Does your copy paint pictures?

I'm not the only one to stress the importance of copy - here is Brad Callen on the topic:

Here's a question for you: what makes people buy from the page or the screen? It's sales copy. And yes, it's because you are selling them a solution and not the features. But have you ever thought about what goes on inside a prospect's mind, from the time they see your sales copy till the time the they have an “aha!” moment and decide to buy your product?

Sales copy is a static medium. You can't use your positive body language, your disarming smile and a confident voice to sell – all you've got is words. Jumbles of letters. How the hell do you sell from that? The key is NOT what you say - even the most focused and ingenious copy can fall flat if it doesn't have “what it takes” to create that desire, that spark inside your prospect's head. It's all about delivery. Not visual delivery of your sales pitch but… The words that you use to deliver your sales pitch.

Michael Fortin calls them UPWORDS. Joe Vitale, another great copywriter, tagged the whole process as hypnotic marketing. Famous marketers of an older era such as David Ogilvy and Joe Sugarman swore by the principle. It's dead simple. You have to translate all that positive body language, all your confidence, all your energy, into a tightly written, powerful, visually stimulating sales copy. Visual stimulation. Painting pictures for your prospects to imagine.

This is what separates the great from the merely good in marketing and copywriting. If you want your prospect to be fully convinced that you are the best deal in town, use your words not only to sell the solution, but to paint that solution as a powerful, eyeball-grabbing picture in their minds. And once you're inside their heads, you just have to connect the dots and show them (once again using words as a visual tool) how they can use your product to erase a problem that has plagued them until they read your copy. Build your sales copy using your words as visual aids – to support, represent and ultimately sell your solution to your prospect.

Take a good, hard look at your sales copy. Are you missing the whole point? Does your copy lack focus? Are you just selling the features and assuming that the prospects will do the mental legwork for you and become motivated by themselves?

So what are you waiting for? Challenge what you have written and test whether your new ideas and copy work any better for you.