High Impact Copywriting – Making the Mundane, Fun!
For business owners looking to create high impact marketing and high impact copywriting, so their product or service stands out, one of the greatest challenges is to make otherwise mundane features and benefits, sound fun, new and exciting.
This is why top marketing copywriters get paid so well. It’s not easy taking something ordinary and wrapping it with high impact copywriting in order to wake the reader up and get them engaged. Unfortunately most business owners gloss over the important need to make their products and services sound extraordinary.
Just yesterday I was on a consulting call with one of my Private Client Group members who has an exceptional training course and as I read through his sales letter, he dropped the ball when it came to naming his course modules so they sounded unique and valuable. As it stood, his this part of his letter put me to sleep.
High impact copywriting SNAPS, CRACKLES and POPS! It’s lively, fun to read and the words jump off the page, captivates the reader. And it’s a skill all marketing-oriented business owners should practice.
To illustrate what I mean by high impact copywriting, here are two, real-world examples. You may have seen this first one before. It’s a classic email written by the founder of CD Baby, Derek Sivers. This email was sent to a customer just after they ordered a CD from CD Baby. Read it and study it.
Dear Mike,
Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow. A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.
Our world-renowned packing specialist lit a local artisan candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.
We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day.
I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year”. We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Sigh...
We miss you already. We'll be right here at www.cdbaby.com, patiently awaiting your return.
CD Baby
That’s high impact copywriting at its finest. It transforms and ordinary “your product has shipped” email and made it fun and exciting. This didn’t take a top copywriter to write. It just took some creative thinking on Derek’s part to craft the email, which has since become a classic in the marketing world. On a side note, I recommend Derek’s book, “Anything You Want - 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur.” You can get it on Amazon or visit his blog: http://sivers.org/ayw.
The other example I want to show you takes an even more traditional marketing piece for a very ordinary piece of hardware and makes it fun.
You can click on the image above to see the full resolution version of the user’s guide that accompanied an outlet surge protector I purchased from 360 Electrical. Peruse through it and see how their high impact copywriting makes reading their direction sheet a fun experience. Phrases like…
- Getting to Know and Love Your Surge Protector
- Use indoors-only and do not use near water. You listening, SCUBA-guy?
- If this light doesn’t come on, no bueno, use a different outlet.
- Advanced fun.
- Etc.
If you have a rather ordinary product or service, you could learn a lot by investing 5 minutes and reading the copy found in this guide. It’s another classic in my opinion.
So to help you craft your own high impact copywriting, here are a few quick tips:
- Study good copywriting and read the classic books on how to write copy.
- Keep an eye out for the few examples of good direct mail, advertisements, emails etc. that come across your desk and store them away for future reference.
- Invest in creative thinking about your marketing and copy and make a conscious effort to write high impact copy.
- Make it fun for your readers. If it feels odd as you are writing it, this means you are doing this right!
- It’s always helpful to have a valued colleague or mentor able to review your copy with fresh and objective eyes.
If you have other examples or better yet, your own crafted high impact copywriting, let me know about it and I will feature it in a future article.
I would also like to hear how others feel about this topic and what you do to write copy that stands out and gets noticed? Leave your comments below!
Mike, thanks for sharing that example of CDBABY.COM and all the good tips you share.
Your friend,
Andrew Mazer
Life is too short to be a fuddy duddy… I am converting my husband – a Cardiologist of 25 + years to change his calling card to actually be in English and not in Medicalease… a tough battle to fight but wives have ways of winning! Gonna do a split test and prove to him that my fun and understandable way will produce better results… let the games begin!
You know what my biggest fear is about writing creatively as in your examples above? Not being taken seriously. The CB Baby example above is just plain silly…as it was intended to be. Obviously Mr. Sivers is being just as silly all the way to the bank. I’ve read dozens of instructions accompanying electronic gadgets. The example above was a hoot. Maybe the only one that ever gets read from beginning to end. That’s a good thing.
The thing is though, I fear stepping out of line in my copywriting. That line is the one made by my expectations of my customers’ reactions. Will they appreciate something a little “out there,” or will it hurt my brand? As you said Mike, maybe feeling odd should be the right feeling.
And then there’s the lawyers….
Good for you Sunita! Let me know how that goes.
Richard – I get where you are coming from. You have to go with what fits with your style, audience, etc. But I am sure there is wiggle room for you to be a bit more fun…
Richard, I understand your concern because I’ve been there. Mike is one of the best know copywriters so the question is… Do you want to be taken seriously or do you want to make serious money?