14 actionable tips for writing persuasive landing page copy Most organizations understand the essential elements of landing pages, but few are proficient at crafting high converting content that engages their visitors. Your content is the story that you are telling which assists your visitors to understand the offer and making them to purchase your product or service. The main objective of crafting your copy is to tell the story as effectively as possible to convince your visitors to take specific action which you want them to do. If you want to improve your landing page copy, have a look at the list of best tips below for writing high-quality copy. I can assure you that, by the end of this article, you will be ready to write first landing page copy. Let’s get straight into it.
1. Know your audience First things first, you need to know your audience. There is a market for everyone; you just have to figure out yours. You should constrict your focus and find the specific group, those who are ready for your message. I recommend that you know who your audiences are, before you start writing content for your landing page. Without knowing your audience, how can you directly speak to them? To be successful, your landing page must be particularly targeted toward one group.
Get inside your audience mind
2. Grab attention with a strong headline Headline is the first part of your copy a visitor is going to read on your landing page. And, the key to the success of any landing page is a great headline. The main purpose of a headline is to draw the visitor’s attention immediately and keep them on your page. Most of the readers use the headline to decide whether a landing page is worth reading. As a result, it needs to tell enough to make people interested. As the marketing expert David Ogilvy said: "On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy."
3. The Call to Action (CTA) When you want your visitors to do something on your landing page like signing up for an e-book or making a purchase, your visitors will have to go through a call to action in order to do it. The call to action is the second most important element of your landing page, as the headline is the most important section. Before you writing the CTA copy, you must need to know the answer of the two questions below to write an actionable CTA copy. Why people would click on your CTA? What will the visitors get if they click on CTA?
4. Write Benefits-Focused Copy We know your company and offer is awesome, but realistically the visitors don’t care about you, your product, your brand or offer. They only think about themselves. So, don’t focus on your features and specifications. Instead, create your copy by focusing on What you can do for your visitors? How the visitors will be benefited from your products? How can you make them more productive and happier? How you can save money or boost revenues for them? And what problems and hassles are you going to solve?
5. Conversational Copy Conversational writing is very essential in landing page copywriting. In this style of copy, you write the way you speak with the customers. Explain why your product or service is amazing in a way that sounds normal, approachable and friendly like if you were talking to someone face to face. The fact is that, when you write as if you’re talking to someone, it reads just like you’re talking to someone. People don’t trust those who are trying to make them buy now, buy now! Your writing should be informal and sound genuine.
6. Write using the second person (You, Your) Writing in the second person means instead of using ‘I’, ‘he’, or ‘she’, you speak in your visitor’s terms by writing ‘you’ and ‘your’. Using the third person in your writing like (he, his, she, her) makes a barrier between you and your visitors. So, try to use the second person to build a stronger connection between the visitors and your offer. Let’s take a look at below screenshot from zestapps, how they crafted their headline by using second person.
7. Keep your paragraph short and skimmable The first paragraph of your landing page should be 1-2 lines and must be attention grabbing. Then vary your paragraph length from here but no paragraph should be more than 2-3 lines. It makes easier to read your copy. Furthermore, use bullet points to describe the benefits you are offering. Short bullet points. Not long ones. If you want to write lots of points in an easily digestible way, nothing beats a bulleted list. Bullet points make your landing page copy skimmable and easy to read. Most of the viewers are skipping and skimming through your landing page. Therefore, style your copy in a way so that it’s easily digestible for them and easy to understand your offer without having to slow down.
8. Short copy vs. Long copy
The length of your copy must be decided depending on your objective of the landing page. Every product/service will not require the same amount of copy investment. As a rule of thumb, shorter copy performs better for a subscription sign-up or something that doesn’t require any cash commitment. Longer copy works well if you are looking to close a sale as people need lots of information about the product or service before purchasing.
9. Write your copy for every reader People are busy and most do not have enough time to go through your every word, even if they are interested in something you offer. In general, there are three types of readers: Bottom-liners, Readers and Scanners. a. Bottom-liners only focus on the headline and close. So, make sure your beginning and close are strong enough to attract these category readers. b. The rarest of all landing page visitors, the readers will read almost every word of your landing page. Your copy needs to hold their attention until they are converted. c. Scanners, the most common, are scrolling through your landing page quickly and only read the highlighted points. You need to ensure that, your landing page copy is perfect for all three types of readers.
10. Be specific and descriptive The more elaborated picture of benefits and results you can explain with your words, the more effective your landing page will be. Writing that ‘your landing page building tool has been used by more than 20,000 companies to create more than 99,000 landing pages’ is much better than writing ‘using your landing page building tool has been used by many companies to build landing pages’. Being elaborated and specific also boost your trust.
11. Use an active voice When you use active voice, the subject of the sentence is doing the action. It communicates you objective better than a passive voice. Active voice is simple, clear and engaging. You will be more persuasive when using active voice. Have a look at the sentences below‘We wrote our new e-book on best tools for growth hackers’ vs. ‘The new e-book written by our company on best tools for growth hackers’ The first one uses active voice copy. The first sentence is not only shorter but also easier to follow.
12. Keep your content simple Always keep in mind that the simplicity sells. The words that you use in your content should be simple and minimize using jargon, highly technical language in your copy. Landing page is not the right place to show off your vocabulary. Write the content in a way that even fifth graders can understand. You should try to make your content as easy to read as possible. If your copy lacks clarity, convincing visitors will be almost impossible.
13. Create scarcity A powerful copywriting tip is to create scarcity, as it can pull a psychological trigger that helps to convert the visitors. The easiest way to create scarcity is to include a countdown clock or declare that only a few numbers of item remaining. See the example below, how pogo utilized this great technique.
14. A/B testing There is no alternative way without testing to know whether your copy will convert the visitors or not. Make two different versions of copy for your landing page and see which one performs better. Things you can test include variations in your headline, sub headline, lists of benefits and call to action text. The below screenshot is taken from woorank. See only the headline text made the huge difference in conversions.
Final thoughts, Boosting conversion rates begin with the killer copy. Writing compelling copy that converts is all about understanding your visitors and their concerns. Your landing page copy must address your visitor’s needs, dreams and problems. Use unambiguous and clean language that’s easy to understand. By following the above 14 effective copy writing techniques, you should be able to write high converting landing page copy. To know more about landing page optimization, you may have a look at my recent published article on complete guide to landing page optimization.