13 Landing Page Copywriting Tips For 75% More Sales
What’s all the traffic in the world worth, if it doesn’t convert to sales?
This is why landing page copywriting is arguably the most valuable skill for a marketer.
Without it, no matter how many times you tweak your advertising campaign to lower your cost per click, for example, you’re still faced with a nagging problem. Your visitors don’t take the next step and convert to a sale.
Now you can go on with this customer acquisition problem forever. Or, you can learn the solution: persuasive copywriting.
This one skill helps business owners go from prospects showing slight interest to begging to give you their credit card no matter the cost.
Keep reading to find out what separates winning landing pages from the rest. (Hint, it’s the copywriting.)
Landing Page Copywriting Best Practices
You don’t need to have the fanciest words, super unique adjectives, and study under Mark Twain to be an effective landing page copywriter.
You simply need to understand the desires of your customer, first. Then deliver your offer in the most attractive way. That’s the game.
Elite landing pages flow with spectacular copywriting, highlighted in the 13 tips below.
1. Benefits-focused descriptions
Your customers don’t care if your product took five seconds or five years to make. They often don’t care about the labor, materials, and thought that went into the product.
The sales process starts with the question: What’s in it for me?
If you remember this and nail it, then you’ll have no trouble convincing visitors to buy. (This same philosophy applies to running Facebook Ads.)
Don’t overthink it. Going heavy on the specifications of the product or service is boring. People will stop caring and click away.
Example: McDonalds.com has the copy, “Take a bite and you’ll find out what CrispyJuicyTender means” to promote the taste (benefit) of their new Crispy Chicken Sandwiches. Notice they’re not spending time on the ingredients and where the food is coming from (features).
2. Pile on the customer testimonials
Customers trust people in their same shoes way more than any polished marketing material.
An authentic review from a customer who has nothing to gain, speaks 10 times louder than a hype piece from a brand who is trying to sell to you.
Knowing this dynamic, load up your page with customer testimonials. Then the key is to write contextual language around the customer’s situation before and after buying.
It goes without saying you first need to deliver amazing results before asking for testimonials. Only at this point can you ask, and collect these as rapidly as possible.
Plus, you can leverage customer testimonials in your ads and email newsletters.
Example: On Zendesk’s homepage we’re shown the VP of Customer Operations at Squarespace with a direct quote compliment. This build’s social proof right away — a key factor of conversion rate optimization.
3. Lead with emotion
Dr. Robert Anthony said, “All buying decisions are emotional…. there is no such thing as a logical buying decision. We are driven to ACT by emotion.”
Copywriters who remember this when creating landing pages will far outweigh those who don’t.
For example, we’ve revised landing pages with our own copywriting and seen anywhere from 75% to 750% more sales with customers. The way the page is written literally changes everything.
Now what emotions lead people to buy? Here are the main ones:
- Pride – I’m getting in early because I’m so smart
- Fear – this is the only opportunity, I’ll regret it if I don’t buy now
- Shame – I’m ashamed I can’t afford this for my family, I have to get it anyway
- Envy – Jon across the street has one, I deserve one too
- Greed – I want more than anyone else
Try channeling these emotional feelings in your writing. Think about what one or two emotions can you lean into inspire the most action from your website visitors?
Example: On the Jenny Craig website, they broadcast if you use their program expect to “lose up to 17 pounds in your first 4 weeks.” This will lead many to follow the fear-cycle of being scared to stay overweight and missing out on this chance.
4. Support statements using numbers and facts
While humans buy with emotion, they rationalize the purchase with logic.
Still lead with an emotionally-charged benefit. And then later support the mission to buy with convincing facts.
If you’re in financial services, write about how many years you’ve been in business, your assets under management, and your average annual return rate.
A marketer could write a case study on how they helped a company in the same niche achieve three times the sales in 11 months using their strategies.
Numerical support is essential to every effective piece of copywriting. Without it, you’re going to lose all the skeptical readers who would have purchased if more evidence was present.
(P.S. Marketing yourself on Twitter works the same way.)
Example: Rotten Tomatoes is famous for giving movies a Tomatometer and Audience Score. While this isn’t social proof to boost Rotten Tomatoes presence, it’s the same concept applied. Numbers offer tremendous support.
5. Give the headline serious attention
The headline sets the frame for the rest of the page. It’s your first impression. The time to be super clear in what’s in it for the reader.
For example, compare the headline “Check Out Our Newest Mattress Selection” versus “You’ll Never Sleep Better, Introducing The Best Rest Of Your Life Mattress”.
What would draw you in more? The latter, clearly.
Give the heading at least 15 to 30 minutes of your time. You want to write it in 10 different ways, or more, until you find the winner. This will ensure you get the most out of it versus your competition who uses the first thought in their head.
Looking to study wonderful headlines? David Ogilvy is your guy.
Example: Active Campaign is doing this right. Their Home page heading “Do more than automate your email — activate your entire customer experience” is a big copywriting winner.
6. Answer potential objections in advance
Removing risk in the sale is another smart weapon in a skilled landing page copywriter’s toolbox.
Naturally, in any buying atmosphere, the potential buyer will have questions.
Price, how it works, and is it truly going to solve their problem are often at the forefront of this issue of risk.
You can jump ahead of their feelings by calling out how your price is cheaper than the competition, how it’s easy to implement, and what problems it solves.
The end goal is this: after reading your copywriting, they have no more doubts. The only logical choice at this point is to buy.
