5 Ways to Write More Persuasive Copy

Nothing kills a sales letter like passive language.

Instead, you want to create active copy that engages the readers and, preferably, puts them into the “action” of your sentences. Here’s an example of a passive sentence:

“The dog must be walked.”

You can make it active and place your reader into the action by changing it to:

“You must walk the dog.”

Another passive example: “The blog must be optimized for the search engines.”

Change that to:

“You must optimize your blog for the search engines.”

See the difference? Words like “must be” and “to be” are dead giveaways that you’re using passive language. Get rid of them and engage the reader by having a noun (preferably “you”) perform the action.

A reader who sees long sentences and big blocks of text is going to read your sales copy very eagerly. That’s because it looks like too much work. And that’s why you need to make your copy easy to read by following these tips:

• Avoid small font. If your readers have to squint or adjust the font size, many of them probably won’t bother.
• Use plenty of white space. That means you should put spaces between paragraphs and use elements like Johnson boxes to make your text stand out.
• Create short words, sentences and paragraphs. Not only do short pieces of text look easy to read, they are easy to read… and that keeps eyes glued to your copy.

People want to follow a strong, confident leader. Indeed, they’re reading your sales letter hoping you’re that leader. You can increase their confidence in you by projecting strength and confidence. One way to do that is by avoiding “wishy washy” statements.

Here’s an example:

“You might enjoy this book.”

Really? Because the person writing that line sounds uncertain about whether the reader will enjoy the book.

Instead, say something like:

“You will enjoy this book.”

Very few people will read all your copy, especially if it’s a long sales letter. However, you can increase the number of people who read your entire letter simply by dropping an unfinished story into the beginning of your copy (and then wrapping up the story near the end).

Let’s suppose you’re selling a marketing product, and in the beginning of your letter you’re sharing your own story of becoming a successful marketer. You might say something like this…

“And then I discovered the piece I was missing all these years. Once I put this simple tip into motion, I started earning money. First it was $5500 per month. Then $10,500. And pretty soon I cracked $21,893 per month.

So what was this surprising secret? I’ll share it with you in just a moment. But first…”

Your product may be good, but it’s not perfect. Certainly, it’s not perfect for everyone.

Now, your prospects know your product isn’t perfect. They may even know exactly why it isn’t perfect. So if you try to hide the fact that your product has flaws, your prospects are going to lose trust in you… and you’ll lose sales.

Instead, you should raise objections up front – and resolve them. That is, you can tell people why this perceived flaw doesn’t matter. Or better yet, tell them why this perceived flaw is a good thing.

Example: Maybe all the other ebooks in your niche are 200 pages long. And maybe yours is just 50, which some people might consider too skimpy. You can handle this objection by saying your guide is very busy people who want results, and thus it’s “straight to the point with no fluff, no filler.”