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Copywriting Makeover: Know Where Your Customers Are In The Buying Process Part 2 of 2
by Karon Thackston © 2004 http://www.copywritingcourse.com In part one of this article series, I introduced a client of mine (AEwebworks) who suffered from some copywriting traumas. The basic diagnosis was a lack of synergy within the copy,...
Jumpstart Your Writing Career
** Jumpstart Your Career by Asking "Why?" ** by Laura Backes, Publisher of Children's Book Insider, the Newsletter for Children's Writers When developing a story or article, writers learn to incorporate the "who," "when," "where," and "how." But...
Segmenting Your Target Audience Through Your Copywriting
by Karon Thackston © 2004 http://www.copywritingcourse.com Ask any copywriter what the first commandment of copywriting is and they’ll quickly tell you “Know Thy Target Audience.” In order to write effectively you have to know this one group of...
SEO Copywriting Makeover: Finding the Right Trigger
by Karon Thackston © 2005
http://www.copywritingcourse.com
You've got a great product or service. Now, how do you make buyers sit up and take notice? How do you get them excited about what you're offering? You have to pull the trigger.
There is...
The Benefits of Freewriting
It's 2 am and you're sitting at your desk, no ideas and no thoughts. The cup of coffee to your side is the sixth. But still, the same blank sheet of paper from an hour ago taunts you, there is nothing to show for your effort but a back cramp and a...
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Copywriting Makeover: Making An Emotional Connection - Part 1 of 2
by Karon Thackston © 2004
http://www.copywritingcourse.com
One statistic shows that over 80% of all buying decisions are emotional. That means your copywriting should be, too. This is something I firmly believe in and have preached for most of my copywriting career. However, all too often, I find people skipping the vital step of making an emotional connection with their customers. That can be a tragic, and costly, mistake.
That’s why I was excited when I had the opportunity to rewrite the homepage copy for a vacation cruise service. While the copy they used previously gave all the details and got them a good number of bookings, it just didn’t have what it takes to make me start daydreaming about my next cruise. It didn’t… but it was about to!
The Problems
The previous copy on the Cruise Vacation Center home page faced a couple of challenges. (You can view the original copy at this link: http://www.copywritingcourse.com/CruiseVacationCenter-Original.pdf.) The copy was very company-oriented instead of customer-oriented. It talked about who Cruise Vacation Center (CVC) is, why the visitor should buy from them, and some wonderful benefits CVC offers its clients including excellent bargain rates and extra discounts. However, all the verbiage was geared toward the company. The customer was left out.
The home page copy also lacked emotion. It was very matter-of-fact. In addition to making visitors aware of the wonderful prices and deals CVC offered, I wanted to create a vision for the site visitors. I wanted to give them what they needed in order to float off into a daydream about fabulous ports-of-call; warm, gentle breezes; and thrilling adventures.
While I was painting a picture of the vacation of a lifetime, I also had to be sure to include a vital fact. CVC’s business plan was set up to be most affordable for the customer when s/he booked online. Without sounding rude, I had to do everything in my power to get the site visitor to book their cruise vacation while at the site. This was an extremely important issue and a point that needed to be woven throughout the copy.
Lastly, the page had to uphold Cruise Vacation Center’s excellent search engine rankings.
They were ranked at the top of several major engines, and the rewritten copy couldn’t jeopardize their positioning.
The Solutions
The first step was, without question, to woo the site visitors with delightful fantasies about their next vacation. My goal was to conjure up all sorts of visions in the minds of Cruise Vacation Center’s visitors. I wanted the visitors to be dreaming of exotic places with lots of fun things to do, interesting sights to see, and 24/7 access to gourmet meals that rival any five-star restaurant. I wanted their blood pressure to drop 10 points just from reading about the onboard staff of hundreds who would pamper them with VIP treatment. After reading this copy, I wanted them ready to leave on vacation today! However, I also had to persuade them to book online rather than calling CVC’s office.
During the rewrite, I had to carefully plan the use of their primary keyphrase, “cruise vacation,” so as not to disrupt their most reliable source of business… the search engines. After all, there is a delicate balance between pleasing the search engines and appealing to site visitors.
If I leaned too much toward the search engine side of the equation, the conversion ratio of the home page would suffer. In other words, Cruise Vacation Center would get lots of visitors, but few of them would book cruises.
If I leaned too much toward the customer side of the equation, CVC’s rankings would plummet, and they would need to find a new way to drive qualified traffic to their site. As is normally the case with SEO copywriting, balance was going to be vital.
In the conclusion to this two-part series, you’ll see how I handled the rewrite and what the end results of all the work were. Curious to see the new copy? You’ll find it on CVC’s site: You can see the new copy on CVC’s site at http://www.cruisevacationcenter.com.
About the Author
Copy not getting results? Learn to write SEO copy that impresses the engines and your visitors at http://www.copywritingcourse.com. Be sure to also check out Karon’s latest e-report “How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)” at http://www.copywritingcourse.com/keyword.
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