You can be good at what you do. Still, if you can’t market your product or service properly, you’ll struggle to generate sales.
A crucial element of running a good marketing campaign is powerful copywriting.
A good copy evokes emotions, answers questions, builds trust and drives prospective customers toward completing the sales cycle.
The best part?
You don’t need to be a grammarian to write copy that persuades potential customers to take action or achieve your conversion goal.
You need to be a good writer, though.
Your copy needs to connect with your target audience and subtly convince them to move down your sales funnel.
To achieve this, you must leverage tried-and-tested copywriting strategies… which takes us to our next point.
What Are the Best Copywriting Strategies?
A good copywriting strategy is one that aligns with your marketing strategy.
It’s the writing approach that allows you to effectively promote your product or service to your prospects and compel them to spend their money.
In this post, you’ll discover not one but thirty strategies and examples to help you write copy that fulfills the customer’s main objective – finding a solution to their problem.
Let’s get cracking.
Strategy #1 – Focus on Benefits Instead of Features
One of the biggest mistakes businesses make when marketing is focusing on features instead of benefits.
Listing features right-left, and center might sound seductive. But, it’s more convincing when you write about how your product can help prospective customers with their pain points.
Let’s you’re a phone manufacturer or seller.
Instead of highlighting all the specs and tech, it makes sense to write about what users can accomplish with your device.
High resolution is good. So is a face scanner. But, the customer’s main objective is to know how these features can help them.
Of course, you can include a list of features, but draw prospects with your offer’s benefits first. That way, you can hook in even the less savvy shoppers.
See how Skype does it.
Strategy #2 – Target Emotions
The payoff in terms of conversion rate can be huge when you connect with your customer’s emotions.
To illustrate the power of emotions and buying behavior, consider the following.
Shoppers will go for brand-name products because of the emotional attachments they have to them. They could save money buying generic brands with the same elements at a lower price but choose not to.
When writing copy, you’ll want to trigger emotions that’ll make people buy your offer or do anything else you want them to. You only need to ensure customers don’t feel manipulated. Be subtle.
A heavy-handed, emotional-stabbing copy won’t sit well with customers. They’ll deem it cheap and untrustworthy.
Once you appeal to emotions, include a reason to justify the shopper’s decision.
Because buyers don’t want to seem enslaved to their emotions, you’ll need to prop up the emotion-induced purchase with something that sounds like reason.
The most effective copywriting comes with rationalization builders, making customers “feel good” about their buying decision.
Strategy #3 – Leverage Story Telling
“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away …” “Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy …” for many people, these snippets instantly create images in their minds.
Why? …because they remember stories that follow.
If you want to write powerful copy, learn how to tell a story.
Storytelling involves taking your business, service, or product description and turning it into a story that engages customers and makes them emotionally invested in the outcome.
Sure, storytelling is much of a science as it is an art. Still, doing certain things can help you become a good storyteller.
- Read your audience: As a general rule, you must know what your target audience wants to read. That way, you can write relevant, high-quality content that helps the potential customer solve their problems.
- Use the classic hero formula: Think about your childhood hero movies. They all have the same plot. Slaying a dragon. Saving a princess. The usual stuff.
Your sales copy most likely won’t connect with readers if you don’t have a strategy to tell your story. Copy without a plot, no matter how good, is just a collection of words.
Strategy #4 – Be Specific
Have you ever read an article or text that promises to help you “double” your earnings or have a “significant” impact on your revenue?
Often, you unconsciously dismiss these claims. Why? Because they’re vague and easy to concoct.
Compare those claims with specifics like “increasing your income by 258%” or “boosting your conversion rates by 90%.” Specifics sell.
Most of the time, prospects assume state-specific numbers are true because it’s harder to lie with specifics. Numbers don’t lie, so they say.
Avoid general claims in your copywriting work. Blanket claims sound too good to be true. Plus, they’re easy to fake.
Below are five ways to add specific proof to your copy:
- Endorsements
- Using percentages
- Demos
- Case studies
- Stating the average savings amount for the customer
Strategy #5 – Write Conversationally
Conversational copywriting will increase your conversion rate.
