Persuasive Copywriting: 10 tips for writing (really) compelling texts

Persuasive Copywriting is the writing of texts that lead to , lead towards . It's that succession of words, emotions and stories that take you on a journey and lead you to action.

Did you know that, beyond fantasies and hearsay , there are many techniques and tricks you can and must follow to make your texts persuasive ? In this article, I'll show you the most important tips for truly effective persuasive copywriting. But, before going into the concrete, let's understand together what copywriting really is.

What is Copywriting

Copywriting is the ability to write persuasive texts, which aim to capture people's attention, lead them into an exciting world, convince them to solve a problem and finally lead them to action. Copywriting, therefore, persuades , a term that derives from the Latin persuadere , from per+suadere , or rather advise , convince . Here, copywriting recommends to convince . And it is certainly no coincidence that the basis of copywriting activity are the method, strategy, creativity and the use of precise techniques.

To write a persuasive text it is essential to know the target audience in depth and in detail and also the objective that the text must achieve, i.e. the concrete action that the person must take (download the manual, subscribe to the newsletter, buy now, free trial , etc.).

Well, now you want to know how to write persuasive texts ? Here you will find 10 straight practices for copywriting capable of leading the user straight to action.

1. Focus on the benefit and not on the characteristic

A basic rule of persuasive copywriting is to draw attention to the benefit the product or service offers to its target audience, rather than the features. I'll give you a concrete example. Think of selling irons, you'd probably be inclined to describe their power, pressure capacity, boiler capacity. But do you know what a good copywriter does? Rather than dwelling on the technical characteristics of the product, it highlights the concrete benefit it brings to people: did you know that our iron allows you to easily iron shirts and trousers thanks to the high temperature it can reach? Or: tired of the usual heavy irons? Our XY iron weighs xxx less.

Focusing on the benefit has several important consequences in people's minds:

• explains what is the real and concrete advantage that the product or service can reserve for them;
• convinces them that that product or service can really solve their problem;
• highlights the characteristics that differentiate the product or service from the competition.

2. Persuasive Copywriting motivates

To get people to take action you have to remind them that they have an urgent problem to solve but you also have to do something more: you have to motivate them to solve it. What does it mean? That you have to stimulate them to get them to act, you have to tell them with conviction how they can improve their lives if they buy your product or service. An example: follow the webinar and immediately learn 5 tricks to optimize your Landing Pages .

3. Attention - Emotion - Reason: the activation steps of Persuasive Copywriting

These are the steps that your Copywriting must activate to be persuasive. The first thing your text must do is attract the reader's attention, a task all the more difficult if you think that today we are inundated with content of all kinds. Add to this the user's ease of scrolling quickly through news feeds, turning pages, being drawn to other things. The second step, immediately following and sometimes contemporary with the first, consists in arousing emotions, in activating the emotional part of people, which is the one that drives them to act. Finally, your Copywriting must bring into play reason, which has a fundamental task: to justify and consolidate the choices that emotion has made.

4. How to get attention with Persuasive Copywriting

Attracting people's attention is probably the most difficult task in an age where we are pervaded by stimuli and our time has become the most precious resource we have. This is why, when you write, it is very important to get hold of some baits right away. Any techniques that can help you capture people's attention and interest?

Start the copy with a direct, clear, simple and specific question . Are you an engineer? or Do you have dry skin and want to solve your problem? or again Is your dream a relaxing holiday by the sea? As you can see, in all three cases the questions are easy to understand, they address the user directly and explicitly and go into detail, immediately identifying:

• the person who may be interested (an engineer, not just any professional);
• or the problem they can solve (problem with dry skin, not epidermal problem in general);
• or the wish they can fulfill (the holiday is relaxing and by the sea, it is not a holiday in the mountains and it is not a holiday suitable for those who love unbridled fun).

Specificity is essential to attract the attention of the right people to target the content, i.e. the people you really care about building a relationship with.

Another technique that can be used is numbers : start the sentence with a number, but first make sure it's true and real. Also, use the so-called bait words (free, limited places, while supplies last, etc.) and, if necessary, write them in capital letters (don't exaggerate, please).

5. How to arouse emotion with Persuasive Copywriting

You know that 80% of our daily choices are dictated by emotions, right? It is these that lead us to act. As Daniel Goleman argues in his Emotional Intelligence. What is it and why can it make us happy ,

All emotions are, essentially, impulses to act; in other words, action plans with which evolution has endowed us to manage life's emergencies in real time. The very root of the word emotion is the Latin verb moveo , to move , with the addition of the prefix e- (movement from), to indicate that a tendency to act is implicit in every emotion.

