Direct Response Copywriting – Complete Guide [2023]

Direct response copywriting is one of the best ways to communicate with your target audience.

Whether you want to advertise your products or simply inform your customers about your brand, you can always leverage copywriting to capture their attention. 

An excellent copy published on your landing page can help you drive more traffic and realize ROI overtime.

When it comes to creating sales copy for digital marketing, most people resort to direct response copywriting. It is like hiring a salesperson to reach out to your prospective customers and wait for a return at the comfort of your bed.

What Is Direct Response Copywriting?

Direct response copywriting is a process of coming up with sales copies that have the objective of getting an immediate or timely response from the target audience.

For example, when writing a sales copy to promote a new or existing product, a copywriter may focus more on ensuring the reader (customer) responds immediately by making a purchase.

Direct response copywriting is very lucrative because of the impact it has on laying the foundation for content marketing.

To convert readers to potential customers, you must have excellent copywriting skills and come up with the best pieces that convince your customers. 

How To Write Direct Response Copy?

Here are the steps to follow to write a direct response copy so that your prospects take an action as soon as they finish reading your copy.

Step 1: Understand The Product First 

The first step to writing the best direct response copy for any business is knowing everything about the product. Yes, to market or sell a product to a potential customer, you should have all the details about the particular product. 

Having all-round information about a product helps you to be more precise when creating the best sales copies. The reason is that you know what customers may be looking for in the product, and you let them know it’s there for them.

Notably, David Ogilvy, the famous direct response copywriter, must have known the significance of understanding a product first when he came up with the famous headline “At 60 miles per hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.” 

Reportedly, it took him three weeks to figure out what headline was the best for the Rolls-Royce advert. By knowing more about the product, David was able to come up with the most compelling sales copy for target customers. Here is a screenshot of the famous David Ogilvy’s sales copy.

The point here is that you should always research more as a direct response copywriter before you can create a sales copy of a product.

Any direct response copywriting project starts by learning more about the product or services that you want to market before coming up with a piece that you believe will convince your readers to take appropriate action.

There is an exemption here. As a business owner, you probably know a lot about your product or business, right? You have complete knowledge of how the product works, its key features, pros, cons, and what you think customers may be looking for when they opt for it. 

When you think of creating a direct response sales copy that will position your product or service to prospective customers, you should start creating a sales copy using the information you have. It is needless to carry out extensive research when you have in-depth knowledge about the product and service you are offering.

Before you start creating a sales copy, you should write down the benefits, features, and all the important information about the product you want to advertise. Having the information at your fingertips makes it more convenient to write the most compelling and informative sales copies.

Step 2: Prepare A Complete Product Description 

Once you have researched the product that you want to advertise, you can go ahead and prepare a complete product description. Below are some questions that you can ask yourself when preparing the product description:

How can you describe the product in your own words?

When answering this question, you don’t have to provide more details. Think of it this way: a customer has just stepped into your shop, and they are asking you about a product they have spotted on your shelves. 

What do you tell them? You just provide a simple description of the product that can give the customer some rough insights into what the product is all about.

What makes the product you are advertising that special? 

In this part, you should bring out a key feature or the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) of the product or service that other competing products do not exhibit. 

What is it that the product offers which others do not have? Is there anything on the product that makes it stand out from the rest of the park? Make the customer believe that the product is actually one of the best they can lay their hands.

Let’s say you were creating a sales copy for software designed for editing e-books. I can call it Complete Editor. Here is how your sample answer may look like for this type of product:

“The Complete Editor stands out because it is light and does not consume a lot of data. It comes with a mobile application that you can download from Google Play Store and install easily on your mobile device. The application gives you unlimited access all day. It also comes in both premium and free versions.” 

What is the most outstanding benefit of this product?

A customer may not only be interested in knowing whether a product is unique or superior to the rest in the market but also to learn more about its biggest benefit before they can buy it. 

Instead of just informing the buyer about the unique features of your product, you should also let them know how the features benefit them.

Here is a sample answer:

The biggest benefit of subscribing to Complete Editor is that it gives you unrestricted access every time you want to edit your e-book. It has a simple minimalist interface that makes it easy to navigate even by novice users.

