Whether online or out in the world, attempting to win over busy people with formulaic phrases and sentences is like trying to sell fruit by displaying painted wooden bananas, peaches and strawberries that can’t be tested by smell or touch. Instead, lure readers with original stories, sensory details, unexpected metaphors, relevant connections to their lives and the consequences of not taking action.

With the rise of the Internet, where shoppers can’t touch the wares or look you in the eye to judge trustworthiness, words have a greater challenge to perform than ever before. But when you understand the angles and techniques that cut through the reader’s fog of indifference, words can bring your offering to life and convince someone not physically present with you to express interest or complete a purchase.

Effective ways to maximize the power of words for lead generation or outright selling include:

* Extend the effectiveness of metaphors – imaginative comparisons in words – by pairing them with related images and expressions. For example, in my second paragraph above, I referred to “the reader’s fog of indifference.” I could continue with that metaphor by going on to talk about techniques that serve as fog beacons or lighthouses, that lift the fog, that offer fog-penetrating glasses, and so on.

* Tempt readers to picture themselves using your products by spinning fictional stories about them. A web site selling lingerie for plus-sized women, for instance, skyrocketed their sales by filling their newsletters with romantic stories about women wearing specific items they sold. The famous J. Peterman catalog likewise wove a spell around its items with wording that got the reader imagining swashbuckling adventures in exotic locales.

* Find positive, pleasant ways to communicate negative policies to keep your prospective buyer in an agreeable frame of mind. Note the enormous gulf between “No personal checks accepted!” and “We accept cash, credit or debit cards, international money orders, bank wires and traveler’s checks.”

* Feel free to use slang to explain a complicated concept while avoiding the tone of a schoolteacher. If your readers probably have never heard of a forensic accountant, for example, you could write: “He’s the guy who finds the emails that people in hot water think they have deleted.”

* Test whether or not you’re saying something informative by reversing your adjectives and asking whether any merchant in their right mind would describe their product with those opposites. As Guy Kawasaki explains, “It would be fine to describe your product as ‘intuitive, secure, fast and scalable’ if your competition describes its product as ‘hard to use, vulnerable, slow and limited.’ However, this probably isn’t the case, so you’re saying nothing.”

* Make your product descriptions juicier by describing vividly what readers can do and feel after they buy. Instead of “Ranchera Resort is devoted to the simple life-no phones, TV or Internet,” try “By leaving your gadgets at the gates when staying at Ranchera Resort, recover from stress, rejuvenate your spirit and restore your joy for life.”

Author Bio: Marcia Yudkin is the author of more than a dozen books, including 6 Steps to Free Publicity and Meatier Marketing Copy, from which this article is adapted. Learn about her Marketing Insight Guides series on finer points of copywriting, persuasion and marketing: http://www.yudkin.com/guides/index.htm

Category: Marketing
Keywords: copywriting,tips,persuasion,words,metaphors,wording,style,jargon,writing,powerful,more,persuasive