced and coerced. Avoid. All of this.
Is grammar and spellings everything?
Although the internet may forgive you for typos, sometimes, bumbling with grammar and syntax can get annoying.
You instantly look down upon a piece of writing that that calls more than one mouse mouses instead of mice. Agree?
Sometimes, typos can get annoying as silly errors tend to change the meaning of a sentence completely leaving the reader baffled and thwarted.
For example:
“Their wasn’t a way out” – sounds awfully misleading and confusing. Yes?
But, in a quest to obsess over grammar, syntax, and spellings, don’t ignore the big work.
Typos can be forgiven if the content is exceptional. – Adam Connell
Adam Connell, the chief wizard behind Blogging Wizard goes on to say – “We’re only human, so mistakes happen. That said, when people find typos, it can cause them to question the credibility of a website – particularly in sales copy or any page that someone would use to evaluate a buying decision.
Ultimately, how significantly typos impact your results can largely depend on the type of content and exactly who your audience is.”
So, if you do not want to risk your position, it is best to avoid typos and severe grammar errors that question your credibility.
Create content to connect with your readers
We write and create content to communicate what we know and express what we think. This is just one side of the story.
Your readers read your content because they want to learn, know, make aware, be informed and ultimately feel how they want to feel. That is why, it is important to write content that influences, and not just informs.
Sharp writers choose each word with piercing precision. – Henneke Duistermaat
No doubt Henneke is the best of writers. She knows how to evoke your senses. Look at the choice of her words – piercing precision! Isn’t that incredible? Your word selection makes or breaks your content. Because there’s no choice – you have to be empathetic when you’re writing. You have to give your audience what they’re searching for. If you promised a solution in your headline, deliver it. If you promised a result in your headline deliver it. That’s how you connect and keep your readers.
Do not deviate from purpose and context
Are stories overdone? We all know that marketing pushes stories like it’s the bloodline of the marketing system. Stories are being pumped into content like never before.
But, what we see today, especially in email newsletters is a bunch of irrelevant, irreverent stories with a connection so weak that you begin to hate business emails.
What should you do?
Cut the crap and deliver what is needed. Even if you have to break rules.
When the whole world is drumming about using stories in your content, it is alright to go without it if you do not have a worthy story that connects.
I have seen emails with subject lines like “My mother’s death anniversary + Fast action bonuses“. I find this kind of subject lines obnoxiously careless and insensitive. You too, right?
Capitalizing on your mother’s death and mixing business by writing a story in the email about how loving your mommy was – an absolute NO!
It is a huge turn-off and people unsubscribe. You don’t have to bring your mother’s death anniversary to build context. It is off-putting.
So please, avoid using such click-bait headlines and cheesy marketing tactics. It is 2020! If you promise something in your headline, make sure you keep your promise by delivering what you are supposed to.
Tip: Check how to write promising headlines and also keep the promise.
Conclusion
Evergreen content is continuously improvised and nurtured. It is not a one-time task, it is a process. So, to summarize:
Timeless content is – exclusive, consumable, grammatically correct, evoking and in context.
What do you do to make your content evergreen? Do you have anything else to add to this list? Tell me in the comments below.
As a time-starved business owner or freelancer, let’s face it: you have a million things to do. And writing your blog doesn’t always get top billing.
But, you will have to produce content consistently to keep your marketing alive.
And, you have other inevitable responsibilities like maintaining your website (WordPress or not), dealing with clients, those annoying plugin popups, your subcontractors, taxes, processes, workflows and 67399 other things!
In the middle of this busy-paced work day, how do you make time to write content? It sure is hard.
But, here’s the good news: There’s an easier, much faster way to write blogs – and I’ll teach it to you right now.
What you will learn in the post
How to save time writing a rough title
How to write the introduction
How starting with Summary helps you write a blog faster
How to decide on the format of the post
How to design a post outline
How to write a post with helpful details
How to add jazz to your post
How to revisit headlines
How to check for readability and on-page SEO
How to save time writing a rough title
I started this post with the title “Write a blog post faster“. This helped me set the context for steadfast writing and gave me a direction. You know what you should write about.