Other questions that you may have to answer when creating a compelling direct response sales copy are:

• What pain does the product solve?
• What features does the product have?
• What is the USP of the product?

Step 3: Know Who You Are Selling To 

The third step to creating excellent sales copies with high conversion rates is knowing who you are addressing in your direct response ads. 

In most cases, a potential customer is going to read the sales copy alone, whether it is on a billboard or a newspaper. Therefore, you want to ensure your message focuses on his or her interest. 

To achieve that, you must understand the customer. Know who you are selling to before you can even ask them to buy in the first place.

The customer determines the approach you take when selling the product to them. He or she also determines the measures you can take to convince and persuade them into finally buying the product that you are offering. 

An expert direct response copywriter will tell you that it is normally about the customer and not necessarily the company you are promoting.

If you are selling your service to startup businesses, you are going to write differently than if you are selling your services to a large organization with a reputable brand image. 

Also, someone writing a sales copy that targets healthcare providers may use a different tone as opposed to someone writing for an audience in the engineering sector.

It is important to know more about your customers. Why? This is because every customer that you meet has a different taste, preference, expectation, and hopes. 

A doctor may have a different expectation from an engineer. A child has different priorities from an adult. The different behavior and opinions that your customers may have about your product determine the kind of approach you take when creating a sales copy.

Defining your customers is more important if you want to come up with the best sales copy to advertise your products.

Fit yourself in the customers’ shoes and reason from their perspective. What is the customer likely to think when they read your direct response copies? Are they going to give some positive feedback?

Research more about your target customers. You can try to find the exact answers to these questions whenever you research your customers?

• Who are your current customers? For customers to proceed and buy your products, they may be eager to know who your current customers are. This way, they can easily tell if your product is actually working. Note that if you are creating a copy for a business that has not sold anything, you should not provide an answer to this question.
•  Who is your target customer? Who would you like to purchase the product or service? Clearly outline who you want to buy the product or service you are advertising.
• How does your typical customer look like? Answer this question by explaining a handful of customers who are likely to show interest in your products. Answering this question provides insights to customers so that they can know if they are the ideal buyers for what you are selling.

Step 4: Create Great Headlines That Will Grab Your Customers Attention 

Simply put, the first contact your readers will have with your sales copy is the headline. Therefore, an eye-catching headline has the ability to attract more people to read your sales copy.  

In fact, it has been proven that if prospects see a headline that grabs their attention or is in line with what they were thinking about, they are more likely to click on it. At least 8 in every 10 people read the headlines only while 5 in every 20 people are likely to read the rest of the copy if the headline is attention-grabbing. (Source: Moz)

To get the first click from readers, you have to focus on creating the best headlines for every sales copy. A poorly structured headline keeps your audience off. You reduce your chances of attracting potential customers into reading your adverts. In short, with a poor headline, you are simply demonstrating to your target audience that you don’t have what they are looking for, and so they shouldn’t listen to what you have to say.

Here are some tips for coming up with the best headline for your copy:

• Ensure the headline contains the product or a problem it solves to customers.
• Write different headlines and read them aloud before you can pick one that you believe is appropriate.
• Ensure you create a headline that is specific. Readers should tell what they will receive right from the headline.
• Convey some sense of urgency within the headline. It makes readers feel like they are missing an opportunity.
• Choose one of your product benefits and include it on the headline.
• Keep testing different headlines if you do not realize the intended click rate.
• Make the headlines simple and clear. This makes it easier for the target customer to know what you are trying to communicate at first sight.

Sometimes you don’t have to be smart to come up with the best headline for your copies. You can just remove certain words and replace them with punctuations to give your headline a new look. Write an ultra-different or whacky headline, sit back, and see whether it brings results.

Step 5: Use Power Words To Drive Conversion Process 

The best direct response copywriters choose their words keenly when writing sales copies. The truth is that there are certain words that, when used on a sales copy can increase the conversion rate significantly. 

Most writers will normally use power words if they want the reader to take some action, or they look forward to changing the customers’ perception and thoughts about the products they are advertising.

Related: What Are Transition Words?

