The brand presence determines how and what customers will know about you. This directly affects the success of your business. You can split any brand into several identifying components:
- What do we do?
- How do we do it?
- For whom are we doing it?
- How do we look?
- How do we sound?
On practice, many of eCommerce companies do not pay enough attention to the last point. Spending months developing more and more of new products, making constant design changes and following all the popular trends they just completely forget about the content. But the fact is that a good content strategy can increase your conversion rates by 200-300% or even more, just by optimizing your internal resources.
In our efforts to help you improve sales by making a solid content, we prepared our list of “Do’s” in your copywriting:
1. Be Alive
Don’t let your content sound like a soulless creature. Think about your audience as people, not as wallets. They need to have a reason to read your material and a hundred more to actually buy what you sell. It means you should set a friendly tone of voice and let the readers know that the content was written by a human, not a robot.
By trying to be way too “professional” you risk becoming faceless. Keep an eye on this and periodically ask yourself a question: “Does it sounds too technical and confusing?”. Only by trying to use a natural language, you can raise your conversion rates up to 25-40%.
2. Use Power Words
Did you know an interesting fact about the power words? They work incredibly in copywriting but don’t do so well in the conversational speech. It’s very unlikely that in the regular speech you will use words like “Incredible”, “Stunning” or “Extraordinary”, but if you want to create a good copy, you should do it.
The most powerful words in English language:
You
First and main rule of selling copy: It’s not about what you could offer, it’s all about what audience could get.
Human psychology is based on our ego, no matter, if we like it or not, so the most interesting and catching information for us is something about ourselves. According to the research made by Gregory Ciotti, “You” heads the top because it’s the most accurate way to build up a personal message without knowing the name of a reader.
So turn off your inner “me” and try to be client-centric in your content strategy and it will definitely help you to achieve your goals.
Free
You isn’t too surprised, right? People love to have things for free, so this word is surely one of the most effective triggers, but you should follow some rules when using it:
Select your free stuff wisely
Analyze what items or services would be valuable for the clients and inexpensive for you. Statistics say coupons are the worst things to give away because the real goods have much more value for the customers than a possibility to have them later.
Don’t overuse it
Letting people have too many free items may reduce the value of your brand in customer’s eyes. You will be popular among the “bounty hunters” in such a case, but it’s unlikely that you grow the loyal audience only by making things free.
It’s important to use a freebie only with a reason. A good idea for a giveaway is to offer the useful information, as the infographics, or e-books. As a result, you not only provide users with info, which will include your promo and will increase brand awareness but also collect the customer’s personal data.
Because
This word is on the list because human psychology works in such manner that we need to know the reason of the action to make our decision, and it doesn’t matter how reasonable it is. In the classic study by Ellen Langer, she tested people’s ability to do an unexpected favor. The idea was to examine a reaction of people who received a request from a person to use their in-office Xerox. Different forms of that request have led to very surprising results:
The first statement by the person was:
Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the Xerox machine?
In that case, almost 60% of people let him cut in line.
The second scenario was:
I have 5 pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush?
Numbers were increased a lot when the reason was added. 94% of people allowed to make copies. You may ask: and what’s so unusual about that? The answer will be demonstrated in the 3rd scenario.
The last request sounded like this:
Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make copies?
Let’s be clear, it’s pretty weak reason. Everyone standing in the line for the exact same reason, so it’s just a ridiculously obvious statement. So, what are the numbers? 93% of office-workers let him copy his papers. With the drastic change of the reason from “normal one” to “are you kidding me?” the percentage drop was just a 1%.
From this, we can conclude that it’s much better to have a bad excuse than no excuse at all.
Instantly
It’s a human nature to want everything and now. The human midbrain is going completely crazy when receiving signals about the instant reward. Many business areas use this trick whenever it’s possible: almost every medication offers you an instant relief and effect which you would feel right after you use it; Soft-companies may offer you the instant access, which is obvious, but which more important, it’s true.
