11 Copywriting Techniques to Skyrocket Conversions and Sales

A headline can make or break the success of your copywriting. A good headline will attract users, drawing them into your content and encouraging them to read on. A bad one, however, will do the opposite and you risk losing users before they’ve even started reading your copy. 

When it comes to writing an attention-grabbing headline, keep things short and sweet, don’t overwhelm users with too much information in the headline. 

Use your headline to make your copy stand out so think about what it is that sets your copy apart. Include the most interesting or exciting elements in your headline.

For example, if you’re creating copy about the importance of recycling, the first example below is much more likely to grab the user’s attention than the second.

Headline one: 5 ways you can save the planet by recycling 

Headline two: 5 recycling tips 

While it may be your headline that attracts users to your copy, it’s your introduction that determines whether or not they will keep reading. 

Your introduction should be clear on exactly what the content is going to provide readers. If you go back to the introduction to this article for example, we make it clear that this article is all about tips to improve your copywriting. You instantly knew what to expect. 

Use your introduction to tell your reader what your copy is going to do for them. Is it going to solve a problem? Provide them with inspiration? Whatever it is, lay it out in your introduction. 

If your focus is on persuasive copywriting then you need to be using persuasive language within your copy. 

One of the best ways to include persuasive language within your copywriting is to focus on emotions. 

Engaging people’s emotions can be a powerful way to convince them to do something and often, people are motivated most by emotion. 

Think carefully about the type of emotion you want to prompt in your reader. For example, a non-profit looking to encourage donations may want to prompt concern and sadness in a reader which will make them more likely to contribute. 

An events business, meanwhile, may want to prompt feelings of excitement and interest in order to convince people to purchase a ticket. 

Try to focus your copywriting around the benefits you can provide users, as opposed to the features of your offering. 

While copy is a powerful sales tool, it shouldn’t be obviously sales-focused. Instead, you should emphasize the benefits you, your products or services can provide to the reader. 

A feature refers to what your product is – for example, a memory foam mattress. A benefit refers to what the product can give you, for example, a better night’s sleep. 

Your copy should convince users that whatever it is you offer will change their lives for the better. 

After every claim or section of your copy, ask yourself, so what? Will readers care that the mattress is memory foam unless you’ve explained the benefits of having a memory foam mattress? Probably not. 

Focusing on the benefits you can offer users is a key tool for driving conversions and convincing them to make a purchase. 

FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) is very real. Nobody wants to feel like they have missed out on something that everybody else has got to experience. 

Creating a sense of scarcity within your copywriting therefore can be a great way of driving immediate action and increasing your conversions. 

The best way to create scarcity is to highlight limited-time offers or availability.

For example, if you’re running a seasonal sale phrases such as “don’t miss out”, “sale ends soon” and “once it’s gone it’s gone” are all ideal ways of creating a sense of urgency and scarcity and encouraging users to take action immediately. 

People will always have objections to converting. Perhaps they don’t fully believe your product will work, or maybe they think your shipping rates are too high. 

Whatever it is, objections stand in your way of making a sale. It may sound counter-productive but raising these objections in your copy, and providing a counterargument to them, can be the factor that pushes users over the line. 

A great way of addressing objections is via an FAQ section. List some of the common objections and questions that users have regarding your products or services and answer them in a way that doesn’t belittle or disregard the concern but instead addresses and resolves it. 

One of the most important copywriting techniques you can apply to your online content is to ensure it’s scannable. 

Headings, subheadings, bullet points, and small paragraphs all help to make your content scannable. 

What this means is that readers can scan over your content and find the sections they are interested in or gain a basic understanding of what your content is about. 

Online readers are busy and they won’t necessarily have time to read and digest masses of content. Lengthy paragraphs and unbroken text can be off-putting so formatting your copy with these features will improve the readability of your content and keep your readers engaged for longer. 

The more engaged your readers are, the more likely they are to convert. 

There’s a lot of online competition. Almost every industry is over-saturated as everyone looks for a way to make money online. 

Your copy therefore can be a key way of highlighting your unique selling points and giving you a competitive advantage over your competition. 

Whatever it is that makes you stand out from the crowd, make sure to thread it through your copy. 

Make your USP stand out in your copy by including it at the start, formatting it in bold, and reiterating it throughout. 

If you feel confident enough, you can even offer your readers a guarantee that they’ll be pleased with your service. 

A guarantee can be a great way of convincing readers to convert, especially as it becomes risk-free for them. More than this though, it highlights to readers that you are confident in your offering and genuinely believe you’re the best on the market. This confidence can be one of the strongest copywriting techniques to have in your toolkit. 

Find Out More

Discover more about what a unique value proposition is and why it’s important for your business in our expert guide. 

No matter how many times we might claim otherwise, people care what others think. This is especially true when it comes to making a purchase or committing to a service online. 

Your readers aren’t just going to want to know what you think about your business, they want to know what other people think too. 

Including testimonials within your copy, therefore, is a great way of adding social proof to your content. Try to back up any claim you make in your copy by adding a customer testimonial that confirms it to be true. 

If you can get people to endorse you, readers will be much more likely to convert. 

Personalization is an online buzzword. With so much content online, offering a personalized shopping experience for users is all but essential and that goes for your copy too. 

You can tailor your copy to individual customers based on an array of different personalization metrics such as their own online preferences, their online behavior, or their demographic. 

For example, the copy you create to target returning customers may be different from the copy you create to target new customers. While new customers may want to know more about your brand and background, returning customers may be more interested in content around new product lines or special offers. 

Similarly, if you’re targeting customers in specific locations, creating location-based content can be a great way of personalizing their experience and improving your conversion rate. 

Despite all the planning, preparation, and research in the world, you never really know how users are going to react to your copy until you put it to the test. 

Conducting A/B testing can be the ideal way to compare different pieces of copy and see which ones perform best. 

For example, if you’re creating email marketing newsletters you can send 50% of your email list an email with subject line A and 50% an email with subject line B. 

You can then monitor which emails perform the best, e.g. which have the highest open and click-through rates and use this insight to help write your email subject lines in the future. 

Testing gives you the chance to evolve and improve your copy with data-driven amends. 

Understanding the importance of copy and how to improve your copywriting is an essential part of marketing your online business. 

Without copywriting, you’re unable to sell your business, your brand, and your products and services to customers in an engaging, memorable, and professional way. 

The good news is that with some practice and by implementing these copywriting techniques, you can transform your website copy into engaging and conversion-promoting content. 

To recap, our 11 copywriting techniques are:

1. Create a compelling headline
2. Craft an engaging introduction
3. Use persuasive language
4. Focus on benefits, not features
5. Create scarcity
6. Address objections 
7. Apply scannable formatting 
8. Highlight competitive advantage 
9. Leverage social proof
10. Personalization
11. Testing and Iteration 

Want even more copywriting advice? Check out our copywriting tips article next!