So you have a product or a service that you wish to sell — one that is complete and ready for consumption. The next hurdle you need to cross is getting the right people to see and be motivated to take action. This is what conversion means. Copywriting, on the other hand, involves crafting special texts simply for marketing purposes. Now, conversion copywriting involves turning words into magnets to pull the right people into doing whatever you need them to do — sign up, buy or subscribe for something, and so on. Learning how to create a great copy that converts takes time and resources, some of which I used in taking a course at the CXL Institute. As the owner of Daiki Media, a Digital Marketing Malaysian company, learning skills like this to optimize my clients’ experience is essential, and that’s why you’re reading this right now.
In this article, I’ll be sharing six steps to creating effective copy that converts.
Research: Customer, Product, and Competition
The first step to creating effective copy is conducting research. During your research, you must pay attention to important components of your business like the customer, the product, and the competition.
Research on how your customers relate to the product — ask questions like why they buy the product, how they buy it, what they use the product for, what aspects of the product matters more to them, and what they could care less about.
Keep an eye on your direct competition and take note of how they sell their products. What language do they use? What is their value proposition? What is their marketing strategy? Answering these questions will give you insight into how to differentiate your product from the rest of the competition so you can stand out.
Also, you will receive better insight on how to create copy that converts when you get out of the box and go back to the people to which you wish to market your product. Conduct interviews and ask them important questions that would help you understand what people think about your kind of product, how they use it, and so on.
Outline and Guideposts
Next, you move on to writing the outline. What an outline does is to give you direction on writing the copy for the rest of the project. In this outline, you also identify guideposts that are the specific markers. Your home and product pages are the two major places where your copy needs to be excellent.
Your home page copy should have features like an attention-grabbing headline, the sub-headline or short paragraph that gives a brief product explanation, and a bullet point listing of the features or benefits of the product.
As for the product page copy, it needs to be magnetic enough to make the user take action. It should include features like the name of the product, value proposition, an overview of the product, technical information, price, CTA, and so on.
Draft Copy
Now it’s time to flesh out your outline and write your first draft. This is the first picture of what your copy would look like and so you should consider these points when drafting it.
Avoid using complicated words and phrases in your copy. To create a copy that converts, you want to connect with your customer on a personal level and assure them that your product is worth the trouble.
Ensure that your copy is specific. Avoid being vague in your value proposition. You want to be direct if you’re going to convince a new user to do anything.
Also, go for a customer-centric copy. People would naturally gravitate towards products that promise to provide value to them. Ensure that your copy is not emphasizing what your company is about, but instead what your company can do for its users.
While you draft your copy, also make sure you make finding the product’s price easy to find. People prefer to know the price of a product while making their purchasing choices. Also, if your pricing is high, consider communicating the value before price but if a lower price is part of the value you offer, make the price very obvious.
Your draft copy is the perfect place to make all the mistakes and correct them before sending them out.
Conversion Boost
A conversion boost is a next step in this process. What this entails is optimizing the copy and filling all the blanks to ensure that people do what you need them to. Now that you have the first draft set in front of you, there are certain things you could do to boost the conversion rates. First, you can check that the copy is very clear. Make sure information about what you sell, the intended target, and the value proposition is clearly stated. Next, check to see that there are no questions left unanswered in your copy. Is it self-explanatory? Lastly, check that the copy is very persuasive. If the persuasion technique isn’t great, make it better.
Revise, Rearrange
A fresh set of eyes looking at your copy will always provide greater insight on how to optimize your copy. You could get a few people to read through the copy and get their feedback. Their feedback could help you spot certain inconsistencies and even grammatical errors that you might have missed while drafting it. When you discover these errors, take the time to correct them, and rearrange some aspects of the copy that could negatively impact your conversion rates.
Test
The best way to know if your sales copy is going to be any good is to test it. Launch it live and see what kind of reactions you are able to garner. Did the conversion rates experience a surge, or did it bring little to no results?
Creating great conversion copywriting requires that you follow these steps religiously. By doing that, you are sure to get the best conversion rates for your product.
