It's all about you!

Recently I’ve been writing sales letters and other web copy, both for myself and for clients. Following on from my post last month Writing for the Web, another couple of important points occurred to me, so I thought I'd share them with you here.

We often get so carried away with how great our product or service is, that we forget the purpose of what we’re writing, be it for website or printed brochure. We want people to be interested enough to buy!

They’re not going to buy unless THEY see a compelling reason. So, the copy we write has to be all about them. It has to contain the words ‘you’ and ‘your’ as often as possible. Keep ‘I’ and ‘we’ to a minimum.

You’ve probably been taught in workshops that it’s the benefits that sell. Very true, but you need to take that a step further in your written copy. Tell your reader what end result they can expect. Or, if your product/service will deliver them from a nasty experience, use the emotion of that.

So, instead of:

“Our product will bring instant relief from unwanted pests”, try

“You will never have to suffer from those unwanted pests again”

You want your reader to say ‘That’s for me!' And for them to feel the emotions associated with the problem you will be solving for them.

Do you have any copywriting tips to share?