What Informercials Can Teach You About Copywriting

Greetings! In this SEO copywriting video, Heather discusses how watching informercials can help you be a better copywriter, and greatly improve your conversions.

Specifically, Heather demonstrates how informercials can inform your writing with structure, clear calls to action, and benefit statements that scream value to the prospect.

Heather admits that she’s actually addicted to informercials because of what they show you about the process of building excitement and getting people really pumped about buying a product, and showing that product’s value so well.

In fact, she’s willing to bet that if you’ve ever watched an infomercial, at least once in your life you’ve thought, “Huh! I want to buy that!” And that’s how powerful infomercials can be! Tune in to learn how watching infomercials can improve your writing…

Infomercials can teach you a lot about how to structure your copy

• The scripts are carefully written and designed to build excitement and convert.

The reason why informercials are so powerful is that the scripts are carefully written and designed to build excitement and convert.  The folks involved in informercials know what they’re doing.

• Everything is measured, so producers can see what works and what doesn’t.

And they know that because they measure EVERYTHING: they have a track record of what works, what doesn’t, and so everything they do is designed with conversions in mind.

• Plus, they make companies a LOT of money.

With their amazing set of skills, informercial copywriters make companies a LOT of money.  Here are three things they do very, very well:

1. But Wait! There’s more…

•  How are you promoting the value of your product or service?

We’ve all seen and heard the “But wait! There’s more!” and this is fun, because what they’re doing here is to sell you on the product and then some.

So when you’re watching the informercial you can get excited about the product, but then after you know the price, you find that they’ve added all this extra stuff and that helps pump up the value: so if your were already set to buy the product at $9.95, when you see all this other stuff that you can get for $9.95 then you’re more than ready to buy.

Really think about how you are promoting the value of your product or service!

• Benefit statements are crucial. You need to tell your prospects “what’s in it for them.”

(Yep, that’s Heather’s WIIFM guy in the screenshot.) Are you really showing the customer what’s in it for him? Those benefit statements are crucial. If you watch informericals, you’ll notice that they may talk a little bit about the product/service features, but everything ties back into the benefit statements.

• You want your prospects to think, “I NEED to have this. Now.”

So it’s not just building a little bit of a need – it’s showing that urgency and intensity so prospects are actually excited to contact you!

2. Call now! Operators are standing by!

The second thing that informercials do is the “Call now! Operators are standing by!” They have calls to action everywhere, throughout the informercial.

• Check your copy. Do you make your call to action clear?

The typical format of the informercial is sharing a little bit of information about the product, and then interjecting “how to order.” Then it goes back to sharing a little bit more information about the product, and then again, cutting in with “how to order” with that phone number.

So when you’re looking at your Web copy, you want to check to see that your call to action is clear.

It’s amazing how many pages, both on the product side and the services side, make it hard to understand what that next action step would be, and how to take it.

• Is it easy to take action?

You want to make sure that not only do you have a call to action (e.g., “buy now!” “contact us today!”) but that it’s easy to take action by providing hyperlinks and buttons, and that everything is very clear to the interested buyer.

• Consider adding a call to action in the content, as well as “add to cart.”

If you’re selling a product, like a lot of folks you might have that little “add to cart” button, and that’s great – but consider that you can also include calls to action with the copy as well.

Amazon does this very well, with its checkout message of “Customers like you also purchased…”  That is another call to action for another conversion.

Maybe you want people to download a white paper, so if people don’t buy from you initially, at least they’ve downloaded something from you and/or they’re on your mailing list.

Make sure that Call to Action is in the content.

3. Hurry, this offer is only available for the next few minutes…!

The third thing about informercials that Heather really loves is that “Hurry…” message.

• Limited-time offers add a sense of urgency.

Well, we all know that that “next few minutes” offer is most likely available whenever you call and you ask for it. But that ticking clock – where it shows that there’s a countdown – provides that sense of urgency that people really respond to.

• If you’re running a sale, make sure that you mention the end date.

It’s funny, how you can run a sale and tell folks that the sale ends on Tuesday – and people may not buy anything until Monday night, because they know the sale is ending soon, and so they suddenly they have that sense of urgency,

So if you’re running a sale, make sure that you mention the end date: make it really, really clear because there are going to be those folks who procrastinate to the very last minute, and you want to let them know when the sale ends.

If you’ve been playing with sales and not mentioning an end date, try stating the end date and see how that boosts your conversions.

• Email campaign? Consider sending another email to remind folks of your limited-time offer.

If you’re running an email campaign and it’s a really cool, exclusive sale, you might want to consider sending another email to remind folks that it’s a limited-time offer.

So for instance, send a brief email of “Just 24 hours left for you to purchase your X at this incredible price.”  And see if you get another bump in conversion rates.

photo thanks to S.wplunkett