Complete Copywriting Tutorial - Examples, Tips and Formulas

In this video, I'll show you my

complete

copywriting

tutorial

. In fact, I've used the

tips

in this video to create blog posts that have been shared thousands of times. I've also written several high-converting seven-figure sales letters. I'm Brian Dean, the founder of Backlinko, so if you want to get more traffic, generate sales, and share on social media, you'll love the practical strategies in this video. Let's get started. This is the truth about

copywriting

. Despite what you may have heard, you don't need years of experience. or train myself to learn copywriting, in fact, before launching backlinko, I used to be a freelance writer and one day, out of the blue, one of my clients asked me: do you by any chance write sales letters now?

At this point, I have never written a sales letter. letter in my life but I wanted to try it so I told them sales letters hell yeah I write sales letters and now that they hired me I had to write a sales letter fast in fact I had about a week to write this letter of sales. from scratch, so I researched everything I could about writing and, because I was in a hurry, I ignored the details and focused on the key principles that I saw over and over again and it worked. My client told me that my sales letter surpassed the current one.

By a two-to-one margin since that day, I've written dozens of sales letters, newsletters, and articles, and in that time I've discovered what most copywriters don't want you to know. Writing is really easy, that is, when you know what to do and how. to do it and that's exactly what I'm going to show you in this

tutorial

, so without further ado, let's dive into the number one copywriting tip. Use Reddit threads. Reddit is a goldmine of copywriting. To use it, head to a subreddit where your customer hangs out and then take a look at the threads that have a lot of comments - for example, let's say you just launched a new keto diet bar.

Well, I would go to the keto and paleo subreddit and search for bars, then pay attention to the exact words and phrases people use to describe what they like and don't like about the bars they've tried so far, for example, I found tons of awesome copy in this one thread copy that would work great for a landing page or a Facebook ad and we move on to our second copywriting tip. use short sentences: This is a good rule of thumb that applies to almost everything you write: short sentences equal better copy, and there is data to back this up.

A study by the American Press Institute found that short sentences were 711 percent easier to read and understand. That's why I always edit my sentences to be as short as possible. In short, I use short sentences, they are easier to read and understand, which brings us to technique number three, the slippery slide, here's the deal, you can have the best copy in the world, but If people stop reading the page after the first sentence, your copy didn't work, that's why one of the main goals of your copy is to keep people reading or, as copywriting legend Joe Sugarman says, the only purpose of the first sentence is to grab you. .

To read the second sentence, the question is how do you get someone to continue reading your blog post, email, or sales letter? little story at the beginning of your sales letter, but leave the ending for last or you can reference something that will appear later in your blog post. You can even say things like here's the deal and the question to prompt people to keep reading. and now it's time for editorial tip number four: super-specific headlines. You've probably already seen this old statistic before eighty percent of people read the headline and only 20 percent read the text.

Is that statistic accurate? I have no idea, but I do know your headline. It is very important and one of the best ways to make your headlines more effective. use super specific titles. Super specific headlines are exactly what they sound like. They are headlines that tell the reader exactly what they will get, for example, see the title of this blog post. It's not bad, but it's not that specific. Now look at this super specific title, it's much more compelling. In fact, it works so well that I tend to use super specific headlines on every blog post landing page or sales letter that are just right and now it's time for the technique. number five, use fomo fomo can make your copy ten times more effective than said fomo, also known as fear of missing out, it doesn't work for every situation, but if you can use fomo, you should use fomo, that's because Fomo triggers a strong reaction in your potential customers. an emotion that makes them want to listen carefully to what you have to say, for example, we recently launched a product that closed on a certain day and time, so we emphasized that on our sales page, which brings us to tip six of copywriting, write solid leads for everyone and your mom knows that headlines are important, but no one talks about something that, in my experience, is just as important, if not more, than a headline. your lead your lead is a section of your page that comes right after your title and at least in my experience if you lose people here, you've lost them forever with that here are three strategies you can use to write awesome leads first use a hook in your first or second sentence your prospect's first sentence is huge, so make sure the first line really grabs your reader's attention, for example, this landing page by marie forleo has a great first line .

Next, you want your lead to be six to eight sentences max, whether you're writing a blog post, a video script sales page, or an email newsletter you want your lead to reach. . Keep it very brief, remember your prospect's goal is simply to grab the reader's attention and once you've done that you want to transition into the main section of your content, for example I keep post introductions from my blog in about six lines, I finally use mini stories. Stories in your leads are a great way to hook your readers from the beginning, but as I just mentioned, the problem is that your lead needs to be short and sweet, so you don't have much room to tell an epic story. . enter mini stories many stories condense a story into four to five lines, for example, here is a mini story that I used in one of my most successful sales letters and now it's time to tell you about writing technique number seven, don't use big words Let's face it, big words don't impress anyone.

