Great sales texts are out there, drawing our attention on landing pages, banners, emails and social media ads. 

In this article, we’ll talk more about this conversion-focused writing and how to create messages that drive sales. Check out!

What is Copywriting?

Copywriting is a type of text that helps companies and professionals to sell their products or services, both online and offline. It typically delivers persuasive messages that encourage people to buy as soon as possible.

The right words have the power to turn your idea into a successful business. If delivered to your audience at the right time and in the right format, impactful copy boosts sales significantly.

The word copywriting is still strange to many people, and if you are already used to creating other types of written content for your business, such as a blog post, you may be wondering: what is the difference between copywriting and any other type of content writing?

Copywriting vs. Content Writing

Both copywriting and content writing are used as a way to connect with your online audience. But they have very different purposes.

Copywriting is writing advertisement or marketing text that is intended to drive sales or a specific action. Common uses are in emails, landing pages and advertisements.

– How to Create a Sales Page 

Content writing is generally intended to entertain, educate or inform an online audience. Common uses are in blogs, e-books, whitepapers and informational web pages.

The two types of writing involve different skills and techniques. While it’s possible to be great at both, a good copywriter is not necessarily a good content writer, and vice versa. 

Now that you understand the importance of copywriting in increasing your sales, let’s look at four steps you should take before sitting down to write your copy.

4 Steps to plan a great sales copy

Writing well can be a challenge for anyone, but lack of inspiration and skill can be overcome with the right planning. 

Step 1: Set your goals

The goal of sales copy is to persuade people to make a purchase, but that’s a rather obvious and empty statement.

To get the best results from your copywriting strategy, be as specific as possible about the goals you want to achieve. You can use, for example, the SMART objectives framework:

• S = specific 
• M = measurable
• A = achievable
• R = relevant to your long-term strategy
• T = time-based

Let’s imagine you’re launching an online course about investment for beginners, with numerous modules and lessons, and you need to create a sales copy for your launch campaign. The goal is to sell as many courses as possible. 

Putting into SMART, your goal could be: sell 50 subscriptions in your annual plan, totaling $30,000 in sales by January 31st. 

With that goal in place, we meet all the criteria for a SMART goal:

• Specific = sell annual subscriptions to new customers;
• Measurable = 50 subscriptions, resulting in $30,000 including discounts;
• Achievable = sales value 5% higher than last year;
• Relevant = resulting in increased market share;
• Based on time = until January 31st.

Now, with a specific copywriting goal, it will be easy to evaluate the results at the end of the campaign and see if you did a good job or need to make adjustments to your strategy and sales texts.

Step 2: Think about your target audience

To create brilliant copywriting, you must understand who you are selling to and why they would care about what you have to say. 

Who is your target audience? What are your pain points, needs and desires? What’s so special about your offer? Why would they believe you? Answering these questions will help you create a compelling message and choose the right tone and language.

Going back to our beginner investment course example, your outreach campaign’s primary audience may be young people interested in starting to invest their money in the stock market, thinking about future earnings. In that case, you should focus on how you will help them understand financial market concepts in a light way and show that they can start applying what they’ve learned as soon as possible.

To reach this audience, you can create an advertising campaign aimed at social media. Use a humorous, energetic tone of voice and show results that they can achieve in a short time. 

– Know what your personas are looking for and attract leads

Step 3: Deepen your search

Once you’ve identified your target audience and their needs, deepen your search and get more detailed information:

• Listen to your prospects and identify how they express their needs. What words do they use? Visit forums, read social media comments and ask questions on sites like Quora. Record all messages that come from them – you’ll use them in your copywriting later.
• Make a list of features of your product or service that will be valuable to your target audience. Following the above example, you can think of practical classes on interest calculations, chats to clarify doubts, etc.
• Shape the offer to make it irresistible and stand out from the competition. Look at your competitors and decide if you would like to offer a lower price for a limited time or some extra bonuses, for example.

Now that you have all the details and information you need, it’s time to use them to create a solid structure.

