Sneak Inside the Web Copywriting Intensive
Dear Fellow AWAIer,
After weeks of anticipation, it’s finally here! AWAI’s first-ever Web Copywriting Workshop.
Hi, I’m Laurie Cauthen, an AWAI copywriter from Barnesville, Georgia. I’ll be your Roving Reporter this week, bringing you all the latest web copy secrets and information you’ll only get here – live from Tampa, Florida!
From the agenda, I can see AWAI has a lot planned for the next three days, starting with a reception this evening so that we attendees can meet and mingle with the experts. I’m planning to target Nick Usborne so I can get a head-start on some of the juicy tidbits he’ll be revealing in tomorrow’s session.
But before I head downstairs, I wanted to take a minute to share something I recently learned from Nick about writing landing pages that give your client an edge … and make you more valuable to him. (With the average fee for a landing page being $1,500 … for less than 1,000 words … it’s a topic that’s exciting to this soon-to-be web copy specialist!)
If you’re familiar with landing pages, you probably already know that you want your landing page headline to match your pay-per-click (PPC) ad, in order to assure the visitor that he’s ended up where he intended to be.
Marketers will spend a lot of time researching which PPC ads work best. Yet once they’ve figured it out, they will often then simply change the headline on the corresponding landing page to match … but they don’t think to change the rest of the copy to match too!
The result? Body copy that doesn’t match the headline, and a landing page that fails to address the intentions of the web visitor.
This is where you – the AWAI copywriter – put on your “web copy specialist” hat and go to work!
To get the best conversion rates, it’s important to re-work the body copy of each landing page to match its corresponding headline (which should match its corresponding PPC ad). And at this point you’ll also want to incorporate the intentions of the visitor in this copy.
So how do you determine the visitor’s intentions simply because he clicked on a PPC ad?
You can’t. But you can make a reasonable guess!
To demonstrate, Nick uses an example of someone trying to sell an essential oil diffuser kit …
Let’s say you’re the web copywriter, and after your research you determine the following two headlines generate the most traffic:
- Free Shipping With Essential Oil Diffuser Kit
- Review of Top Essential Oil Diffusers
Now depending on which ad your visitors click, you can make a decent guess as to their intentions …
You can assume the people who click the first ad are more or less ready to buy.
And the people who click on the second version are more likely to be at the research stage and, therefore, may want to read some reviews on the product.
Now that we understand our visitor’s intentions, we can tackle the landing page … or pages rather.
You’ll actually need to write two totally different landing pages – one that closes the sale, and the other that informs the reader with product reviews. Since you’ve identified your visitor’s intentions, you can deliver exactly the information they’re looking for, which means you’ll be able to convert more of them into customers or subscribers.
Bottom line: Better results for your client … and more work for you. The perfect win/win!
Until tomorrow …
Laurie Cauthen
AWAI Copywriter and Roving Reporter
Published: August 5, 2008