Example: We, Robben Media, the ones writing this blog post have a good example of this played out. On our main service landing pages, we provide a Frequently Asked Questions section at the bottom. This way prospects can get answers and filter themselves before wasting our time and theirs.
7. Write clearly and simply
Unless you’re selling to only PhDs, the language on the sales page needs to be crystal clear. So clear that a 10-year-old can process the information and act on it.
Confusion is an enemy of a solid sales funnel. Get rid of ambiguous text, big words, and undefined meanings.
Make the statements to the point. After writing a first draft of landing page copy, go through it to see how you can state it even simpler. Ask a coworker if it reads clear.
The energy you put into diluting the key details and deleting the rest will pay dividends.
Example: Unbounce offers many minimalist landing pages where white space is prevalent with limited text. Make the most of each text section, because that’s all you’re going to get here.
8. Implement curiosity
Curiosity is compelling.
Just as a movie trailer gets you to watch the whole movie, a curiously written description gets visitors to read the full landing page.
Great copywriters use curiosity as a means to take the readers’ attention and lead them to grab your offer.
How’s it done? Here are ways to implement curiosity:
- Add an exclusive offer to the first 100 buyers
- Do a raffle drawing to create intrigue
- Sell a limited edition item
These are a few ways, but the options are limitless.
Example: In asking visitors to take a physique quiz, Kinobody is able to get people curious about the personalized recommendation they’ll receive. This is brilliant!
9. Mention the transformation from pre- to post-purchase
A core component of any marketing strategy is to clearly understand your market. The same is true for landing page copywriting.
Understanding your prospect adds two wonderful factors to your writing ability.
One, it tells the reader you understand their current situation, including struggles, pains, and desires. This builds rapport.
Secondly, you’re clearly showing you know where they’d like to be after purchasing your product or service. This also builds trust.
By “leveling” with the prospect, the odds they choose you to deliver the experience rises exponentially.
Example: Many plastic surgeons do a tremendous job using copywriting on their landing pages like, get the look you’ve always wanted. This is a classic transformation-inspired pitch to have prospective customers go from how they look now, to how they’ve always desired looking.
How can you use this in your copywriting?
10. Ask for one specific action
What if I met you at a party and asked for your name, phone number, email address all at once? You’d think I was crazy, and the attempt would fail.
People understand this in social settings. However online, in their landing page’s copywriting, they will lose focus, making way too many asks at once.
No, do not ask the prospect to schedule a call, sign up for your newsletter, and follow your company’s Twitter account all on the same page.
This creates unnecessary pressure on your prospect.
Instead, smoothly build trust and credibility — using the other strategies in this blog post — to then make one clear, specific, and strong call to action.
If you’re a film producer, then the pitch may look like getting people who are interested in seeing the first movie trailer to sign up for your VIP newsletter.
If you sell enterprise SaaS, getting interested parties to book a demonstration call is ideal.
And you can never go wrong with asking for the sale.
Example: DocuSign does a tremendous job of using copy to engage visitors and lead them to starting the free trial. Here’s one of their strong lines of copy “Lower your costs, save time, and elevate the customer experience.”
11. Use strong action verbs
Your writing can pop off the page, and be more interesting than a Hollywood thriller. Or it can lull readers to sleep.
Strong writers use action verbs to bring energy to the readers.
As a marketing copywriter trying to inspire action from a website visitor, it’s good to know the strongest action verbs you can deploy:
- Hurtle
- Attract
- Boost
- Capture
- Discover
- Distribute
- Encourage
- Exchange
- Fortify
- Master
- Command
- Experience
- Orchestrate
- Learn
- Achieve
- Generate
- Leverage
- Build
Continue to search Google for synonyms of the verbs you write, to swap out for verbs with more pop.
Example: Dunkin’ Donuts uses a tremendous action verb in ‘run’ with their slogan “America Runs on Dunkin’”. This creates an energetic, feel-good tone to inspire people to go to Dunkin’ to hit the ground running each morning.
12. Run through a finished draft and cut unnecessary words
Enter: the practice of concision.
The goal of concision is to say more by using strong words, and less of them. In practice, this is often extremely difficult.
Why’s it so hard? Because concision forces you to trim the fat. Lazy writing with filler words left and right does not inspire conversions.
Crisp, focused writing does inspire confidence for website visitors to take the call to action.
Example: Would Apple’s “Think Different” slogan be better or worse if it was longer? Worse, of course. The brilliance is in the brevity. Those two words say everything they need to, no more and no less.
13. Proofread out loud before publishing
We’ve all been there before. The writing sounds beautiful in our head so we click publish. Only then do we read it later, or worse have someone tell us, that it doesn’t sound right.
A quick tip before publishing is to read your copywriting out loud. If it sounds off when you speak it, then it needs to be rewritten.
This is also a good time to check for spelling mistakes too. While it can seem petty, you’re making an effort to build, not harm, credibility in your landing pages.
I don’t know the science behind it, but I do know that speaking the words improves your copywriting. The wording will sound more natural.
And every extra advantage helps to polish your landing page’s copywriting for maximum conversions.
Conclusion
Becoming a better copywriter is a skill you can develop. You don’t need to be born with it (same for entrepreneurship).
Implement these 13 landing page copywriting tips immediately. Heck, use this blog post as a checklist when drafting your next one.
Slowly you’ll put in the reps where brilliant landing page copywriting becomes muscle memory.
Now if you don’t have the time or interest in copywriting but are desperate for the results, you can contact us so we can see if we can help. Odds are your conversions will moonshot. Plus, this copywriting problem will go away entirely.
How much time do you dedicate to your landing pages’ writing?