Your sales copy is perfect. It follows all the rules of grammar and marketing to a T. Yet because of some sales copywriting mistakes, you’re still not converting.
Before ending and rebuilding your marketing strategy from scratch, consider if you are making these sales copy mistakes. Here are three “don’ts” I see time and again in a lot of copy.
Too much I and very little you in your sales copy
Imagine you’re busy having a cup of coffee, when a salesperson knocks at your door. Because you are polite, you decide to hear what they have to say.
For the first three minutes, they proceed to recite their CV to you. After hearing about how they graduated top of their class at college for the fifth time, you will probably ask them to get to the point. I’d simply shut the door in their face.
I’m sure you’ll agree that the salesperson's strategy is not a good one. Yet many business owners, maybe even you, do just that. It’s one of the most common sales copywriting mistakes I see time and again.
I know it is human nature to talk about ourselves. At times too often and too much.
Talking about yourself is the fastest way to pull your prospect out of the picture that you're painting for them.
Our job when we create sales copy is to really immerse ourselves in exactly what our buyers are looking for, and give it to them.
Do you have any idea which university the person who built the device from which you’re reading this graduated from? Probably not.
Likewise, your readers don’t care about you or your certifications. It’s harsh but true. The only thing they care about is solving their problem.
Can you blame them? Even you, unless you are reading a biography, care more about how the reader can solve your problem, than you do about their history.
How to talk about yourself
Now don’t get me wrong. Giving a potential customer your experience and background is crucial for establishing credibility. But a curriculum vitae style of introduction is not the way to go about it.
The trick here is to focus on the reader. When you eventually talk about yourself, it should be in light of solving the reader’s problem.
Show them exactly why your experience, your expertise, your education, your certifications, your results, all of it, why it matters. You designed logos for Uncle Joe’s Pizza Parlor, so what? What does that mean to the prospect and their problem?
My clients love to know the conversion rates of pages and the results of things that I've gotten, because it helps them imagine it for themselves. What I typically don't do is tell them who I've done it for, unless it's a big name that I can borrow credibility from.
I just say a landing page that I wrote got an 82 and a half percent conversion rate. From there, it is easy for them to imagine that could be their own page.
During the sales process, we talk about it and I tell them why it got such a great conversion rate. But that’s a whole other topic.
I never put anything in my sales copy that pulls them out of the story that I'm painting for them.
If you're talking about yourself, in the first line of your website, stop it.
If you're talking about yourself more than you're talking about your customer, stop it.
I know it’s tempting to talk about yourself throughout the website. It’s your baby you’ve worked so hard for, after all.
Yet as long as your website is me, me, me, the baby you’ve worked so hard to build is never going to convert.
Dry sales copywriting
There’s this strange notion that business proposal writing and sales copywriting are the same thing.
This is why you will see people edit themselves so much, they bleed the copy dry of any personality. When they’re done, all that remains is a stuffy skeleton. Just writing about it is making me yawn.
What ends up happening is you disconnect from the intended reader. When you use a word someone has to think hard about to remember the meaning, that’s a stumbling block to your conversion.
When someone is reading your copy, the last thing you want is for them to open a new tab, trying to find out what a word means.
Remember, our goal is having the reader so wrapped around our finger, they read up to the end. Reading up to the end improves our chances of converting.
If we use formal, stuffy, stiff language, that's not going to help wrap them in that story.
Think of the best storytellers you know, they use all five of your senses. They activate your senses just by using their words.
That's what you want to do.
Conversational copy works way better than super formal copy. Every single time.
We sit and try to emulate the corporate world as entrepreneurs, but we forget that people buy from people.
Even when we're selling to multibillion dollar corporations, someone is sitting behind a desk writing that check. Contrary to any conspiracy theories, CEO Ms. Bridget Billions is fully human.
We are too shy
The third big sales copywriting mistake that I see is people shy away from asking for the sale.
You’ve managed to address the reader’s problem, your content was even engaging enough you made the connection.
And then you just leave them to take that final step on their own without some gentle prodding.
That, dear reader, is a self assured recipe of killing your conversion rate.
Ask them for the sale. It's okay to ask for the sale.
Ask them: Are you ready to make this change for yourself? This is how you're going to do it. Simply click the green button to sign up for X.
I’ll say it again – it's okay to ask for that sale.
Don't wimp out. Tell them exactly what to do step by step.
“Sign up” is just a couple of words. But it makes such a big difference to the experience that your person is having because now they know what to do and what to expect.
It removes any buying uncertainty the reader might have. It also prevents a situation where the reader decides to look into it later. Meanwhile, your competitor’s better written copy comes along, and converts your prospective client. Or shall I say your former prospective client?
Unlearning sales copywriting mistakes
The 3 major sales copywriting mistakes I’ve observed are:
- Talking about the writer / business owner.
- Writing copy that doesn’t connect with the reader.
- A weak call to action.
Old habits are hard to break. If you’re still making these sales copywriting mistakes, book a call with me right now.
