Sales copy is one of the most critical marketing materials a company can produce. It’s what convinces customers to buy a product and can make or break a business. Unfortunately, many companies don’t know how to write effective sales copy. They produce text that’s difficult to read, bland, and uninteresting. As a result, their products don’t sell as well as they could.

Fortunately, there are five principles you can follow to write compelling sales copy that will convince customers to buy your product.

These principles are: be clear and concise, focus on the headlines, use strong verbs and adjectives, talk to your audience as if you’re talking to your friend, and know your audience. Additionally, there are a few hacks you can use to make your sales copy even more effective.

Here is what we will cover in this blog post:

1. What is Sales Copy and why is it important?

2. The 5 Principles of Effective Sales Copywriting.

3. The Hacks You Can Use to Make Your Sales Copy Even More Effective.

5. Keywords to Include in Your Sales Copy.

What is Sales Copy, and why is it important?

Sales copy is text that uses persuasive language to convince readers to perform a specific action — like buying something, signing up for a mailing list, or downloading content. Creating effective sales copy can help your business achieve its goals by boosting revenue.

It’s important for a simple reason — it can make all the difference to your conversion rate.

The 5 Principles of Effective Sales Copywriting

1) Be clear and concise. Don’t make your customers think too much.

People don’t want to think because it’s not fun. Not to mention, most people have the attention span of a jellyfish, so why would they want to spend time figuring out what your content is about anyway?

If they can’t understand what you’re offering right away, they’ll go somewhere else.

Write a benefit-driven headline, and then use the following 2-3 lines to explain why it works.

• What your product is
• What problem your product solves
• Who can benefit from it

An image of the product is always a good idea. People usually understand pictures more quickly than words.

Summary: When writing sales copy for a product, be clear and concise. Don’t make your customers think too much about what you’re offering. Use strong verbs and adjectives to describe the product and focus on the headlines to grab attention. Additionally, include an image of the product to help people understand what you’re selling.

2) Focus on the headlines

One of the most effective uses of sale copy is in writing headlines.

David Ogilvy, a revolutionary in advertising, once stated that headlines are the most important aspect of your copy. He said:

“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

People often scan content, and the headline is the first thing they read. If it doesn’t capture their attention, they won’t bother reading any further.

That’s why it’s so important to write headlines that are interesting and catchy. If you can get people to read your headline, there’s a good chance they’ll also read the rest of your copy.

Many copywriters sacrifice quality for quantity by writing long, drawn-out headlines for online sales letters.

Ted Nicholas, a copywriter who has experience with writing headlines for products that have sold more than $6 billion dollars, recommends using his “fill-in-the-blank” shortcut.

According to him, all headlines fall into one of these 11 categories:

1) How to (Blank)

2) The secrets of (Blank)

3) Stacked benefits

4) Problem / Solution

5) How to / Guaranteed

6) Get (Benefit) fast, Regardless…

7) Problem solver

8) Visualize it…

9) Ways to / Reasons why

10) If… Then…

11) A mix of the previous

The next time you brainstorm headlines, keep this list close by for reference. You can use it for a sales letter, video, email campaign or Pay-Per-Click advertisement.

3) Talk to your audience as if you’re talking to your friend

When you’re writing sales copy, it’s important to talk to your audience as if you’re talking to your friend. This means avoiding business jargon and nonsense that doesn’t mean anything.

When you’re writing your copy, always remember that there is a real person on the other side who will be reading it and making decisions based on what they read.

When in doubt, use the “friend test” to see if your copy sounds natural and easy enough to understand. If you come across a sentence you wouldn’t say to your friend, change it!

4) Know your audience

Every audience is different, and each requires a unique approach to reach them.

When writing persuasive sales copy, it’s important to know your audience. Tailoring your message to resonate with potential customers is essential in converting them into buyers.

Some ways to learn more about your target audience include conducting market research and studying your existing customer base. Once you have a good idea of who you’re trying to reach, you can start crafting messaging that will appeal specifically to them. 

The best way to define your audience is by building personas.

Personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customer, based on market research and real data about your existing customers. They allow you to get into the minds of your target buyers and better understand what motivates them.

When creating personas, it’s important to go beyond demographics (e.g., age, gender, income) and include psychographic information too (e.g., interests, values, attitudes). This will give you a more complete picture of who your target buyers are and what makes them tick.

Once you have a good understanding of your target audience, you can use this information to create more effective sales copy that speaks directly to them.

5) Use persuasive language

When it comes to sales copywriting, persuasive language is key. After all, if you can’t convince people to buy what you’re selling, then you won’t make any sales.

And that’s why using persuasive words and phrases is so important – they help to evoke an emotional response in your reader, which can encourage them to take the desired action.

So what makes a sales copy a persuasive copy? It should be:

Well-written – Professional copywriting is without errors and clear.

Succinct – Jumbled, lengthy copywriting quickly loses its impact. The most effective copywriting is brief and straightforward.

Intelligent – You will not convince anyone with low-quality writing skills. Your copywriting must be smart, original, and informed to create an impact.

Relevant – The same thing that persuades one audience might not have the same effect on another. This means that, in order to be effective, persuasive writing must focus on topics of interest to the targeted audience.

Now we have covered the 5 most important 5 principles, let’s talk about the hacks that we often use for our clients.

The Hacks You Can Use to Make Your Sales Copy Even More Effective

Hack 1: By analyzing competitors’ reviews, we can discover what their customers are unhappy about.

Part of writing sales copy that will resonate with your audience is understanding what dissatisfies them, what problems they are trying to solve, and what motivates them to buy your service.

One way to do it is by conducting surveys — but that takes a long time and is not an easy approach.

There is an easier way… your competitors’ Customer reviews.

If your service is very common, and there are many competitors offering the same service as you, chances are there are many negative reviews to analyze and study.

Why do we do that?

To build a value proposition.

A strong value proposition is important for any sales copywriting. It is what convinces potential customers that your product or service is worth their time and money. Without a clear and compelling value proposition, people are unlikely to be interested in what you have to say.

So if any of your competitors have bad reviews on Yelp, Trustpilot, or Google, collect all those reviews, pin them all on a board and look at what is common among all the reviews.

From there you can know what customers dislike, what problems they are trying to solve, and what is missing from a competitor service. All that is a goldmine for writing killer sales copy.

Hack 2: Using AI support like Jasper AI.

Jasper AI is a copywriting tool that uses the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to automatically produce content. We find it useful sometimes if it’s used correctly.

The thing we like the most is their recipes and templates the frameworks they use.

The AIDA framework: The oldest marketing framework in the world. Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

The PAS framework: Problem-Agitate-Solution. A valuable framework for creating new marketing copy ideas.

The most beneficial thing about using an AI like Jasper is that it can help in removing a writing block. Sometimes you can get stuck on where to begin.  Jasper is like a kick to the door to get you started.

Conclusion

Coming up with good sales copy can be tough, especially when you need it to sell. It often requires intensive research into your audience’s needs and desires, a lot of time investment and dedicated focus.

Even if your website is great and your SEO tactics are getting you ranking for competitive keywords, unless your sales copy is convincing, nothing else will matter.

If you want help editing your sales copy, planning your content calendar, or managing the blog and other web content needed for marketing purposes, we’re here for you. Our team offers a content writing service that is geared towards delivering results in terms of revenue and sales.

We want to help you convert more traffic into customers, and the first step is our free content audit. An analysis of your sales copy, SEO keywords, ranking, and visibility against conversions will allow us to tailor a plan that works for you. Get in touch today!