It is a way to channelize your focus to think about what you want to achieve with this post. You should go with a rough title because it will help you set the goal for the post.
You can always come back and optimize this title later to make it more interesting and clickable. But, to begin with, and to save time, you should have a title that tells you what you should write about.
How to write the introduction
Assuming that you can update this section to suit the tone and course of your blog, write the introduction in a way that it grabs your reader’s attention.
You can do this by addressing your reader’s pain point (bring emotional relatability here).
Make sure the first sentence is super short, snackable + magnetic enough to pull your reader to the next sentence and then to the next and so on.
How starting with Summary helps you write faster
I generally wrote without summary till recently.
But this method helped me write much faster.
Because I already had the goals and the mini goals defined in the summary section. The purpose of the blog is clear now.
You only have to follow this map to write a detailed post once you decide the format of the post and come up with a blog outline.
How to decide on the format of the post
The Summary section will also help you decide the kind of post you want to be writing.
For example, whether it will be a list post, a how-to guide, an interview, a product review, newsjacking post or any other type of post.
The summary helps you set the context for the reader and the reader knows what to expect from it.
How to design post outline
This is the most important section.
Post outlining is a way of mapping the relevant topics you will be covering under your post.
Outlining a post makes it easier for you to write. And not just that, it also makes it easier for your reader to consume information without being overwhelmed.
So, how do you design an outline? Just write down the things you want to cover under your blog. For example, in this post, what makes you write faster? The outline is:
starting with a rough title to set goals
catchy introduction
carving a summary
format of the post – list, how to, review or whatever
To be more practical, let me give you another example. Say you are writing a post called “5 Benefits of using Google Docs“. Your post is all about highlighting the benefits of Google Docs. So the outline of the post will be:
Introduction
List of 5 benefits
Benefit 1 – Easy to use
Benefit 2 – Accessibility – Access from anywhere
Benefit 3 – Reliability – Google is up most of the time
Benefit 4 – Never have to worry about losing data
Benefit 5 – Share easily
Conclusion
CTA
Once you carve out the subheadings, it becomes so much more easier to write and most importantly, finish the post. Let’s move to the next section.
How to write a post with helpful details
Once you have outlined your post, you now know your mini goals. You only have to elaborate on these mini-goals and fill in the content. For example, say you are writing a post titled “How to achieve SEO in simple steps“. The subheadings under this will be something like:
Hashtags
Low-Competition Keywords
Using Images
Fresh Content
Length of content
Title
Header Tags
Meta tags
Slugs
Internal Links
Sitemaps
Robots.txt
Now, under each subheading, you write about optimizing or methods that help you achieve SEO.
Tip: A comprehensive subheading is a huge plus for SEO. Write, elaborate and clarify.
How to add jazz to your post
To make the post more interesting, add information in different formats. Presenting information in formats other than normal blog text format keeps your reader hooked until the end.
There are many ways to present information differently:
Add a Note that gives a warning to avoid mistakes your reader might commit if there is a chance that s/he might get confused.
Give a Tip that adds more value to the content in the subheading.
Quote a high authority industry personality to leverage the content.
Include statistics that imply that your content is well researched
Include images – because visual information is consumed faster and stays longer in the memory. Plus, relatable images and graphics keep the flow smooth.
Come up with graphs, pie charts or Venn diagrams to represent complicated information in an easy to understand, visual format.
How to polish your headlines
You must and should revisit headlines.
If your headline does not interest the reader, all your efforts go down the drain.
You can also curate a Headline Swipe File to draw inspiration when you get stuck.
I use Coschedule’s headline analyzer to check the factors that make a good headline.
For example, a catchy headline has a high emotional quotient attached.
