For most small businesses, the owner will be doing a lot of the tasks. You probably don’t have a dedicated copywriter on staff, and you might be outsourcing the large majority of your marketing (to an awesome agency like us).
In this case, you’ll probably be doing a lot of the copywriting yourself.
Why Should You Improve Your Copywriting
If you’re reliant on online traffic for the majority of your sales, then you know just how important your conversion rate is. Even just a single percentage improvement in your conversion rate could correlate to thousands of dollars each month.
Your copywriting is one of the most influential factors on a customer. If your writing sucks, then you’re not going to get your message across, and the visitor won’t feel compelled to pull out their credit card.
However, if your copywriting is amazing, then they won’t be able to resist. Getting more traffic is expensive, but increasing the conversions on your existing traffic is far cheaper and will lead to a much greater ROI.
Learning how to write better copy will boost your conversion rate, create more lifelong customers and can directly increase revenue.
Read More
The greatest tip we have for those looking to improve their writing skills is to read more. It’s almost impossible to be a greater writer if you’re not a great reader. You should be reading copy from your competitors and also from companies in other industries.
This will help you to see what works, what influences your decisions the most and how you can improve your pieces.
Rather than just reading the copy, you need to be actively analyzing it line by line. This doesn’t mean you need to get a highlighter out like in high school, but you should be thinking about the words that they used and the way that the entire page is organized.
Nothing is by accident. If the copy is written by a competent professional, everything was planned, even if it might seem like it’s written naturally and without planning.
Write More
As with any skill, the only way that you can continue to improve over the long run is to do the activity over and over until you become better. In this case, that means writing copy and then re-writing it until it’s perfect.
When you first start out on this journey of self-improvement, you might struggle to analyze your writing, but eventually, you’ll find your groove and progression should jump. The important thing about practising is that you do it in the right way and that means analyzing and testing.
It’s no use for you to create the copy and then keep it hidden away. You might be scared of showing your friends, family or customers, but it’s crucial that you get feedback. You should be publishing your content and testing the key metrics against another piece of content that you’ve created.
This will give you some objective feedback. You’ll quickly learn that sometimes what you think is awesome, really isn’t awesome. On the other hand, something that you might think sucks could convert far better than you could ever imagine.
Be Personal
When you’re writing copy, you’re trying to sell directly to a single person, not a group and not an entire industry. Therefore, it’s important that you write in a personable way and speak directly to the person reading the article, just like we have done in this article.
This means using a lot of “you” so that you can speak directly to the person. This has the effect of making the copy feel like a conversation rather than a sales page, which is likely to make the copy more convincing and less ‘salesy’.
Be Concise and Direct
Many amateur copywriters make the mistake of thinking that more is always better, and it’s easy to understand why. Most of the sales pages that we see are thousands of words long and would take half an hour to read in their entirety.
The truth is that most people are extremely busy. They don’t have the time to read thousands of words; they want to read something concise and direct, that gives them the information that they need without wasting their time.
Finding the right balance between keeping the article concise and giving the reader all of the information they need can be difficult. It’ll be different depending on what product you’re trying to sell, and that’s why you need to put yourself in the consumer’s shoes.
If you’re looking to buy a cheap product that solves a minor issue, you’re unlikely to want to read a huge chunk of text. You just want to read the benefits, buy the product and receive the benefit.
But if you’re buying an expensive product or something that solves a huge or serious issue, getting the right information about the product is probably more important. In this case, you might be willing to read a larger sales page that educates you on the problem and the solution.