The Art of the Sell
As any writer worth their words knows, being able to construct your work to appropriately effect and impact your audience is one of the most valuable skills of the trade. For mystery fiction writers this effect may be feelings of intrigue or suspicion. For history, or science writers, this impact may be the learning of new information on a subject of interest. In copywriting, however, the desired effect could be boiled down to growing the reader's interest and desire for your topic. Essentially, you are selling them a product or idea with your words, and while there are many tools and techniques available to writers to do so, using words that sell is one of the most important.
What are Words that Sell?
If you're a marketer, copywriter, or blogger, seeking more conversions from your written content, understanding the concepts behind words that sell, and knowing how to use them, is imperative in today's online environments. Certain Words and the way we use them can have profound emotional and psychological effects on the reader. Developing an understanding of this is crucial to choosing and using words that sell. Perhaps this is best illustrated using the example of one of the most powerful words there is, when trying to get your audience's attention:
You
Choosing the word 'you,' instead of 'we,' or 'us,' immediately makes your reader a part of what they are reading, and it goes without saying that humans are ultimately more engaged and involved when we are a part of something. In addition, this usage of 'you,' also subtly changes the focus in the reader's mind from you attempting to sell them something, to enhancing their life in a better way. For example, if you were to say:
"We can meet almost anywhere for your consultation, including work, home, restaurants, or our offices."
A better, more customer inclusive way, to phrase this, using words that sell, would be:
"You can schedule your consultation for almost anywhere to meet your busy schedule, including work, home, restaurants, or our offices."
Further examining how certain words impact users emotionally, 'because' is another powerful word to add to your arsenal immediately. 'Because,' is a way of providing reason to people, and giving people a reason can be a pretty powerful influence. Just look at Harvard psychologist, and Professor, Ellen Langer's research into the willingness of people standing in line at a busy copy machine, to let someone skip ahead of them, when having a reason for doing so.
Additionally, using words like, 'picture,' 'visualise,' or 'imagine,' offer your audience an opportunity to escape their real-world troubles, if only briefly, and may subliminally link your topic or product with a more relaxed state in their mind. As you can see, using words like 'you,' 'visualise,' and 'because,' can have some startling psychosomatic effects on your readers, and having a broader understanding of how and why this happens can help strengthen your own ability to choose words that sell for your own writing.
Where and How to Use Words that Sell
Considering the emotion that you're wanting to tap into with your audience is essential in choosing the best words to sell your content or products. Having the proper words, or phrases, to speak to the reader is the first step into making a conversion. Consider these words when promoting a new offer or product:
- Innovative
- Unique
- Introducing
- Announcing
- Fresh
Or these words to convey a sense of one-of-a-kind specialness:
- Exclusive
- Limited
- Select
- Premiere
- Choice
Or, for a sense of urgency:
- Direct
- Attention
- Hurry
- Only
- Now
Using these words, or words like these, subtly grabs the attention of the reader and keeps them engaged in your writing. Let's take a look at how you can use words that sell, and ultimately phrases that sell, to promote conversions for your brand, blog, or business.
CTA on Blogs
It can be easy to spend a lot of time on the body of a blog post without paying much attention to your Call to Action. However, a casual reader to a conversion is just one well worded CTA away. Some of the best words that sell for blog CTAs include:
- Sign Up Free! – Everybody loves anything free and offering a free sign up in your CTA is an excellent way to drive response rates and interest.
- Get Started! – A simple but effective CTA that's made up of highly actionable power words to motivate readers to check out your content or products.
- Contact Us Today! – Sometimes all that's needed to gain a conversion is offering a simple means of contact.
- Explore! – Not only does the word Explore entice readers to delve further into your content or product information but makes them feel like they're going on an adventure in the process.
- Discover! – Much like Explore, Discover provides a sense of mystery and excitement to lure a potential customer into becoming a conversion.
Social Postings
Promoting interest, engaging with potential customers, and ultimately converting that potential into reality, is what social media is all about for online marketers. Employing words that sell on social media, though using the same concepts as anywhere else when it comes to connecting with readers, takes on a slightly different form in that you are attempting to gain the trust and interaction of your friends and followers so as to organically introduce them to your content or products. Using words, terms, and phrases like fair price, fair treatment, caring, competency, quality, please, sorry, and even simply, trust, in your social media posts, has been shown to increase trust in a social media setting.
Being able to effectively use words that sell is not limited to aiding you in gaining human customers but is also essential in being able to promote yourself on the internet. Search engine algorithms make use of keywords to further boost your online presence. If worded incorrectly, or unknowingly, your webpage, blog, or digital store can quickly become lost in the back pages of Google.
SEO
In SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, one of the most popular means of driving traffic to websites, online stores, and social media pages, using the right keywords is everything. This means knowing what words are going to sell your specific online content most effectively. This does an excellent job of breaking down the reasons why choosing the right keywords can make SEO such an effective means of gaining attention for your content or products, but ultimately good keywords should be those that stick out in the customer's mind when they think of your brand.
The Importance of Words that Sell
As you can hopefully now see, making the right word choice, and structuring your writing around words that sell, can greatly affect just how much your audience engages with your content, and your ability to turn readers into believers, and ultimately into customers. If you find yourself with a blog piece, social media post, or bit of copywriting, that just doesn't seem to grad the reader's attention the way it should, remember to look back over the words listed here to see if there is something that would make it more attractive to potential customers. Above all, don't forget to consider the payoff for your audience, and if your words are truly selling your vision.
