“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” and the purchase of your company’s product begins with a single click. This may be one leap from a great ad to an immediate buy. Or it may be the prospect downloading a white paper as they start through the purchase process. Whatever stages your marketing funnel includes, it’s the job of conversion copywriting to persuade a shopper to keep moving.
What Is Conversion Copywriting?
Conversion copywriting motivates the audience to take an action, AKA, convert. There are many different types of conversion, like filling out a form, sharing on social media, and of course, making a buy.
Note that conversion copywriting is not the same as content writing, where the goal is to promote the branding of a product.
What Is the Purpose of Conversion Copywriting?
Many marketers use the idea of the sales funnel to define the steps that the audience (hopefully) takes along their journey to becoming customers. Let’s take a look at a simplified sales funnel and the possible conversions that are associated with its stages. Here we are using the classic AIDA model as the steps of the sales funnel:
- Awareness (initial learning about the product) – clicking on a paid social media post found on a channel associated with the audience
- Interest (connecting your brand with a topic of audience concern) – clicking on an email signup form found in the social media post
- Desire (explaining why your product answers a need) – clicking on a ‘7 day free trial’ link found in a direct email
- Action – Subscribing to the product after the trial
At each step, effective conversion copywriting drives the prospect to keep going.
Where Is Conversion Copywriting Used?
The above mentions two channels – email and social media – where conversion copywriting applies. But this is only a sample. Other areas in which the audience might be compelled to click include:
- Video scripts
- Landing pages
- Blogs
- Apps
- Online white papers
- Notifications
- Welcome messages
- Sidebars
The conversion copywriting process will change for each of these areas. Every platform and medium has its own tips and tricks, as well as different formats and audiences.
The Conversion Copywriting Process
Building the messages that keep the audience interested is about more than just good writing. There are three distinct activities that allow the copy to be relevant and compelling:
Customer research: This enables the marketer to understand (among other things) the target market and the kinds of messages that they prefer to read. Customer research can be an exhaustive process, depending on the resources of the company, and can include everything from focus groups to data mining. At the most basic level, the marketer should form personas according to the characteristics of the assumed audience, and then test their assumptions (see below).
Copy composition: Information from customer research will dictate the style of the writing, and to some extent, the structure. For instance, if research shows that your market is mainly older men, then the writing style will be masculine and probably include various specs and details (as opposed to focusing on emotion, as a comparison).
Testing: Once the copy is posted, conversion rates are monitored. Then, an alternate version is composed and also posted, and the conversion rates are compared. This continues until optimal conversion rates are reached. If there is wide variation in rates, it could be that there is a flaw in the research, so the cycle should start again.
Conversion Copywriting Outcomes
In the digital world, what really counts is that the audience clicks on the call-to-action. For some potential buyers, taking that last step can be intimidating, especially if it seems to say ‘give us money’. The smart conversion copywriter will customize that little button or link with some brand-oriented writing. Here is a great example from Metafy of a CTA that uses branding, curiosity, and humor all at once.
Similarly, the marketing manager should use non-threatening CTA steps that allow the audience to get discounts, view interesting material, understand product value, and receive offers before they fully commit.
Still, businesses can learn a lot of other things from the success or failure of a conversion effort. For instance, when conversion occurs, it tends to confirm that the elements of messaging, structure, and/or style have all been chosen correctly. Moving forward, the copywriter can apply the same ideas to other campaigns, and perhaps vary each element to check exactly what was done properly.
Some Tips To Consider
As you can see, conversion copywriting isn’t so simple. You can follow all the steps and still not get the conversion rates that you need. To make your journey to optimization a little bit easier, here are a few important tips:
Don’t copy/paste. For every campaign and channel, you really should build a new set of texts. This is essential because, in case you rely on Google, your search results will suffer if the algorithm comes across duplicate texts. In addition, as mentioned above, there are certain best practices to think about for every marketing platform, and your copy should account for them.
Use a strategy for your composition. In light of the ‘don’t copy/paste’ tip, it helps to come at each copywriting task from a different direction. But doing something original every time will take forever. Writing techniques such as ‘foot in the door’ and ‘FOMO’ allow you to change your tack without needing to invent the wheel for each campaign. Click for a list of conversion copy strategies.
Check out competitors, but be unique. Keeping an eye on the competition is always a good idea because they are targeting the same audience. You might notice that they are using an interesting copy structure or writing technique that you can adapt. However, it’s vital to maintain the look and feel already established by your branding strategy.
The Ultimate Conversion Copywriting Tool
One of the smartest conversions that a marketer can make is a move to Anyword. The AI-based copywriting platform was built to convert prospects into buyers through a revolutionary application of big data and language analysis.
Anyword connects the conversion rates of actual ad spots to audience demographics and copywriting style. This enables the platform to build the right kinds of messages for your product’s ideal audience.
But how do you know that Anyword’s copy will convert? The secret lies in the platform’s unique Predictive Performance Score. Each line of text produced by Anyword gets a grade that indicates its potential to convert. A marketer simply chooses the version with the best score and then posts it. The result is a significant time savings, as well as a higher chance to convert. Sound interesting? Creating conversion-oriented copy is only one of Anyword’s capabilities. Try out the 7-day free trial and get the big picture of how Anyword can make your marketing happen.