CoSchedule’s headline analyzer tells you the exact quotient your headline is lacking.
Plus, the analyzer assesses a combined score suggesting you to tweak the headlines to make them more intriguing, catchy and clickable.
Check how I used the analyzer to come up with a title for this post.
Write headlines faster with CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer
How to check for readability and on-page SEO
The last step to take care of before you publish a blog post is conducting an SEO check – put on your white hat baby! Here are the steps:
Check for hyperlinks wherever necessary. Check if they are working and have no broken links.
Optimize your images with the right title, descriptions etc.
Conduct a spell check and use Grammarly to catch minor errors.
Optimize your headings with the right header tags.
Add screenshots wherever necessary. The screenshot from CoSchedule has obviously given you a better understanding of what’s going on. So, make use of screenshots to make your blog more interesting.
Check for Yoast’s readability score and tweak your sentences to make them easy to read and follow.
After you follow these steps, make sure you proofread your blog.
Now that you know the 9 easy steps to write a kick-ass blog post, will you follow these steps? Or do you have a different process to write a blog? Have any questions? Comment below. Let’s have a discussion.
You want to make your website an arsenal of good content.
But, you haven’t written a blog in a week. Oh wait, I think it has been a month. Right?
How do you write a blog post quickly? Here is what you need to write quick, snap and post.
Keep logging ideas that make good blog posts
The biggest impediment a blogger faces is – “What do I blog about? What do I write? I don’t know where to start. How do I come up with good topics?”
You feel like you have run short of topics to write. But, it is not the case if you take little more effort to log ideas.
Your mind is an idea machine. The kind of power it holds is insane, in a good way. Make a note of those crazy ideas and turn them into barrels of blogs.
To start with, make a note of problems YOU are facing as a blogger. When you have found traction in collecting topics, go eavesdrop other bloggers’ problems.
Look at those blogger communities, they are flooded with problems in the form of questions. Go find the answers to those questions and help your fellow mates and more importantly, help yourself. Write more.
How to choose from my list of topics?
I am writing this post because I needed to start writing. I needed to kill those innumerable distractions from Facebook Groups and Linkedin Feed. (Let’s talk about the lame videos everybody is making on LinkedIn in my next post.)
Or, if you are anything like me, the other biggest impediment is a situation like this – “Oh, I have too many topics! Where do I start? Which one do I choose? No, I will save this one to publish later. Oh, this is the best topic, but I will save it for some special occasion.”
Do you ever have this kind of a monologue going on?
Choose the one that you feel is your closest current need. Choose the topic where you think you have more ideas about. Is it not easier to start this way?
Identify the core reason for the problem
You have chosen a topic.
You type out the headline and then what?
The problem I am talking about here is about getting a blog written quickly. I solve the problem by showing you how I solved it for myself.
Do not sit lingering about giving your post a sassy introduction already. Just start typing. I used the word typing, not writing. The first line of this post is the last thing I wrote. Makes sense right?
Start with the problem, talk about the first step and gather momentum from there. “One step at a time”, these five words are not random and overused. Think about it and try and stick to smaller goals in a day to achieve big. The catch is, sticking to the smaller goals. So, solve the core problem in smaller steps. Make use of headings to do this.
Write in a pollution-free zone
You can have your kid running around while you are writing. I wouldn’t call that a distraction. You can have 37 more tabs open. I won’t call it a distraction although you can consider shutting them down.
But writing in a place polluted with features, icons, widgets, plugins and unwanted BS all around your writing space is the biggest distraction. Technology can be a hindrance in situations like these.
I used to write directly on WordPress and I can’t tell you what kind of a fool I was to do that. It killed my productivity and buried it in Antarctica.
Choose a writing space that has minimal features. MS Word is good, but it has portability issues.
To write this piece quick in no more than 50 minutes, I made use of a clean writing environment. It is called Airstory.
I am not an affiliate to Airstory. I am endorsing it because it has helped me boost my productivity. Airstory turns me into a word monster. Try it here and let me know how it goes.
