7 Defensive Copywriting Strategies

In Scientific Advertising, Claude Hopkins teaches us that “any … attempt to sell, if apparent, creates sales resistance.” This is as true for copywriters as it is for door-to-door salespeople. If you’ve written sales copy, you’re already familiar with the truth of this principle.

To circumvent this resistance, you have to take a different approach. Applying the defensive perspective makes a lot of sense.

Here are 7 defensive copywriting strategies that will help overcome obstacles to closing the deal. They may even prevent those hurdles from entering your readers’ minds.

1) Express genuine interest in and empathy for your prospects’ desires/needs. This can be challenging. You may have to edit until you get the tone and language just right, but it’s possible.

This goes a long way to removing the resistance to being sold. Your reader feels valued by you; you think of him as a person, not a customer. Major distinction.

Read the other 6 tips on ProCopyTips.

Why You’re Not Making Any Money Online

Ryan Healy listed 12 reasons why most people don’t make any money in their internet “businesses.”

If you’re experiencing difficulty getting money flowing online, this will help. You might see yourself here.

Check out 12 Reasons You Can’t Make Your First $50 Online.

How Would George Carlin Respond to Your Ads?

From the Marketing Beyond Advertising blog:

Do your ads sound like ads? Do your ads boast about your superior service, your wide selection, or name the number of years you’ve been in business?

If so, you may be guilty of Ad-Speak.

Introducing the Carlin Ad Speak Calculator!

This cool tool will analyze your advertising copy and tell you if it sounds too salesy, too much like and ad.

I think its rather neato.

Advertising that sounds like advertising is easy for your target audience to ignore. If it does get read, it’s often disregarded.

Your message has to interrupt your readers enough to grab their attention, channel desire, and direct them to you and what you offer.

The Carlin Ad Speak Calculator is just another way to take a critical look at your copy. It will even list the elements that you’ve used that are commonly considered advertising lingo

Have a little fun, a little laugh, and another look at the quality of your message.