What makes marketing copy truly persuasive? How can you transform casual readers into enthusiastic customers?
Gary Halbert’s copywriting techniques, revealed in The Boron Letters, are proven strategies for creating compelling marketing messages that drive sales. From following the AIDA model to crafting visually appealing content, these methods help businesses connect with their target audience and inspire action.
Continue reading to explore these powerful copywriting secrets that can revolutionize your marketing approach and boost your conversion rates.
Gary Halbert on Copywriting
After you’ve identified a profitable market and a product to sell in it, sending out convincing marketing messages (or “marketing copy”) is what turns leads into customers. Here are four of Gary Halbert’s copywriting tips that can make your marketing materials more persuasive.
#1: Follow the AIDA Model
When writing marketing copy, the authors recommend following the AIDA model: a decades-old template for persuading readers to buy your product. AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action: four goals your copy should achieve, in this order. Let’s take a closer look at each of these steps.
Step #1: Attract Attention
First, your marketing message needs to grab the attention of potential customers. The authors note that unless your message is immediately interesting, no one will bother to read your full copy.
This part of your message doesn’t need to be persuasive in itself—it just needs to stand out enough to make people pay attention. For instance, if you send someone a letter that plays a song when they open it, they’ll read your copy to try and understand why.
Another way to attract attention the authors suggest is to make your message look different from typical advertisements, so the reader doesn’t know straight away that it’s a piece of marketing. If you can get them to read your message, you have a chance to hook them so they keep reading even after they realize you’re trying to sell them something. For example, the first few seconds of a television commercial might pretend to be an emergency news bulletin.
However, the authors note that whatever hook you use to attract attention must be relevant to your product. Otherwise, your audience will see it as a cheap trick, and they’ll feel irritated rather than interested. For example, if the aforementioned “emergency news” television commercial is a teaser for a science fiction TV series about a meteor about to hit Earth, audiences might accept it, but if it’s for something unrelated like car insurance they may feel manipulated and get annoyed.
Step #2: Create Interest
After you’ve hooked someone to start reading your copy, your next goal is to get them interested in what you have to say, argue the authors. To do this, offer a few interesting facts that tie into your product somehow. For instance, if you’re selling make-your-own-kombucha kits, write about how there are 100 trillion bacteria inside your digestive system (and drinking kombucha helps give you more of the healthy ones).
Another way to get your reader interested is by telling them a story: Describe a problem in your life, then reveal how your product helped you solve it. You might share the story of how you struggled with IBS for years until you started drinking kombucha every day, which alleviated many of your symptoms.
Step #3: Build Desire
The authors explain that the next step is to intensify your audience’s desire for your product by describing all the tantalizing benefits that the reader will experience if they buy it. Although it’s likely that your audience already understands how your product would benefit them, spelling out its benefits in detail will help persuade them on an emotional level.
Don’t just describe the product’s immediate uses—convey what the customer’s life will look like if they buy it. To be the most persuasive, use vivid imagery that evokes positive emotions. For instance, if you’re selling organic sleep aids, write about how good the customer will feel when they get out of bed with no mental fog and can appreciate the shimmering peach-colored sunrise.
Step #4: Spur Action
Last, your marketing copy should push the customer to buy your product, write the authors. Offer them a special deal that seems unreasonably valuable but time-sensitive: If they want to buy, they need to do it immediately. These deals are more effective the more personalized they are to the potential customer’s unique life situation. Additionally, provide a reasonable excuse as to why you’re giving them such a special, exclusive deal.
For example, if you’re selling sleep aids, you could send promotional emails exclusively to people who’ve recently bought another tool to improve sleep, like a sleep mask or white noise machine. Then explain that you’re offering three months of sleep aids free with the purchase of a year’s supply. Why? You used to be an insomniac and you know how painful it is, so you want to help other people who struggle with sleeping as much as you can. However, you only have enough funds to offer this deal for a limited time, so they need to act now!
To increase the likelihood of someone making a purchase, the authors recommend making it as easy as possible for them to order. To do this, explain in your copy, step by step, how they can buy your product. Err on the side of over-explaining to make sure that no customers get confused.
