5 Steps To Power-Up Your Marketing Messages
(So Your Audience Listens, Follows and Buys)
Is your marketing like a limp handshake?
You know the type.
Your audience can’t get away from you fast enough.
Their eyes glaze over within seconds and they hit the back button to find someone more interesting.
You might not even realise that your marketing is having this effect?
(Well…other than the fact that nobody’s clicking, or signing up, or buying your stuff…darnit)
The good news is that Limp Marketing is totally curable!
Apply the following 5 Writing Tips liberally, and before you know it you’ll be well on your way to writing reassuringly confident copy that keeps your readers’ attention, and helps focus them to take the actions you want.
Tip 1: Content consumption beats gold stars, every time
Copywriting is not the same type of writing you won a gold star for when you were 8 years old.
Even if you were the best in your class at school when it came to English, this is a different beast altogether.
Yes you want to avoid sloppy spelling and grammatical howlers.
But,
The purpose of powerful copy is to connect emotionally with the conversation already happening in your audience’s head, grab them by the feels, and move them to taking action.
In order to do this…
Sometimes you need to take liberties with the language.
Write things that would make your teacher’s toes curl, even.
But that’s OK, as long as it keeps your audience sliding nicely down the page, consuming your content with gusto, and taking your ‘most wanted action’ instead of hitting the back button.
Tip 2: Short is sweet, and variety is spicy
As Dr Seuss said
“The writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.”
Long sentences are daunting to read.
In today’s attention-challenged times the last thing you want to do is make it hard work for someone to get through your marketing message.
Impenetrable chunks of text make the reader feel tired and more likely to lose track. Their attention starts to wane, and before you know it you’ve lost them as they wander off in search of something less demanding.
So how can you write in a way which is easy for the reader to consume?
Short and sweet is the way to go.
Ditch the convoluted sentences which try to squeeze multiple points into one rambling monologue.
Instead you can still make those same points, but look at how the sentence can be chopped up into more digestible pieces to make them easy to consume.
But hang on, that can lead to another problem too…
If your whole piece is made up of tiny choppy sentences it can start to feel a bit staccato. As if someone is peppering you with information pellets.
The simple trick to overcome this is to mix in longer sentences too, where it makes sense, so that your writing has interest and variety.
And a great way to check it reads well is to read it out aloud afterwards and get a feel for the rhythm of what you’ve written.
No long monologues which leave you gasping for breath.
No language tangles which make you stop to try and decipher the meaning.
Instead you’re looking for flow and simplicity.
Easing the reader gently to the next sentence, and ultimately towards the action you’d like them to take.
You want to aim your content to hit the right readability score for your target audience, whilst still being true to your own brand voice.
Tip 3: Get active
A curse of marketing messages is when people write in the passive voice. (Corporates are especially guilty of this as they love an opportunity to show off with pompous words and linguistic gymnastics rather than getting to the point!)
This is a big topic (worthy of another post which I’ll do in the future), but in a nutshell the difference between an active and passive verb is:
Active: The subject of the verb is doing the action
Passive: The subject undergoes the action rather than doing it.
For example:
- Active: How to know if your marketing is failing…
- Passive: Marketing can be considered to be failing if…
- Active: You can improve by doing….
- Passive: Improvements will be seen by implementing these actions….
You can clearly see that the active voice speaks directly to the reader, so they can see themselves right in the message, taking the action.
The passive voice is weaker and feels much less compelling for the reader, which means they’ll be less likely to connect with your message and take action.
Tip 4: Ditch that ‘That’
Pet peeve time.
You do not need ALL those “THATs”!
Trust me….that’s breed like rabbits and if you don’t consciously guard against it your copy will become bloated with unnecessary that’s in every paragraph!
Of course there are occasions when a ‘that’ is perfectly justified.
But too often it’s a weird filler word which is just there because of habit.
If in doubt, read your sentence out loud without the ‘that’ and see if it makes sense. If it does, ditch the that.
Here’s an example:
He called to say he can be here by 6pm. (makes perfect sense)
He called to say that he can be here by 6pm. (the ‘that’ is superfluous)
Tip 5: Tell people what you want them to do next
Ah yes, the good ol’ Call To Action.
You’ve slaved over your marketing message and you’ve done an excellent job.
Then right at the critical moment you drop the ball. Either you have no call to action, or your call to action is served with such a weak apologetic tone it negates ALL your efforts up to that point.
Don’t ever assume the reader knows what you want them to do next.
Lay it out.
Make it crystal clear.
In no uncertain terms!
This is not the time to bottle out and get coy.
If you want someone to click the link and sign up – tell them exactly that.
If the next step is to book a call with you, say so and make it clear how to do so.
Often business owners shy away from having a clear call to action because they think it will be seen as pushy and put people off. But this does your audience a disservice. If they’ve taken the time to read through your marketing piece you know they’re interested in the topic. So it makes perfect sense to SHOW them exactly how they can get more help (or information) from you…right then, rather than leaving them hanging.
So there you have it.
Start powering up your marketing messages with these 5 tips.
Your audience will thank you, and so will your business.
If you’ve realised your own Ads, Landing Pages, Emails and more could use some help to be more powerfully persuasive and get better engagement and conversions (ya know…new leads, more sales, all that good stuff) get in touch today to see how I can take that off your plate. It’s my specialty!
