Complete Copywriting Tutorial - Examples, Tips and Formulas
- In this video, I'm gonna show you my complete copywriting tutorial. In fact, I've used the tips from this video to create blog posts that have been shared thousands of time. I've also written several high converting, seven-figure sales letters. I'm Brian Dean, the founder of Backlinko. So if you want more traffic, leads, sales, and social shares, you'll love the actionable strategies in this video.
Let's get started. Here's the truth about copywriting. Despite what you might have heard, you don't need years of experience or training to learn copywriting. In fact, before I launched Backlinko, I used to be a freelance writer. Then one day, out of the blue, one of my clients asked me, "Do you, by any chance write sales letters?
" Now, at this point, I'd never written a sales letter in my life. But I wanted to give it a try, so I told him, "Sales letters? "Heck, yeah, I write sales letters." And now that I was hired, I had to write a sales letter fast.
In fact I had about a week to write this sales letter from scratch.
So I researched as much as I could about copywriting. And because I was in a rush, I ignored the minutiae and focused on the key principles that I saw again and again. And it worked. My client told me that my sales letter outperformed their current one by a 2:1 margin. Since that day, I've written dozens of sales letters, newsletters and articles.
And over that time, I discovered what most copywriters don't want you to know. Copywriting is really easy. That is when you know what to do and how to do it. And that's exactly what I'm gonna show you in this tutorial. So, without further ado, let's dive into copywriting tip number one, use Reddit threads.
Reddit is a copywriting gold mine. To use it, head over to a subreddit, where your customer hangs out. Then, take at look at threads that have lots of comments. For example, let's say that you just launched a new keto diet bar. Well, you'd head over to keto and paleo subreddits and search for bars.
Then, pay attention to the exact words and phrases that people use to describe what they like and don't like about the bars they've tried so far. For example, I found tons of awesome copy in this one thread, copy that would work great for a landing page or Facebook ad. Moving right along to our second copywriting tip, use short sentences. Here's a good rule of thumb that applies to pretty much everything that you write. Short sentences equals better copy.
And there's data to back this up. A study conducted by the American Press Institute found that short sentences were 711% easier to read and understand, which is why always atomize sentences to be as short as possible.
Bottom line, use short sentences. They're easier to read and understand. Which leads us to technique number three, the slippery slide.
Here's the deal. You can have the best copy in the world, but if people stop reading the page after the first sentence your copy didn't work. That's why one of the main goals of your copy is to keep people reading. Or as copywriting legend Joe Sugarman puts it, the sole purpose of the first sentence is to get you to read the second sentence. The question is, how do you get someone to keep reading your blog post, email or sales letter?
The slippery slide. A slippery slide is where you add something to your page that's specifically designed to keep people reading.
For example, you can tell a little story in the beginning of your sales letter, but leave the ending for the end. Or you can refer to something that's coming up later in your blog post. You can even just say things like here's the deal and the question is, to push people to keep reading.
And now it's time for copywriting tip number four, super-specific headlines. You've probably already seen this old statistic before, 80% of people read the headline and only 20% read the copy. Is that statistic accurate? I have no idea. But I do know that your headline is super important.
And one of the best ways to make your headlines more effective use super-specific headlines. Super-specific headlines are exactly like they sound. They are headlines that tell your reader exactly what they're gonna get. For example, check out this blog post headline. Not bad, but not that specific.
Now check out this super-specific headline. It's much more compelling, right? In fact, this works so well that I tend to use super-specific headlines on every blog post, landing page or sales letter that I write. And now it's time for technique number five, use FOMO. FOMO can make your copy 10 times more effective.
That said, FOMO also known as fear of missing out, doesn't work for every situation. But if you can use FOMO, you should use FOMO. That's because FOMO triggers a strong reaction with your prospects, and emotion that makes them wanna listen closely to what you have to say.
For example, we've recently launched a product that closed on a certain day in time. So, we emphasize that on our sales page.
Which brings us to copywriting tip six, write strong leads. Everyone and their mom knows the headlines are important, but no one talks about something that in my experience, is just as important if not more than a headline. Your lead. Your lead is the section of your page that comes right after your headline, and at least in my experience if you lose people here, you've lost them for good. With that, here are three strategies that you can use to write awesome leads.
First, use a hook in your first or second sentence. The first sentence of your lead is huge. So make sure that first line really grabs your reader's attention. For example, this landing page from Marie Forleo has a killer first line. Next, you wanna make your lead about six to eight sentences max.
Whether you're writing a blog post, video script, sales page or email newsletter, you want your lead to be super short. Remember, the goal of your lead is just to grab your reader's attention. And once you've done that, you wanna transition into the main section of your content. For example, I keep my blog post introductions to around six lines. Finally, use mini-stories in your leads.
Stories are a great way to hook your readers right off the bat. But like I just mentioned, the problem with that is that your lead needs to be short and sweet. So, you don't have a lot of room to tell an epic story.
Enter mini-stories. Mini-stories condense a story into 45 lines.
For example, here's mini-story that I used in one of my most successful sales letters. And, now it's time for me to tell you about copywriting technique number seven, don't use big words. Let's face it, big words don't impress anybody. Um, yes, in this video I plan on demonstrating the effectiveness of online vocabulary and augmenting online transactions. In fact, they make your content harder to read.
