Every freelance copywriter lives by a certain set of letters.
AIDA provides all the elements your writing needs to make a sale. If your copywriting skills are going to be effective you have to learn how to:
– Capture your readers Attention
– Arouse their Interest
– Create a Desire
– Get them to take Action.
I am going to break this down over the course of the next few articles. So to start with we’ll take a look at how to go about grabbing your
readers Attention.
How does a copywriter grab their readers’ attention?
If you’re writing direct mail, web copy, reports etc., your attention grabber is an effective headline. If you are writing an email, it’s the subject line.
To save complicating matters this article will concentrate on the writing of a sales letter. Your headline will be at the top of your letter but, to create instant impact, you could also add it to your envelope as this will be your first opportunity to grab the attention of your reader.
So what type of headline works best?
– One giving news?
– One promising a benefit?
– One that arouses curiosity?
The most powerful headline is the one that incorporates all three elements.
If you are stuck for ideas try starting it with ‘How’ or ‘Now’:
‘How this copywriter will increase your sales conversion rate’
‘Now, even better quality, even lower prices’
When is the best time to write it?
For some the best time is at the start before they write the body of their copy, for others it’s at the end. There is no right or wrong answer so go with whatever feels right to you.
If you can, come up with several headlines and then pick the best one. You may find that different ideas occur to you at different times in the writing process.
Forget the full stop
This mind sound simple but whatever you do never, never end your headline with a full stop.
A full stop tells your reader to stop reading – that is last thing that you want to happen.
How long should it be?
As long as is necessary to get your message across.
In a few days I’ll post the next article in this series addressing how you can arouse your readers’ interest.