Shut all other windows
I have a problem. I love beautifying things and I suffer from the pathetic perfection syndrome. It is probably because I deal with obsession every single second. Obsessed with bringing the best. But I have to throw this truth here.
Looking for perfection is like living in a limbo. You don’t know whether the totem is spinning for real or not.
Being obsessed is a good thing.
You cannot be an entrepreneur if you are not obsessed with your work.
You have to love and bathe in your work if you are an entrepreneur.
But, an obsession of the other kind – to perfectize the bigger picture is what will drag you down and pin you there. That is exactly what happened to me.
I was obsessed with the bigger picture. I was afraid of breaking rules. I was afraid to invent words (like perfectize ). I was too afraid to compromise the green color a plugin gave me to indicate my SEO score. There were too many factors judging my writing even before it got published; even when nobody was watching it.
I broke free from all of it and wrote in a clean white dynamic space. See for yourself. I did it.
Write now. Edit Later
It took me years to do this.
Again, the perfection syndrome is the culprit. I cannot get past grammatical errors and spelling mistakes in general.
I have caught errors in writings of few of the top writers in the world (no exaggeration). I mailed them the errors and have heard back about the correction and a compliment – “Good catch!”. I have such an eye for detail.
This ability of mine was countering my own productivity. Now I knew why they were the best writers in the world and why I am just a fly catching their errors. You get it, right? Just edit later if you want to get somewhere one day.
Time your writing
You don’t need fancy chess timers on your table or an extra downloadable software or an online tool that sucks up your time asking you to create an account to save time (Oxymoron alert for the less sarcastic).
All you need is a simple timer by Google. Just Google “timer”, enter the time, hit start and you have a watch telling you to focus.
I aimed to complete an 800+ word article in 40 minutes. I arrived at a 1000+ word blog in 50 minutes. Not too bad eh?
Conclusion
Now, this blog did not require as much research because I spoke about how I solved my own problem. I had the requirement, I had the data, I ruled the style and tone. So, I could write it super fast.
But for articles that are backed by stats, research is what takes time. With that too, the above tips can boost your writing speed.
If you want to be productive and create an arsenal of blog posts, you have to write quick and write dirty, first. How can you make that possible?
Start by logging ideas.
Do not waste time finding good topics.
Use a timer.
Will you start logging ideas from today? That is the first step.
So what will you blog about now?
Comment your topic here and go start writing. Why did I ask you to comment? If you leave a comment here, you will be obliged to write about the topic and that is a good obligation that solves your blogging woes. Right? Now, go write.
P.S: I will be true to you. The editing took me another 15 minutes.
Copywriting. This term can be condescending, I know.
The word “copywriting” can evoke baffling questions like these:
Is copywriting about copying? Is it copy-pasting?
No kidding, such questions are asked for real.
So, what is copywriting?
Copywriting is the art and science of putting words that absolve the reader’s objections and persuade the reader to take a pre-defined action.
Good copywriting is backed by a thorough study of the psychological behavior of the business’ audience. It involves a step by step procedure that gathers detailed information about the target visitor.
In the digital age, copywriting is synonymous with web copywriting or direct response copywriting. Web copy is written to lead the target prospect to act on a CTA.
Copywriting is an intense process. As a copywriter, it is your responsibility to know your customer’s business in and out. The business functions, benefits, features, USP, value proposition, objections, problems, FAQs, mission, vision, audience and so much more.
What does a typical copywriting process look like?
Ideally, a copywriter gets business information from the client in the form of a questionnaire with specific answers. Specificity is the key. It is up to the copywriter to ask questions that fetch unambiguous information avoiding back and forth communication.
Based on the information in the questionnaire, the copywriter studies the customer info and derives a customer profile.
The copywriter designs a wireframe sketch to make the copy come with a flow. The wireframe sketch decides the fluidity of the copy.
