Why is the conversion effect of your copy always limited?

What is the most important feature of a copy that can sell products?

• "At least it can stimulate consumption desire, making people want to buy it after seeing it."
• “It can make people trust it, at least they won’t doubt the quality of the product”
• “There has to be a very convincing selling point.”
• …

Maybe your answer is something like this.

But I think that one of the most important features of copywriting that can sell products is that it takes the consumer’s perspective and designs the content of the copywriting based on the process by which they come into contact with the copywriting.

The reason why most copywriting has limited conversion ability is often not because the selling point is not good enough, trust is not established, or desire is not mobilized, but because the entire process of consumer exposure to the copywriting is not taken into consideration.

That is to say, you should consider and provide solutions for every link in the entire process, but you only focus on a single link. In this way, the conversion effect is naturally very limited.

So, what is the process by which people are exposed to any marketing message?

In 1898, Elmo Lewis proposed the marketing communication model AI DA , which holds that the process from consumers being exposed to marketing information to completing a purchase can be divided into four consecutive stages: attention, interest, desire, and action, depending on the degree of their response.

Therefore, only by taking targeted measures in these four reaction stages can the conversion effect of the copy be maximized and the marketing goal be achieved.

1. Attract attention: Can my copy grab the user’s attention in one second?

In the age of information overload, countless advertisements are doing their best to "harass" users every day, but users' attention resources are very limited. As a result, a large amount of bland information will be filtered out by the brain, and only a small amount of information can enter the brain for deep processing.

Therefore, it becomes particularly important to make your own copy become that small part.

So, now think about it, which information do you think is easier to enter your brain?

I think it might be that the United States launched a trade war against China, Hawking passed away, scientists discovered a new type of human organ, Amazon's market value evaporated by 53 billion, and so on.

These information all have one thing in common: abnormal and unexpected .

Yes, we pay more attention to abnormal information, which is easily explained by evolutionary psychology:

——In ancient times, when your companion was walking normally, you would not pay special attention to him, but if he was walking and suddenly accelerated to run (abnormal information), you would immediately turn your head to see what happened.

Maybe he saw a ferocious beast and was running away. It could also be that it has seen its long-missed prey and is chasing it.

So what happens if you don't pay attention to this abnormal information?

Obviously, there are two possible outcomes: you don’t even know a lion is coming and end up being eaten; or you don’t see the prey and don’t put in the effort to hunt it, so you can only watch others enjoy a delicious dinner alone that night.

Therefore, extreme attention to abnormal information is a prerequisite for human survival and reproduction. It has been written into our most basic genes.

Therefore, if you want your copy to stand out from the crowd of information and allow consumers to pay attention to you even when they are overloaded with information, you must provide abnormal information in the copy.

For example, Alipay’s stuttering series of copywriting , with N identical words lined up, attracted a lot of people’s attention.

The cheap Weilong spicy strips had a high-end Apple-style advertisement, which created a huge contrast and brought a surge of attention.

(2) Create interest - Can my copy create purchasing interest among users?

At this point, consumers have noticed you, what should you do?

Obviously, the next step in the consumer response process is to arouse interest.

To achieve this goal, the most important way is to provide highly convincing reasons to arouse consumers' purchasing motivation.

For example, the copywriting of Guazi Used Cars is "sold directly from individual to individual, with no middlemen making a profit from the difference." This sentence is the best reason to use melon seeds.

In fact, you will find that if the copywriter wants to complete the task of sales conversion, arousing motivation is an important prerequisite, which can even become a criterion for distinguishing good copywriters from bad copywriters.

But some people will definitely have doubts: I think what you said is wrong, look at the copywriting of Coca-Cola , "Refresh and Cheer up", "Refresh", which focuses on emotional appeal and does not arouse motivation at all. Can you say it is bad copywriting?

But one thing is that Coca-Cola is not a startup brand . You have to know that when it was first launched into the US market, the copy was not "joy and cheer", but "non-alcoholic beverage of a great country". At that time, the United States implemented prohibition, and Coca-Cola seized this market opportunity to provide drinks with similar effects to alcohol (refreshing) but without alcohol, which won the favor of many Americans.

This is what I said before, "Can you become famous by shooting a heartwarming TVC? Small brands can’t sit still anymore! 》 As mentioned in the article "The Big Brands Who Make the Most of Their Moments", many startup brands idolize big brands in marketing and promotion . When they see others making a heartwarming commercial that goes viral on WeChat Moments , they also want to make one and dream of becoming famous overnight. When they see others' copywriting is so touching, they think, "I want to be more touching than them."

But these are not what startup brands need to do. Startup brands have not yet established basic cognition in the user’s brain, so the first priority must be motivational marketing to let users understand you, know you, and have reasons to buy you. Don’t forget, that’s what the biggest brands did when they first emerged.

(III) Stimulate desire - Can my copy stimulate the user's desire to buy?

