The science behind persuasive copywriting
Graduated with a journalism degree, I had a difficult time transitioning from journalistic writing to creative writing and conversion writing. And it was because I had this mindset that journalism is to inform, and conversion writing is to sell. However, when I look closely at these two, I find that these two have more similarities than I thought before. (Good) conversion writing and journalism writing both:
try to tell a good story;
provide accurate/factual information to influence readers' perspectives and decisions
After I decided to take on a Marketing route, I still often check my conversion copy with journalism principles, however, with an additional layer of conversion sciences. In this article, I will try to summarize what I've learned from my experience and CXL courses, and I would love to hear from you.
Value Propositions - the heart of all your messages and conversion writing
Conversion writing aims to get people to act - sign up, make a purchase, or something similar. And the words you use and the number of words you use can make a huge difference. And there is an effective copywriting process:
Research
Product: You need to figure out why people buy the product, how they buy it, what they use it for, and what really matters to them
Customer: The most effective way is to talk to your ideal customers and find out what they think about your kind of product, what language they use when they talk about it, what attributes are important to them, and what promises would most likely convince them to buy your products.
Competition: You need to know your direct competitors and how they present their products, and what claims they are making
Outline and guideposts
Draft copy
Aviod jargon and blandvertising
Be specific
Conversion boost
Optimize for clarity: what you sell, what that is good, and who it's for
Optimize for info: no question unanswered
Persuasion boost (I will get to it later)
Revise and rearrange
Test
I think this method applies to writing all the copy, no matter if it is for your home page, product page, or resources. And you need to show your value proposition in all the assets you create.
What exactly is a value proposition (VP), and how to write it?
Simply put, a VP is a promise of value to be delivered and the primary reason a prospect should buy from you. In a nutshell, VP is a clear statement that:
explains how your product solves customers' problems or improves their situation (relevancy),
delivers specific benefits (quantified value),
tells the ideal customer why they should buy from you and not from the competition (unique differentiation).
There are many formulas out there to teach you how to write a VP. But I find the one CXL suggests the simplest.
Headline. What is the end-benefit you're offering in 1 short sentence? Can mention the product and/or the customer—attention grabber.
Sub-headline or a 2-3 sentence paragraph. A specific explanation of what you do/offer, for whom, and why it is useful.
3 bullet points. List the key benefits or features.
It takes time to craft a unique and winning VP. So let's look at some examples to take the ideas to the practice ground.
Gem:
Comments:
It's clear what it is and for whom
Specific benefits-oriented sub-headline
Relevant product visuals
Smooth transition into social proof and product features
Evernote
Comments:
A different layout. They bring a clear call to action front and center.
Key features and benefits listed below with relevant product image
I'd adjust the image layout and key benefits to make the words more prominent and easy to catch. They should serve the purpose of clarifying the slogan.
Continuum Financial
Comments:
The headlines with "welcome to xxx" are an attention waste. Have you ever seen a website where visitors are not welcome?
The subheader is not helping much in clarifying what they offer.
The call to action is weak.
The image is not relevant.
Overall, the VP is not properly in place.
There are many ways to test and track your VP. A simple one is to split test ads with different VPs, targeting the same customer, and the ads with higher would obviously be a better attention grabber - though not necessarily higher sales conversion. So be brave and test.
The science of writing product messaging.
Most professional conversion analysts would do a copy "tear down" to understand if your copy includes the most fundamental conversion critical elements needed to make a compelling, persuasive argument.
Momoko Price brought up this pyramid of persuasion principles. The one at the core/bottom is MarketingExperiments' Conversion Sequence Heuristic. The second layer is Richard Cialdini's Principles of Persuasion. And the top is Claude Hooplin - the most revered copywriting expert, and his Scientific Advertising.
MECLab's Conversion Heuristic Formula
Don't be scared away, my fellow marketing friends. It is not a mathematical equation. It is just to show each element's power in this mix of key components to develop a persuasive argument.
Motivation - why visitors come to your page. Understand your prospect's motivation, so you can make sure your messaging is aligned with it.
Value Prop - what are the things they can get from you, not elsewhere.
Friction - how hard are you making it for people to act
Incentive - what to motivate people in that moment of acting to get over the hump
Anxiety - people's objections and perceived risk
Once you get the base down, we can move to the next level:
Cialdini's 7 Principals of Persuasion
Social proof: evidence that other people are saying yes
Authority: third party authoritative statement to support your offer
Liking: get people to like you
Scarcity/Urgency
Reciprocity: give before ask
Commitment/consistency: small ask -> bigger ask
Unity: make people feel they belong to a group
Claude Hopkin's Scientific Advertising
Claude Hopkin is like the godfather of conversion copywriting. He was born in 1886, and he is the first to put out ads with promo codes to track the effectiveness of different ads he used.
His book, Scientific Advertising, still offers universal and timeless insights for marketing/conversion writing.
Be specific: People tend to remember fine, specific details than generic info. More importantly, like Mr. Hopkins pointed out, it's hard to lie with specifics. People don't expect you to be specific and lie, but they totally expect you to say generic stuff and try to hide the details as part of a lie.
Offer service: The best ads don't scream, "Buy this, buy that." Instead, they say "I'm here out of the goodness of my heart to give you this amazing offer that's going to make your life so much better."
Tell the full story: Whether long or short, an advertising story should always be reasonably complete.
Be a salesperson: As in imagining if you use this copy, would it help you close a deal in a one-on-one sales environment.
Think about the Funnel
Another element we should consider is the funnel.
Attention-capturing copy. This is the stuff that makes people see and click on your page.
SERP snippet, PPC ads, Display Ads, FB ads
Persuasive copy: This stuff gets people excited and understands more about your offer and what's excellent for them.
Home page, PPC landing pages, Product Details Pages
Transactional copy: This is where the friction comes in where people have actually to give you information.
Cart Page, Order Summary, Checkout page, Signup page
Confirmation copy: This is like your post-conversion experience.
Payment success message, first-time UX copy
Now we have a full picture of all the principles and elements to conduct a page tear-down/heuristic analysis and write/improve your product messaging based on it.
The challenge is that page tear-downs/heuristic analogies can be very opinion-based, so you'll need a consistent framework to make sure you always review them with the same principles. So here is a framework she shared to help if you're looking to do your own heuristic analysis. It's a powerful tool but could be a little confusing to start using. So I added my understandings to help, but if you have questions, feel free to reach out.
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