Mr. & Mrs. Internet Marking, Meet Web Copywriting

If you are just starting out in Internet marketing or are struggling to promote your online business, it may time for you get familiar with web copywriting. Writing for an online audience is different from general copywriting or copy for the print media.

A picture may be worth a thousand words but it is the power of your words that will persuade your online audience to take action. The primary goal of web copywriting then is to promote your business or your expertise if you are a coach or a consultant.

Sure, you can outsource copywriting or buy Private Label Rights (PLR) articles for online content. However, you must understand the true cost of those options. Do you really want to risk the reputation and credibility of your business by depending completely on others? Their primary motivation is to sell your their services or PLR products and not grow your business.

Now that you understand why web copywriting is so important to marketing your online business, let’s get very familiar with it.

What is web copywriting?

Copywriting is a generic word that describes several types of writing, all of which are useful for marketing and credibility in your business. As I have said before, the main purpose of online copywriting in its many forms is to get the reader to DO something. It could be signing up for a newsletter, buying a product, or registering for a webinar.

Unlike the printed media, online copywriting requires you to maintain a delicate balance between the needs of search engines and communication with your human readers without dumbing down your copy in an obvious attempt to stuff keywords for optimization (SEO).

Why use copywriting to promote your business?

Copywriting is a necessity to grow your online business to grow. Word-of-mouth marketing works great for a brick-and-mortar business and will only you take you so far when it comes to driving traffic to your website. The internet gives you access to a global market but you can’t be there in person to meet and greet you visitors 24/7.

Since you are not limited to your local area for your core audience, your web content must be your online salesperson and help those who are searching for you and your product, find you in search engines. Online, it will be a challenge to reach this market without good copywriting.

What kinds of copywriting materials should you use?

Let’s look at some of the key pieces of online content that you must have to market your online business. They are:

Sales letter: Whether you are writing one of those long sales letters or mini-site to market an information product or using a blog that pre-sells an affiliate product, your copywriting is sales copy. It acts as your online direct response letter to induce your visitors to take action now.

Squeeze pages or landing pages: A squeeze page has only objective, which is to collect the visitors name and email address in exchange for receiving something of value, a free eBook, report or a multi-part email course. A landing page is where your visitors first land when they click on a link. Typically, it is used in conjunction with pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Even though these web pages are much shorter than a sales letter, they require skillful copywriting in order to convince your visitors to part with their email address. Sometimes, it is a bigger challenge to write these pages because you must make a compelling case quickly and succinctly.

Press Releases (PR): In today’s Web 2.0 world, PR is no longer for journalists only. They are great for reaching your target audience directly. Use PR whenever you launch a new product, service, and site or want to announce a major business accomplishment. The key to remember when writing PR is not to make it into a long sales pitch. It should be about how the reader benefits from your solution. (See Writing Press Releases for Web 2.0). You can learn more about using PR to promote your online business from my small report, The Solopreneur’s Guide to Marketing with Press Releases.

Product descriptions: This is also a form of copywriting because they are meant to get the reader to click the BUY button before leaving the page. Writing persuasive product descriptions requires being creative with your copywriting because they are short and you need to grab their attention. You want to use every opportunity to make the sale.

Now that you know the importance of copywriting in converting readers from visitors to customers, would like to learn how to do it yourself? You don’t need to become a professional copywriter or spend hundreds of dollars or weeks of your time learning a new skill. You need to get my new product, “SoHo Write Marketing Suite.” It an affordable and a complete suite of sales-sucking copywriting and content marketing tools for solopreneurs and small business owners.