#2: Make Your Copy Visually Appealing
Another way you can write persuasive marketing copy is by making sure it looks good on a purely superficial level, argue the authors. Neurologically speaking, people rely heavily on first impressions to decide how they feel about something. If your message is pleasant to look at the very first second they see it, they’ll be much more likely to keep reading. Not only that, it’ll be easier to persuade them because their brain will be biased to interpret your copy in a way that justifies their initial emotional response.
To make your copy visually appealing, design it so that anyone can read it with little to no effort, explain the authors. Use wide margins and a large text size, and include plenty of negative space. As a more general guideline, design your copy to look like the kinds of content that people read for enjoyment. For example, when designing an email newsletter, study how your favorite blog designs visually appealing articles.
| The Psychological Effects of Good-Looking Marketing Psychologists theorize that the reason people align judgments with their first impressions is to avoid cognitive dissonance: the experience of holding two contradictory beliefs. Cognitive dissonance is psychologically uncomfortable. Thus, if we notice that something has one positive quality, we generally assume that all its qualities are positive to avoid the cognitive dissonance of acknowledging that it probably has good and bad qualities. This phenomenon is called the halo effect. This is why it feels easier to believe that a beautiful marketing message is from a remarkable company with a genius product than to consider the possibility that the company is good at marketing but bad at designing products. There’s another psychological effect working in the favor of good-looking marketing copy, too: When faced with a difficult question like “How valuable is this marketing deal, really?” our brains will frequently substitute that question with one that’s closely related but much easier to answer, like “How does this letter make me feel?” Thus, people will mistake marketing that feels easy and pleasant to read (or that looks like content they already like) as their body signaling to them that the deal they’re considering is desirable and valuable. |
#3: Keep Your Writing Simple and Punchy
Another way to make your copy as persuasive as possible is to write in a punchy style that’s easy and enjoyable to read. The authors recommend using short sentences and simple words that everyone knows. Structure your text in short paragraphs that are easy to digest quickly.
More broadly speaking, write in a style that’s clear rather than showy. It doesn’t matter how clever or beautiful your copy is—what matters is how many people it converts into customers. Ideally, people reading your copy won’t think about the way it’s written at all.
(Shortform note: In On Writing Well, William Zinsser argues that all writing—not just marketing copy—benefits from being simple and clear rather than showy. However, he notes that writing in simple, clear prose can be a difficult task. To keep your sentences and paragraphs short and punchy, you need to know a lot of precise words that convey everything you want them to. Otherwise, you’ll have to use long phrases to communicate your ideas, which can clutter up your writing. For instance, “reinvigorating kombucha” is easier to read than “kombucha that gives you back your energy”—but you need to know the word “reinvigorating” to write the first one.)
#4: Study and Imitate the Best Copy
One practical exercise you can improve your copywriting skills is to find some of the best examples of effective marketing copy, then read them out loud and rewrite them longhand, word for word. The authors contend that this will train you to instinctively recognize what makes high-quality, persuasive marketing copy. These instincts will then help you write original marketing copy that reads and sounds like the proven, successful examples you collected.
(Shortform note: The authors don’t offer any scientific evidence to back up their claim that rewriting marketing copy will help build your writing instincts, but there’s plenty of supportive anecdotal evidence: Numerous writers who wrote masterpieces of fiction used this strategy, including Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Hunter S. Thompson—who typed out the entire novel The Great Gatsby multiple times.)
Exercise: Practice Writing Persuasive Marketing Copy
The quality of Gary Halbert’s marketing copy is arguably what set him apart from his competition. To improve your copywriting skills, imagine a product to sell and practice writing persuasive marketing copy for it.
- Brainstorm a list of potential products you could sell. Which one makes you feel the most excited and motivated? Why?
- Practice writing a brief marketing email for this product. Follow the AIDA model: Hook your reader’s attention, get them interested, intensify their desire, and push them into action with an irresistible deal.
- Look over your marketing email and rewrite it to make it more persuasive. Try to make every sentence more punchy and engaging. To do this, use short sentences and simple yet vivid, precise, and evocative words.
