Or, How Not To Create A Webinar
The other day, I watched a webinar about cryptocurrency.
It was titled “Cryptocurrency Beginner to Advanced Masterclass” or something similar.
It was also horrible.
As a copywriter, you get the whole “you’re just evil salesmen doing that horrid sales stuff to trick people into buying!”
For the most part, this assertion is completely incorrect. I’ll explain why now.
There Are No Copywriting Tricks
On a site devoted to sales, copywriting and generally making money through various enterprises, the above title might seem strange. It’s not though.
There are copywriting templates which you can use – the direct marketing approach yields many of them.
From AIDA through my own 19+ step system, each sales letter contains a ton of elements which increase the likelihood of someone buying a product.
Also, you have certain linguistic techniques – like emotive language or using carefully placed facts – which also increase the likelihood of sales.
These things aren’t tricks though, and it’s where the webinar I watched went wrong.
You Still Need Substance
Good copywriting sells because it lays everything in front of the prospective customer.
Think about where your reader sits on their road to becoming a customer.
If, for instance, you’re writing about cryptocurrency for beginners, you need to do a few things:
- Explain what a cryptocurrency is
- Let the person know why they should do this – in as exact terms as possible
- Give the person an idea of how to buy, sell and otherwise invest in cryptocurrency
Those three things are pretty basic. You could spend half an hour looking into those things and find the following:
- A cryptocurrency is a digital currency that uses a technology called the BlockChain
- It’s an investment vehicle because people can exchange cryptocoins like they would any other currency, yet don’t require bank accounts or merchant accounts etc. to do things
- You buy crypto-coins on one of many cryptocurrency exchanges, first by buying Bitcoin and then using that Bitcoin to buy any other coins you might want. You can either store your coins on the exchange or store them on hardware off the exchanges
As you can tell from the above, I’m not an expert.
Yet I’m not the one selling a $2000 course on cryptocurrency investment with numerous and undoubtedly more expensive upsells. I’ve still given you readers more than that webinar did.
This brings me to my point.
You can talk and use the “ONCE IN A LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY” emotive language…
You can tell people that they’ll miss out on the chance to live their dreams…
And you can tell people that all of their dreams will come true if they hand over their keys to the future to you…
But none of that is worth anything if you don’t tell them what they’re getting.
The Difference Between “Salesy” and “I Want This Product” Is Telling Them About The Product
Good copy seems like sales material to people who don’t want to buy the product.
To people who do want to buy the product though, good copy is a list of reasons to buy a product. Nothing more.
Why is this?
Because for someone who wants the product, the reasons to buy it are straightforward. They see the benefits of your solution because they have the problem and you’re just reinforcing the idea that their problem can be fixed with your product.
For people who don’t want the product, the list of benefits doesn’t trigger the same response, because, surprise, they don’t need or want the product. We aren’t concerned with them.
We are concerned with the former group though; the group that’ll buy.
You need to give details and you need to tell them what they’ll get.
If you run a webinar, it should be like any other infomercial.
It should be information-based in nature.
If you are running a course, you should centre your webinar around what’s in the course. You should tell people exactly what’s in the course and why it benefits them.
If you don’t, you’ll look like a scammer and it’ll all look like sales tricks.
Final Thoughts
The copy is only as good as the substance behind it. That’s why it’s difficult to write copy for a terrible product and the easiest thing in the world to write copy for a brilliant product.
You cannot read a simple book on copywriting and just copy/paste the “magic words” and expect them to work.
It doesn’t matter if your headline is “GET THIS PRODUCT AS A ONCE IN A LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY” If you don’t go on to explain why your reader needs that once in a lifetime opportunity.
Behind good copy is substance. Without it, you won’t sell anything.