Yes, in this video I plan to demonstrate the effectiveness of online vocabulary in increasing online transactions; In fact, they make the content harder to read, so instead of big, fancy words like these, use words that are easy. to read and understand and now it's time for our eighth technique, the aida formula ada is a classic writing formula that can help boost conversions on sales pages landing pages articles newsletters video scripts and more here's what it looks like This formula, as you can see, Aida stands for attention, interest, desire and action. Let's take a look at a real-life example of this formula in action.

In fact, I use the ada formula in this guide on my blog. First I caught people's attention with the first line, then I generated interest with a bold promise and I followed up by tapping into the desire that anyone reading this page wants to rank higher on Google and finally I end with a call to action to keep reading. and move on to technique number nine, benefits over features, there is no doubt about it when it comes to copying benefits crushing features in other words, the features are good but the benefits are sold, for example, let's say you run a sas company that sells productivity software, here's how you can turn boring features into powerful benefits coschedule.com does a great job of highlighting benefits over features, yes like any software product, they outline the key features, but unlike most SAS companies, the vast majority of their copy is based on profits.

It's good to move on to technique number 10, get out of the friend zone, we've all been in the friend zone before or at least I have. having the friend zone is when you like someone and they also like you as a friend, well it turns out the same thing happens with potential customers and customers like what you sell but not enough to buy what the solution is, address their objections. I'm talking about objections like it's too expensive, it's not a good time for me, yes it sounds good but will it work for me or am I not ready to switch from another product?

Most people pretend these objections don't exist, instead you want to raise these objections and squash each one of them, for example, here's an objection we raised and squashed on a product FAQ page, let's go straight to tip number 11, talk to customers, remember earlier when I talked about using reddit for customer research, well, if you want to take this kind of thing to the next level, I recommend talking to your customers, e.g. I recently got on Skype with three people who graduated from one of my programs. Fun fact: I was visiting my family in Rhode Island when I made this. interview, that's why you can see my mom's amazing flower curtains in the background and since we were chatting on Skype I was able to go deeper with follow-up questions.

Next we have urgency and scarcity. Has anyone ever told you that they are interested in what you are selling they just need some time to think about it in my experience, 99 of the time that person doesn't end up buying maybe they were busy and forgot maybe they found another product the reason exact it really doesn't matter how important it is. The point is that you do something to make that person convert immediately. The question is how you do it. Add these words and phrases to your copy. It goes without saying that these statements must be backed up with real limitations, otherwise you will lose people's trust. but if you can use them, you should use them, for example this email from one of our recent product launches uses a clear and thorough deadline which creates a very high sense of urgency and now it's time for our latest editorial tip to resolve The paradox of social proof. you need social proof to sell but you need sales to get social proof.

I call this the social proof paradox and it's a real problem for many business owners. Fortunately, I found a simple way to fix this problem. Present your strongest form of social proof. It doesn't have to be sales, for example, let's say you just launched a new nutrition coaching program and to get leads you offer people a free 7 day meal plan and if they want to upgrade to a paid coaching plan , they get a full 90 days. daily meal plan and personalized support from you, but so far only a few people have upgraded to their paid plan. In that case, you can show how many people signed up for your free meal plan or maybe you only have 20 clients total, but three of them.

Clients got amazing results. You can feature those three amazing results on your home page, for example, when I launched my SEO course on YouTube, at that time we only had about 10 beta users in total. 10 people isn't a lot of social proof, but four of them. Ten people had great results so we decided to put those four people on the sales page and it worked and now it's time for a quick bonus tip. Use this proven three-step testimonial formula. It's no secret that testimonials can boost sales; indeed, great business reports. That testimonials can increase sales by up to 62 percent, that's the good news, the bad news is that most people use testimonials that simply don't work.

I'm talking about testimonies like this now, to be fair, there's nothing wrong with that testimony, but it's not. In order for anyone to take out their credit card and buy what you sell, I recommend using this proven formula, as you can see, this formula is divided into three main parts, the three parts complement each other to first create a super powerful testimonial. you have the before this is where your customer talks about where they were before using your product or service that way people can relate to the person in your testimonial here is an example below it's time for the after the after highlights the specific results that got your customer your product finally it's time for the what they tell someone section, as the name suggests this is what your customer would tell someone who is on the fence and because this recommendation comes fromdirectly from someone who used your product, it is very credible, let's close this video with one more. bonus strategy use crooked numbers crooked numbers are numbers that have not been rounded here are some

examples

according to research crooked numbers are more believable than round numbers, which means whenever you can you will want to use them instead of round numbers, for example, check out this introduction From one of my blog posts, I could have made this a nice round number like over 200,000, but I went with the exact crooked number, so that's it for my writing tutorial.

If you like this video, make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel right now. just click the subscribe button below this video and if you want exclusive SEO techniques that I only share with subscribers, head over to backlinko.com and hop on over to the newsletter, it's free. Now I want to tell you which techniques from today's video are You'll try it first. Will you use crooked numbers or try to use more benefits instead of features? Let me know by leaving a comment below right now. Oh man, with that, here you go, well, you're not rounded, you're not rounded, you want to have lunch, how the hell?

I'm going to say that but no one is okay? That wasn't bad.