By Bridgette Hernandez
There are many reasons to write a copy. You want to establish thought leadership, increase name recognition, build a social media following, earn backlinks, and drive people to your website. As you’re doing all that, don’t lose sight of the one reason that drives your bottom line. That’s writing a copy for generating leads. After all, who cares if people love your content if they aren’t moving through the sales funnel at a healthy pace?
Sadly, writing a lead-driving copy isn’t easy. It takes a deft approach. Using an online copywriting service can help ensure that your copy is effective in driving leads. However, if you choose to write your own copy, consider these seven copywriting secrets for generating more leads. With the help of these tips, you can improve your sales copy and drive more leads.
1. Write to Create a Sense of Urgency
One of the best ways to get your audience members to answer your call to action is to make them think that time or supply is limited. This creates a sense of urgency that encourages potential customers to make a move now rather than waiting.
Here are some tips for doing this:
- Indicate a limit in products or tie a reward to answering a CTA immediately.
- Use dates or times to indicate the beginning or end of special deals or offers.
- Focus on your products meeting needs, not wants.
- Display countdown timers or tickers.
- Use urgency power words like Now, Limited Time Offer, Immediately, Reward, and Last Chance.
Even the formatting of your writing can impact emotional response. Get to the point quickly with subheadings, bold fonts, and bullet points. Avoid long paragraphs or lengthy narratives.
2. Educate Your Potential Customers
You may think that writing content to generate leads means hyper-focusing on sales. That’s not the case. You must also establish yourself as a source of information and education.
Keep in mind that a customer who isn’t ready to buy today is still a potential lead. Take the time to understand their experiences and needs, to educate them, and you will find that they will be more likely to return to you when they are ready to buy.
What happens if they don’t convert? They’ll still remember that you helped them and gave them relevant information. That’s powerfully influential. You can do this by:
- Writing content that shares strong opinions and offers advice.
- Don’t act as a customer yes-man. Challenge them, and tell them the truth.
- Be generous with tips, tools, and resources.
Someone that trusts and appreciates your efforts to inform and educate can also be a great referral source.
3. Use The Second Person Point of View
It may be more natural to write from the first-person POV, but that puts the focus in the wrong place. Instead, write from the 2nd person POV, and make generous use of the word, ‘you’. This allows you to better communicate your value proposition, and speak to the benefits your products and services can bring to your readers.
Using the second-person point of view with emphasis on the word you, also has the subtle psychological effect of making the reader the star of the story. Not only does this create positive feelings, but it also makes it easier for them to envision themselves using your products or services.
You may find that there’s a bit of a learning curve to making this adjustment. Most of us are taught to write from the 1st or third-person POV. Still, it’s possible to learn to do this. Give your team access to various copywriting tools and additional resources. These will help them write more productively and give them time to focus on improving copywriting competencies.
4. Get Rid of The Fluff
Writing for word count is a controversial topic. On the one hand, Google’s algorithms do prefer long-form content. Because of this, you may be tempted to write long posts to earn better rankings.
The problem with long content is that while it may appeal to someone interested in doing a deep dive into a story, it doesn’t necessarily put the audience in the frame of mind to take action. There are other ways to write for SEO and earn better SERP. The best way to do this is to write things that are informative, relevant, and actionable.
When it comes to writing for leads, be concise. Brevity is a virtue, and you must edit your writing ruthlessly. Avoid using the passive voice. If a word or phrase doesn’t inform or otherwise add value, cut it out. Get rid of 50 cent words, and avoid jargon. Instead, focus on informative content and stating your value proposition.
5. Adopt Relatable Tone And Phrasing
Are you using the same language to communicate with your audience? Let’s say you sell a healthcare app for patients with a chronic illness. You could write content with plenty of complex tech-speak and medical terminology, but will that help you reach your audience? Alter your wording and vocabulary to make your content relatable to the people you want to buy your product. Here are some things to try:
- Use an intro page on your website to direct different audience segments to relevant content.
- Rely on team members who have direct contact with customers to tell you if your copy would reach your target audience.
- Let copywriters take the lead on this. They are trained to write to the audience.
- Know your audience. Pay attention to their feedback. Find user communities and social media groups that your audience frequents, and learn how they talk around your niche.
- Finally, if you need help creating relatable content, consider hiring AI freelancers who can help you craft language that speaks directly to your target market.
6. Offer Social Proof
What you say about your products may be credible, but the word of your customers is more powerful. Incorporate real stories from your clients into your copywriting. This approach, rather than simply creating a ‘testimonials’ page, allows you to weave social proof into your website content organically. You can do this by:
- Adding relevant testimonials and case studies to product and services pages.
- Link directly to customer review platforms for additional credibility.
- Ask happy customers to share video testimonials
- Encourage customers to tag your brand on social media
Place social share buttons on blog posts and other content.
7. Tailor Your Writing to The Channel
While you should never lose sight of your brand’s voice, you do need to make some changes to it and your other content choices depending on the platform you are using. Simply put, a potential customer is likely following you on Facebook for different reasons than on Instagram. Likewise, a customer reading your blog is probably looking to have a distinct need met than one who clicks into one of your landing pages.
Don’t assume that your audience is homogenous from one platform to another. Different social media platforms tend to attract different demographics. Learn as much about these as you can. Then, do a bit of competitive research. How are your competitors reaching customers with content?
Final Thoughts
The key to the content that generates leads is to write in an informative, customer-focused, and relevant way. Customers who are ready to move closer to purchase, want purposeful content, but may need to be nudged a bit. Use the tips above to turn your copywriting into a lead generation powerhouse.
Bridgette Hernandez is a writer and editor whose content can be found on multiple blogs and online publications. She writes about a variety of topics but specializes in marketing and small business growth. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys watching old movies and baking.