The positives and features of the product or service are aggregated and converted into benefits.
The copywriter comes up with a clear value proposition that tells the purpose of the business website. No beating around the bush here. It has to be clear and concise.
This is followed by rounds of editing, search engine optimization and testing the copy.
Note: A prospect is determined by the business whose products are designed for a certain demographic.
Why should a copywriter know everything about the company?
To define the value proposition
You are writing copy for the company’s customer. You are writing copy to convince the prospect. The prospective visitor comes with many questions. Answering all their in-mind questions on-page is the goal of web copy.
In order to answer their questions, you should know the business inside out. If you do not know about the company functions and operations unique to that company, your value proposition fails. If you do not know why the company does what it does, you fail to get the purpose in words.
The value proposition is the most distilled version of the company’s prime purpose.
To understand and reproduce the purpose
When the “why” is not projected strongly, there is nothing that moves the prospect to establish an emotional connect. The emotional connect is not about instantly liking your brand. It is about a feeling your words can evoke
Let’s talk about a common activity you and I both do. Do you feel good shopping on a website that sells the products you love at your happy price? Do you see the key-points here? Love..Happy!
Ultimately, you do what you do to make yourself feel the way you want to. Even if it means trading money.
Jim Keenan, the author of Not Taughtsays you cannot sell to your prospect if the prospect doesn’t perceive value in your product or service. The “value” here can take any form. But it eventually boils down to a feeling. An emotional state of content that happens after an action.
Great copywriting is about salvation, not sales. – Aaron Orendorff
When you invest your money in a worthy product, you willingly trade your hard earned money because you have assigned a value to the product. That is all a customer pays for – Salvation. And, copywriting is the art and science that brings out the value out of a product and projects it in the form of words.
If you succeed to provide that reason of fulfillment your prospect is looking for, you have written good copy. That is when your copy becomes convincing. You don’t need to put any more effort, even in terms of fancy-glittery graphics. They do not matter. All you have to do now is drive your prospect to take an action. The sale is just a resultant action. And, congratulations! You just sold your product.
How to edit your copy?
To get the most pristine version of your copy, try removing one random word from one random sentence of your final copy. If you see a discrepancy, in any form, you put back the word and publish it. If not, repeat the distillation process.
Good copy is achieved when if you remove a word from the line, it obstructs the meaning of the sentence terribly.
Why is copywriting called copywriting?
The above definition implies that anything worthy of being reproduced to preserve its existential value is copy. This highlights the monumental importance copywriting holds in the business world.
Why every business needs copywriting?
When I began my career as a copywriter, I wondered what copyblogger meant. It sounded weird. I get it, the word is formed by the amalgamation of two words copywriter and blogger. But why? Why would anybody do that?
Now, when I know why every business needs copy, I fully understand the profound reasoning behind naming the legendary website CopyBlogger. In simple terms, CopyBlogger is a resource that teaches you conversion blogging or business blogging but not limited to blogging.
It is all about conversions. You cannot grow your business without conversions. Can you?
You need copy to convert.
Copy that converts + A well positioned product = Sales that spike your revenue
And after all, sales is the ultimate goal of any ethical business. Now that you know why every business needs copywriting, what are the steps you are going to take to write copy?
If you want to grow your business 10X faster, do what the other 86% of B2B businesses are doing. Get a Business Blog.
The customer isn’t a fool anymore.
She is well informed and will not fall for old-school advertising tactics. Hence, advertising has become extremely competitive.
The customer base is aware of the psychological schemes behind an ad.
They have learned to say NO to urgency based ads because they know offers are recurring. They have adapted to the parity of the persuader making standout copy a rare asset.
A B-Blog helps customers make informed decisions through educative posts. It is a web point that provides informative content in an ocean of chaos. It is a medium to prove your mastery in your industry by providing detailed information.
