What is the #1 Skill any Marketer Needs to Succeed?

A. The ability to write Persuasion Copywriting.

Now you’re probably thinking about all those other skills a marketer needs to generate leads and convert them to sales, and wondering why one of those other skills didn’t come up first. Well the truth is that marketing only works when you successfully manage to convince the target audience of your message, and you simply can’t do that without a skilled copywriter.

Copy does the ‘heavy lifting’ for your small business in terms of developing initial client relationships. The fact is that people simply don’t buy a $5,000 or $10,000 service from someone they don’t know just because they peered at a brochure or a website. I’m amazed by how many people don’t realise this—that marketing is NOT a one step process. What needs to happen instead is that a relationship based on knowledge and trust needs to arise before they will commit to using your services—and this begins with copy.

Great copy sparks a relationship between a potential client and your small business. It positions you as the expert, gets rid of people’s objections to buying, and keeps you relevant in potential client’s minds. It means that when they are ready to become clients, they’ll think of you first.

For an older audience, credibility will be the main factor that influences whether or not they trust you. Increasingly, however, believability is becoming more and more important to persuading audiences to trust you, listen to your message and hire you. In order to make your copy believable, it needs to explain the ‘why’ behind everything you’re offering.

7 top tips to make your copy more believable and convert leads to sales:

  • Establish a reason or motivation for your service or product. Tell the story of how or why it came into being, why you thought it was necessary or would help people. This humanises your offering and makes it more appealing. A background story that emphasises why the product is useful also makes your claims of having a great product more believable
  • Emphasise details. Even small and seemingly insignificant details establish groundwork to make your claims believable
  • Tell the story of why you’re doing what you do
  • If a single element in your copy is unbelievable to your potential customer, the whole pitch is compromised
  • Tell stories (recount, don’t make up!) of your customers that illustrate your promises actually being achieved. Give details of measurable results within a specific time frame
  • If you can get an expert to comment positively on the product, include this in your copy as it adds to the believability
  • Use testimonials from satisfied customers in your copy. This shows potential customers that you have delivered on your promises before to people who are just like them, and therefore you will be able to do so again

All these tips help to make your copy engage with people, and make the task of small business marketing and lead generation much simpler. For more expert marketing advice you can download a free information resource on Small Business Marketing or buy our new book Sales Lead Generation for Small Business on Amazon.com.

(links:

1) http://www.leadcreation.com.au/about/whitepaper

2) http://www.amazon.com/Sales-Lead-Generation-Small-Business/dp/1448686628/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256530013&sr=1-3)