IttyBiz

Pain points are a big deal in copywriting, and for good reason: People will do more to avoid pain than they will to gain a positive benefit in their life.

It’s one of the core reasons we procrastinate as well.

The pain of starting on a task (or facing it) can easily outweigh any and all benefits we might receive by Doing The Thing. So we move away from that pain, even though the greater cost is one we’ll regret later.

Pain points, then, are used in marketing to leverage that quirk of human psychology.

If you can make the potential customer experience enough pain about their current situation (or fear of loss in the future), it’s a lot easier to encourage them to take action and buy your product.

Most human beings don’t like causing other people pain.

This presents a bit of a challenge for you, as a marketer.

You don’t want to cause people pain. And you certainly don’t want to take your knowledge of pain points and engineer it to cause the maximum amount of pain just to make sales.

And yet… your product solves a problem that causes people legitimate pain or unhappiness. And you want them to know that their pain can be helped by your product.

So what are you supposed to do, while still keeping your integrity?

You have options.

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Over the last 13 years, IttyBiz has averaged a 3% refund rate in an industry that averages 20-30%.

A big part of how we accomplish that is with the way we write our copy.

So that’s what we’re going to cover today – why people refund in the first place, how you can write your copy in ways that reduce the chance that they’ll refund, and how to treat people who do decide they want their money back.

This has been our approach so far, and it’s been working wonderfully.

Ready to learn? (I hope you are – otherwise, aren’t I going to feel stupid.)

Let’s do this.

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Sales pages – for the most part – need some kind of imagery or graphics in order to convert at their best.

But as we discussed yesterday, images aren’t necessary for conversion.

Other than a picture of the product, and perhaps a picture of the seller, they are not a requirement when it comes to getting readers to say “yes” to a purchase.

They are a requirement for getting higher conversion, but they don’t make-or-break the core ability of your well-written copy to sell your product.

The more you internalize that, the more money you’ll make.

Let’s talk about why.

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Sales pages are like the packaging that a physical product comes in – they contain words, pictures and design that helps a potential customer evaluate whether or not they want to purchase what’s inside the box.

There’s no doubt that a more appealing package makes an impact on buyer behavior.

A better, more professional looking package can go a long way towards boosting conversion and bringing sales up.

But packaging has a weird kind of culture around it.

Because so many products come in such beautiful (or impressive) packages, it can be easy to assume that people will only buy if the packaging looks exceptional.

This gets reinforced by things like “unboxing” videos, where people literally film the process of opening the package because the design is so noteworthy.

That leads to sellers – like you or I – having anxiety about the quality of our “packaging” and feeling like we have to look exceptional or no one will take our product seriously.

So what do we do about that?

Let’s discuss.

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Introducing yourself – whether on a sales page, an about page, or the bio at the bottom of a blog post – is one of the more challenging aspects of copywriting for people.

It’s not actually hard to do. It’s hard to get yourself to do.

It brings up a lot of personal stuff and internal self-consciousness that makes the average person want to go check on the laundry.

Do they want to check on the laundry? Hell, no. But it’s better than having to… I don’t know… brag about yourself? Make yourself the center of attention?

Being uncomfortable writing about yourself is not mandatory.

I’ve written a lot of copy for people who are too uncomfortable to toot their own horn. I get it, I truly do. Our society has a lot of mixed messages on self-promotion.

But if you’re selling something – whether it’s a product or your expertise – you’re going to need to get comfortable with it.

Once you’re comfortable, the sky’s the limit. You can talk about yourself and all the cool things you have accomplished, learned and experienced in a way that connects with the value you bring to the world.

Now, that’s a beautiful sentiment, but how do you get truly comfortable with writing about yourself? To the point where you can do it well, and without being self-conscious?

You have to do two things: Normalize and templatize.

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