Five Common Reasons Your Ads and Sales Copy Underperform
Nail these basics and your conversion rates should rise. Think of them as a pre-flight checklist you run over every piece of copy before it goes live.
1. Your Message Isn't Clear
You aren't speaking your market's language, so your words never take root in their minds. Keep your vocabulary and sentences simple — plain words everyone understands beat fancy ten-dollar words every time. For a deeper look at writing copy that makes your audience feel you can read their thoughts, see Eugene Schwartz's biggest copywriting secret.
2. You Have No Unique Selling Proposition
What makes you different from your competitors? If they can copy what you do without effort, you don't have a real competitive advantage. Learn what a Unique Selling Proposition is and how to put it to work in your business, then weave it into every sales message you can.
Perry Marshall's Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords lists six ways to be unique:
- The buyer you serve
- What you sell
- An unusual angle
- What your product or service does not do
- The time frame around your offer
- How you guarantee your product
As Perry puts it, any time you communicate with a prospect you can lean on any one of these, or all of them together. Explore more of Perry Marshall's wisdom.
3. Your Headline Falls Flat
Weak headlines tend to share a few traits: no benefit to the reader, nothing that grabs them by the eyeballs, no curiosity or drama, and a weak offer instead of a S.I.N. offer.
4. Your Offer Is Weak
A strong offer rests on a few keys: risk reversal and a powerful guarantee, making it hard for prospects to say no, and a high-quality product. As the late Rosser Reeves said, a gifted product is more powerful than a gifted pen. Your guarantee should be strong enough that offering it makes you a little nervous. Adskills.com's Triple Guarantee is a good example — it lifts their conversion rate while making life hard for competitors.
Think about it: how many online course gurus keep their courses fresh versus simply reselling the old version and taking people's money?
What Is a S.I.N. Offer?
- Superior — How does what you sell compare with your marketplace and with others in your price bracket? You must be able to beat your competitors, or you'll have to work at least twice as hard to market your stuff.
- Irresistible — What do you include with your product, and how do you frame and position it?
- No-brainer — How easy does your guarantee or risk reversal make it to do business with you? If you can honestly promise results, are you saying so? In what time frame can your average buyer expect those results? Is your product or service higher quality than your competitors', and does your sales message clearly highlight that?
5. You List Features Instead of Benefits
You've heard it before: features are fine to include, but people buy because of the benefit the product delivers and the problem it solves — really, the benefit of the benefit. Highlight benefits over features more often than not. Features are about the product; benefits are about the person.
Legendary copywriter Eugene Schwartz advised using "does" statements to convey benefits rather than "has" statements for features. Features are what a product has; benefits are what it does for your prospect. On vacation, you don't care about the vehicle or what the building is made of — you care about being on vacation and what you get out of it.
Two Easy Ways to Turn Features into Benefits
- Ask: What does this feature do to help my customer? How does it ease pain or frustration for my prospect? How does it change and improve their life?
- Use the "so you can" or "what this means to you is" formulas: "Has [features] so you can [benefit]" and "Has [features], and what this means to you is [benefit]." For example: made from organic orange juice so you can avoid filling your body with toxic pesticides.
Conclusion
Run your ad, sales letter, cold email, or any other sales message through these five checks every time and watch your response rate improve.
Next post: Lee McIntyre's 5 Lessons to Grow Your Business Exponentially
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The Boring Stuff
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Every piece of copy you write is a chance to connect with a real person who has a problem you can solve. When you lead with clarity, a genuine unique selling proposition, a headline that earns attention, an offer that feels like a no-brainer, and benefits that speak to the reader's life, you give your message the best shot at landing. Keep this checklist close and run it before anything goes live.