You can use power words in direct response copywriting to provoke an emotional response from the audience or simply to capture the audience’s attention so that they read your copy and get the message. 

Use words such as ‘mistake,’ ‘results,’ ‘failure’ and ‘risk’ to highlight pain. Alternatively, you can use words like ‘final,’ ‘now,’ and ‘limited’ to show urgency in your sales copy.

Here is an example of how a company is using the power word ‘result’ to create a compelling sales copy.

Customers are likely to take immediate action as long as you create some sense of urgency in the sales advert. For instance, the phrase ‘hurry while stocks last’ can easily persuade customers into buying immediately after they finish reading the advert.

You can use power words to manipulate a customer’s thought from ‘I don’t need this product’ to ‘I need this product right now.’ You decide on how you want your prospects to think about your products by using the right power words. 

Show the customers that you understand what they are going through and convince them using power words that your product has the perfect solution to their problems.

Step 6: Don’t Forget Call-To-Action (CTA)

The main objective of direct response copywriting is to ask customers to take some immediate action based on what they have just read. You speak to the customer on a personal level and ask them to act. 

Therefore, your sales copy must have the CTA section that specifically targets informing or asking the customers to act.

In most cases, especially if you have a long sales copy, a prospect can read the entire copy and forget to take any action. This happens because you forget to remind them of the reason for reading the advert at the end. 

Use power words to provide simple instructions to prospects to take action. This way, you can easily convert most of your readers to potential customers.

To increase the number of clicks on your sales copy, you should not forget to make your CTAs more clear and valuable. 

Ideally, a customer is more likely to click on a link, purchase, or subscribe to your services if you’ve informed them of what they are likely to get in advance. Therefore, you must ensure you offer a value proposition on your CTA.

Another factor that you must consider when writing your CTA is the type of audience you were addressing. Keep in mind the target group and design a CTA that focuses on their interests. 

For instance, if you are targeting stay at home mums, you should not ask them to subscribe to a premium service. If a prospect finds out that what you are asking them to do does not relate with them, they are not likely to take any action. You lose a potential lead at the end.

Lastly, you can use URL shorteners to determine the effectiveness of different CTAs you use. Eliminate CTA that do not convert your readers and replace them with something more persuasive and convincing to your target group.

The screenshot below shows how Lyft has been using CTA to convince their prospects to subscribe to their service. 

Step 7: Create Scannable Content 

Today, almost every person has an insane urgency. People are generally impatient. In most cases, it is hard for someone to read an entire copy without switching to the conclusion. 

Therefore, to ensure that your readers get the message from the sales copies you create, you must ensure the copies are scannable and navigable.

Scannable content is very easy to navigate. If you are creating sales copies for online publishing, then you must ensure that they are scannable. People read online content in a different way to offline content.

When you make your content scannable, you can easily move the readers from the headline all the way to the CTA and convert them to customers. Make everything on the copy scannable right from the proposition to the point of asking the reader to take some action.

To make your work scannable, you can create content with a considerable amount of white space, include bullets points, headers, and subtitles.

Step 8: Incorporate Social Proof In Your Copies 

Like I mentioned earlier, customers want to know that you’ve got what they are looking to win their attention. The only way you can prove to your readers that you are a reputable brand is by having some social proof to back up whatever you have written on the sales copy.

Including testimonials from some of your happy customers is enough social proof that what you are offering is beneficial to the target group. You can also use the following to incorporate social proof in your sales copies:

• Some of the clients you have served in the past.
• Your business, product, or service ratings.
• The number of subscribers or customers you have.
• The number of people following your brand on social media platforms.
• Social media logos with links to your accounts.

If you want to include social proof, you can offer anything that you believe can convince and persuade the reader to take some action. You easily convert your readers to potential customers if you can prove the credibility and authenticity of your products and services.

Final Thoughts 

Direct response copywriting is one of the most effective tools that most companies and startups are using to market their products on different platforms.

There is a list of many things you should do to make your direct response copywriting successful. In every tip you employ, you must always ensure it is based on what can help to custom your sales copies for a target audience.

The eight tips I have shared here should give you a complete understanding and guideline for copywriting. Implement these tips now and convert most of your readers to potential customers in the shortest time.