As mentioned above, the most important way to create interest is to arouse motivation.

But it should be noted that motivation and desire are very different and are two completely different things. In marketing, a person's motivation to buy generally comes from rational persuasion; while the emergence of desire is often not based on rationality, but comes from instinct.

For example, a health product whose main marketing slogan is “makes the body healthier” is motivational persuasion - the purchasing behavior is mostly the result of rational analysis. However, if the main selling point is "Your parents have given so much for you, you should care about them, give them xx health products, and show your filial piety", it is emotional persuasion - the purchasing behavior comes from your instinct to fill the sense of debt.

Back to the topic, after creating interest as above, you have provided convincing reasons, and at this point, consumers generally have the motivation to buy.

However, motivation does not equal purchase, because it is still at the rational level of persuasion. Next, you need to make good use of human instincts to mobilize their desires and increase the potential energy of demand.

So, which instincts can we use?

1. The desire for “something for nothing” or “something for little effort”

Humans are naturally lazy, and in the hunting era, everyone wanted to work less and gain more. This is reflected in contemporary times, where consumers desire "low prices" - obtaining target objects at low cost.

However, in marketing, price cuts, promotions, discounts, and clearance sales are, in most cases, not a persuasive reason to arouse motivation, but simply an exploitation of instinct.

If consumers already have the motivation to buy but are just hesitating, then discounts and promotions can give them the final push and many people will place orders directly.

2. Desire for resonance

Another instinct that can trigger people's desire to buy is resonance .

When someone says what you have always wanted to say, you will feel understood; when someone criticizes a phenomenon that you have always hated, you will feel supported; when someone does something for you that you have always wanted to do but have not done, you will feel helped.

These feelings are the sense of resonance.

If consumers resonate with your copy, it will create a feeling that "we are in the same group", which will quickly narrow the psychological distance between them and the brand and promote purchases.

For example, the slogan of Red Star Erguotou is “The more you have nothing, the more you will resolutely move forward.” It expressed many of the thoughts of wanderers.

3. Raw Emotion

In addition to low prices and a sense of resonance, there is another more common way to stimulate desire: exploiting people's primitive emotions .

For example, once consumers’ fear is aroused, they will have a desire to eliminate this unpleasant feeling.

Therefore, in the education industry, which is prone to fear, their copywriting is often like this:

• "Don't let your children lose at the starting line"
• "Time will eventually punish those who are unwilling to change"
• “You can refuse to learn, but your competitors won’t”

Similarly, a sense of indebtedness is also a primitive emotion.

When your family, friends, and partners have given so much to you and you have nothing to repay them for, when you are too busy with work to visit your parents or spend time with your children, you will feel a sense of guilt.

At this time, if the product copy focuses on the appeal of "compensating others", it will be able to win the favor of a large number of consumers.

4. Promoting Action - Can my writing effectively promote action?

After the three steps of attracting attention, creating interest, and arousing desire, consumers at this moment no longer just want your product, but are very eager for it. Yes, they were moved.

But that’s all, are we just waiting for customers to come?

Not really. Before actually pressing the purchase button to pay, their brains will once again return to rationality.

In 1960, Professor Bauer of Harvard University proposed the famous perceived risk theory . He believes that consumers' purchasing decisions are implicitly based on uncertainty about the results, and this uncertainty comes from the various risks they may perceive after purchasing the product. If these risks are not addressed, they will give up on buying the property even if they want it.

So, what are these perceived risks? How can I solve this?

Financial risk – Is the product too expensive? Wasted money?

Reference solution: value reconstruction

"Only one dollar a day, read 50 books a year"

Time risk - Does the product require adjustment, repair or return that will take a lot of time?

Reference solution: no reason to return or exchange

Health risks – Is the product harmful to my health?

Common solution: authoritative endorsement

Social risk - Will using your product damage my image?

Reference solution: Provide reasons

Functional risk - Does the product really perform as well as you say?

Reference solution: Sales volume is far ahead

Psychological risks - What should I do if I feel psychologically burdened after using it?

Common solution: Activate compensation psychology

(ps: There are many other ways to deal with these risks. Due to space limitations, I will not list them all. Remember this theory. Next time you write copy, find targeted solutions based on different products.)

Conclusion

If after reading this article, you only remember one thing. So, what I most want you to remember is the AIDA model, which can describe the entire process of consumers' exposure to marketing information.

With this model in mind, the next time you write copy, your thinking will not just stay on a single link (such as focusing only on the interest creation stage), but you will deliberately consider every stage that the consumer is in, so as to optimize the copy globally.

In addition, the AIDA model can also improve your efficiency in modifying copy. When you find that the conversion effect of the copy is not good after it is released, you may not have to kill the copy and rewrite it as you did in the past. At this time, you can take the model, compare the content of each link, check them one by one, find the problematic parts, and then make targeted modifications and adjustments.

The author of this article @盐商小欧 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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