If you are going to apply these tactics to your brand, you should remember that the main rule is to always keep your promises and to over-deliver when possible. Customers don’t like broken promises, so if you don’t want to deal with an angry mob, try to do all that you’ve stated.
New
Despite the fact that “new” is one of the most persuasive words when it comes to sales, it hardly depends on where and when you use it.
It’s a fact that people would rather choose a well-known brand instead of the “freshman”, but the logic is completely different with products and goods. The life cycle of products is significantly shorter than brands’. You probably wouldn’t argue that iPhone is good, but most likely will not be satisfied with 3GS, because you want something new.
The best option is to leave the reputational functions to your brand and the novelty to your products and services.
3. Choose The Right Headlines
You could write a brilliant article with the perfect combination of usefulness and thrill and have an unfortunate surprise looking on your analytics because you screwed up with the headline. The tagline is the only beacon your audience will have while breaking through all of the informational chaos.
A good headline can be written using several formulas. There are tons of great studies, articles, and infographics about this topic, but we have a couple of advice, following which you will never fail:
Questions
It’s a good way to awaken people’s curiosity, which is a very powerful trigger.
Example:
Bad: The Future of eCommerce
Good: What Will eCommerce be like in 5 Years?
Numbers
The success of numbers in the headlines is caused by the human’s desire to predict and psychological fear of obscurity and uncertainty.
Example:
Bad: Tips for the Better Workout
Good: 10 Tips for the Better Workout
How to
This formula is so successful because of two reasons: that’s one of the most common search queries beginnings and it gives people an illusion of simple problem-solving.
Example:
Bad: The art of changing diapers
Good: How to change your baby’s diaper without any “surprises”
Negatives
This is a powerful method of writing the headlines simply because it just activates people’s sense of insecurity and provokes them to make sure they do things right.
Example:
Bad: Everyone made mistakes: learn how to choose a proper bike
Good: 5 bike choosing mistakes which can hurt you
4. Don’t Forget About Formatting
Sadly or not, but the fact is that people usually don’t read the content, but rather scan it. Based on this you can be sure that without the proper formatting 99% of your readers wouldn’t read your articles.
To make someone actually go through your writings you should earn his attention first. Tell me, what will be your first thought if after clicking on article’s headline you’ll see just a “brick wall” of a continuous text diluted by one or two typical images from google? You’ll probably think something like this: “C’mon if you didn’t even try, why should I?” and, of course, you will be finishing your sentence already after leaving the page.
,p>You probably heard about the study made by Nielsen, according to which, internet users read the web-content in F shape pattern. To improve your text formatting and increase conversions, you should:- Write the headers to let readers identify the following information in the block and decide if they want to read this part.
- Use bullet-points, especially when it comes to a listing.
- Place the most important information in the first half of an article.
- Add a relevant photo and video materials, which do not only match the topic but also fit the visual style of your article.
- Use different colors and font formats when needed. If you won’t mark an important information somehow, most of the audience will not be able to catch this by the eye and most likely will skip it.
- Please, make paragraphs. Put yourself in the reader’s place, it’s disgustingly lame not to separate different parts of the content.
And overall, remember, if you have already spent numerous hours to write your thing, why not just multiply the chances of it being read by spending 20 minutes on formatting?
5. SEO
Don’t forget about SEO. If your website isn’t optimized well enough, you’ll have a harsh time trying to get even a bit of organic traffic and that’s not what you want. Recently Maven’s experts wrote a comprehensive article about SEO, so if you want to know more about how good SEO can notably boost your conversions, you should check it out.
6. Be Yorself
And last, but not least, don’t turn your writings into one total mathematical equation, doing it exactly how it “should be”. Your individual style – that’s what makes it good, people want to read other people, not being subjects in the “Moneymaking content writing” study. So, the best way to become a competent writer is to invest creativity and qualification into your work, relying on the proven rules, when it’s needed.
Really Good article. It’s clear that content can bring conversions if it’s presented in an interesting way. It’s all about how user feels about your website or page. I like your suggestion of adding power words and writing great headlines. Thanks for the guidelines.