Step 4: Design your copy structure

There are several approaches you can take to structure your sales copy, and even some ready-to-use formulas. The most popular examples are:

• AIDA = attention, interest, desire and action;
• PAS = pain, agitation, solution;
• 4Ps = problem, promise, proof, proposal;
• Star, story, solution.

Although they look very different, they all have one thing in common: You can’t offer a solution if you don’t know the problem. The more relevant the pain point you touch, the more likely the person will consider your offer.

How do these formulas translate into specific copywriting formats? Let’s look at the more extensive sales copy format, like the one used in a presentation. The structure can be as follows:

1. Title
2. Problem or opportunity
3. Value proposition 
4. Success cases or testimonials
5. How does it work? Key product features and technology
6. Your solution’s advantages over competitors
7. Price or one-time offer
8. Contacts

For a presentation, this can be great, as long as it doesn’t exceed ten slides. However, depending on the channel you are using, such as a social media ad, this structure will need to be much leaner, going straight for persuasive information such as price, discount and product benefits. See the example below:

As you can see, depending on the segment, copywriting can have different elements, but the main ones, such as the problem, the value proposition, the product features and the benefits, are universal.

– 6 Ways to Sell on Social Media

3 Copywriting tips to sell more

Now that your planning is done, comes the most creative part of the process. Take the defined structure and think of a title for each point.

Headings will make your sales copy readable. Then create content for each point and enhance your text using a tone of voice that matches your brand and your target audience.

Here are some tips to make your copywriting shine:

Always think about what matters to your customer

One of the biggest mistakes some copywriters make is to focus on the product’s features, rather than the value it brings. 

Remember the famous saying: your customer doesn’t need a drill, your customer needs to drill holes in a wall. That’s exactly what it means to think about what matters to the customer: talking about value, not functionality.

For example, this is how Phillips tells its customers about its epilator. Note that there is nothing in the ad about how the device works, but it’s clear why you should have it.

Use common language

This tip goes hand in hand with the first one: Think like your customers mean to speak the same language as them. Study how your potential customers talk about their problems and expectations and use your own words to create a copywriting that they identify with. 

That way, your message will sound like you’re reading their minds and will be 100% relevant, which is critical to a productive conversion.

Avoid slang, professional terms and jargon. The only exception here is if you sell a product to a specific target group of professionals, for example an online course for web developers. Here, you will have to show your expertise and that your product is technically up to their expectations.

Work with emotions

Use emotions to attract attention and solid logic when explaining all the whys. People are not rational most of the time, even when they make a purchase, but they still try to make an informed decision.

Here again, your copywriting will have to be adapted to the media format used. If you create sales copy for a shorter ad format, images, slogans, or your customers’ ranking scores will do the job (and the difference). 

If we’re talking about sales pages or an email, for example, take advantage of the extra space to highlight your offer, its benefits and perfect the emotional appeal, the one that convinces the customer that he needs and deserves what you have. to offer. See the following example:

With these copywriting tips, you are ready to start practicing and creating powerful sales texts to sell your online courses.

– Practical guide for creating and selling online courses

Complete eLearning platform, Coursify.me is the ideal solution for those who want to create, sell and promote courses on the internet.

Serving companies and professionals in more than 60 countries, the platform is a dynamic and customizable Learning Management System (LMS).

– Whats is a Learning Management System

To learn more, visit our website, test the platform and start selling online courses right now.

The post Copywriting: How to Create Powerful Sales Copy appeared first on Blog Coursify.me.

This practical guide will cover practices such as the keyword research process and the production of content SEO-friendly. 

Importance of SEO and Copywriting for sales

Anyone who wants to sell any product or service online must have a main objective:  build and maintain the best website possible. The ranking on Google will come automatically if your site has quality. 

Google wants to show people the best results. If your website is the best in your niche, the searcher will rank it at the top of the results.

For this, the technical design of your website must be excellent, the UX impeccable and all aspects of security must be covered. 

– How to create a sales page

The most important thing, however, is the content that must be well written and targeted to the audience that you seek to reach. This approach requires SEO and copywriting for sales skills.

