3 Most Common Copywriting Mistakes & How to Fix Them With These Foolproof Tricks to Up-Level Your Copy

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Your copywriting drives your sales and profitability. It helps you to be seen and heard by your target customer, and it helps persuade people to buy from you.

Good, effective, powerful marketing copy is key to the success of your business, especially in this digital age when consistent communication leads to trust, relationships, and customer loyalty – all essential to cutting through the noise, standing out from the crowd and competition.

Below are three common copywriting mistakes you need to avoid to keep driving sales. And if you’ve made these mistakes, don’t worry and keep on reading. You can revert these mistakes with the following simple, foolproof tricks and up-level your copy:

MISTAKE #1: Selling your products or services, not what they actually want

If your marketing copy focuses on talking about your products or services, it can come off sales-y and pushy. People are being sold to every day and probably every minute of the day, it takes more than talking about your products and services to stand out.

To fix this, know this first – People aren’t buying what you sell. They’re buying what your products or services will do for them.

Therefore, share the results and transformation that they will get after having used your products or services.

How can you actually avoid or fix pushy copy that emphasizes too much on what you sell? Here’s a simple trick. For every time you want to talk about your products or services, put yourself in the shoes of your target customers and ask, “What’s in it for me?”

Consider the answer from your target customers’ perspective, address the reason and the headache that prompted your target customer to shop for what you sell, and focus on their desired results from your products or services.

MISTAKE #2: Focusing on you and forgetting the customer journey

Most of us want to tell the world what makes our company, our team, and what we sell different from other people, how great our offers are, etc. However, when you keep talking about what you want to talk about and share marketing copy all about you, you lose people’s attention. Instead, your target customers should be the focus.

Create your marketing copy with the customer journey in mind. Address their concerns, doubts, fears, and desires to connect with them and to persuade them why they should buy from you.

Here’s a simple way to find out if your copy focuses too much on you – On every page of your website and marketing collateral, do a word search on “I,” “we,” “us,” and “me.” Get the total word count for all of these words. Then do another word search and get the word count for the word, “you.” If the first word count is greater than the latter, you need to shift your marketing copy and use it to help walk the readers through their customer journey.

MISTAKE #3: Sharing too much about things people don’t care about

Business owners and founders often overshare about the specific processes, features, methodologies, and approaches they used to create what they sell, hoping to stand out this way. However, the “hows” aren’t what resonate with your target customers. The benefits are what really matter to them.

To correct this, before you mention a specific process, approach, or method of how you created what you sell or a particular product feature or tool, ask with your customers’ perspective, “So what? Why does it matter?”

By asking these questions, you will be able to dive deeper into the benefit(s) of each technical detail and help your target customers understand why they should care and value these details.

It’s time to fix these three major copywriting mistakes that are costing you sales and opportunities!

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