Writing conversationally implies you’re in tune with your prospect’s tone, lingo, and speech patterns, which makes you one of them and not another money-hungry business owner.
And that implies you care more than just getting money out of your customer’s pockets.
So you come across as a serious and trustworthy brand. Customers view you as a business offering a genuine solution since you understand their pain points.
Besides making your brand more relatable, conversational copy triggers a more profound psychological connection to change how customers see you.
Below are five copywriting strategies to keep your content conversational:
- Brevity: A brief copy is easy to read, digest, and engage with
- Avoiding passive voice for a powerful copy
- Use shorter sentences to increase readability
- Ask questions
- Use examples
Strategy #6 – Keep Your Writing Brief and Compelling
Whether you’re writing copy for web pages or landing pages, you don’t want potential clients lost in big text walls.
Big walls of text are intimidating and don’t work to keep your target market engaged.
Keep your writing short and sweet; like The Dollar Shave Club.
Pass your message using simple language. Also, write something compelling to entice potential customers to read your copy till the end.
Start with a captivating headline and ensure the paragraphs that follow are interesting and clear.
You’ll want to add virtual elements like images, charts, graphs, and videos to highlight your point.
If you’re writing a sales copy for your latest product, for instance, you can include a demo or product video to increase your chances of turning a prospect into a customer.
Below are four pointers to help your write brief, compelling copy:
- Use short paragraphs and occasional single-sentence paragraphs
- Break sections with images
- Include links to sources that explain details when necessary
- Use bullet points occasionally
Strategy #7 – Trigger Urgency
Picture this.
A shop is selling your favorite sneakers. There are dozens of pairs available. Most likely, you won’t be in a hurry to buy. There’s plenty to go around, after all.
What if there were only a few pairs left? You’ll probably feel like you want to purchase a pair urgently before missing out.
That’s urgency.
And to run a successful content marketing campaign, you need to know how to leverage the power of urgency.
Below are some copywriting strategies to create urgency in your sales copy:
- Start with the headline. Create headlines that draw potential clients to reading the rest of your copy. Think along the lines of “time is running out” or “before it’s too late” type of headlines.
- Use power words that imply scarcity and action like “lost,” “acted sooner,” “get the best,” “acted sooner,” etc.
- Take advantage of limited-time offers
- Let your customers know what they’re missing out on
Strategy #8 – Prove Your Product’s Value
Customers want to get a good deal. They want to feel that your product is worth their money.
When writing online copy, one of your main goals is to prove that your product or service delivers what it promises.
There are several ways to show value proposition, including:
- Similar product comparison: Show the customer what makes your product better than similar products. This way, they can compare your offer against the price.
- Comparing a similar product but not a direct competitor: This strategy gives the customer a different benchmark to compare your product’s value.
The idea is to convince potential clients that they’re exchanging their cash for value by changing the conversation in their heads.
Showing your value proposition ignites a debate in the customer’s head about whether they should buy your product over the competition and not whether they want to pay X amount for it.
Strategy #9 – Leverage Social Media
Social media can be a powerful strategy to generate leads and increase sales.
With 78% of customers willing to buy from a brand over a competitor after a positive social media experience, it’s not surprising that 91% of execs are eager to allocate more resources to explore the opportunities selling on social media offers.
Being on social media isn’t enough to draw followers, much less convert those followers into customers.
The key lies in how well you engage the audience with your social media posts — and that’s where punchy social media copy comes in.
Below are three copywriting formulas you can apply to your brand’s social media content.
- Encourage your target audience to join conversations by gamifying their responses with lines like “tell us your ideas…”, “what are you looking forward to …?” etc
- Share industry news, quotes by influencers, statistics, etc
- Elevate images and social media ads with emotional copy
In addition, show off your social media numbers. That way, your customer will know they aren’t the only ones using your product or service
Strategy #10 – Make Prospects Feel Exclusive
Good writing involves using persuasive words to make your readers feel special. That’s why phrases like “insider information” or “secrets” work.
