An excerpt from course content I wrote for Lurn, an online education platform focused on teaching digital marketing and entrepreneurship. This sample highlights a simple 5-step process for creating compelling sales copy.
The 5-Step Copywriting Process
Many people are intimidated by the idea of writing. Don’t be, good copywriting can be broken down into a simple 5-step process.
This process can be applied to any kind of sales pitch, whether it’s a letter, a video, a webinar, or even face-to-face selling.
Why is this 5-step process so effective? Because it is based on sound psychological principles.
As we review each step, you’ll learn not only what each step is, but also why that step works on a psychological level.
Step 1 – The Introduction (or Headline)
In most copywriting, the introduction means the headline.
The headline has one purpose—to grab the reader’s attention and make them interested in what you have to say next.
If you fail to get your audience’s attention, it doesn’t matter how brilliant the rest of your copywriting is, nobody is going to read it!
When writing copy, a good portion of your time should be spent on the headline.
The best way to approach writing your headline is to tell the story of your product. This story is about how your product is uniquely positioned to solve the problems, or pain points, of your reader.
It should take your reader no more than 3 seconds to read your headline and understand how your product is going to help improve their lives.
Remember, your reader only cares about one thing—what’s in it for them.
If you can answer that question in the headline, you have a good chance of keeping your reader’s attention until the next step, the story.
Step 2 – The Story
OK, you’ve grabbed your reader’s attention with your headline. Now what?
The next step is to befriend the reader. Why? Because if the reader likes you, they’re more likely to trust and buy from you.
You can achieve all this with a story.
“We are, as a species, addicted to story,” writes Jonathan Gottschall in his book The Storytelling Animal. “Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.”
A well-told story literally changes our brains. When we hear a story that resonates with us, a hormone called oxytocin is released within our bodies.
Oxytocin increases our feelings of compassion, empathy, and trust. These are the exact feelings you want to evoke in your reader, and telling a story is the quickest way to do that.
In your story, you need to let the reader know that you understand the pain they’re experiencing. In fact, you’ve experienced that pain yourself!
Then you tell them that you’ve found something to alleviate that pain, which is the product you’re promoting.
Your story isn’t really about you. It’s about how you discovered your product.
Now you’re ready to move on to the next step in the copywriting process, which is teaching the reader about how your product can help them.
Step 3 – Content
In this section you need to address the two big objections that your reader is likely to have:
- Yeah, right! (your reader doesn’t believe what you’re saying about the product).
- So what? (your reader doesn’t see why your product matters to them).
To overcome objection #1 (Yeah, right!) you need to provide “social proof”.
Social proof can be testimonials, before-and-after photos, screenshots, case studies, online reviews, or personal experience.
To overcome objection #2 (So what?) you need to show why your product matters to your reader.
You do this by listing all the ways your product is going to improve your reader’s life.
Focus on the benefits received by the reader rather than the product itself.
This is also a good place to highlight why your product is unique. Tell your reader why they should buy your product and not some other similar-type product.
The goal of this section is to overcome the reader’s two main objections.
Hopefully, you’ve convinced your reader that your product can help them (in ways that no other product can) and you’ve also offered enough proof so they believe you.
Great! You’re well on your way to making the sale.
Now you have to tell them how much your product costs. But first…
Step 4 – The Transition
The transition is the shortest step in the 5-step copywriting process, but it’s just as important as the other steps.
In the previous section, you’ve painted a vision of how your product is going to help make life better for your reader.
Asking for money is an abrupt change in tone. That’s why you need a transition, or bridge, between the two sections.
Transitions happen all the time in life. For example, when you’re talking to a friend and it’s time to say good-bye, you say something like, “well, it was great seeing you.”
This is a transition, from the main body of your conversation with your friend into the good-bye section of your conversation.
Not using transitions can be off-putting. You can actually lose a sale by skipping this step or not doing it correctly.
In copywriting, a transition is basically saying, “You’ve just learned how this product can improve your life. Now it’s time to learn how you can get started using this product for yourself.”
This leads into the final step in the copywriting process…
Step 5 – The Pitch
The pitch is where you reveal the price of your product. Some of your readers might just go ahead and buy the product once they know how much it costs.
But many readers will still be on the fence. They’re hesitating.
The purpose of “The Pitch” is to remove all hesitations.
One of the best ways to remove hesitations is by offering a money-back guarantee. This makes buying the product risk-free.
Another way to remove hesitation is to offer some great bonuses. Bonuses add value to your product.
That’s the purpose of the pitch—to keep on adding value to your product. The goal is to make the price seem like a bargain. People love bargains.
The pitch is also where you introduce the idea of “scarcity”, which we discussed in the previous lesson.
There’s no better way to turn fence-sitters into buyers than to convince them that your product is a bargain, and that bargain is going to end soon.
That’s a great pitch, and should definitely clinch the sale.
In conclusion, the 5-Step copywriting process is designed to grab the attention of a potential customer and, through each step, gradually turn them into buyers.
There are sound psychological reasons why each step in the process works. Simply follow the process and you have a very good chance of producing strong, effective copy that sells.