Without giving up the quality of your content, you must adjust your text to the specific demands of search engines. The copywriting process requires skill, but with a little training, anyone should be able to improve their writing.

– Copywriting tips

Always begin with a keywords research 

The first step of building copywriting for sales has little to do with the text production. First, you need to decide which keywords you want to rank, that is, what terms your business can be found online for.

Proper keyword research consists of three steps:

1. Define your goals and differentiator

Before starting keyword research, you must think about what your business is for and what makes you stand out from the crowd. Answer questions like: who are you and what is your business about? What makes it unique? 

Take the time to formulate and write down what your goals are and why people should invest and trust your product / service amid so many options.

2. Make a list of relevant keywords

Once you have defined your goals, you will have no problem finding search terms (keywords) that apply to your niche market and you can start making a list of all the terms you want your website to be found for.

To do this, get into your audience’s head. How are they more likely to find you? What would they search on Google? At the end of your search, you should have a list of all the relevant terms that people can use. 

Also, think about the combinations and variations of these terms. There are some tools that can facilitate keyword research, such as Google Adwords Keyword Planner and SEMrush.

– How to define keywords

3. Analyze the search intention

The SEO and copywriting for sales today, largely revolve around answering the questions people have

Whenever someone enters a search term into a search engine, they are looking for something. 

There are three types of intentions that the user can have:

• Informative intention: to find information about a specific topic.
• Navigation intention: access a specific website by entering the term in a search engine.
• Commercial intention: research with the intention of buying something.

You need to find out what types of intentions apply to your keywords and try to match those intentions. This should affect your writing style, as we will see below. 

Three phases of producing good copywriting

After deciding on a topic you want to write, copywriting for sales begins.

The SEO writing  process consists of three steps: preparation, writing and editing.

Phase 1: Preparing your text

The first phase of the process is content planning. Before you start, take a moment and answer the following questions:

1. What is the purpose of this text? Why are you writing? Do you want to inform users? Amuse them? Or persuade them to do something on your website?
2. What will be the main message of your post? What question do you want to answer?
3. Who is your audience? What are they looking for?
4. What information do you need to write your text?

The preparation step is when you must consider the visitor’s intention. If your keyword research has clearly demonstrated that the intent behind a particular query is informative and you want to write a persuasive page for that keyword, this is not a good match. 

You need to think about the user’s intention before you start writing, simply because an informative text is written differently than a persuasive text. 

The language you will use when writing informational text should be clear and focused, while persuasive language will generally be very positive, with more focus on the reader. 

– Content marketing to sell online courses

Phase 2: Writing your text

Now you can start the process of copywriting for sales. This only takes about 20% of the total time you spend on your text.

The most important tip for this phase is just writing. If a sentence is not grammatically correct or seems strange, continue and don’t worry about it yet. You can rewrite these things in the next phase. In the writing phase, it is important to stay in the writing flow.

In order not to get lost during the process, use the structure you created in the preparation phase and write the paragraphs according to that plan. 

Make sure you write clear, short paragraphs. Avoid being verbose and be very careful with repetitions, a common mistake of beginning writers. 

Most importantly, make sure your text is targeted at the audience you are trying to attract.

– How to create buyer personas for my business

Some people are natural writers and have the ability to write a good and readable article in a short time. Others need to try harder, and in that case, practice certainly helps. 

If you want to develop an attractive writing style, reading (novels, blogs, magazines, whatever) will inspire you and teach you how others form their sentences and construct paragraphs. 

The copywriting for sales, focusing on SEO, can be a very intense process and you need be careful not to lose concentration and impair the quality of your text.

In case you notice that your mind has started to wander, it’s time to take a break.

Come back when your head is more relaxed and finish what you started. With time and practice, this process will become easier and faster.

Phase 3: Editing your text

After you finish writing, you will have a first draft in hand. 

In the editing phase you must ‘kill your darlings’. Don’t be afraid to throw things away. You should read and reread your text and correct any strange, unclear sentences and confusing paragraph structures. 