Strategically deliver words to make prospects and customers feel they belong to an exclusive group with information others don’t have.
Including words “exclusive offer” or “become an insider” on your landing page, sales letters, or product pages will draw people in because customers love feeling special and unique.
Similar to specifics, avoid false claims with exclusivity. If your product or service isn’t rare, don’t create copy that says it is.
To promote genuine exclusivity, create limited collections or make your products available for a certain period.
The beauty of this is that you can still have your main product pages while taking advantage of this copywriting strategy.
Some tactics skilled copywriters use to pull off exclusivity include:
- Creating a members-only area of their website
- Offering private sales letters
- Branding products as one-of-a-kind
Strategy #11 – Write Customer-centric Copy
As a marketing copywriter, there’s always a nudge to write about your business. You know. The “what we do,” “where we are located,” and “about us” stuff.
The thing is, customers don’t care about your business. They want to know what your business can do for them.
Sure, it’s good to follow marketing fundamentals when writing promotional materials, but that doesn’t mean putting your business on a pedestal.
Avoid writing from a first-person perspective. Instead, write about your customers.
What do they love? What can they expect? Why should they engage with your brand?
Slack does a great job at showing what it is like to use the solution.
Below are some tactics to make your funnel more customer-centric:
- Replace “we” with “you”
- Keep your copy simple and to the point
- Keep off industry jargon
- Ask and answer questions immediately
Strategy #12 – Establish Authority
The ability to demonstrate expertise in a particular industry separates your sales page, website content, and landing page from other marketing materials on the internet.
The principle of authority dictates that customers defer to experts and are more likely to accept their recommendations.
At times authority isn’t a “real” authority. If you use a source your audience respects, you can still persuade them to take action.
Some authorities you could use to appeal to a specific audience include:
- Industry bodies
- Reports and surveys
- News items
- Trade journals
Also, if you have someone on your staff who’s an authority in your industry, you can use them to create an authoritative copy.
What’s more, Google is showing love for website copy exuding Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EAT) these days. This makes authority crucial for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) copywriting.
Speaking of authority, you’ll also want to keep up with important marketing trends to know what’s working and what’s not.
When you’re in the loop about what’s happening, you can authoritatively show your customer that you know what you’re doing.
Strategy #13 – Understand Where the Customer is on Your Sales Funnel
As a business owner out to win clients, you want to make sure you’re targeting people as they journey through your funnel.
The customer journey progresses through four stages: awareness, interest, desire, and action.
At the awareness stage, customers learn about your service for the first time. Copywriting opportunities at this stage focus on providing helpful information.
Copywriting strategies include:
- Informative blog posts
- A captivating landing page
- Lead magnets like whitepapers and eBooks
- Infographics
Any call-to-action at this stage should seek to drive engagement or gather information.
Customers are actively interested in your offer at the interest stage of the funnel. They’ve subscribed to your email list or followed your social handles.
Copy strategies at this stage include:
- More blog posts
- Product descriptions accompanied by videos
- Email marketing
- Lead magnets promising more information
At the decision stage, prospects know they require a solution to their problem, and your product is a contender. They’re comparing similar solutions and checking out more detailed product descriptions:
Copy strategies include:
- Offers
- Cost estimates
- Case studies
- Guarantees
- Comparison guides
At the action stage, the customer is ready to buy; they just aren’t sure of the transaction.
Copy strategies include:
- Product literature
- Trial downloads
- More offers
- More case studies
The point is that professional copywriters target their messaging for different stages of the buyer’s journey to increase conversion rates.
Strategy #14 – Use Testimonials
Professional writers keen on keeping readers engaged leverage testimonials to win trust.
Testimonials are one of the greatest forms of social proof. Statistics show that 95% of customers say testimonials and online reviews influence their buying decisions.
Most customers take online content with a grain of salt. They assume you’re biased because the truth is, you are.
But when you throw a client testimonial into the mix, you instantly gain credibility. Writing words from a customer’s mouth is more powerful and trustworthy than similar sentiments from a sales rep or business owner.
