Learn 4 Secret Text Edits to Increase Your Sales

Whether you're writing a blog post, creating a new Facebook advert or optimizing a landing page, you have one real goal – to engage and connect with the reader. For regular marketing activities that don't have an audio visual budget, you have three primary tools to achieve this: text, image and color.

You've probably landed on blog posts that you left within seconds because the headline was un-engaging, or the first few sentences failed to keep you interested. This is extremely common – 55% of website visitors leave within 15 seconds. Unless completely irrelevant, visitors tend to bounce because the content creator failed to stir up an engaging emotion through words and imagery.

In this article, I will reveal how certain words and phrases can help shape prospects' desire; in order to keep them on your page, sign-up to your newsletter or purchase your product.

Most consumers don't think twice about the effect words have on their mind, but advertisers do. A single word or phrase can raise hope, drive fear or raise uncertainty within us. As a business that's looking to engage and grow, knowing how to leverage certain words on marketing materials is what separates a mediocre business from a great business.

All words have two meanings, they are:

Denotative – Their dictionary definitionConnotative – Their emotional affect

For example, I used the word secret in the title of this article. How did that resonate with you? It most likely raised curiosity, as most secrets do, and was probably the reason you clicked on this article. At least that is the generally agreed theory.

'Secret' is an example of written word, text psychology in action – certain words have the ability to push emotional triggers that cause consumers to take action.

So, here are 4 small copy edits you can use in your marketing material to help push your prospects or web visitors through the sales funnel and take action.

Did you know that I wrote this article just for you?

The word you places the reader as the center of all attention. It's a powerful yet underutilized word. The reason it works so well is because it's the closest relative word I can find, short of calling you by your name.

How many times have you been waiting in a lobby or queue and you hear "you're next", and look up to see if the speaker is addressing you?

Most people turn their head and look.

Shopify do a great job of leveraging the word you and your on their sales page. They use it three times to increase the likelihood of prospects signing up:

How often are you using it?

As the saying goes; money talks.

The addition or removal of currency symbols can skyrocket or plummet sales as you're about to find out. A study at Cornell University found that restaurants who removed currency symbols from their menu and displayed only numerical values got customers to spend more.

Why? When prospects see a currency symbol they know they have to spend money and that creates conflict and pain. Conflict and pain are two emotions that stop consumers from spending.

But here's the problem: leaving out the price or failing to add currency symbols online can confuse prospects. Market Dialer found this out first hand when they added the price of their product to their landing page, and increased lead generation by 100%.

It's believed when businesses don't display their price the product is likely very expensive, and many don't wish to fill out a form to be contacted later by a sales rep. Internet users' attention spans are very short, leaving out key information or offering a service without listing a price is not only a questionable business tactic, but has negative psychological connotations.

Mailchimp recognized that removing the dollar sign from their pricing plan all together would cause confusion and most likely reduce conversions. So what did they do? They got smart.

They decided to reduce the font of the dollar sign in relation to the numerical values:

They drew focus away from the area of their copy that created pain and conflict (dollar sign), and kept attention on the benefit that the prospect will be receiving.

We've all heard it – fear sells. Nobody wants to miss out on a deal or lose a customer to their biggest competitor. Whether you're trying to get your prospect to click on your next article, or urging others to donate to a worthwhile cause, fear is commonly used to evoke an impulsive action.

Save the Children, for example, use fear words on their marketing materials:

Words like risk and hurricane are terrifying parts of real life that Save the Children deal with everyday. When you think of the word risk or hurricane, you think of loss, destruction, tragedy and danger.

Using these words helps Save the Children portray the fear children are going through in certain areas of the world, compelling prospect to join or donate to a very worthwhile cause. Fear and the discussion of negative emotion marketing could easily be a book in itself – much care must be taken when evoking feelings of this kind, especially those which evoke guilt.

On the marketing side of fear, it's "fear of missing out" (FOMO) and "fear, uncertainty and doubt" (FUD) that prevail. Office leverage words like last, be quick and going to evoke the fear of missing out (FOMO) on epic savings if prospects don't take action now:

Notice how small and subtle the words "up to" are? That's for another day!

Key FOMO edits you can make to your marketing copy are around time-limited, quantity-limited, exclusivity and shortcuts/secrets.

Grab your place before it closesOnly for the first 100 peopleGet the full, exclusive story hereStop making these 5 mistakes

Fear has always been a great motivator to shape consumer desire, and can be used in a number of ways to get your intended result. Just remember – use it wisely and use it ethically or you might just end up scaring them away!

Who doesn't love something for nothing?

Free is arguably the most powerful word in online marketing today. Everybody wants to get their money's worth and giving something away for free certainly achieves that.

The Sims 3 were trying to get customers to register their details online, and found once they emphasized the word free in their copy, opt-ins increased by 128%.

For Internet marketers, a prospect's email address is worth its weight in gold. That's why so many of them offer high value lead magnets for free in exchange for an email address.

Here's Digital Marketer clearly labeling that their blog post template download is free:

They then go on to use the word free three more times on their landing page.

HubSpot do the exact same thing when giving away their lead magnet:

It may appear obvious after reading this article the benefits the word free has on consumers. But you'd be surprised how many businesses forget to use this word when promoting free material.

The average consumer is exposed to 5,000 adverts per day, they have learned subconsciously to block most of them out. Using the word free is a great tool to leverage their attention onto your content, as in many cases it's not often someone is giving them something for free.

Free Tip: a note of caution

Whilst free is a killer copy word, it can be killer in more ways than one. Such is its over-use, many email providers give a heavy spam rating to newsletters and mail when "free" is included in the subject. Free also has the potential to devalue your product or service.

Words are certainly one of the most powerful tools a business has in their arsenal, and when used correctly, can transform opinions and shape actions.

Just like reading a gripping book that throws your mind into an imaginary world, you can do the same with all your marketing materials once you understand the significance of words, phrases and emotion. 

Take 10 minutes to browse through your advertisements, website or newsletter. How many minor edits could you make to improve your sales, signups or readership?

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Original source: Learn 4 Secret Text Edits to Increase Your Sales.
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