Here are four steps to take to edit your content:

Read slowly 

Begin this phase by reading your article slowly (and even out loud, this can help). Each sentence must be grammatically correct and the spelling must be perfect. You need to be very critical with your own work.

Focus on the sentences

Make sure that all the sentences are correct, make sense and are not too long, this tires the reading. If all sentences in a paragraph pass, focus on the first sentence. Does that first sentence really capture what you meant in that specific paragraph? Are the sentences in a paragraph presented in a logical order? Do you use transition words to make the connection between sentences clear?

Check the text structure

Make sure the structure between paragraphs is clear. Are the topics in your article presented in a logical order? You should also check your titles and subtitles. Make sure your keyword is in one of those headings and subtitles. But just as important, make sure that the headlines help readers understand the structure of the text. 

Ask for feedback

The final step in your writing process is to get feedback. After editing your text, you should submit it to others for evaluation. Feedback offers the perspective of someone other than the writer and almost always leads to major improvements. It would also be useful to let someone in your audience review your post to test that the message was communicated correctly. 

– Tips to get more Reviews for your course

Copywriting for sales in multiple languages

Writing well is difficult, writing well in several languages ​​is even more complex. If you sell to different countries and need to adapt your copywriting for sales in other languages, as we do here on Coursify.me, you know that this is true. 

Translating content can be a complicated business, because often words that look the same in two different languages ​​do not actually have the same meaning.

There are three ways to create content in other languages:

• translate the original content;
• create new content for this market;
• transcribe content: a combination of both.

Getting translations seems easier, but it is necessary to know the language well to correct mistakes and poor translations. This is difficult to judge if you are not a native speaker. 

Creating new content is the safest choice, with probably the highest quality result. However, this is very time consuming.

Therefore, we advise you to “transcribe”: take what you already have as a base, but rework it to fit the local target group. 

Go for copywriting and sell more online courses

Creating copywriting for sales works best when you follow a defined process and make sure your text is the best it can be. 

As a last tip, we recommend using the Yoast SEO plugin that helps to optimize your text for search engines and make it more readable. 

– 12 practical SEO tips for beginners

In addition, selecting a platform optimized for SEO is already halfway to a good positioning in search engines.

Complete eLearning platform, Coursify.me is the ideal solution for those who want to create, sell and advertise courses on the internet.

With complete optimization for SEO, Coursify.me allows integration with your social networks and content platforms like Vimeo and Youtube, all to improve the visibility of your page.

To learn more, visit our website, test the platform and start selling online courses right now.

The post Practical Guide to SEO and Copywriting for Sales appeared first on Blog Coursify.me.

If the only thing missing is to understand a little bit more about copywriting, this post is for you.

Why Copywriting is Important to Sell Online Courses

In summary, Copywriting is the production of texts (articles, slogans, whitepapers, ebooks, posts, etc.) with the purpose of making a sale.

It is true that everybody knows how to write, but developing a text capable to sell online courses is something else.

– How to sell online course

Those who create courses usually devote so much time and energy to producing content that when it finally comes to an end, the thought is, “Now I just have to put some words describing my course and I can go sleep!”.

Big mistake. The sales page is your greatest opportunity to show your audience why your course is so valuable and life changing.

A well done copywriting can paint your online course as the solution that your students sought and the tool that will solve their problems.

But if writing is not your best hability and you are afraid of not being persuasive enough to sell online courses, do not worry, you are not alone.

Even skilled bloggers or content marketers tend to go wrong in copywriting  when they do not focus on their purpose.

– Content Marketing to Sell Online Courses

An article for blog or newsletter, for example, does not have the same type of content that should go to a sales page.

When writing a blog post, the goal is to provide information about a subject and in turn get new subscribers and more traffic to your website.

– How to use your blog as a marketing tool

With  copywriting, however, you expect to get people to dump their money and commit to a solution you’re offering.

That means that to sell online courses using copywriting, you need to convey two things: the value of your product and the urgency of acquiring it now.

Basically your message begins with “Choose my product because it will make your life easier,” and ends with “But run because the offer is for a limited time”.

Learn How to Use Copywriting to Sell Online Courses

To successfully sell online courses, you need to adopt an effective marketing strategy to ensure that you are headed in the right direction.

