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Buyer Psychology Copywriting
The goal of copywriting is the connect with and influence the buyer psychology of online shoppers.
If you’re a marketer you spend 80% of your day thinking about improving conversion rates. There are many ways to boost conversions:
— Have a killer offer— Improve the design of the page— Add explainer videos— Write better copyNoah Kagan is an amazing marketer and this is his killer offer:
It’s a bloody genius offer. Incredible value for the shopper and expertly constructed. Noah understands his audience and knows how to design offers that can’t be avoided. But here’s the problem with killer offers, they can kill margins. After all, it’s a killer offer because it’s such great value for money. The other issue is that as a marketer I typically don’t have the option of changing prices. I have to work within what’s already there. So the option of using a killer offer is off the table.
Changing the design of the page can also be promising but that’s a really sensitive topic for management. Every time I’ve presented a new design it’s caused delays because new designs almost always have to be approved by a committee. And committees are where good ideas go to die. So that’s off the table too.
Here’s what I know— in a head-to-head fight video will always kick copy’s ass. Videos are incredibly powerful. What copy has going for it is that it’s cheaper to integrate, which makes it ideal for A/B testing.
So this is why, like me, you primarily use copywriting in most of the A/B tests you set.
How to think about copyriting
When you think of copywriting who comes to mind? I’m confident you’re seeing someone who has a background in English, really understands language structure doesn’t make a ton of typos.
This is how I look at copywriting. I like Joseph Sugarman’s definition: The single goal of copywriting is to, “cause a person to exchange his or her hard-earned money for a product or service.”
So, copywriting is salesmanship in pen.
Where do buyer psychology and copywriting meet? Here.
Buyer psychology copywriting
Evolution has trained us to be cautious. 100,000 years ago misreading your surrounding was the difference between seeing your kids grow up and being eaten alive by a sabertooth:
Our world has changed a lot in the last 100 years but our brains are still very primitive. The fear our ancestors felt at the thought of unexpectedly encountering a sabertooth you and I feel at the thought of using our hard-earned money to buy the wrong product online. Our brains have evolved to save us from irrational impulses.
But as a copywriter (oops, I mean salesman) making a pitch my job is to get you over this fear. To do that I need to deeply understand the buyer psychology of my buyer.
We’ve spent the last 13 years in our marketing lab, experimenting with ways to understand the buyer psychology of online shoppers so we can write copy to connect with it. We’ve identified 9 aspects of buyer psychology that can be influenced by copywriting. You just have to read this article: Conversion Copywriting: Strategies That Will Make You Money.
FURTHER READING
We hope you enjoyed this buyer psychology copywriting article. Here are few of our most important articles:
— The most important page on your site is the product page. Why is that and why focus on product pages?
— On the product page (also called PDP) the most important element is the product description. This is where we present our product sales pitch (also called product story). This product story presentation needs to be perfect. We have just one chance to convert this visitor (only 15% of visitors ever return). Learn how to construct the perfect product story.
— The opening of your product description really matters. We call it the art of the start and it’s covered in this article: The Art of The Start.
— The Myth of the Perfect Product Page
— Once the basic product story has been developed you need to rewrite it to influence the psychology of the buyer you are trying to convince. Because shoppers are exposed to so many ads they rely on a mental checklist to decide if they should consider a brand, or not. We’ve identified these 9 checklist items and developed a conversion copywriting process to influence them. That knowledge is revealed (with examples) in our most important article of all: Conversion Copywriting: How to Craft a Product Story That Converts.
ABOUT FRICTIONLESS COMMERCE
We deliver an unfair advantage to technical product DTC brands by improving their advertising effectiveness by 20% in 90 days. Our secret? A buyer psychology copywriting framework. The process.
If you like doing the hard work yourself, our founder Rishi shares conversion ideas on LinkedIn every day. Connect with him here.
If you want to make your life easier and still increase conversions, jump on a call.