Blog posts are educational and inspirational. A blog post doesn’t have an immediate sales objective, but it does have a marketing purpose. By sharing your knowledge, experience, and skills, you grow your authority. Once blog readers get to know you, like you, and trust you, it becomes easier to sell to them.
– Henneke Duistermaat
How is a BLOG the solution to growing your business?
The approach is more humane with a blog. A blog serves the purpose of an expert educator. This means it is about how much a reader gains from the valuable information.
By having a blog, you are devising an interface that opens up opportunities for both the parties. It is an opportunity for the customer to learn more. For a business, it is a pass to build trust amongst your customers by providing detailed information. An expert is deemed as the authority and has the power to persuade through higher knowledge.
For example, if you are looking to invest in a Marketing Solution like Hubspot, you land on their site and look for the product listing tab.
Hubspot’s Content Flow
Once you have seen the product and pricing, you DO linger over the website to find out more about the product. What do you do next? You hit the very inviting “Resources” tab.
What does the “Resources” tab tell you?
It throws arrays of options for the potential customer to derive value and access the company’s success stories. All the freebies, trainings, comprehensive courses, eBooks, Blog and everything under the tab is done for a purpose. The purpose is to provide VALUE.
A business can win over the trust of a customer only when there is the provision of value. Employing content strategy to design the website directs the business to bring in more leads. If you read the blog, notice how many links point back to Hubspot’s other content? That is visitor retention.
How do the FREE Resources benefit the business?
The FREE resources are designed to solve a particular set of problems faced by a certain set of audience. This set of an audience is the circle of potential customers to the company. When the company is investing time and effort to solve its audience’s day to day problems, it is building a relationship with the audience. Therefore, Relationship Marketing comes into the picture.
Now, because the company has already established a truly helpful relationship with the audience, the audience is willing to listen. The next step is to capture emails by proposing an enticing freebie offer, through a blog post.
How do the FREE Resources bring in prospects?
Access the blog and see how one blog arrives at a point of conclusion to point at another blog post. This creates the train of information that retains the visitor. At the end of every post, the content leaves the reader wanting for more of such helpful information. The cycle of continuous data consumption is triggered to keep the visitor feelinterested. From one blog post to another and up comes the prompt with a “Download eBook” message.
The moment you see a ‘FREE Download’ image, you are willingly offering your email id in a quest to learn more about the subject. You did this because the information offered you value. You would have bounced if the headline promised something and delivered things you don’t want. And, you just became a prospect.
What happens after a prospect becomes a subscriber?
As a general process, a subscriber is scooped into the company’s information exchange community. She now receives tons of relevant information spiking her learning curve. Over a period, now that the company has helped the subscriber with her needs, the subscriber has a higher chance of buying a product from the company. Do you appreciate how the traffic is routed through the blog by providing targeted content?
A business blog acts as a source to display the company’s expertise and project mastery. By delving deep and denting those details, the business establishes authority in that niche. So, if you have a problem pertaining to that niche, you look up to the master and not the minion.
This is not the end. A purposeful blog post makes the reader FEEL more knowledgeable and powerful. By discovering knowledge in the areas of her interest, the reader feels the same relief as she would feel in finding a solution. That is the power of writing. The intrinsic synergy and excitement in the moment, persuade the reader to share the blog content online. This promotes the online visibility of the brand.
Why is online visibility a concern?
If you are reading this, you know that online visibility is important. Today, the spine of any business is its content system. If you do not distribute content, it goes stale. Content distribution or social media sharing brings warm organic traffic. A warm audience brings natural engagement and genuine distribution. This results in boosting traffic leading to some fresh link juice. This is a cycle that keeps generating traffic.
In the digital world, traffic is money. Website traffic coupled with power-packed copy and persuasive blog content is a goldmine for a business online. But, this is no cakewalk. Writing content that pleases the reader, as well as the search engine, needs experience. It involves strategy, planning and conviction.
Do you have a business blog? What are the challenges you are facing with your B-Blog? Comment below or know more about Business Blogging here.
