Writing High Converting Copy: The Step-by-step Guide

When it comes to creating high-converting copy, there are several key elements that must be included. In this step-by-step guide, we’ll walk you through the process of writing copy that persuades your audience to take action.

Define Your Target Audience

Before you start writing, it’s important to understand who your target audience is. What are their pain points, desires, and motivations? What language do they use to describe their problems? By understanding your audience, you can tailor your messaging to resonate with them on a deeper level.

“If you can articulate the pain a prospect is feeling accurately, they will almost always buy what you are offering”

Alex Hormozi, $100M Offer: How to make offers so good people feel stupid saying no

A great strategy is to base your target audience on somebody you know and be as specific as you can when writing about them. For example, if you’re trying to sell a workout program, is it for mums, dads, or CEOs? who do you know that fits that profile?

Then figure out what they’re into, how they do research, do they read blog articles, books, and/or magazines. or do they watch Youtube videos or listen to podcasts, when they surf the web, do they use their phone, tablet, or computer? Where do they do their research? on the couch, bus or while driving to work

Be as specific as you can.

Determine Your Value Proposition

What sets your product or service apart from the competition? Why should your audience choose you over other options? Your value proposition should be clear, concise, and compelling.

4 things, from Alex Hormozi’s book, $100M Offer, to consider when creating your value proposition:

1. Dream Outcome: What is the outcome you what your prospect to achieve and how does your service or product help them get there? Everybody has a goal they want to achieve and if your offer resonates with them and helps close the gap between reality and dream then you are on the right track to determining your value proposition.
2. Perceived Likelihood of Achievement: People pay for certainty, so what is the likelihood of your prospect achieving their dream outcome? If you had to choose between being a dentist’s first patient or the 1000th patient who would you choose? The offer is the same but the perceived likelihood of achievement is different. You can achieve the perceived likelihood of achievement through social proof, messaging and guarantees.
3. Time delay: how fast will the prospect achieve their goal? a month? a week? tomorrow? now? the faster they can get their dream outcome the more valuable your product or service is if you can’t speed up the process then create small wins so they know clients or customers feel like they made the right decision. When competing against someone that has the same value proposition for free then double down on fast. fast always beats free.
4. Effort and Sacrifice: Decreasing the effort and sacrifice someone has to put in adds more value. For example “done for you services” are more valuable than “do it yourself” because they don’t have to put in any effort or sacrifice. It also adds the component of “perceived likelihood of achievement” because an expert will be tackling the task.

Bonus tip: Add a guarantee to your offer. by reversing the risk people are less likely to object to buying your product or services because you take on all the risk.

Write a Compelling Headline

Your headline is the first thing your audience sees, and it needs to grab their attention and make them want to keep reading. Use strong language and make a bold promise to pique their interest. For example “Find the love of your life in 6 weeks” compared to “Dating consultant sessions” same thing just worded differently

Clay Shirky an American journalist says your headline should be truthful but interesting but goes on to say

“Almost everything that’s true is boring and almost everything that’s interesting is false”

Clay Shirky

Clickbait headlines are a sure way to get clicks in the short term but will come back to bite you later down the track, they pique your interest but don’t deliver. So if your headline is “Find the love of your life in 6 weeks” you better deliver.

Creating a headline is an ongoing process and finding the right headline takes time and testing. Try different headlines with SEO keywords, clever puns or some humour, see what works and what doesn’t, learn from it and adapt. Follow this in-depth guide on writing your own headlines by Copyblogger How to Write Headlines That Work

Create a Sense of Urgency Now!

To encourage your audience to take action, you need to create a sense of urgency. Use phrases like “limited time offer” or “act now” to motivate them to take action immediately. Having a cut-off deadline of cut off for action creates urgency. Not to be confused with scarcity. Our fear of loss is greater than our desire for gain.

Here are some ways to create urgency

1. Countdown timers show how much time before the offer runs out
2. Early birds get extra benefits like a bonus
3. Show upcoming price increases, If you plan on increasing the price of your product or service, let visitors know when the price will increase and how much it will increase
4. Bold and attention-grabbing headlines that convey a sense of urgency, such as “Last Chance to Save!” or “Limited Time Offer – Act Now!” Don’t overdo it though

Scarcity

When there is a fixed amount of supply that is available for a purchase it creates FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). It plays on the psychological fear of loss to get us to take action and when something is perceived as being rare or in limited supply, it becomes more valuable and desirable.

There are a few ways to create scarcity in marketing:

1. Limited spots available creates exclusivity. Everyone wants to be part of a higher-status group
2. Limited stock is available. motivates customers to make a purchase before it runs out
3. A limited supply of bonuses. Great way to reward early birds.
4. One-time-only offers. If they don’t join or purchase then they never get to ever again. Make sure you stick to this though otherwise, you will look untrustworthy.

Include Social Proof

People are more likely to trust a product or service if they see that others have had positive experiences with it. Include testimonials, case studies, and reviews to build credibility and demonstrate the value of your offering.

Add them in where ever possible and makes sense. they don’t just have to be 5-star reviews, think customer logos are using your product or service, getting an expert’s approval, showing the number of people that have the same product in their cart at that moment. For more ideas check out these 11 examples for social proof. Here are just a few:

1. Testimonials from a high-profile client or business
2. Case studies of one of your most successful customers
3. Influencer endorsements, When influencers endorse your product or service, their followers are more likely to take notice and consider making a purchase.
4. Social media followers, showing the number of social media followers you have can be a subtle way to create social proof.

Create Your Call to Action

Your call to action (CTA) is the final step in persuading your audience to take action. If you’re not asking someone to do something then, it’s just writing. Make it clear and concise, and use action-oriented language. Use phrases like “buy now” or “sign up today” to encourage them to take action.

Here are some tips on writing your call to action:

• Use the tactics discussed above to create scarcity and urgency
• Make the call to action stand out and be easy to find using colour, typography and placement
• Offer a benefit that encourages them to take action, this could be a discount code, free trial or access to exclusive content
• Be specific about what you want the audience to do. “Find out more”, “Book Now”, and “Subscribe” can help your audience understand exactly what action they need to take.
• Test different variations of your call to action to see which one is the most effective. Refine your language and design elements until you find the combination that generates the most engagement and conversions.

When writing your call to action you don’t have to be clever to be effective. Sometimes the most boring CTA are the most effective, Subscribe, Sign Up, Learn more and so on. If you’re asking your audience to take action then it’s copywriting.

Edit and Revise

Once you’ve written your copy, take the time to edit and revise it. Make sure it flows well, is free of errors, and effectively communicates your message.

A great way to see if it flows is to read it aloud, when read aloud it’s easier to see if it sounds natural and pick up any errors you may have missed when editing. Lastly, consider having someone else read it over to get a fresh perspective.

Here is a general copywriting editing guide:

1. Review the structure: Make sure it is well-organized and easy to read. This can be achieved by breaking up large bodies of text into bite-sized pieces, using headings, subheadings, bullet points and images
2. Use the correct tags: When Google crawls your website it looks for HTML tags, h1, h2, h3, etc, so Google can determine what your site is about. Make it easy for Google by using the correct tags and ensuring there is only one h1 tag on each page and every other h-tag is not greater than its parent tag.
3. Simplify your language: Technical language or jargon can confuse your audience. If you’re using a lot of jargon it can confuse Google too. Sometimes you don’t have to be clever and just say it straight.
4. Remove the fluff: Sometimes when writing, we add extra words or phrases to make the sentence that we are writing longer by adding extra unnecessary words or phrases. Remove them.

Test, Improve and Repeat!

There is no silver bullet when writing conversion copywriting, there may be times when you spend hours or even days getting your copywriting right then… nothing. The worst thing you can do is give up. Look at your copy as an organic thing that grows and changes with time

Here are some tips to help you test your website copy:

1. Use A/B testing: A/B testing is when you create an A version and a B version of your copy and publish them both to see which of the 2 performs. Neil Patel has a guide on this: A Beginner’s Guide To A/B Testing: Exceptional Web Copy
2. Track the right metrics: You can use tools like Google Analytics to track everything on your website like your bounce rate, time on site, conversion rate and user journey. Every business is different and google analytics can be overwhelming, figure out which metrics are important and focus on those.
3. Ask for feedback: This can help point out sections of your copy that are unclear or confusing then adjust accordingly.
4. Make iterative improvements: based on your feedback and data and testing, make iterative improvements to your website cop. Overtime your copy will become a high-converting machine

By following these steps, you can create high-converting copy that persuades your audience to take action. Remember always to keep your audience in mind, and focus on highlighting the benefits of your offering in a way that resonates with them on a deeper level. With practice, you can become a master of crafting persuasive copy that drives results for your business.

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