An easy tip, to make any piece of writing more persuasive
Do you want to know a trick that will instantly strengthen any persuasive writing?
How to make sure you’re talking about benefits rather than features
You’re probably already aware of the copywriting rule about leading with benefits rather than features, so you can help your reader see what’s in it for them, which makes them more likely to buy.
Following this rule should be simple. But when you’re the one who designed the features of a programme, it’s hard to get out of your creator’s mindset. So we often stay stuck in listing what your course or programme does, rather than explaining why anyone should care.
There’s a way round this though. It’s the “so you can” trick.
You can still list your programme’s features, but now you add to each one, “so you can X”.
You can vary the “so you can” wording in the final copy. For instance, in my own sales pages, I sometimes use “and instead” and “so that you know” in place of “so you can” so it’s less repetitive. E.g.:
“...finally get out of your own head, and instead have potential clients ask how you know what’s going on in their heads”, or
“get detailed, specific feedback, so you can feel secure, knowing that a professional has checked over your whole website”.
Bringing in emotions
Another point to remember here is that your “so you can” will be even more powerful if it packs an emotional punch.
For instance, this is why I included the phrase “so you can feel secure” in that last example. One of the things that has come out from my research with potential clients who have not previously worked with a copywriter is that they feel uncertain about the copy they’ve written themselves - they don’t know whether it’s good enough or not.
The feature is that you get feedback on your copy. The benefit is knowing that a professional has checked every word on your site, but the emotion attached to that is a feeling of security or certainty.
Tapping into emotions is not simply a copywriting trick - it will make all of your marketing more powerful and memorable, whether that’s your newsletters, course videos or podcast interviews.
Find out more about how our emotions work, or about the psychology of buying. And of course, stories are engines for creating emotional responses - find out more about the power of stories.
And if you’d like to have emotion-packed messaging on your own website, you might like to work together.