Writing copy that is both persuasive and informative is a valuable skill for digital marketers. It can help you attract, engage, and convert your audience, as well as boost your credibility and authority. But how do you balance the art of persuasion with the science of information? Here are some tips to help you craft copy that is both compelling and factual.
Before you write anything, you need to know who you are writing for. What are their needs, pain points, goals, and motivations? How do they talk, think, and feel? What are their objections, questions, and concerns? The more you understand your audience, the more you can tailor your copy to their interests, preferences, and emotions. You can use tools like personas, surveys, interviews, and analytics to research your audience and create a clear profile of your ideal customer.
Keyword research is not just useful for SEO purposes, it's also a great way of getting to know what's on your audience's mind - and, crucially, how they describe it in their own words. If you're not prepared to invest in a paid tool, don't worry - you can use a range of free tools, such as Google Trends, Google Keyword Planner, or the free version of tools like SEMrush. For simple research, you could even just head to Google and look at autocomplete (search queries that appear in the search bar when you start typing) and the "People Also Asked" box (on the search results page for queries related to the topics you're writing about).
Your copy will never be persuasive if it's targeted to no one. You have to understand your audience correctly. Know what they want and how they want it. Understand where it hurts them the most. Their interest, pains, desires, and even fears are all tools to show them you understand them and can feel them.. That empathy goes a long way to stir up trust in their hearts. To do this, you must by researching about them.
Your copy needs to strike a balance between persuasion and information. Highlight benefits: Highlighting the benefits your product or service offers is crucial—go beyond functionalities and emphasize how it improves your audience's life. Solve problems, save time, and enhance experiences to deeply connect with their needs. CTA: To drive action, a crystal-clear call to action is key. Guide your audience smoothly towards the next step, be it signing up, exploring more, or making a purchase. Ensure your instructions are clear and straightforward, encouraging engagement and conversion for a seamless user experience.
Next, you need to define what you want your copy to achieve. What is the main message, value proposition, or call to action you want to convey? How do you want your audience to react, think, or do after reading your copy? What are the benefits, features, or proofs you want to highlight? Having a clear purpose will help you structure your copy, focus on the most relevant and persuasive points, and avoid unnecessary or confusing information.
AIDA is an acronym for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. It is a classic copywriting formula that can help you craft persuasive and informative copy. It follows a logical sequence that guides readers from being aware of your offer to taking action on it. To capture attention, use a catchy headline, hook, question, or problem related to their needs or goals. Keep their interest by providing useful information that answers their questions, educates them, or solves their problems. Use subheadings, bullet points, and short paragraphs for easy readability. To stir desire, show how your offer can benefit them or satisfy their needs. Use emotional triggers, testimonials, social proof, or comparisons to appeal to their emotions and logic. Finally, prompt them to take action with clear and specific calls to action that motivate them to click, sign up, buy, or contact you.
I personally prefer the PAS model: - Problem: lead with the issues and pain points experienced by your target audience - Agitate: paint a vivid picture of the pain they experience due to the problem, using the language they would use to describe it - Solution: offer a solution to the problem (the product or service you are promoting)
Writing persuasive and informative copy requires clarity and simplicity. To achieve this, use words and terms that are familiar to your audience, active voice and strong verbs to convey action, short sentences that are varied in structure, transitions and connectors to link ideas, punctuation, formatting, and white space to break up the text. This will ensure that your readers don't feel confused, bored, or overwhelmed by your content.
Finally, you need to edit and proofread your copy to ensure it is free of errors, inconsistencies, and redundancies. You want your copy to be polished, professional, and credible; typos, grammar mistakes, or unclear messages can lead to a loss of trust or interest from your audience. To edit and proofread your copy effectively, read it aloud to check the tone, voice, and rhythm; use tools like Grammarly, Hemingway, or ProWritingAid to check spelling, grammar, and readability; ask someone else to review it for clarity, persuasiveness, and accuracy; revise based on feedback; and repeat until satisfied.
Leveraging common experiences and pain points helps your copy be more relatable. Identify a problem, then use a relatable story to persuade them that they need your product/service to solve that problem.
Less than 4% of people remember the details of a lecture a mere four hours later. I once delivered a talk to a roomful of businessmen. To bring some levity, I inserted a story about growing up in the far north and playing hockey outside as kids until our toes were nearly frozen. After my talk several people approached me. All but one referenced the story I’d told. One man was visibly moved while thanking me for sharing that memory as it reminded him of his own childhood. It was then that I realized I’d have been better off telling a story to share my message than just using one as an attention break. Stories deliver information in ways our brains and our hearts can absorb.