Testimonials add authority and believability to your content. The best part? You can use testimonials almost anywhere, from landing pages to print ads, and direct mail.
Below are four ways to make the most of customer testimonials:
- Saying things you can’t, like “we provide amazing services and wish you could work with us”
- Strengthening key aspects of your copy
- Highlighting key clients for social proof
- To spruce up your headlines
Strategy #15 – Include Call-to-Action
This is one of those copywriting strategies you must perfect to entice a prospective customer to buy your offer.
All call to action (CTA) is a phrase that tells your target audience what to do. They’re often short and sweet. Examples of power words for CTAs include:
- Get a free quote
- Book a consultation session
- Contact us today
- Join us
- Sign up now
A call to action is enough to persuade a prospective customer to link to your product.
Suppose you’re promoting a new product in a blog post. Some prospects get excited, but there’s no CTA to lead them through the funnel.
Of course, they’ll leave in a huff, and you’ll squander an opportunity to make money. Not good.
What are the Best Copywriting Examples?
You’re about to uncover fifteen copywriting examples that’ll make your jaw drop. These copies showcase the power of knowing your buyer personas and having a strong brand voice.
Hopefully, they’ll inspire you to write copy that connects with your audience and drives more sales.
Example #1: The Clever Landing Page
There’s a lot of thought going into Basecamp’s landing page.
First, the headline is super creative. The email opt-in is straightforward too. What makes this a killer copy?
Join 2,983 companies that signed up in the last week alone!
A potential customer reading this will feel that they’re not alone and that many people have tried and liked Basecamp.
And then there’s the “free trial” offer inviting the customer to verify Basecamp’s bold claims without paying a penny.
Example #2: The Classic Tagline
A tagline sums up your value proposition in just a few succinct words. A great example is Nike — Just do it! And if you’re an Apple person, then you’re familiar with the Think different tagline.
A classic tagline can be inspiring like Disneyland’s The Happiest Place on Earth or self-effacing like Volkswagen’s Think Small.
Why is a tagline effective? Because it is the last thing prospects see at the end of your marketing copy, a tagline keeps your brand on top of your prospect’s minds for future purchases.
Example #3: The Playful and Authentic Copy
Right from the start, Omsom’s landing page ushers you to ‘rip, pour and fire it up” and get ready to stuff your face.
By highlighting ease and three simple steps, this web copy makes the value proposition that Omsom’s product is efficient and time-efficient.
There’s plenty of wordplay on the website as well. One of the founder’s name is Pham, a phrase that has worked in several spots on the site, including welcoming new customers to the “Phamily.” Nice.
Example #4: The “We Understand our Audience” Copy
To win prospects, your website content has to be engaging through and through. BarkBox knows this if their homepage is anything to go by.
Notice how the brand uses its target customer’s language to sell directly to the customer’s dogs.
BarkBox sells not to human beings but to the buyer’s pet. Dogs cannot verbalize their dissatisfaction, so this is a clever marketing strategy to boost BarkBoxs’ conversion rate.
It doesn’t matter what you’re selling, shoppers want to be understood by the brands they invest in.
Example #5: The Corporate Copy
While customers know Bellroy for its high-quality, sleek wallets, marketers know them for their corporate copy.
Corporate gifting is good for business.
One survey found that 40% of businesses that receive a gift experience loyalty and the willingness to work with the vendor longer.
It doesn’t come as a surprise then that more e-retailers are offering corporate gifting to appeal to affluent brands as upsells and corporate-exclusive offers.
On Bellboy’s corporate page, they outline their buyer’s understanding while offering a bespoke solution depending on what they’re looking for.
Example #6: The Impactful Billboard
Billboards target motorists. A billboard must be attention-grabbing and leave a lasting impression.
Here’s a great example.
The message on this billboard is loud and impactful. It is instant. Notice how the copywriter uses few words and images to drive the point home.
Great copy isn’t just about words. The layout, content, choice of words, and images are equally essential.
Example #7: The Humorous Product Page
Baron Fig’s “our story” page is whimsical and outright funny.
This small online business that sells crafted books uses humor to engage visitors while giving them a reason to buy.
