Copywriting - Four Simple Rules That Will Make All Your Marketing Materials Sell

Therefore: To sell drills you must convince your customer that your hole-maker makes the best holes.

Rule 3. WIIFM (What's In It For Me?)

Every single one of us is permanently interesting in "What's In It For Me?". It's not that we are selfish or mean. We simply want to know that we have the best product, the best deal, the best guarantee, the best customer service......

In copywriting it is not enough to simply sell the benefits of your product or service. You have to reassure your visitor that they are getting the best possible deal available anywhere, anytime.

So when copywriting your marketing message get yourself into the mind of your customer. Think what they really want, what is troubling them and what is really causing them pain. Offer your solution in terms of the benefits you offer.

And then make an irrestisible offer. Something they really cannot refuse.

4. AIDA - no, not the Opera. Attention, Interest, Desire, Action

AIDA is an acronym that has been in use in copywriting for over 100 years. It is just as valid today for use on the web as it is for crafting sales letters, brochures, radio broadcasts, your elevator pitch....

In fact, just about any marketing pitch.

Attention If you are to sell anything you have first got to get peoples attention. The normal way of doing this is to use a benefit Driven Headline.

Eye movement studies show that 95% of people never read advertisements. The human brain is pretty fantastic at filtering our information it doesn't want.

Eye movement studies have an even more stark message for adverisers. Only 5% of readers actually read advertisements but 95% of these never read beyond the headline.

You do use headlines in all your advertisments and marketing materials don't you?

The message is clear. Your headline has to not only capture attention but do so in such a way as to encourage people to read more of your ad (or web page). So on to the next part of AIDA

Interest We've got our visitors attention. Now we have got to make them interested. This is where all that work thinking like a customer comes into play. In the first sentence following our headline we have to fire our biggest benefit gun. Something that really shows we understand our customer and that we have a solution to their problems.

Maybe we can't do that in one sentence. But the name of the game here is to get the visitor to read more. All of our web copywriting has to be geared to keeping our visitor reading. Building their interest, and, at the right time getting them to buy.

Lead with benefits. Show how your product delivers those benefits. Make the copy as long as it needs to be to tell your story. Then, before the interest has a chance to wane. Create....

Desire If we have stoked a visitors interest effectively we will already have established a desire for our products or services. We now want to raise that desire to fever pitch. To make it impossible for our prospects not to buy.

We are going to create that irresistible offer I talked about a moment ago. We are going to add value, offer a guarantee, provide discounts for the first 200 respondents, package the offering,.....

OK, we have done all the hard work. Our visitors love our service. They can taste the difference it will make to their lives. They are panting with desire to buy.

All we have to do now is to tell them exactly what ACTION they need to take now.

ACTION I have rarely seen AIDA done well. Most web sites concentrate on their company and their products. A few, those that understand copywriting, really work at understanding their customers. Less pack their site with benefits. And even those select few who do all the first, simple steps well seem to fall down at the last hurdle.

It is vital that you tell your visitor exactly what they need to do now to make an order: