So you’ve been learning about the critical role effective digital marketing plays in building your online business.
You know that crafting and placing great ads into your regular and native social media channels can be a powerful way of getting new clients and customers for your online coaching or fitness business.
Maybe you’ve even taken our cutting edge online coaching certification to learn the industries’ most cutting edge fitness and coaching digital marketing best practices.
As a certified wellness coach or fitness professional, you’re already been building your career on a solid foundation of expert knowledge and by earning industry-leading credentials.
But when it comes to writing sales copy, you’re not a in advertising. You’re not a graphic designer. You’re not a copywriter. You’re not an SEO expert. And you’re not a social media savant. All of these are separate career tracks in the field of marketing.
You need to create an ad and you don’t have a marketing team to pull it together for you.
You’re winging it and that’s OK, because you have this handy best practices guide to writing ad copy.
Copywriting is its own skill set separate from any other type of writing.
Under the heading of writing you might find e-book writing, which is separate from article writing, which is separate from writing white papers.
Each has its own skills, best practices, and writing style. The same goes for copywriting.
Copywriters use different best practices and tactics to write copy for landing pages, web pages, AdWords ads, regular and native social media ads.
One common best practice followed by all top copywriting professionals is that they understand they’re making an argument. And arguments have a formula.
How to Make Your Argument
People today would have you believe their formula is somehow new. There are all kinds of articles and webinars about what to include in an ad to make it compelling and believable.
When you’re writing copy, you’re simply making a compelling argument for your product or service.
You’re establishing why your offering is better quality, less expensive, more important, or unique from everything else out there.
Without launching into an academic exploration of what a well-constructed argument looks like, just understand for the sake of copywriting best practices that a basic argument consists of four parts: claims, counterclaims, reasoning, and evidence.
Claim
Make a single claim about your service, such as its price or quality. If you provide both, a low price and high quality, then you have two separate claims with which to persuade your prospects.
Counterclaims
We know that there are two (sometimes more) sides to every argument, right? Well, this is your chance to anticipate consumer questions and claims made by your competitors. An example of a counterclaim might be side-by-side comparisons.
Reasoning
You can list the reasons your product/service is worth buying even though it’s less expensive. For example, you’re passing on huge savings with the world class health supplements you supply your clients. Offering an major initial discounted rate, and/or a philosophy that low prices better serve your market.
Your reasons need to make sense to your prospect and convince them they are making the right purchase. In sales, this is often referred to as addressing prospect’s “objections” or anticipating and planning for their “rebuttals”.
For example, If you know a common rebuttal is that your product is too expensive, be prepared with a great payment plan option.
Evidence
Part of having a voice online or anywhere else is that you build credibility. This is especially true when making an argument for your services.
You now need to prove your claim. Examples might be case studies or video testimonials from your most satisfied customers. Just remember, evidence is verifiable and directly backs your claim.
Copy Formulas that Convert
Now you understand that in order to inform and persuade people in a compelling way, you need to state your case by making a classically well-constructed argument.
There are plenty of people who suggest formulas. Most of the time they are adding classic sales tactics to the standard argument profile.
Eddie Shleyner breaks down the four step argument by recommending Bob Stone’s flexible and widely used 7-Step Formula for writing copy that sells.
You can see from his list that you need to make your claim, list your counterclaims, include reasoning and evidence, but this formula adds the invocation of Freud’s pleasure principle.
Simply stated, people seek pleasure and avoid pain. So, don’t just include why your service will help people.
Describe how not having your services in their life has been or will harm them. A common example is letting people know they’ll miss out. In a world where everyone wants to belong, exclusion can be considered pretty painful.
Julie Boswell recommends a formula where you call out your prospects. Actually point out who your message is for.
This means you have to know who your perfect client is as well as how and where to reach them. This is a great marketing exercise everyone should do anyway.
Does your perfect client tend to search for their personal trainer online or do they only want a word-of-mouth personal recommendation from a friend or someone at their gym?
If they are the online search type, you know that developing ad copy for AdWords might be the way to go.
If they like to get recommendations, but do so through Facebook fitness groups or through their online friend network, writing copy for social media ads should get some consideration.
What all guides for digital copywriting have in common is to make sure you have the right call to action. Daniel Faggella brings it home when he says:
“Don’t assume that your prospect is going to automatically take the next step… provide an explicit call to action.”
He goes through the basic argumentation steps, though under slightly different names, then makes his point about a call to action.
People are processing all the information you’ve put in front of them. Help them take that final step by guiding them – telling them what to do next.
The Incredible Marketing Power of Emotional Triggers
Once you’ve covered the basics of clearly, simply and quickly communicating your value-proposition (the unique value you deliver above and beyond your competitors), the door is open for the effective use of powerful emotional selling triggers.
Dan Shewan makes the point that tapping into the emotional appeal is one of the best ways to connect with consumers. It also helps build a strong and lasting memory for your brand.
The prime example of eliciting emotional triggers in you online audience includes sharing powerful, real life stories of personal challenge and transformation.
For example, video testimonials from your current and past coaching and fitness clients that convey the negative emotions and experiences they had prior to their work with you and your service enabled them to overcome those pain points and obstacles are used by the world’s leading online coaches to emotionally inspire people to follow through with their calls to action.
Provoking a very real human emotional response, negative or positive, is an important way we can relate and connect with each other in a cold digital world.
Just be careful any negative emotions you trigger are not carried over into your brand or product perception. Let them know your product or service is the best solution.
Always emphasis how you meet you clients’ most important needs and help them resolve their real world pain points and problems.
Close the Communication Loop
When you get into advanced copywriting, you may look at details such as whether your audience will react more favorably to the word, “awesome” or “amazing” but all we’re really talking about there is research and testing.
Research your audience to understand how they talk and what they respond to.
Know your competitors. What kind of ad language and value propositions are leading trainers and coaches using in their ads?
What highly emotional and inspiring personal and client stories are the industry leading wellness coaches and top fitness professionals sharing with their online audiences?
You’ll inevitably run into areas of uncertainty no matter how much research you do, so plan on doing some A/B testing. Meaning, put a few different ads out and see which copy converts better.
It will only help you understand your market that much better. Christina Gillick describes this perfectly when she examines a common saying in the field, “If you’re not testing, you’re guessing.”
That being said, writing copy is a form of communication. To close the communication loop, you have to return to step one, which is to listen.
Pay attention to analytics, but also listen to your existing clients. Hear out your prospects when they have feedback or tell you why you didn’t win their business.
Even more important than big data is your personal ability to listen to and understand your client’s needs. If you can listen to their needs and talk openly about how you can help – you’ll write compelling ad copy.
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