Copywriting Makeover: Making An Emotional Connection - Part 1 of 2

by: Nandang S Nugraha | Total views: 42 | Word Count: 686 | View PDF | Print View

 by: Karon Thackston

One statistic
shows that over 80% of all buying decisions are emotional. That means
your copywriting should be, too. This is something I firmly believe in
and have preached for most of my copywriting career. However, all too
often, I find people skipping the vital step of making an emotional
connection with their customers. That can be a tragic, and costly,
mistake.

Thats why I was excited when I had the
opportunity to rewrite the homepage copy for a vacation cruise service.
While the copy they used previously gave all the details and got them a
good number of bookings, it just didnt have what it takes to make me
start daydreaming about my next cruise. It didnt but it was about to!

The Problems

The
previous copy on the Cruise Vacation Center home page faced a couple of
challenges. (You can view the original copy at this link: http://www.copywritingcourse.com/CruiseVacationCenter-Original.pdf.)
The copy was very company-oriented instead of customer-oriented. It
talked about who Cruise Vacation Center (CVC) is, why the visitor
should buy from them, and some wonderful benefits CVC offers its
clients including excellent bargain rates and extra discounts. However,
all the verbiage was geared toward the company. The customer was left
out.

The home page copy also lacked emotion. It was very
matter-of-fact. In addition to making visitors aware of the wonderful
prices and deals CVC offered, I wanted to create a vision for the site
visitors. I wanted to give them what they needed in order to float off
into a daydream about fabulous ports-of-call; warm, gentle breezes; and
thrilling adventures.

While I was painting a picture of
the vacation of a lifetime, I also had to be sure to include a vital
fact. CVCs business plan was set up to be most affordable for the
customer when s/he booked online. Without sounding rude, I had to do
everything in my power to get the site visitor to book their cruise
vacation while at the site. This was an extremely important issue and a
point that needed to be woven throughout the copy.

Lastly,
the page had to uphold Cruise Vacation Centers excellent search engine
rankings. They were ranked at the top of several major engines, and the
rewritten copy couldnt jeopardize their positioning.

The Solutions

The
first step was, without question, to woo the site visitors with
delightful fantasies about their next vacation. My goal was to conjure
up all sorts of visions in the minds of Cruise Vacation Centers
visitors. I wanted the visitors to be dreaming of exotic places with
lots of fun things to do, interesting sights to see, and 24/7 access to
gourmet meals that rival any five-star restaurant. I wanted their blood
pressure to drop 10 points just from reading about the onboard staff of
hundreds who would pamper them with VIP treatment. After reading this
copy, I wanted them ready to leave on vacation today! However, I also
had to persuade them to book online rather than calling CVCs office.

During
the rewrite, I had to carefully plan the use of their primary
keyphrase, cruise vacation, so as not to disrupt their most reliable
source of business the search engines. After all, there is a delicate
balance between pleasing the search engines and appealing to site
visitors.

If I leaned too much toward the search engine
side of the equation, the conversion ratio of the home page would
suffer. In other words, Cruise Vacation Center would get lots of
visitors, but few of them would book cruises.

If I
leaned too much toward the customer side of the equation, CVCs rankings
would plummet, and they would need to find a new way to drive qualified
traffic to their site. As is normally the case with SEO copywriting,
balance was going to be vital.

In the conclusion to this
two-part series, youll see how I handled the rewrite and what the end
results of all the work were. Curious to see the new copy? Youll find
it on CVCs site: You can see the new copy on CVCs site at http://www.cruisevacationcenter.com.

by Karon Thackston © 2004

http://www.copywritingcourse.com

About the Author

Copy not getting results? Learn to write SEO copy that impresses the engines and your visitors at http://www.copywritingcourse.com. Be sure to also check out Karons latest e-report How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy) at http://www.copywritingcourse.com/keyword.

IF PUBLISHING ON A WEBSITE, USE THIS RESOURCE BOX:

Copy not getting results? Learn to write SEO copy that impresses the engines and your visitors with The Step-by-Step Copywriting Course. Be sure to check out Karons latest e-report How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy), too!

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