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A Guide to Copywriting to Promote Your Business Brought to you by Gabor Olah www.IncomeAutopilot.com
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DISCLAIMER AND/OR LEGAL NOTICES: The information presented in this ebook represents the views of the publisher as of the date of publication. The publisher reserves the rights to alter and update their opinions based on new conditions. This ebook is for informational purposes only. The author and the publisher do not accept any responsibilities for any liabilities resulting from the use of this information. While every attempt has been made to verify the information provided here, the author and the publisher cannot assume any responsibility for errors, inaccuracies or omissions. Any similarities with people or facts are unintentional. No part of this ebook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any informational storage or retrieval system without expressed written, dated and signed permission from the publisher.
Page 3 Table of Contents
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What is Copywriting & Why Is It So Important? ............................................ 4
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The Basics of Copywriting: Important Terminology ...................................... 5 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10
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Target Market: .................................................................................................... 6 USP: .................................................................................................................. 10 Features: ........................................................................................................... 12 Benefits: ............................................................................................................ 12 Bullets ............................................................................................................... 14 Headlines:......................................................................................................... 16 Subheadlines: ................................................................................................... 18 Testimonials ..................................................................................................... 19 Call-to-action: ................................................................................................... 21 Offer.................................................................................................................. 22
Tips for Writing Great Copy ......................................................................... 24 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9
Speak to Your Audience .................................................................................... 24 Avoid Excessive Adjectives ............................................................................... 25 Be Specific ........................................................................................................ 26 Don’t Worry So Much about Grammar ............................................................. 27 Keep it Simple ................................................................................................... 28 Keep Layouts Simple ........................................................................................ 29 Be Succinct & Edit ............................................................................................ 30 Sense of Urgency – Get Them to Buy Now ....................................................... 30 Close the Deal – Call-to-Action......................................................................... 31
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Why a Marketing Mama Needs a Website for Her Copywriting Plan ........... 33
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Closing ......................................................................................................... 35
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1. What is Copywriting & Why Is It So Important? Simply put, copywriting is the writing you use in your written promotional materials. This can include your advertising, website, brochure, catalogs, business cards, sales letter and more. Copywriting is what you use to get your customers and potential customers to take a particular action. For example: •
Call you for more information
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Place an order
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Sign up for your mailing list
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Get them to refer a friend to your business
Many business owners make the mistake of thinking they can just throw their copywriting together. I congratulate you for taking the time to read this guide because the information in it will put you ahead of many other small business owners who make this mistake. Consider this: When someone visits your website or reads your brochure, you aren’t there to answer their questions or to convince them how great your product is. Your words need to do that for you. In other words, you need effective copywriting. This guide is going to show you how to do that.
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1 The Basics of Copywriting: Important Terminology In this chapter, I’ll go over some terminology that will help you in understanding the principles of copywriting. Read each one in detail as I’ve not only included the definition of each word, but I’ve also added: •
Examples and further detail for deeper understanding of these important concepts.
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Exercises to apply these concepts.
This information will serve as your foundation of knowledge in all the copywriting you do for your business.
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1.1 Target Market: Your target market is the group of people you’re selling your product to. You have to be very specific when you define your target market, in order to make your copywriting most effective. You can’t just say “women, moms or pet owners” because that is still vague. What women? Which moms? Which pet owners? When defining your target market, there are many things to consider. We’ve made a small list below, but it only touches the surface. For each target market, there are so many different factors that can make up your specific target market: •
Age
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Income
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Interests
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If it’s a woman, her marital status may come into play
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If it’s a mom, you might want to have an idea about the age of her children; if she works outside the home, etc.
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If it’s a pet owner, what kind of pet she has, what breed, etc.
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Wants, wishes and desires *
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Problems she needs solved *
*These last two are particularly important because this is what really motivates people to spend their money and buy products. Yes, they buy to satisfy their immediate needs, but desire is what drives people to spend their money readily.
Page 7 The following are important human motivators that have been identified by psychologists. They will help you in understanding what motivates your readers to take action: •
Fear
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Exclusivity
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Guilt
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Greed
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Need for approval
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Convenience
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Pleasure
Some people might see it as unethical to play too hard on the emotions of their potential customer, but you can use this information to really understand what motivates your target market. The more you understand your target market, the easier it will be to sell to them. You will understand their point-of-view, the problems they have and how much they’d like a solution. The Problem with Being Too Vague: I’ve seen a number of business owners who try the vague “be everything to everyone approach” and it’s really tough to make that work as a small business owner. These people may sell candles online or cosmetics or a similar product and the business owner will say their target market is simply women. The problem is if you sell those things not all women are your target as I’ve already said. Let me explain further…
Page 8 There are plenty of women who don’t care much about candles and they’re content buying the typical drugstore cosmetics or no cosmetics at all. Those women are not your target market. Even a woman who thinks candles are lovely and wears a little makeup now and then, but doesn’t readily spend her money on those items, is not your target market. You need to understand the woman who really wants to buy your product and she’ll buy it over and over again. Imagine Your Typical Customer: What are her wants and desires? What problems does she need solved? If you don’t already know that, try surveying the customers that you already have. Ask them a few questions about themselves, why they bought the product, what they like about it and what they don’t like. In return, offer them a coupon or a free gift or something, just to get that feedback. This information will be very valuable to you. Think about your product: What is the single most important reason your target audience would want to buy it? You need to be able to empathize with your target market, identify their problems and show how your product solves that problem. If you think too generally about your target market, the passion is lost in your copy and it’s tough to get anyone excited about anything. For example, if you sell acne medication and you simply talk about the embarrassment of acne, you might get some sales. But if you know that your target market for a specific ad campaign is teenagers, talking about being teased at school, worrying that they won’t find a date and having a case study of a teenager who overcame that – your copywriting will be much more powerful.
Page 9 Here are a few more examples to illustrate how your target market is important and how it can vary from product-to-product and ad campaign to ad campaign: If you sell more than one product and they’re related (example: skin cream and eye shadow), each product that you sell can have a slightly or even a very different market. If the skin cream helps reduce wrinkles and the eye shadow is in a sparkly blue color, it’s likely the skin cream will appeal to a woman in her 30s who would like to reduce wrinkles. The sparkly blue eye shadow is more likely to be appreciated by a younger, more trendy audience. Of course, there are exceptions and if you sell make-up, you have the opportunity to know your market best. Regardless, even within your own product line, you can identify differences in your target market and your copy should reflect this. It is also possible that you have more than one very targeted market for an individual product. If that’s the case, you can create different promotional materials to target those specific audiences. For example, if you sell that wrinkle cream and discover that not only are certain types of women buying the cream, but men are interested too, you can create promotional materials to target the problems and interests of each group. That way, when you have different advertising campaigns or promotions, you can send people the appropriate marketing materials. You will sell more to a highly-targeted group of people than trying a lukewarm approach with the public in general. Leave general marketing to Amazon.com, Wal-Mart and other huge companies. Note – Here’s a Big Company That Does It Right: We mention Amazon.com and yes, they target a general audience overall with a wide variety of products, but a visit to their website will show you they customize their marketing right down to the individual visiting. They will show you like items based on what you are looking at on their site and they remember this the next time you visit