How to: Copywriting

As we are bombarded with information and ads every day, you want to develop a new skill: copywriting.

Think about this: there is more information that is shared on social media in one day than all the information created since the beginning of humanity and 2003. Passed 2003, everything started to go faster and faster.

At some point, you want to create content that will be different without trying to scream louder than everybody else.

*May contain affiliate links. Clicking on the affiliate links will most likely result in the same price you would pay elsewhere or you may get a special offer using those links.

What is copywriting? It’s content creation to lead people to buy. As simple as that. Every type of content, on every type of support, you create as an affiliate marketer is copywriting.

In the beginning, it was a term used for describing the text you use in ads. Ad copy. Now, it’s a broader term for every piece of content you create for your business and for your audience.

It’s important that you create a connection with your audience. You want to create a bond and build a trusting relation with your followers.

Let’s talk about regular marketing strategies to create content that would convert.

What you want to do here is to create an attention grabbing headline. To do so, you would use words that catch the eyes like Free, Technique, Secret, Discover, Hacks, Now, etc. It is recommended to create a few and choose the one you like best and ask some of your friends for feedback.

You know, everything that goes: “Lose your belly in 3 days doing this trick!”, “The unknown secret to get your ex back”, “Money hacks to triple your income in 5 days!”

Then, in your copy, you would talk about a problem your audience has related to the product you want to promote. Also, you want to talk about how miserable their life is since they have that problem, right?

Good news, you have the perfect solution for everyone in their situation! Now you talk about the benefits of the product you want to promote and how awesome their life will be after they decided to buy it.

You can insert the story of your cousin who was struggling with this issue. How his days went by and how difficult his life was for him and his wife. Until one day he found that super product/program/service and his life changed forever.

Oh, you don’t stop there. To finish, you want to make sure you use their grief to the max and tell them what a shame it would be for them not to take this once in a lifetime opportunity to improve their lives or that something is wrong with them if they do jump in right away.

How do you like that? Even though you are trying to connect and give some kind of value to your audience, you are bringing them down to a low level of emotions. These are proven to convert. They convert around 2%. Apparently, that’s enough to make good money online.

The use of these strategies are mostly to make money. This is when the copywriter doesn’t really care about building up his relationship with his audience. If money is our only goal, you can use the techniques I described earlier and you can stop reading here.

Money is not the ultimate goal when you are building an online business. Yes, you want to earn money online, but you also want to help people. I believe that you want to do things differently or at least, see how you can copywrite in a different way.

A new way to copywriting

There is a way to do copywriting where you will be empowering, educating and where you responsibilize your audience so it converts naturally into sales.

Instead of focusing on negative emotions like guilt, judgment and fear to make people buy, you want to prioritize good emotions, like happiness, gratitude, joy, etc.

Before I get in the details, let’s see what kind of content creator you are. I used He in the description to make it easier to read than if I used both genders. I thought about using It, but I wasn’t sure how it would turn out.

There are 5 types of content creators:

1- The Improviser. That’s the type of content creator that doesn’t have a strategy nor a plan. He lacks consistency in his posts either on social media and his website. He gets few interactions from his followers. He doesn’t get much results from his online presence.

2- The Seller. You know that type. All we see on his online profile are the products he is selling/promoting. He gets a few comments from his followers and there aren’t many interactions. There are few posts about himself, since all that matters is selling the products. He gets some results, but can’t grow to more sales.

3- The Teacher. This content creator is often the overdoer. He creates tons of content including all the knowledge he has. So the content is full of valuable information. He also creates long videos and long blog posts to share everything people want to know related to his niche.

He gets tons of great comments from people thanking him for all the great content, but very little are buying anything since they get everything for free. He has some results, but they take long before they happen and it doesn’t grow much.

4- The Copywriter. He creates copy that lead people to buy what he’s promoting. He could be an influencer that creates a lot of content, tell stories, give valuable information and make people take action.

He is sometimes using regular marketing strategies that people won’t like. It can happen that he lacks integrity.

He generates good results and has interaction with his followers.

5- The Meta Copywriter. Here we are with a good mix between the Seller, the Teacher and the Copywriter. This content creator gives importance to reflection and has a desire to contribute. Has strong human values like integrity, authenticity and respect.

