Written by Bob McClain, Web Copywriting Expert

Writing website copy for a landing page is one of the most specific types of website copywriting you’ll do. Landing pages are very specific. They are very targeted and have a very singular purpose as opposed to most website pages.

Landing pages have one purpose and one purpose only. And that depends on what the client is trying to accomplish. Landing pages are used to:

•    Generate leads
•    Sell a product
•    Spread the word through viral marketing; or…
•    Establish or reinforce the brand

Written by Bob McClain, Web Copywriting Expert

For Part Seven of our Web Copywriting – Using Subliminal Persuasion series, we’re going to talk about the third basic element of telling your “story”. This involves creating conflict. If you want to paint yourself as the “hero coming to the rescue”, you have to create a powerful enough antagonist to drive people to buy your solution.

Let’s first review our previous subliminal persuasion posts:

Written by Bob McClain, Web Copywriting Expert

For Part Six we’re going to talk about the first two of the five basic elements of telling your “story” and how they are all necessary elements of subliminal persuasion in web copywriting. Let’s first review our

Previous Subliminal Persuasion Posts

•    Part One of this series established who we are trying to sell to by answering a series of in depth questions.

•    Part Two talked about the power of “Story” and three tools to utilize it in your website copy.

•    Part Three explained the “iron-clad” guarantee.

Written by Bob McClain, Web Copywriting Expert

As I said in my earlier web copywriter toolkit post, every web copywriter should have a “toolkit”. In that post, I talked about the books every copywriter should own. In this post, I want to talk about some of the software tools a website copywriter should own.

A lot of copywriter’s who decide to break into website copywriting take my SEO & Website Copywriting 12 week ecourse or buy my SEO & Website Copywriting Manual. Either way, they get introduced to some of the tools I use to do on-site SEO. In this blog post, I will give you the first of some of my favorite website copywriting tools.

Written by Bob McClain, Web Copywriting Expert

The days of a website being a static brochure on the Internet are long gone. They are now platforms for blogs, video, images, advertising, forums, articles, white papers and various other forms of social media.

Today, you need to be competent in a wide range of writing styles and methods. For instance, I have a client who is a dentist. So far I’ve written all his website copy, Wrote an e-book for him to give away, written 4 magazine ads (he just asked for a fifth), written 2 radio ads, wrote a video script and the voice-over, and I’m writing blog posts and doing blog commenting for him.

Written by Bob McClain, Web Copywriting Expert

Website copywriting isn’t all seriousness and salesmanship. If you don’t believe me, spend a little time on woot.com. There’s an old saying in business: People do business with people they know, like, and trust.

Trust must be earned and one great way to do that before a transaction is to be likeable. And being fun is a great way to get liked.

Think before you crack a joke…

Obviously, you have to consider the content of the site, the client, and the potential customer before you decide to be funny. It is too easy to offend people’s sensibilities to just shoot from the hip. You have to be smart about it.

Written by Bob McClain, Web Copywriting Expert

All the great sales pages in the world are useless if no one finds the website. And Google isn’t impressed by sales pages. They are impressed by good quality, informative content.

Since the Internet is one big popularity contest, Google watches to see which content gets the most links. Because the content that gets the most links is the content Google wants to send people to.

So you don’t want to write content just to write content. It has to be targeted to your audience and also meet your business goals.

Written by Bob McClain, Web Copywriting Expert

When you’re going to sit down and write website copy, you have to know what you’re talking about. Just like a sales person, you can’t sell what you don’t know. And a website copywriter is just a salesperson who works online rather than face to face.

In fact, when I get a client who insists on writing their own copy, the first thing I tell them is to get a digital recorder and give it to their best salesperson. Every time they go on a sales call, they are to record the call from just before they walk in the door until they leave the meeting.

Written by: Bob McClain, Web Copywriting Expert

On the Internet, nobody is going to sit through a long, drawn-out proposal or sales page. We live in an age of instant gratification. Give me what I want, when I want it, and nobody gets hurt.

To accomplish this, you need to forget about the logical sales pitch you would use if you were sitting face to face with someone in a sales meeting where you have maybe half an hour and you can answer questions and prod the potential client with questions to figure out what they really want.

Written by Bob McClain, Web Copywriting Expert

For Part Five we’re going to look at persuasion devices, hypnotic commands and involvement devices. These are all devices that have been proven to be successful persuasion tools. There’s nothing unethical about them because you can’t persuade someone to do something that they didn’t already want to do.

Let’s first review our previous subliminal persuasion posts:

* Part One of this series established who we are trying to sell to by answering a series of in depth questions.

* Part Two talked about the power of “Story” and three tools to utilize it in your website copy.