Direct Response Copywriting: 7 Ways To Increase Your Ad Conversion

I’d start off by explaining the effectiveness of direct response copywriting with an illustration below.

Imagine meeting your ideal customer/client in a hangout spot.

You’re eating your food or drinking something and using your phone. 

You’re doing all these while enjoying the music and overall ambience of the place.

Now, imagine your ideal customer walks in, scans the room, and settles on the empty chair beside you. 

You catch each other’s eyes and exchange smiles/greetings. 

She gestures at your 20” luxury bone straight wig and gushes, “Omg, I love your hair!”

You tell her the hair is 3 years old. You then spend the next 10 minutes talking about your love for luxury hair. 

Also, you go on to talk about styling and maintenance, and how these things are important for hair longevity.

The two of you spoke about your favorite hair stylist, even showed her pictures of the wigs he styled for you and promised to take her there.

You move on to talk about how awesome the hangout spot is. Their food, drink, views, etc 

At some point, she asks you, “what do you do?” You tell her (not pitch her), and she goes, “Really?, I’ve been looking for a trustworthy luxury hair vendor!”

She goes ahead to tell you about her numerous shopping experiences from different hair vendors and how she’s been unlucky at buying quality hairs online from the so-called “luxury hair vendors.”

She talks about not being afraid to spend money on hairs as long as they’re of great quality.

Boom! This is where you make your sales pitch

Except now, it doesn’t sound like a pitch. It sounds like a friend helping a friend. You assure her that your hair is of great quality.

You appease her worries by even offering her money back guarantee if she buys hair from you and it’s not up to standard.

You show her your business page, show her clear pictures/videos of your customers rocking hairs from you, show her available hairs that she can choose from.

In less than 30 minutes, she’s made a choice and is sending you money for the hair.

You both part ways feeling happy and accomplished – a customer gained for you, a problem solved for her.

Now of course, you can’t hangout with all of your potential customers/clients…but that doesn’t mean you can’t forge the same emotional connection and establish the same level of trust with them online. 

And that’s where direct response copywriting comes in; 

By making your customer the center of your marketing messages…she’d listen to you as if you were chatting with her at a hangout spot on a beautiful evening.

As a business owner or freelancer…

One way to stay above your competitors while making more sales and getting new customers/clients is by using direct response copywriting.

Once you understand how to do this…acquiring and retaining customers/clients will be easier for you (I know it is for my clients)

But first…

What is direct response copywriting?

Direct response copywriting (DRC) is a form of marketing message that communicates directly to the customers and gets instant action from them.

In other words, when you use DRC in your marketing, your goal is to get a direct response from your audience as soon as they have consumed your marketing message.

Response in this context could be to:

Buy a product 

Subscribe to a service

Sign up for a newsletter or event 

Follow you on social media

And so on.

As you can see, DRC is very powerful. 

That is why I want to show you 7 ways to use it to increase your ad conversion…

• Target Specific Audience:

Direct response copywriting helps you target a specific audience because you now have a better understanding of your target audience through market research.

For example; let’s say I sell women’s fashion wear in general…

When writing my ad, I would segment my market into 3 age groups (age 20-30, age 30-45 and age 45-60)

I’d then write 3 different ads targeting my specific audience in a way that will appeal to their emotions and inspire the required action from them.

Doing this will get me more conversion and sales because I understand that a general marketing message would do a poor job of appealing to the segments of my market at once.

• Refer To Your Audience As “You” in Your Marketing Message:

This is because writing in the second person voice (you, your) creates a feeling of familiarity between you and your potential customers….almost like you are talking one on one.

Doing this will increase your chances of getting a positive reaction from your potential customers which will lead to sales and conversion.

• You Can See And Measure Results:

One of the beautiful things about direct response ads is that you can see your ad performance and measure results.

This will help you to identify what’s working for your audience and focus on it.

It’ll also help you know when to make changes and when to let go.

It helps you see and measure conversion rates without guessing.

• Grab Their Attention With a Great Headline:

Your headline is an important part of your marketing message because it’s the first thing your potential customer sees and is what determines if they should continue reading or not.

It is so important that I explained it extensively in a separate blog post.

You can read it here.

• Use Emotions To Sustain Their Interest:

One effective way to make your marketing message work like crazy is by using emotions to appeal to your potential customers.

People mostly make buying decisions based on emotions and then back it up with logic.

So why don’t you use it to your advantage?

Use what you know about your potential customers in your marketing message.

Talk about their aspirations, address their worries and fears, and then present the solution in a way that’d appeal to them.

• Create a Sense Of Urgency:

It is not enough to craft an irresistible offer for your prospective customers…you have to also make them act on that offer instantly.

SIDE-NOTE: An offer is the value you are offering your customers in exchange for something (could be money,their email addresses, etc). On the other hand, an irresistible offer is an offer that is so good, they will hardly say “no” to it.

It is very important to trigger urgency in your marketing message because the longer someone thinks about whether to buy a product or service, the more likely it is that they’ll talk themselves out of it.

Plus, using urgency helps you get more conversion and sales.

One way to use it in your marketing is by making people feel as if they’re about to miss out on a great deal or lose a great opportunity.

Triggering that fear of missing out (FOMO) is a powerful way to drive conversions and sales.

Let the following tips guide you in creating urgency in your marketing:

Make sure that you’re offering something your potential customers want AKA an irresistible offer because no urgency in this world will make someone want what they’re not interested in.

Set a deadline: If potential customers know there’s no rush to buy your product or service, they’d relax and not take action immediately. In fact, they might even forget about it forever.

Make them take action as soon as possible (ASAP) by running an offer for a limited time. You can use a countdown timer to achieve this on your website. Otherwise, keep announcing it in your marketing messages on other platforms.

Create scarcity: The scarcer a product or service is, the more people want it.

If you can highlight how scarce your product or service is…the more people want it….or at least show them that it’s about to run out…then you can make people click the call to action button before someone else does.

For people who sell physical products, one effective way to do this is to announce that you only have a certain number of the item in stock.

If you sell a service, you can make the same strategy work for you by only taking on a certain number of clients every month.

• Use a Strong Call To Action (CTA): 

Now that they’re at the end of your message…you don’t want to lose all that traffic by not adding a strong call to action that’d compel them to take the required action instantly.

Therefore, your direct response marketing message should end with a strong CTA that makes it easy for your audience to take action immediately. It should be clear and practical.

For example:

Let’s say you are using a free guide on “how to source for fully-funded scholarships in Europe” to get people to join your email list…

Instead of writing “submit” or “sign up,” as the CTA in your ad..

You can write “get your free guide now and discover how to source for fully-funded scholarships in Europe.”

Test, Tweak, Repeat And Grow Your Customer Base

I can tell you for sure that the only way to get good at using direct response copywriting in your ad is to keep doing it.

And while you are at it…make sure to test different ads (that’s how to spot what’s converting more)

And in cases where the ad isn’t performing well…make some tweaks to either the headline, body copy, the offer or the call to action.

Repeat this with your ads from now on and watch your customer base grow like wildfire.

Do you have any other tips you’d like to add?

What’s been most helpful for you in using direct response copywriting to grow your business?

PS: I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post.

If you want my team at Jacinta Ebere Digital to help you set up a highly converting marketing campaign. Just book a call below.

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