At times, knowing what you should not do can be enough to turn that poor conversion rate on your website or sales copy in the right direction. If you are responsible for writing your company’s marketing material or writing the ads, you can avoid some of the most common copywriting mistakes as listed below.
6 Common Pitfalls Of Poor Copywriting
1. Are You Creating Ads Just To Get Someone’s Attention
Always keep in mind that there’s a huge difference between getting someone’s attention, and getting someone to actually buy. While your ads absolutely do need to grab attention, they also need to do so in a way that will open the door to making some type of conversion, either an email submit or even a sale.
2. Are You Forgetting To Mention The ‘Reason Why’ When Writing Your Copy
One of the most crucial elements when writing ad copy is telling your reader and audience the exact reason why you are selling them your product or service. Notice how we didn’t say, ‘Stating the benefits of your product’, well at least not yet. Writing strong copy will remind your buying market the exact reason why you want them to buy, and why your service or product is the only logical solution and choice for them.
3. Why Are You Talking To Yourself In Your Copy?
This is one of the most common of sales copywriting mistakes that’s found in countless marketing copy and corporate ads. A message that will usually distill down to:
“Why we are the best, and the biggest, we are the most established, and you should do business with us right now simply based on us saying so.”
This type of ad message is destined to fail badly because there’s absolutely no connection between you and your customer. There is no mention of the benefits towards them as the buyer, and there is no ‘one to one’ customer individualization. The ‘one size will fit all’ type of message will simply not work anymore. People interested in your product want to know that when your product or service was designed, was it specifically with their exact needs in mind.
4. Failing To Trigger The Human Emotion
Make sure you do your homework on your target subject. Make sure you find out everything that’s required, and that means absolutely every little detail about your buying audience. What are they complaining about, that your superb product or service will be able to solve for them? What type of problems have they come across or encountered using your competitors product? What are the new features as well as benefits that you offer that will instantly make their work or lives easier? How much is your target market end buyer willing to pay for your product?
Make sure that you use copy that will convey laser focused ’emotional’ trigger words, that will solidly reinforce the problem that they will need resolved, with the solution that you offer.
5. Using Poor Weak Ineffective Headlines
It’s been tested over and over again, as well as been proven that your late great attention grabbing headline is the most important key piece of text that your advertising copy has to offer. Every test indicates that your ‘killer’ headline must instantly grab the attention of your audience, and hang on to them for dear life in less than three seconds flat. If that headline fails to nail them down like white on rice, your marketing copy and advertising impact will plummet like an anchor.
6. Using Accurate Strong ‘Real’ Testimonials
First of all, most readers can tell a ‘fake’ testimonial on your site, from a mile away. People by nature are always skeptical, and will resist any attempts to be sold anything. So unbiased ‘real buyer’ testimonials by far are one of the best ways to ease the natural built in resistance to purchase. Real valid testimonials will reassure potential ‘on the fence’ buyers that your product has made your customers extremely satisfied, so much so, that they went out of their way to write a glowing, positive testimonial.
Use photographs if possible, as well as their first and last names, and links back to their website if available in your testimonials to add credibility.