Copywriting is critical in creating and executing this strategy and has a direct impact on the sales potential of your course.

– How to generate leads

So, stay tuned to the tips we prepared about how to use Copywriting to sell online courses.

1. Make a great sales page

When designing your landing page, you must take into account a few factors to ensure that no visitors leave the page without reading what you have to say.

• Use brief and punctual titles

A good landing page should have a header at the beginning with bold, large text that gives visitors an idea of ​​what they will find on your page.

So keep in mind that for a sales page, using only the title of your course will not be enough.

A better approach is to briefly inform the benefits your potential student will receive upon enrollment in the course.

This specific text, although short, should predispose the reader positively based on their needs and desires, as well as promise an interesting result if he lingers a little longer and read what comes next.

• Put important information at the top of the page

People on the internet have short attention span and tend to focus on what they see first on a page. Only if that information captures their interest they will go through the rest of the content.

So your best chance is to put all the important data about your course and services at the top of your landing page so that everyone can see it as soon as the page starts loading.

• Use simple and straightforward language

When creating your course description, it is important to keep your speech simple, brief, concise, accessible and easy to understand to all.

Remember that this text is an opportunity for you to begin to relate to your audience by letting them know how you can help them reach their goals and desires.

• Use action words and phrases

When visitors enter your landing page, they need to feel engaged, excited and attracted to your speech, otherwise, goodbye.

Your best friends at this time are words and action phrases that can spark or boost their motivation to learn.

Words like “discovering”, “getting” and “exploring” are bound to make them feel like they are part of the learning experience you are offering.

• Present social proofs

Since what you are selling is digital, and it is not something that the customer can see and touch, it is necessary to prove that you are a trusted authority in your segment and what you say is true.

For this, you’ll have to make use of social proofs, that is, testimonials and evaluations of people who have already tried your product.

– How to get more Reviews to sell Online Courses

You can get this content through multiple channels, such as emails, tweets, posts, comments on social networks, etc.

Whenever a customer speaks positively about your courses, you definitely want to add that comment to your sales page.

2. Follow the step by step of professional writing

Using copywriting to attract more potential clients and sell online courses is undoubtedly a challenging task.

Many people find it difficult to write a message when it comes to promoting a product or service.

However, this assignment may be easier if you follow the three phases of writing: Pre-Writing, In-Writing and Post-Writing.

• Pre-Writing

Before writing your sales text, you should practice and improve your writing skills. The pre-writing phase involves the following steps:

• Research: Be aware and always look for new ideas and resources that you can use to get inspired later.
• Planning: Organize your copywriting strategy using a content script to always be aware of the progress of your work.
• Reading: Read other material and content relevant to your work on a daily basis and stay updated.
• Writing: Make a commitment to practice writing regularly, not only to gain more practice, but also to connect your thoughts with your words and ways of expressing them.

Finally, focus on a key idea and make your proposal focused on meeting the needs of your readers.

Gathering information about your audience and understanding their tastes and preferences is important to help you create content that retains customer attention.

– Learn what their personas seek and attract leads

• In-Writing

The second phase deals with some of the text-building elements that you need to take into account when writing.

• Title: Create an attractive title that summarizes the information that the rest of the text contains.
• First sentence: Both the title and the first sentence should guide readers to the main point of the text.
• Introduction: Create a brief and engaging presentation.
• Stay Focused: Always keep in mind what is the point of your message. This is important to help you stay consistent and avoid confusing your audience.
• Show, not say: Readers want details, examples, arguments, and stories to support everything you’re saying. It is always better to show what you can do for them than to say.
• Appeal to Emotion: Online purchases most of the time are not logic-driven and that’s exactly why you need to put emotion into your text. The needs and desires of your students may agree well with what you are proposing.
• Speak their language: Determine the profile of your target audience, who your potential students are, and choose your vocabulary accordingly.
• Conclusion: Summarize your key points and underline the ways your visitors can benefit from the information you provided.

And for last but not least, have fun!