Emotions, therefore, prepare the body for an action and each of these has a different and very specific task. For example, fear draws our attention to danger, to threat, suggesting that we must do something about it; happiness is a state of well-being that predisposes positively to an action; surprise leads us to think quickly about what could be the best reaction to that sudden event.

How Persuasive Copywriting Arouses Emotions

How can Copywriting arouse people's emotions? Using different techniques. A very important role belongs to Storytelling , which is not only the art of telling an exciting story, but which also does something much more important: it induces people to identify with that story, to feel the protagonist of that adventure. Thus, if the hero has a problem to solve and his faithful helper comes to his rescue with a magical and powerful solving tool (a bit like the magic wand of Cinderella's fairy), then even those who read the story will be induced to feel as that hero who had a problem and who has now solved it thanks to the helper and his tool.

Equally important is the role of the levers of persuasion (in this regard I suggest you read the book by Robert Cialdini, Weapons of Persuasion ). These are stimuli that act on an unconscious level (this is where we make 95% of our decisions) and lead us to act.

6. How to stimulate reason with Persuasive Copywriting

After attracting attention and activating emotion, persuasive copywriting must stimulate reason because it has the fundamental task of confirming and consolidating the choice that the user has previously decided on an emotional level. Now this choice must be confirmed by rational and concrete arguments , it must be demonstrated by numbers and, if possible, by people, i.e. testimonials , who by activating the social proof mechanism have a very important role in convincing people that theirs is a right choice (if Maria, Alberto, Teresa have chosen X and have had an excellent experience/solved their problem/realized their dream, then it will be the same for me too).

7. Focus on the problem

Focusing attention on a person's problem, reminding him how much he wants to solve it and how important it is for him to find the right path, has two important implications:

• activates fear , an emotion that drives us to act to find the best escape route;
• value the solution that you will propose to the user and will induce him to take action.

The mechanism that drives the writing of a persuasive text is: you have this problem, you have to solve it to prevent it from causing consequence X (fear), so you have to find the right solution and you have to do it quickly. Here, what I am offering you is the best solution for you, to solve your specific problem.

8. Remind that you are the holder of the solution

When you write a persuasive text, in every word, thought and content, it must be very clear that the user has a problem that he wants and needs to solve and that you are the holder of the most suitable solution for him , the one that can really satisfy the his desires, the one that can concretely solve his difficulties, the one that can be the access key to the universe of his dreams. You have the solution.

Be careful not to overdo it, though. Being the holder of the solution shouldn't turn you into the absolute king of the kingdom: always maintain your proximity to the reader, be humble and discreet, don't be excessively self-referential and don't constantly remark that you are the best in the world.

9. Earn trust

Do you really want to sell your product or service? It will be impossible for you to succeed if you have not first won the trust of the people. And most importantly, you will have to do it with truth, honesty and transparency. Never make fun of a user or a customer, rest assured that he will notice it and you will not only have lost him but you will also have to face damage to your reputation and image that you will be unlikely to be able to resolve. Remember, word of mouth (whether positive or negative) travels at the speed of light on the Internet .

How to get people to trust you? It will not always (or rather almost never) be possible to do this at the first contact. It takes time for people to get to know you, to understand who you are, to understand what you do, to realize that you actually own their solution and that you are not fooling them. And it takes time to listen to you, talk, get attached to you and convince yourself. Unless you're selling an impulse product or a product or service that has a fraction of the cost, it's very difficult to sell on the first contact. But you can work to win people's trust in small steps , content after content, word after word, and this is a bit what Lead Generation strategies do, winning over people interested in your offer and then cultivating the relationship with them.

The tools at your disposal to convince people are: words, other people's testimonies, free gifts (such as information resources, guides, e-books, in-depth videos, webinars, free consultations, free trials of the product.And a fundamental role plays your reputation: what is said about you on the Net?What messages, positive or negative, precede you?

10. Persuasive Copywriting does not abuse

If you learn this rule you are already halfway there. Persuasive Copywriting Does Not Misuse:

• of people's attention , but always offers them really interesting and relevant content;
• of formatting with the aim of attracting attention: no excess of words or scarcity of words, no excess of bold, capital letters and italics;
• of the words themselves, which must be written in the right form (tone of voice, language and grammar) and in the right quantity (not too many but not too few).

Conclusions

Persuasive Copywriting is the professional ability to write copy designed for people. Better, for that specific target of people. This is why a good Copywriter must be able to combine many skills, knowledge and skills: writing, but also communication, psychology, marketing, analysis and often SEO. Specifically, in this case, we are talking about SEO Copywriting , the perfect combination of SEO and persuasion.