NLP Copywriting

Attract more sales from your website by learning the Secret Language of influence

Learn and apply these 10 NLP copywriting techniques to your website, emails, sales video or blog posts to dramatically increase the conversion rate of visitors to your website to become paying customers.

I am often faced with the question ‘how do I achieve this?’ So, I’ve decided to compile a list of 10 tips that cover the first four stages on the hierarchy of marketing needs (see graphic). Each of the tips will have a positive impact individually but when applied synergistically, will increase your chance of converting more browsers into buyers exponentially. The fifth stage on the graphic will be covered in a future post.

So let’s take a deeper look at how you can shape and feed your marketing content with powerful Subliminals, subtle pre-suppositions and predicates to massively impact your audience to take your call to action.

• Striking a rapport is all-important in the trust-building process, but before you can do that you first need to know, who you are looking to strike a rapport with. Or, put another way, who and what makes up your ideal prospect or your market if you will?

There is no exact science to this but what I do is imagine what my ideal prospect would look like to me.  Are they male or female? How old are they and what kind of home do they live in? Do they own a business? Do they have a family? Try and create a ‘virtual’ profile or understanding from as much information as you can such as; their social standing, education, location, career, hobbies and interests and so on…You will also have your own experience from past and current clients to help form a base reference point to start with.

• Once you have a clear reference point or profile of your ideal prospect and the demographic they belong to, go ahead and delve deeper by using a ‘free to use’ analytics tool such as – Audience Insights (see tutorial here) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDbnYMhbTBY into understanding the common interests, aspirations, concerns and traits of your target demographic. You will learn so much from this exercise and gain valuable insights, which will help you learn to communicate much more effectively towards meeting your audience on their path of travel.

  Take this knowledge and infuse your web copy, blog posts, sales emails and sales videos with references to the wider interests or concerns that are likely to apply to a large proportion of your demographic. Nothing builds rapport more quickly than showing an interest in what interests or concerns are expressed by your prospects. Remember the saying? ‘People like people – like themselves!’

• Next, open up a word document or similar and draw up a list of the features your offering provides and then match those features up with the benefits they will undoubtedly gain.

  The aim here is to relate or empathise with your target markets’ most pressing needs, wants, concerns, desires, worries or problems. Remember, it’s the ‘benefits’ that motivate people to take action and buy – not the features!

  A lot of people are only really interested in the features of a product or service if they are comparing like for like or to justify their buying decision in the eyes of others.

• Now you should be ready to craft or rework any existing web or other marketing copy content and aim it with laser-like precision directly at your chosen audience.

  Always start with a strong headline that in no uncertain terms will tell your target market exactly what they can expect from your service.

• Make your headline short and use an analyser to score your creation for overall effectiveness. Here is one I use – https://coschedule.com/headline-analyzer

• Always fire your big guns first! This means stating the most powerful benefit or promise you are making in the very first sentence of your content. So even if they only skim-read the rest of your copy you’ve at least fed in your strongest benefit right from the outset.

  Ensure your page or other content includes sub-headings to break your copy into smaller chunks which makes it easier to read. Also, highlight your subheadings in bold to make them stand out.

  By doing this you create a secondary reading path which is proven to help increase memory retention and indelibly ingrain your key message into their subconscious. This also benefits time-poor speed readers who want their information in a hurry or on the go.

  Add bullet points as reinforcers and start them with a verb. Action words or directives will help motivate prospects toward taking action.

• Try and feed the body of your copy content with action-orientated bullet points and headlines that focus on ‘away from’ and ‘towards’ motivation types. Addressing the needs of both will ensure you don’t leave anybody out!

• Use a ‘yes set’ to claim unconscious micro-commitments along the way.

  For example; “I am sure that you like so many other people in your situation will look forward to a positive (outcome whatever that may be) to your particular needs/problem right now…” or words along similar lines.

  Repeat similar pre-suppositions for example; “ Don’t be too surprised at how easy you find it” or, “Before you choose which (service) you’d like, I’d like you to show you even more of the benefits you will gain…”

• Use words and phrases known to connect with the prime predicates that visual, auditory and kinaesthetic (VAK) people use such as; look, see, visualise, listen, hear, say, shout, sing, feel, understand, know, gut feeling, instinct etc.

  We all lean towards predicates at either a larger or a lesser degree. The challenge is because we don’t know which predicates are most dominant in our readers, we need to try and include as many VAKs from above. If you do, you won’t go too far wrong.

• Consider the hierarchy of needs as defined by Maslow.

  The graphic I’ve used in this piece was inspired by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which is a motivational theory in psychology comprising a five (or eight) tier model of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid.

  If you can write your copy content that addresses at least three of the primary needs as defined by Maslow for your audience, then you will have gone a long way towards subtly influencing the rate of your conversions of browsers into buyers.