The endgame of any type of sales efforts is to get that final conversion, whether it’s a true sale or something that could lead to a sale down the line, like redeeming an offer or signing up for an email list. A lot of sales professionals get creative here, from trying to add a sense of urgency via timed sales or trying to add fun elements to the purchase experience. For sales copy, because you’re limited to the written word, you may think that your options are limited, but this isn’t the case. Your sales copy is a potentially powerful tool when used correctly. Here are three ways to use your sales copy to drive conversions:
1.Benefits over features
Some people fall into the mistake of thinking that there’s not a lot of difference between a product description and sales copy. However, it’s easy to point out the flaw in this thinking right away. When a person looks at a product description, it’s because they already have some sort of degree of interest in it, whether they found it through a search engine or were recommended it by a friend. The goal here is to try and explain the features in a clear and concise way. That’s not how sales copy works. You are still missing that key step of convincing someone why these features are important. A subtle shift in your sales copy can make that possible.
Part of this is because the nature of sales is changing. People no longer need to be sold “a solution” because most already know the solutions they want. What you need to focus on in your sales copy is communicating benefits. The simple change here is making it less about how great your product is and more about how your product can help the reader improve their quality of life. In order to do this effectively, though, you need to know what your reader’s concerns are. That’s part of the reason why big ad firms pay so much for market research—to know what their customers value so they can write with that in mind.
2. Intelligent Structure
As said before, sales copy isn’t a product description. However, it’s not a blog either. Think of it this way. Very few people watch a commercial intently. Instead, something may catch their eye, they see the brand association, then they go on their way. Something similar applies to sales copy, in that most people are likely to skim it rather than read it intensely. You need to keep that in mind when creating your sales copy.
To make the most out of a customer who is skimming your content, make sure that you focus on creating enticing headlines and sub-headlines. These should communicate key benefits of your product or service so, even if a person only skims, they will understand those. Ideally, the headline will be so interesting that they want to read the whole way through, but this way, you’re covered in both cases.
3. A successful call to action
Remember, if someone decides to read your sales copy, they’re likely aware that its sales copy, and that you want something from them. It’s essential to make what exactly you want as clear as possible with a strong call to action. Don’t be ambiguous about things, so if you want them to click a link or fill out a form, simply say it. In addition, you also want to make things as easy as possible for your reader to actually get to the sales copy. It may be worth it to try and experiment with things like different font, verbiage, and even placement in your sales materials. Just make sure that you don’t go off-brand in doing so. Remember, the rest of your sales copy is about convincing a person to buy your product or whatever conversion you are looking for. The goal of your call to action should just be making it easy for them to do so.
The good news is that if you are struggling, there are a lot of strong examples to draw from of other businesses. Just make sure to adapt some of these examples and the principles we mentioned earlier to your niche and your customer base to see the most success.
If there are two things that probably mean the most to your sales copy efforts in terms of conversions, they are effort and empathy. Low-effort sales copy is easy to notice—a verbatim reading of benefits of a product that is more about talking at a customer rather than to them. Going hand-in-hand with this is empathy. This is taking the time to understand customer problems, so you can address them ahead of time in your sales copy. Remember, with sales copy, you don’t have someone behind the desk to answer questions like in a store, so you need to think ahead.