Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to sell things. It’s what you’ve been trained to do, it’s what you were born to do, and it’s what you’ll continue to do, whether you like it or not. You might now find yourself wondering, “Does this mean I have to be good at writing?” Relax. You don’t have to be good at writing to be a sales person. You just have to be able to write effectively. After all, not everyone is blessed with the talent of a Stephen King or Chuck Palahniuk. Luckily for you, you have found the right place. We’re going to discuss exactly what a sales page copywriter does, why you need one, and how to find the best person for the job.
What Is a Sales Page Copywriter?
Your sales page is the first piece of text a potential customer will read about your product. It might be the only piece of text they’ll ever read about your product. So it might as well be good. Your sales page copywriter is your first line of defense in keeping them interested in what you have to offer and encouraging them to click the “Buy Now” button. At the very least, they’ll have to read through your sales page to learn more about your product. But hopefully, they’ll be so engaged by it that they’ll decide to visit your website, join your email list, or give you their email address so you can send them special offers and products that will interest them.
Here’s the thing about a sales page copywriter: Although you might think you need someone to write your sales page for you, you probably don’t. You might need someone to help you brainstorm ideas, or you might need someone to edit your final copy once it’s been written. But you probably don’t need a writer to create your sales page from scratch. You might be tempted to hire someone who has previous experience in creating sales pages. But you should probably avoid this temptation. Why? It might be because the person you’re hiring is actually a very good writer, but they don’t have any experience in creating sales pages. So instead of hurting your cause, it’s probably best to bring in someone who is already an expert in this field.
Why Do You Need a Sales Page Copywriter?
Let’s take a quick trip back in time to the year 2012. Back then, Google was still fairly new to the SEO sphere, and content marketers were just beginning to figure out ways to measure the success of their campaigns. One of the most popular tools at the time was SERPStress.com, which stands for “Serp Search Results Page Stress.” Check out this video to learn more:
You can see from this video how the results of a stress test search for “best hair dresser in London” looks like. Now, if you’re the owner of a hair dresser shop in London, you might want to pay special attention to these results. Among the many SEO articles and case studies that can be found on the subject, the experts at SERPStress.com identified the following requirements for a successful SERP writing campaign:
- Keywords: The best hair dresser in London, England
- Headings: A headings.org report can help you identify the major headings in your content, and what type of words to use in each one. For example, “Why you need a hair dresser’s assistant” might be a suitable heading for a blog post, and you could write content to match.
- Lists: The experts at SERPStress.com also suggest using ordered lists (such as the one below) to establish structure.
- Unexpected – Unpredictable and interesting events that happened during the creation of your product
- Curate – Items created or curated by your product (such as an album or art collection) for your customers to purchase
- Compelling – Items or aspects of your product that make it special and worth purchasing
- Relevant – Items or aspects of your product that are applicable or related to your target audience
- Accurate – As much as possible, the information in your sales page should be accurate
- Actionable – Your sales page should be able to inspire potential customers to take some kind of action
- Clutter-free – Your sales page should have a clear call to action and no other distractions
- Responsive – Your sales page should display well on all devices
- Accessible – Everyone should be able to access your sales page, regardless of whether or not they have web experience
- Include screenshots – Screenshots are helpful for people who are unfamiliar with your product or service and can assist with the decision-making process.
- Use headers – Each paragraph of your sales page should have a headline (a short phrase that grabs the reader’s attention), and the rest of the content should continue in a straightforward manner with subheadings, or no subheadings
- Use structure – Instead of just writing for content, have a clear idea of what you’re writing for and stick to it
- Avoid slang – If you’re writing for a technically-inclined audience, going over their heads in slang might not mean much
- Use hyperlinks – The best way to ensure that a reader stays on your site after they’ve navigated to it from another is with a hyperlink back to your site. The simpler the better, just keep it to one or two per paragraph. Use the header tag and h1 through h6 for headers, and make sure to keep your header tag as close as possible to the start of each new paragraph
- Spelling & Grammar – As someone who has to proofread just about everything these days including my own writing, I can tell you that errors (especially spelling and grammar errors) throw me off completely. I hate it when I’m in the middle of writing something and all of a sudden I realize that I’ve spelled something wrong. It takes me out of the flow and ruins my writing session. This is why I suggest you hire a copy editor to help you with this part.
- Plagiarism – Even though you’re giving credit where credit is due, others might not be so nice about it. Make sure you’re using unique content and creating something original when pitching your product or service. Otherwise, you’ll end up in hot water quickly.
- Organic Search – If you’re reading this on a mobile device and into a Facebook or Google news feed, then you’re in luck because we’re going to talk about organic search right here. As you may have guessed, organic search is search traffic that is not paid for. Usually, you’ll find this type of search traffic coming from people who are actually looking for the product you’re selling, or at least have an interest in purchasing it. The nice thing about organic search is that you don’t have to do anything special to get started – you just need to have a product to sell.
What’s important to remember about SEO is that it is a constantly changing field, and the best way to succeed is to continue learning and adapting to new techniques and strategies as new technologies arise.
Do you have a product or service that you’re trying to sell, but don’t know where to start? Whether you’re a business owner or an entrepreneur seeking to turn a profit, you’ve come to the right place. Take a few moments to read through our blog. There’s a lot more material that you can gain valuable information from. But for now, we hope this article has helped you understand what a sales page copywriter is and why you need one. And maybe even convinced you to try a new product or service that you’d never even heard of before.