7 Copywriting Hacks to Boost Your Conversions

If you’re reading this post, then you’re probably trying to sell something online.

Whether you run a SaaS business, or you’re a freelancer selling your services, you can always use a few more sales or leads. Regardless of your business, it’s going to be powered by killer copywriting.

But, improving your conversions seems so difficult and you don’t have the budget to hire a high-end copywriter.

Copywriting is a hard-won skill. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t use some of its tools for your own business.

Below you’ll find 7 copywriting tricks of the trade that’ll help to boost your conversions.

1. Repeat, and Repeat Again

The more often we hear something the more likely we are to believe it’s true, regardless of whether it’s actually true or not.

Think about it — how many beliefs do you have hard-wired into your brain, just because your parents would say them incessantly when you were young?

What does that mean?

It means the more often you repeat yourself, the more likely your readers are going to believe you. Now, that doesn’t mean you can just copy and paste lines of previously written copy. You do need to be a little more subtle than that.

The goal is to find the phrases within your existing copy you’d like your readers to remember the most and repeat them as often as possible.

2. Steal (Ethically, of Course)

I’m not giving you permission to steal your competitor’s copy. I’m talking about a different kind of theft.

It’s about stealing the language of your market.

What a better way to make your readers feel like home, than to use the same language that’s floating around their own heads.

You know that whole “you read my mind” type of feeling? The only way to extract these juicy tidbits of your ideal market’s language is to study them.

Chances are you’re already familiar with your target market. If you don’t feel like you know them intimately, then it’s time to stalk them. Visit Facebook groups where they hang out, check out relevant forums, read the comment sections of the blogs you know they read, look in the review sections of Kindle books they read.

Make special note of the words and phrases they use, and infuse them into your existing copy.

Don’t waste time playing the guessing game of what words you should use. Your market is telling you what they want and what magic phrases you can use to help them open their wallets.

3. Justify Yourself

There’s a great book on persuasion called Influence by Robert Cialdini. If you have time to add another book to your reading list, I’d highly recommend checking it out.

But, here’s the main point.

It highlights a study done way back in 1978 (yes, the world did exist before the Internet). It focused on using the word ‘because’ to justify your actions.

In the experiment people who were waiting in line were asked a question in three different ways:

1.  “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”
2.  “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?”
3.  “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I have to make copies?”

Which one do you think performed the worst? Number 3, right?

Wrong!

It was number 2. The reason. It lacked the simple word ‘because’.

Researchers believe this is due to our “click-whirr” programming, which has us rely upon learned behavior when making decisions.

What’s the lesson?

Use the word ‘because’ whenever you’re making a claim about your product, or yourself, or requesting your users to take any action.

4. Let Your Reader Say No

Readers don’t like being held hostage.

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by Kevin Wood via SitePoint