You spend hours crafting the perfect copy, but it doesn’t look like anyone even notices. Actually, that’s not true. You know they notice. Your monthly performance reports consistently show you get loads of website traffic. You’re just having a problem getting people to convert – or even engage.
While you can’t force people to engage or take action, there are ways you can increase the chances of either one happening. You can use a lineup of persuasive copywriting tricks and tactics that have been proven to work. You’ll find seven of the most powerful right here.
Use Storytelling
No matter how many days, months, years, or even decades past, chances are you still remember the best story you’ve ever read. Great stories are remembered. And they also make fantastic selling tools. That’s because stories:
- Entertain the audience, keeping them interested for longer periods
- Elicit emotion which, in turn, makes things easier to remember
- Give the audience real-world examples of your product or service in action
- Produce neural coupling in the listener, which is the ability to transform the story into their own experience by activating specific regions in the brain
- Engage many areas of the brain that aren’t engaged when the brain is simply processing facts
The next time you’re about to share a list of straightforward facts in your web copy or product descriptions, you can try incorporating the facts into a story instead.
Appeal to Emotions
Emotions make things easier to remember. And they also are the driving force behind the decisions people make. People make decisions based on emotions, but then later justify those decisions with logic.
They don’t buy the souped-up sports car for the gas mileage. But they may later tell themselves – and others – how wonderful the car is because it gets 34 mpg on the highway.
In short, we like to think we make decisions based on logic and reason. So that’s what we tell ourselves in the aftermath. Use emotional appeal, backed by logic, and you have a winning combination to persuade.
Trigger the Senses
Let’s say you’re reading a product description for pizza. Which one is going to win you over?
- The one that says it’s a 12-inch pie in a sturdy cardboard box.
- The one that mentions the thick, melted cheese and sizzling pepperoni perfectly placed atop a crispy, garlicky crust.
The second one, for sure. Triggering a sensory experience in the reader is another way to practice the art of persuasion. This counts double if you’re able to weave the sensory experience into an emotionally-appealing story.
Highlight Benefits over Features
Too many brands like to give you a ho-hum list of features their product or service has. A description for a content creation platform, for instance, might say something like:
- Advanced tools with functions that help with your content creation
- Main dashboard to see what’s going on with all your orders
- Helpful videos for learning even more
Those are the features, or attributes of your product. Yes, they’re important. But they’re not what’s going to seal the deal. That’s where the benefits come in.
The benefits of that same content creation platform might be:
- Beat the competition with built-in content creation tools
- Save time and hassle by tracking all orders on an easy-to-use main dashboard
- Become a content marketing maven with on-demand video sessions
The features describe product attributes. The benefits outline the positive impact your product has on the user. You can certainly include both, as long as you put the benefits ahead of the features.
People are not going to get excited about advanced tools or a main dashboard. But they may get excited enough to do backflips about beating their competition while saving time and hassle.
Weave in Some Humor
Granted, humor may not be a good idea for brands with strictly serious services or products. But it can be an amazing tool for those that can lighten things up a bit.
Humor can make your product, service, campaign, and overall brand more memorable – and likable. As business coach Magda Kay notes:
“We buy from companies we like, and humor is the easiest and fastest way to get there.”
There are myriad ways to incorporate humor into your brand. The trick is to find a way that fits your brand personality, aligns with your message, and heartily connects with your audience.
Break Out the Power Words
So many power words, so little time! Power words are words used to trigger an emotional or psychological response. And there are tons of them. You’ll find 100 power words here, another 700 power words, and still others from some of our favorite content marketing experts.
Copyhackers’ Joanna Wiebe discovered seven high-ROI words we outlined in detail in a previous blog. Known as the 7 Money Words, they are:
- Should
- You
- Already/Still
- Here’s the thing
- The truth is/The fact is
- Even if
- [Whatever word your readers keep using]
HBT Marketing cofounder Nancy Harhut shared two power words that trigger a response more often than not. We noted these in a neuromarketing blog, and they are:
- Because: Gives people a reason they should do something (and often has them agreeing the minute they hear the word before even knowing what the reason is).
- Guarantee: Takes away the risk, and removes a major point of friction.
Bring Up and Resolve Objections
Objections are a huge point of friction in marketing, with people sure to come up with a variety of reasons why they’re not sure if they should buy what you’re selling. Cut to the chase and remove the friction – by bringing up the objections first.
But don’t just bring up objections and leave them hanging. Bring up the objections, and then resolve them. You can do this by creating a FAQ page that presents each objection as a question. You can also highlight objections and their resolutions on the relevant web page.
Let’s say you’re selling a high-tech gadget, and one of the objections is that looks like it is way too complicated. You might write something like:
“Even though our gadget looks like a highly advanced super-tool from thousands of years in the future, it’s actually quite easy to use. In fact, you can master its operation in about five minutes – less time than it takes to find a suitable show to watch on Netflix.”
Summing It Up
While these persuasive copywriting tricks and tactics have been shown to boost engagement and results, they are not the end-all for quality content. You still need to deliver valuable information that interests your audience: topics they love to read about, and problems they need to be solved.
The tricks and tactics are more like the icing on a well-baked cake. They serve to capture attention and trigger a response – that they must have the delicacies you’re offering.
Learn more copywriting hacks at WriterAccess Academy, where you’ll find more than 200 on-demand content marketing sessions. Don’t have time to put the hacks into action? Hire one of our freelance writers to do it for you. Get instant access to our academy and our pool of skilled freelance copywriters with a free trial.