So instead of big fancy words like these, use words that are easy to read and understand. And now it's time for our eighth technique, the A-I-D-A formula. AIDA is a classic copywriting formula that can help boost conversions on sales pages, landing pages, articles, newsletters, video scripts and more. Here's what this formula looks like. As you can see, A-I-D-A stand for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.
Let's take a look at a real-life example of this formula in action. I actually used the AIDA formula on this guide from my blog. First I grab people's attention with the first line, then I create an interest with a bold promise, and I fold it up buy tapping into a desire that anyone reading this page wants.
Higher Google rankings, and finally I cap things off with a called action to keep reading. Moving right along to technique number nine, benefits over features.
There's no doubt about it. When it comes to copy, benefits crush features. In other words, features are nice, but benefits sell. For example, let's say that you run a SAS company that sells productivity software. Here's how you can turn boring features into powerful benefits.
Coschedule.com does a great job of highlighting benefits over features. Yeah, like any software product, they outline key features. But unlike most SAS companies, the vast majority of their copy is benefit-driven. Nice.
Moving right along to technique number 10, get out of the friend zone. We've all been in the friend zone before. Or at least I have. The friend zone is when you like someone and they like you back, as a friend. Well, as it turns out, the same thing happens with potential customers and clients.
They like what you're selling, but not enough to buy. What's the solution? Address their objections. I'm talking about objections like, "It's just too expensive." "It's not a good time for me." "Yeah it sounds good, but will this work for me?" or "I'm not ready to switch from another product.". Most people pretend that these objections don't exist. Instead, you wanna bring up these objections and squash every one of them.
For example, here's an objection that we raise and squash on a product FAQ page. Let's get right into tip number 11, talk to customers. Remember earlier when I talked about using Reddit for customer research? Well, if you want to take this sort of thing to the next level, I recommend actually talking to your customers. For example, I've recently hopped on Skype with three people that graduated from one of my programs.
Fun fact, I was visiting my family in Rhode Island when I did this interview, that's why you can see my mom's amazing flower curtains in the background.
And because we were chatting on Skype, I could dig deep with follow-up questions. Next up, we have urgency and scarcity. Have you ever had someone tell you that they're interested in what you're selling, they just need some time to think it over? In my experience, 99% of the time that person doesn't end up buying.
Maybe they got busy and forgot, maybe they found another product. The exact reason doesn't really matter. The important thing is that you do something to get that person to convert right away. The question is, how do you do it? Add these words and phrases to your copy.
Needless to say, these statements should be backed up with real limitations, otherwise you're gonna loose people's trust. But if you can use them, you should use them. For example, this email from one of our recent product launches uses a clear to-the-minute deadline, that creates a super high sense of urgency. And now, it's time for our last copywriting tip, solve the social proof paradox.
You need social proof to sell, but you need sales to get social proof.
I call this the social proof paradox. And it's a real problem for lots of business owners. Fortunately, I found a simple way to get around this problem. Feature your strongest form of social proof. It doesn't have to be sales.
For example, let's say that you just launched a new nutrition coaching program. And to get leads, you offer people a free seven-day meal plan.
And if they wanna upgrade to a paid coaching plan, they get a full 90-day meal plan and personalized support from you. But so far, only a few people have upgraded to your paid plan. Well, in that case you can showcase how many people signed up for your free meal plan, or maybe only have 20 total customers.
But three of those customers got amazing results. Well, you can feature those three amazing results on your homepage. For example, when I launched my YouTube SEO course, at that point we only had about 10 total beta users. 10 people isn't a lot of social proof. But four of those 10 people got great results.
So we decided to feature those four people on the sales page, and it worked. And now it's time for a quick bonus tip, use this proven, three-step testimonial formula. It's no secret that testimonials can skyrocket sales. In fact, BigCommerce reports that testimonials, can increase sales by up to 62%. That's the good news.
The bad news is that most people use testimonials that simply don't work. I'm talking about testimonials like this. Now, to be fair, there's nothing wrong with that testimonial.
But it's not gonna get anyone to whip out their credit card and buy what you sell. Instead, I recommend using this proven formula.
As you can see, this formula is broken down into three main parts. The three parts build on one another to create one super-powerful testimonial. First up, you have the before. Here's where your customer talks about where they were before they used your product or service. That way, people can relate to the person in your testimonial.
Here's an example. Next, it's time for the after. The after highlights specific results that your customer got from your product. Finally, it's time for the "what they'd tell someone" section. As the name suggests, here's what your customer would tell someone that's on the fence.
And because this recommendation comes directly from someone that used your product, it's very believable. Let's close out this video with one more bonus strategy, use crooked numbers.
Crooked numbers are numbers that haven't been rounded. Here are some examples. According to research, crooked numbers are more believable than round numbers, which means, whenever you can, you wanna use them instead of round numbers.
For example, check out this intro from one of my blog posts. I could have made this a nice round number like over 200.000, but I went with the exact crooked number instead. So, that's it from my copywriting tutorial. If you like this video, make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel right now.
Just click in the Subscribe button below this video. And if you want exclusive SEO techniques that I only share with subscribers, head over to backlinko.com and hop on the newsletter. It's free. Now I wanna turn it over to you.
Which technique from today's video are you gonna try first? Are you gonna use crooked numbers or try using more benefits instead of features? Let me know, by leaving a comment below right now. Oh man. With that, here's... You good? Aren't rounded, aren't rounded...
You wanna do lunch? How the hell am I gonna say that? But no one's... Okay, that wasn't bad..
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