You Have A Beautiful Body - Don't Hold It Against Me
You have built a great fast-loading web site. Your gifs and jpgs are optimized to their tiniest proportions. Your initial headline is perfect and all navigation bars and buttons are clear and accessible. So what else can go wrong?
Your visitors start to read.
Within two lines they are bored to tears and click away. Your body copy stinks.
Your web site is an advertisement. Whatever its purpose, a web site is selling something:
o Selling you o Selling product o Selling an idea or concept o Selling a dream
Take a look in the paper, or a magazine. Which ads do you read? The ones that engage you. The ones that intrigue you, or excite you, or interest you.
The headline is like the book's cover - it draws them in. The body copy is what makes them stay and buy in to whatever it is you are selling.
Body copy must be
- Personal - Friendly - Accessible - To the point - Easy to read - Benefit driven - Empathetic - Convincing - Persuasive
Take a look at a few of the sites run by big Internet marketing names - Marlon Sanders, Cory Rudl, Ken Evoy for example - and you will see how body copy should be written.
Do you need to be a world-class copywriter? Well yes. But that isn't so hard. Here's how.
o Use short, direct sentences.
o Use active, rather than passive verbs.
o Never talk about yourself - always put it from the reader's point of view.
o Wax lyrical about the benefits, never concentrate on features.
o Ensure that you communicate your Unique Selling Proposition - the point that sets you apart from your competitors.
o Keep to the point. If you remain focused, so will your reader. If you wander all over the place and try to cover too many different topics, you will lose them.
o Build up your story. A good standby is AIDA. Get their Attention, build Interest, stimulate Desire, call for Action.
How long should your body copy be? Good question. The answer is that it should be as long as it needs to be. Write it all down, following the AIDA formula, keep to benefits, then revise what you have written down by 25% - cutting out as many unnecessary adjectives and adverbs as you can. Then, no matter if it is 100 or 1000 words long, it will be the right length.
Is this all about web sites? No, it applies to anything you write: letters, press ads, radio/TV commercials, sales presentations - even a best man's speech can benefit from AIDA. Keep writing, keep practicing, and talk from the heart.
About the author: Martin Avis publishes a free weekly newsletter: BizE-Zine - your unfair advantage in Internet marketing, business and personal success. To subscribe, and get 4 great free gifts, please visit http://www.BizE-zine.com