When you start a business in our modern world, to succeed, your business cannot just be in-person, it must also be online. This means in order to build a business and your brand online, you must create a website and content that promotes what you are selling and what you are about as a company. But what if you have no idea how to cultivate this sort of online existence for your business? Well, it sounds like you need to find someone to do some direct response copywriting for your business.
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What is a Copywriter?
While there are different types of copywriters depending on the field in question, a general professional copywriter is someone who pitches your brand to a specific audience. They use different methods of advertisements to promote and sell your products such as ads online and on billboards, tv commercials, or direct email marketing. The type of copywriter you want to look for would be a website copywriter. These individuals specialize in writing digital content for web landing pages such as blogs, product pages, or direct company websites.
Why is Copywriting Important for Your Website Development?
Website copywriting is important to keep visitors on a website engaged and also for search engine optimization. Excellent website copywriting is persuasive and will convince the reader to do something. Whether it’s promoting your brand, making a purchase of a product, or hiring your services, good copywriting connects to your target audience and convinces them to trust you.
What Type of Copywriting Best Serves My Online Business?
While any form of good copywriting can benefit your business, a certain type of copywriting best suits the target audiences of most first-time customers. This would be direct response copywriting. Direct response, or direct response marketing, is designed to prompt its audience to take immediate action like making a donation or signing up for a service. This isn’t a new concept, but cutting-edge techniques in email and social media marketing have brought the demand for direct response copywriting to an all-time high. When using direct response copywriting, your goal is to get your customer to instantly respond to your advertisement, whether that means making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, downloading a freebie, or following your social media.
Direct Response Copywriting V.S. Indirect Response Copywriting
You might be wondering whether direct response copywriting is the only way to go when it comes to advertising your business. There is another form of this type of copywriting called indirect response copywriting. The goal of this type of marketing would be to build awareness so that customers will recognize and remember a brand or product at a later date. Indirect response advertising is a general and long-term game. Having a healthy mix of the two forms of copywriting would not be a bad decision for your business, but especially in our world of ever-changing trends and businesses, you do not want your only form of marketing to be long-term. Even if a customer is interested in your product, only using indirect copywriting leads to more customers forgetting to return to your business, and allowing them to find more direct response marketing from your competitors.
Best Methods for Using Direct Response Copywriting
Much like every business decision, there is a method to the madness of online marketing. Each business has a specific target audience and area they want their advertisements shown, and this sort of criteria needs to be considered when developing your direct response strategy. To get you started, here are six tips for effective direct response copywriting.
Snag Readers With a Good Headline
The first step of direct response copywriting is to craft a headline that makes your readers want to keep reading. The headline needs to snag their attention, inspire their curiosity, and spark their interest. You can do this by:
- Keeping it sweet and simple
- Use exciting and provocative words
- Inform, but do not overwhelm
- Spark curiosity in your product/service
Use Long-Form Copy to Inform and Persuade Your Target Audience
You want your advertisement to provide a productive amount of information about your company and the products and/or services you provide. The more factual information you provide your soon-to-be customers, the more likely they are to spend more time on your page and purchase something. It also helps to use long-form copy on your advertisements to provide as much useful information as possible (this being no more than 1,200 words) to give customers a good idea of who you are as a business and what sort of things they should expect from you.
Have a Great Call To Action
Having an excellent CTA or Call to Action is a marketing term that transcends all forms of media. It functions as an advertisement and a promotional tool for your brand. Using CTA’s well does not mean using click buttons that state things such as “submit” or “access”. It’s using phrases such as “Yes! Give me access!” or “I want to join the team!”. This will not only excite the customer but make them feel including within the process and within your company itself.
Stay Customer-Focused
Direct-response copywriting must stay relevant for the audience to receive the results you are wanting. It’s about your customers, not about you. In fact, this form of copywriting exclusively uses the second-person voice to address the reader. Some tips to keep it focused on your customers.
- Find similarities within your current customer base and focus on how to draw in similar people.
- Keep an eye on your competitors and their target audience. Develop methods of not only keeping your current customer base but also intriguing some of theirs as well.
- Interact with customers on social media.
Make Sure Your Customers Understand Your Copywriting
There are a lot of ways that you can guarantee that your target audience understands what you are trying to communicate in your copy. Some of the most common things to consider is your readability and length of article, but there are smaller details you might not have considered.
- Keep it simple. This just means try avoiding over-explaining, present clear and concise content, and keep your stories logical.
- Inspire direct action with your word choice. Do not write above or below your audience’s level.
- Use specifically tools to gauge your readability such as Hemingway Editor and Readable.io
Cultivate a Sense of Urgency
According to Norrisnode, using the scarcity principle to bring customers to your website is a great way to build customer interest and revenue. This simply means tapping into a basic buyer fear: that an item will sell out before they get their hands on it. This cultural phenomenon is very common in online businesses, but there are specific techniques that can benefit any business.
- “Hurry- While supplies last!”
- “Only 3 left in stock!”
- “Limited quantities available.”
Provide Essential Information Through Graphics and Captions
Humans are quite visual creatures, so it makes sense that your customers won’t want to just read about your business, they want to see it in action! One way to make sure your customers see the most important information online is by putting it into sequences of images or in graphics, where our eyes are naturally drawn when reading. That way you keep them interested and engaged on your page and also provide credibility to your business. It’s okay to use emotion in website copywriting. The majority of website copywriting is persuasive, and emotions are a powerful tool to persuade readers. Appeal to your reader’s emotions!
Link to Other Reputable Sources
A good way to cultivate trust with your target audience is to link to other reputable sources in your industry or area of expertise. This is also a great way to increase your search ranking and connect with other similar businesses that can benefit more than just your reputation.
Optimize Your SEO
Don’t forget to use the all-important relevant keywords and utilize other search engine optimization best practices. Every professional website copywriter should be trained on SEO. It’s an important step to remember so that your copywriting finds your proper target audience. Companies like SEO Design Chicago specialize in such tasks and have done case studies on the perfect SEO to best suit your direct response.
Customizing Your Own Direct Response Experience
There are many directions that you can take your business and your copywriting! If you do not know where to turn, reach out to businesses that provide agents and advice within this field and discover what your business needs to be successful. At the end of the day, it is your brand at stake, so decide what you need and make sure what appears on your site is the same as in real life.
FAQs
- How to use long-form copy?
- What is long-form content?
- What is a copywriter?
- How do I create a CTA?
- What is direct response copywriting?
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