“We make tools for thinkers.” “If you have thoughts, you’re a thinker.”
These phrases brighten a drab day, making customers happy to purchase Baron Fig’s product. Can you add some fun to your eCommerce product descriptions to win more deals?
Example #8: The “Buy Me Now” Product Descriptions
Have you ever clicked through to a product’s details on an online store only to find boring descriptions that leave you cold? That’s not the case with Method.
The website has captivating details for their cleaning products enticing you to hit the “add to cart” button.
Method sells dish soap and gel hand washes, products that are in no way “sexy.” Still, the store leverages dynamic language and metaphors to create images of a fashionista, international traveler, and enviable lifestyles. Phrases like “on-trend colors,” “relaxing hour in the spa,” etc
Example #9: The Catchy Copy
“Beanz Meanz Heinz” is one of the most lucrative and memorable marketing slogans ever made.
Running for more than thirty years, this super catchy jingle was so impactful that many people could recall every bit of the ad off heads.
Heinz’s ad was popular because of its fluency. Copying that rhyme is more memorable, likable, and easily repeatable.
Rhyming doesn’t work for ads only.
Bombas, for example, use rhyming in the home page value proposition to draw a visitor’s attention.
Example #10: The Persuasive Social Media Ads
You must have come across this classic line by Ernest Hemingway:
For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.
This ad copy conjures an entire story in six simple words. Further, every word is dripping with emotions.
While it’s hard to see LinkedIn, Facebook posts or Tweets matching Hemmingway’s flair, the general rules of successful content marketing posted on social media ads are the same.
You must be brief and relevant and add a persuasive punch to it. The L’Oreal Paris ad featuring Eva Longoria comes close to this.
Example #11: The Trustworthy FAQs Page
Indeed, FAQs’ primary purpose is to answer questions. But that’s not all there is to FAQs. Some of the reasons you’d want to leverage FAQs include:
It attracts visitors to your websites, giving you plenty of SEO opportunities
It enables you to overcome objections potential customers may be having toward buying your products
It’s an excellent way to tell prospects what they may want to know about your products without sounding salesy
And it takes good writing skills to know. Ask McDonald’s.
Example #12: The Conversational Opt-In Page
Hustle’s opt-in page is creative and conversational.
The most notable part of the copy is “Your smart, good looking friend that sends you an email each morning with all the tech and business news you need to know for the day.”
This copy gives a feeling that Hustle is a trustable brand giving prospects a sense of belonging dealing with the brand.
Example #13: The Clear and Concise Copy
Trello’s clear and concise copy is a great example of what people are looking for when they want to learn how to use a product.
Trello understands that switching a project management solution can be a challenge. The brand uses copy that ensures new users aren’t left behind.
Never heard of Trello before? If the answer is no, you’ll love their site copywriting. Trello’s production description — like most content on the website — is concise and concise.
Their login page is equally clever.
Example #14: The Exclusive Copy
Scott Cheap Flights copywriters know how to position a brand as an industry insider using pro tips and lingo.
While the company is known for finding discount airfare, it has branched out to dish out helpful guides, And to add a personal touch, Scott offers some pro tips on their “Meet the Team” page.
Members feel like they’re getting exclusive information from seasoned industry insiders, making them feel part of the team.
This small, clever copywriting nurtures connections with users while improving Scott’s credibility.
Example #15: The Abrasive Copy
Cards Against Humanity’s copy is abrasive and somewhat offensive, which perfectly aligns with their brand voice and audience.
The brand is a self-declared “card game for horrible people.”
Cards Against Humanity isn’t trying to appeal to everyone. What they do is great at attracting a particular clique of people that don’t mind the abrasiveness and aren’t offended by the copy on the card.
Check out their FAQ page.
Conclusion
Copywriting drives people to act. Done right, it enables you to sell products, build trust and improve your brand’s credibility.
Writing copy, combined with content marketing, can go a long way in helping you achieve your marketing goals.
And, writing good copy doesn’t have to be complicated. The strategies and examples highlighted in this blog post are enough to get your juices flowing.