Strict, serious writing creates an unnecessary distance between you and your audience.

The best thing you can do is to avoid boring text, so try to enjoy and have fun with what you are doing and channel it into your copywriting.

• Post-Writing

When you finish your copywriting with focus on selling online courses, you will need to go back to the beginning, review and re-evaluate your work.

More specifically, you should do the following:

• Ask for feedback: Have friends, colleagues, and people you trust read what you write and take their comments into account when reviewing the document.
• Edit: Write first and check back later. Your first attempt at writing will probably end up as a rough draft, because good content never comes out the first time.

Now, with a killer text ready, you’re one big step closer to sell online courses and profiting by doing what you like.

With a well-planned and aligned strategy, you’ll soon have your first students.

– 5 tips to attract students

Complete eLearning platform, Coursify.me is the ideal solution for anyone who wants to create, sell and promote courses on the internet without having to invest to start your own business.

Attending companies and professionals in more than 60 countries, Coursify.me is a dynamic and customizable Learning Management System.

– Whats is a Learning Management System

In addition, we have three options for you to decide what best suits your needs and the good news is that the Beginner Plan is free!

Visit our website, test the platform and start to sell online courses right now.

The post Copywriting Tips to Sell Online Courses appeared first on Blog Coursify.me.

What is Copywriting

Promote online business is something that takes time, work and investment, and first of all, you must know the tools and ways of doing this.

Copywriting is the process of producing texts in order to promote a person, company, product, opinion or idea. 

In other words, is to write a text which misleads the reader to take action, to buy something. For this reason, the copywriter, writes and edits the content carefully, selecting words and constructing sentences that lead the reader to take a specific decision.

The work is continuous, and the texts produced does not always have to make a sale, but influence the audience to perform an action, such as signing a newsletter, visit a website, send an email to the seller, among others.

How to use Copywriting  to promote online business

In the eagerness to use this strategy to promote online business without the due knowledge, many professionals produce poor texts, which fail to attract and hold the reader’s attention.

Despite having conversion as goal, the content produced should be beneficial for both you and your reader.

To help copywriters that are starting, we prepare five tips on how to produce texts to promote online business, at the same time that you create a good relationship with visitors to your website or blog. 

1. Keywords Repetition

Those who have read our posts about keywords and SEO techniques knows that the repetition of words related to the service or product is quite effective, both to influence the reader as to attract the attention of Google and other search engines.  

There is a limit, of course, but working the text correctly, the repetition of keywords reinforces your message and transmits confidence.

2. Present Solutions

To promote online business, as in any other business, you must determine the profile of your target audience, their needs and desires and show how your product or service is the solution they need.

The idea is to provoke, pointing out the problem, then to provide the answer for it to be solved.

3. Forecasts

This tip applies especially when we talk about the sale of online courses. The aim is to show the potential customer everything that he can win by purchasing your product, designing a successful future.

Through an engaging copywriting, take the reader to anticipate what he can achieve by doing your course, how his future can be transformed.

4. Anticipate to Objections

By defining your target audience, you are able to predict what objections they will do to your product. There is an old saying, “the attack is the best defense”. Formulate your copywriting intelligently, responding and resolving these objections.  

To promote online business efficiently, it is necessary to anticipate the customer, offering a practical and irrefutable solution.

5. Storytelling

Content that is quite successfully with the audience, the storytelling is to tell a real or convincing story, with which people can identify and be able to connect.

This copywriting strategy has the potential to tell the reader what he should do or think without being bossy, also giving freedom for him to draw its own conclusions.

Copywriting goes side by side with the Content Marketing and Digital Marketing in its task to promote online business.

Learn and practice its techniques in the content production for your website or blog has a direct impact on the increase in the number of visitors, leads and conversions.

With the Coursify.me, in addition to host your online course, you create a custom page for your course in which you can enter all information you find relevant in the way that you prefer.

Complete eLearning platform (LMS) to create and sell online courses, Coursify.me has everything you need for free! Visit our site and learn why we are the best option for your business.

The post Why use Copywriting to promote online business appeared first on Blog Coursify.me.