7 Principles of an Effective Sales Copy

A sales copy is a persuasive page which is meant to push the reader to perform a specific task such as buying a product, joining your email list, downloading a report, following you on social media, or inquire about your service.

The sales copy is very effective when used on web pages, sales brochures, and emails.

Principles of Effective Sales Copy

The words which you choose to describe your product and the order in which you arrange these words will determine how much of your product or service you sell. Here are some principles you should use as a guide in writing a good sales copy:

1. Who is your Target Audience?

When writing a sales copy for any product or service it is important to have a specific person in mind so you can write to the people with similar interests.

It is important to write a different sales copy for each individual target group. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the person you are writing the sales copy for and try to figure out what his/her likes and dislikes are, what his hobbies and interests are.

This will ensure that when this person reads your sales copy they can relate to it and thus influence them to make a conversion.

2. You Are Writing to your Friend

Whether you are selling B2B or to an individual, it is important to always ensure that you remember that there is a person who is going to read your sales copy and thus make it a little more personal.

You should always perform a friend’s test when you are writing any sales copy. This entails proofreading the copy and check for any sentence that you wouldn’t use when having a conversation with your friend.

Avoid using business jargon and just opt for simple English that any person can understand. When you use simple words it is considered a sign of truth as no one has to struggle to understand what you are talking about.

3. Work Hard to Create a Compelling Headline

Most people who go online to look for anything do not read they just skim through whatever page they open.

Thus you should ensure that the headline you come up with for your sales copy is compelling enough to make the potential customer want to read your page.

This makes the headline the most important aspect of your sales copy as it’s the one that generates traffic for you.

What you should ask yourself when coming up with your headline

• What is the biggest problem that your prospect is facing right now?
• What does he/she care about?
• How can you assist him/her to achieve the goal or solve the problem?
• What is your prospects biggest goal or dream?

You should ensure that your headline communicates a direct benefit to the prospect. You should also ensure that you test different headlines so that you can get the one that most prospects react positively to.

4. Don’t Make your Prospects Think

Most people generally don’t want to think as it is a really hard process. They want to understand what you are talking about in your soft copy the first time they read through it.

If you do not make your offer obvious then you will probably lose very many prospects. You should ensure that just below your benefit oriented line you write 2 or 3 lines that give a description of what your product is all about.

Explain what the product is, what it does and who it is meant for. You can also decide to add a clear photo of the product itself so that the prospect can get a clearer picture of what he/she is to expect.

The photo may give you an extra edge over your competitors as most people are visual and are more likely to understand your photo better than your text.

5. Avoid Using all Caps and Exclamation Marks

You may think that writing your words in bold or caps and adding exclamation marks will attract the attention of the reader and make them want to read through the whole sales copy, but in truth, it will just make them get bored as it slows down their reading process and comprehension of what you are talking about.

It has been proven that text written in lower case are recognized faster by people due to the different shapes of lower case letters. When you use more than one exclamation mark in a sentence people will take it as immaturity or being rude.

6. Readability Matters

You should ensure that the text on your sales copy is readable by everyone. You can achieve this by doing the following:

• Set line-height to 24px
• Set the font size to a minimum of 14px or 16px
• Ensure you create a new paragraph every 3-4 lines and leave an empty line between the paragraphs
• Ensure you use sub-headlines as much as possible
• Use images in your sales copy so as to break the monotony and pattern of the text
• Set the line width to max 600px
• Ensure that you use dark text on a light background

Long or short?

When writing your sales copy you should consider only the people who will be interested enough to read the information you want to give.

You should ensure that you give as much information as possible to them so that they can understand what your product or service is all about.

This will increase the probability of making a sale as most people will avoid completing a sale due to lack of enough information about a product or service.

How to write a winning sales copy

When writing a winning sales copy you should consider a number of factors.

• Price

When a product is priced higher then you will need to write a more detailed sales copy because your prospects will require proof of why the product is worth all that money and that the benefits they will get outweigh the cost. More copy will help you overcome objections.

• Medium

Some promotional medium such as Twitter and Google AdWords only allow short copy.

You should first know the type of medium that you want to use and this will guide you on how to write your sales copy. In the case of writing a short copy, you should aim to capture the prospect’s attention as fast as possible using a few words.

• Goal

The purpose of writing your copy will determine the length of the copy. If the main purpose of your copy is to ask the prospect for him email address then the copy will be short but if it’s to make a sale then the copy will be longer as it needs to be a little more detailed.

When you consider the above factors and principles you will be able to write an amazing sales copy that will be sure to increase your sales. Ensure that the sales copy is as long as it needs to be and not longer.

With these 7 principles as a guide, you are sure to create the most effective sales copy to achieve what you want.