General Copywriting – Interent Marketing Voices

How to Support Your Copy with Images (Instead of Just Dropping Pics on a Page)

“I want to go to there,” says Liz Lemon.
She’s just watched a sexily rumpled John Hamm walk out of the kitchen only to tell her:

Now that’s an image that inspires action, amiright?
We see.
We want.
We make happen.
The connection between sight and longing is visceral, primal – not to be ignored.
Except here’s the thing: most of us content creators do ignore it. In an effort to draw a prospect in with our words, copywriters may dismiss the power of images. Or, at best, we may find ourselves using them as meek supporting characters to

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Storyhacking: Cracking the Code Behind the Irresistible Selling Power of Stories

One evening about 30,000 years ago, a Stone Age content creator was hanging out at a firepit, social networking with his friends and family, when he posted a picture of a rhino to a cavern wall.
His target audience was immediately hooked and began inviting friends to take a look. A few even started drawing their own rhinos, cave bears and horses. Thousands of generations of followers drew and re-drew animal figures on the walls of the cave – and what’s more, similar versions of the figures were drawn

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Here’s why it’s so hard to write convincing copy

What is copy supposed to do?
We believe this: copy is your online salesperson. If it’s not selling, it’s not doing its job. If it’s not turning prospects into leads, leads into sales and sales into referrals, it’s honestly not doing its job. Which means that, generally speaking, copy is not doing its job.

The thing is that we’ve gone and made it hard for copy to do its job.
Check out what I mean – and tell me if you agree that these 2 problems are making it harder to write

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Is A/B testing failing you? Here are 19 shorter, faster paths to growth

You’re trying to grow your SaaS startup.
You’ve heard all the reasons why you should be engaging in conversion rate optimization (CRO)…
Naturally A/B testing has come up more than once in your CRO discussions.
You’ve even run a test or two. Or seventeen.
Yet despite your efforts, testing isn’t having anything resembling a material impact on your MRR. And now you’re jaded over the whole failed promise of split-testing…
You’ve come to the right place. We love A/B testing ’round these parts because, like you, we love learning. (That’s why you’re reading

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Please, for the Love of God, Read This Post (Or How to Fight Content Fatigue)

Smell that? That’s the scent of 52,776 sweaty, desperate content marketers trying to grab a tiny slice of your attention.
Okay, I made that number up.
The real number is higher.
And the reason you’re smelling those content marketers, instead of eating up what they’re dishing out, is because we’re all experiencing “content fatigue”. Our content overload detectors are so sensitive that they’re being tripped up by even the slightest infraction.
In fact, I’m betting that if you read what we posted yesterday, your detector is going off like a Geiger counter in Chernobyl.

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Seth goes short. Buffer goes long. Here’s what you should do with your content.

Blog posts. Case studies.
Email drip campaigns.
Ebooks.
Is it just me, or is everyone scrambling to add to the deluge of long content in an effort to attract new readers, additional email subscribers, and more leads that can be turned into customers?
Given the still growing popularity of inbound marketing, the flood of content promises to get even bigger.
Of course, there’s a good reason for the deluge: It works.
According to HubSpot’s latest State of Inbound industry report:
“Inbound campaigns achieve higher ROI than outbound. This holds true across different company sizes and budgets…

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Why Your Copy Needs to Pick a Fight with the Other Guy (Instead of Smiling and Shrugging)

What are you built to destroy?
That’s an aggressive idea.
The idea of being a destructive force.
After all, we build products to help people, to improve lives, to make happiness. We write about benefits and value. Our raison d’etre is to build others up.
We don’t destroy.
But… if we’ve created something better than the competition has created – if we’ve built something that our users are truly going to love – then does it, perhaps, behoove us to eliminate The Other Guy?
Is it our job as marketers to put up our dukes…

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The Ultimate Guide to No-Pain Copywriting (or, Every Copywriting Formula Ever)

Because only rookies write from scratch…
We’ve pulled together every single copywriting formula we’ve ever seen to create the ultimate guide – the most complete handbook – to copywriting formulas.
This one post will help you write all your copy faster and with greater likelihood of success.
You should be using copywriting formulas whenever you write anything.
They eliminate the guesswork that makes a lot of bad copy bad copy.
They will help you face the Blank White Page without cowering. They’ll help you generate A/B test ideas faster. They’ll help

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The Ultimate Copywriting Crash Course, as Taught by Mad Men (Infographic)

If you didn’t love Mad Men, I don’t even know how to talk to you.
Mad Men ended this Sunday after 7 incredible seasons…
…which is a terrible blow to copywriters worldwide. Thanks to Mad Men, my sister knows what I do. Thanks to Mad Men, marketers get that copywriters belong with the design team in the creative lounge. Thanks to Mad Men, I have an ever-so-slight addiction to drinking, smoking, sleeping around, changing my identity and selling stuff.
In honor of one of my fave TV series of all time

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