He will motivate, inspire and enlighten his audience so it can take better decisions. He has great interactions and his results grow fast.

So what you want to do now that you know what type of content creator you are, is to learn strategies to help you become a Meta Copywriter.

You mostly use the normal strategies but with good intentions, other than just making money. Keep in mind that you are building a connection with your audience. You can use each part of each step in different posts.

Step 1: The hook

This is where you want to create a connection with your audience. It’s the top of the funnel.

To create a good hook, you want to talk about a problem your audience has. Yes, we are back with the problem but we are using it in a different way, mostly using storytelling.

The problem is not only something like back pain. It’s the difference between what your audience wants, its expectations, and its reality. Can your audience sleep well at night, can it stand up easily, etc. Don’t start with: Do you have back pain? Talk about someone you know, or yourself, that struggles to have a normal life because of back pain.

You want to avoid talking about your solution (or product, service, program) when you are creating a bond. You want to inform your audience. Here you want to talk about all the different solutions that exist, like massotherapy, chirotherapy, medication, osteopathy and physiotherapy, and why it didn’t work for you (or your friend, family, etc.) and the one that worked for you.

From there, people are free to choose the solution that works best for them and will come back to you for more information on back pain.

That’s one angle to use for hooks. You can also talk about the innovation your product provides to the users, answer Should Ask questions and use the general tendency to create interest.

A Storytelling Formula

Here, I’m going to provide you with a formula you can use in your storytelling copy.

1- The Hook: it can be anything that grabs the attention: a question, a punchline, something intriguing, statistics, a quote, etc.

2- Talk about the environments: What is going on in the head and heart of your audience, what is around them? Here, you talk about the problems, the fears, the thoughts they have.

3- The Solution: One sentence. Don’t give away all the details. This is not the place to do that yet. Just tell your audience you have a solution.

4- The life after the solution: How great is your life when you have your problem solved. How it made a positive change, etc.

5- Call to action: It doesn’t have to be Buy Now!. It can be a link to your blog, a link to a sales page, they can subscribe to your email list, etc.

The hook can be used on different platforms. You can create posts for Facebook and Instagram, you can write a blog post, you can create a podcast, etc.

With that in place, you are ready for the next step.

Step 2: Alignment

This is the moment when you confirm what your solution is. You want to make sure people agree with what you are telling them.

How you do that is by simply reminding them of the bigger problem and demonstrating it with facts and stats.

Once you have done that, you want to talk about your different philosophy, how different is your solution, how it takes a new path.

After that, you want to confirm that you can help the person who has a problem with your solution. You can talk about who your perfect buyer would be and talk about the innovation of the solution you offer.

Lastly, you want to include success stories.

Keep in mind that your solution closes the gap between the expectations and the reality of your audience.

You can do the alignment step in an email sequence, in a webinar, in an ebook, etc.

Step 3: The Natural Purchase

I’m not going to explain all the details of the purchase since, as affiliate marketers, we don’t have control over the price and the payment methods.

What you can do is to add value to the products you are promoting. You can do that by offering a valuable gift you’ve created to someone that buys from your link, asking them to provide the receipt.

You can create multiple posts, articles, podcasts, YouTube or Tik Tok videos, etc. using that copywriting method.

The important things to apply are:

-Stay authentic

-Keep your integrity even though you could make a lot of money promoting a product you don’t care about or that you don’t trust.

-Respect your audience.

-Encourage people to make the best decision for their current situation. It’s possible you don’t have that solution.

-Use Storytelling to make a connection with your audience.

One Last Thing

Don’t forget about Visual Flow. You want your content to be easy to read:

One idea, one paragraph. New idea, new paragraph. It doesn’t matter if you end up with a few sentences that are alone, as they reprensent a different idea in your copy.

Make short sentences. Don’t overuse commas and semi-colons and create a 10 lines long sentence. You will loose your readers interest.

Avoid stuffing your content with too many pictures. Use the most relevant ones that will also ease the reading of your content.

Stay away from creating one big block of content to read. You really want to create space in your text so your readers don’t feel like it’s too tidious to read your copy.

With this, you are going to be able to create good copywriting content.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Let’s get started!

Cynthia