9 classic tips for copywriting success

From the mists of time, some truths never grow old…

In this post you’ll:

• Benefit from decades of headline and copy research.
• Learn the best copywriting techniques that just keep on giving.
• Save the effort of reading a book.
• Ignore that, go read the book!

Today’s timeless tips are based on a fantastic book, ‘ Tested Advertising Methods’ by John Caples (goodreads).

Here’s the news: it was published way back in 1932. But don’t let the age of it put you off though. The insights came out of decades of scientific research across the advertising, direct-mail and mail-order print industries. Developed and applied to US consumers, this offered the scale necessary to support a huge range of creative, products, markets and give robust results.

I’d argue that this is equivalent to today’s online advertising environment, with similar test factors applied at volume, not just copy either. Important differentiators such as font, size, colour, placement, form-factor, imagery, timing… ad infinitum.

Read the book, and you’ll see the same insights pop up again and again throughout the today’s copywriting and advertising industry — often the results arise independently, or someone’s not giving due respect!

Headlines: the first 3 tips

You need to grab attention to pull people in, so without a winning headline the rest of your message won’t even be seen.

NB. “You will fail if you don’t include one or more of these elements”

Use at least one of these tips to focus your headline or email subject:

1. Self-Interest: a call to the reader’s own worries, show the reader benefits, remove problems & provide solutions. Note that finding the right drivers for your audiences usually involves some research work in website SEO analysis, email testing, customer surveys or developing personas.
2. News: news, announcements, something new that gives advantage to the reader. Add keywords (more about that below) to emphasis the news-worthiness. Meet people’s expectations in what a news headline looks like and don’t be clever with it — processing a clever line is too much effort and won’t work at volume.
3. Curiosity: the 3rd most important driver. At this level (if you don’t combine it with some of the above tips) people are likely to only read if they have spare time. A curiosity-only headline lacks urgency.

I’ve run tests myself applying these same 3 principles to multiple series’ of email subject lines, and the results turned out just as predicted, in that order.

6 more top tips for marketing copy

Apply the following (or combinations thereof) to increase click-through:

1. Quick, easy way: emphasise the speed or results and lack of effort needed. Make it believable though, for example “Become an analytics expert in 5 days” won’t wash with a target audience of intelligent prospects.
2. Be specific: this helps with believability and adds trust. “Save £3,546 in one year” will get more clicks than “Save £4000 in one year”.
3. Positive spin: a negative messaging approach generally puts people off, as people are averse to pain and will subconciously try to avoid it (and your message). Although this can be turned on it’s head by using humour or storytelling, eg. “How a fool stunt made me a star salesman”.
4. Long headlines CAN work: just make sure you get the point across.
5. Don’t be too smart or clever: it takes the poor reader extra brain processing time and energy to decipher a clever, witty or subtle headline. So if you want results, don’t do it.
6. Use CAPS or bold, or big font to pick out key words: depending on the online etiquette of the media you’re using, this still does work.

Bonus tip no.10

Use Key Words in Headlines. After much analysis, some recurring key words have emerged from the research. Get quick results by beginning your headline with one of the following triggers that people always respond to.

• “How to”
• “How”
• “Why”
• “Which”
• “Who else”
• “Wanted”
• “This”
• “Because”
• “If”
• “Advice”

Walking the talk

This is the hard bit.

The above tips are great to give a line some extra vroom when you’re looking for ideas, but without a great understanding of your audience & the technical ability to apply marketing personalisation you’re limited to generic improvements.

And did I mention behavioural framing, system 1 & 2 cognitive processing, information chunking, the propinquity effect, or information gap theory? The real challenge is to not become victim to analysis paralysis as you take in a million different inputs from the marketing industry.

However, if you add these classic tips into the mix, you’re sure to improve your response rates over time. I know I did.

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