How to Formulate Your Copy To Increase Sales

Once you’ve determined that you’re ready to create a promotional or marketing piece and you’ve considered who you want to speak to and how you want to present your information, you’ve examined features and benefits, plus brainstormed headlines, you’ll want to take the process a step a further. Creating the content for your marketing materials is a craft. It takes thoughtful perspective and planning.

Good copywriters use formulas ~

When you examine copy that works well, you’ll see that good copywriters use formulas. These formulas may not be obvious at first and that’s a great thing. That’s why effective copy works and moves you towards action (and ultimately closing a sale). Think about offers, marketing material or advertisements you’ve responded to.

• A good sales letter that compels you to read onn • An informative radio commercial that made you want to respondn • A television spot that spoke to you at the right time about a product you’d been looking fo
• A clever billboardn • Website copy that went above and beyond a vanilla presentationn • A print ad that provided a reason to buy instead of just presenting price and itemn • And even the infomercial that sucked you in before you realized what was happening

When you consider the materials you’ve responded to, it causes you to think about motivation and what made those offers or ads stand apart from the rest. Exceptional copywriting brings results.

If you want to create really good copy, you have to study what the top copywriter’s are chu
ing out.

I encourage you to keep a swipe file. This is a file of compelling ads and marketing materials that are superior. Some of the world’s top copywriters like Robert Bly, Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero, Peter Bowerman, Bill Glazer and Dan Kennedy use this tool. Study the format to get ideas for your own copy. They key to using a swipe file ethically is to use it as a guideline for inspiration, not a playground for plagiarism.

While the formulas for each type of copywriting may vary they should almost always have these three key elements:

The hook ~ The headline or offer that draws you in.
The benefits ~ What the product or service will do for you.
The call to action ~ What you need to do, (buy now or call today, etc.).

Remember, your customers want to know what’s in it for them. You have to ask them to take action and give them good reason to do so.

Have you ever placed an ad only to receive no response? If so, reconsider your message and speak to your customers in a language they understand and will respond to.

Now that you know what to look for, you’re ready to create compelling copy of your own or at the very least evaluate copy you’ve hired someone else to create. This information might ultimately save you time and money plus increase your marketing results. nnnn