How to Write to Sell

by Mark Bloom | Jun 27, 2022 | Writing

Write to sell and reap the profits

What’s the Purpose of Online Content?

Companies don’t create online content — for their website, blog, newsletter or social media — because they like doing it. No business owner likes to write content for the sake of publishing it. Businesses write to sell their products or services.

Even social media posts are ultimately trying to deliver leads, potential customers, to increase the company’s return on investment for creating the post in the first place. Businesses don’t do anything that doesn’t contribute to the bottom line. In other words, every business decision has to make money. Otherwise, why do it?

What’s the Formula for Writing to Sell?

There is a way to entice readers enough to encourage them to buy from you. As you can imagine, the formula is flexible enough to work for multiple industries, various products and a number of approaches. It’s therefore easy to learn, yet difficult to master. To write to sell, use the acronym AIDA:

Attention
Interest
Desire
Action

Attention is what you first need from your readers. Interest is what you have to generate through your written words. Desire is what you generate by accomplishing the first two things. Finally, action is how you inspire your readers to take the steps necessary to buy from you.

How Do I Get Readers’ Attention?

In this day and age, it’s more difficult than ever to get anybody’s attention. There are distractions and alternatives in every direction, and your competition is always one click away. So when you write to sell, you have to put a lot of thought into the headline of your article, blog post, email or social media post. Your headline or title line has to:

Stand out from the background noise of everyday marketing efforts
State a fact, pose a question or articulate a problem your readers want to learn about
Be succinct enough to do it in less than 15 words

To craft an effective headline, subject line or title, you have to know what your readers are looking for. Your company’s products or services have to solve at least one of their problems. Once you know that, you can write to sell. Examples include:

Why Your Business Needs a Newsletter
Is Your Business Name Top-of-Mind in Your Industry?
How Your Business Can Reach New Customers Consistently

How Do I Generate My Readers’ Interest?

Just as knowing your readers’ problems helps you create a captivating headline or opening, this information is a necessary ingredient to capture their interest. When you understand the issues your readers are grappling with, you can offer solutions … assuming your company has something they can use. Remember to:

Clearly state the problem as you believe your readers experience it.
Deliver the solution your business offers.
Don’t focus on features. Instead promote the advantages and benefits of your solution.

It’s a compelling formula. It’s a successful strategy. And when you can make it personal or emotional, your readers won’t be able to resist your pitch.

How Can I Get Readers to Desire My Solution?

If your readers have stayed with your content through the headline and are interested enough to keep going, you’ve learned to write to sell. Now you have to generate a desire for your solution, be it your product or your service. Desire is interest personified and amplified. Desire is a reason to take action. You can create desire by:

Announcing a limited-time sale
Providing a free sample
Guaranteeing satisfaction with a money-back offer

You create desire by giving your readers a reason to buy now. Another effective way to generate desire is to show that others bought your solution and it worked for them. These testimonials are called social proof, and when you use real customers with real photos of them, it creates another compelling reason to buy from you.

How Do I Get Readers to Act?

When you write to sell, you ultimately have to get your readers to do what it takes to buy from you. That last step, buying your products or services, is the purpose of creating your content. To encourage your readers to take this final step, you have to present a call-to-action that’s simple. You can try:

A single, large button that says, “Buy Now.”
A simple form for them to enter their name and email address.

When you keep your call-to-action simple, it doesn’t get in the way between them and a sale. Write to sell, and this last step converts those readers into customers, feeding your company’s bottom line. And that’s the real purpose of creating content for your company.

Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.

The Four Types of Writing

by Mark Bloom | Jan 25, 2021 | Writing

And How They Apply to Your Website

Know how and when to use the four types of writing

Since Ray Access is in the business of providing content to businesses, the principals know a thing or two about writing. The various research, writing and editing projects the company undertakes always has a clear purpose behind the scenes. No client is going to pay Ray Access to produce a word unless that word serves the business in some way.

The same is true for online content. All writing has to help you gain an audience, maintain your customers or build your brand. These are specific reasons for you to hire Ray Access. But there are four general types of writing, whether you do it for business or for yourself. Whenever you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, you do it to:

Explain
Persuade
Sell
Entertain

Let’s explore how each of these types of writing play into your online presence. You may intuitively understand that a social media post is fundamentally different from a website page, you may not understand why. That difference is its purpose.

1. Writing to Explain

This style of writing always involves the facts. You’re writing to explain a concept, a definition, a process or a procedure. This kind of writing belongs on specific web pages, where visitors want to learn about a specific topic in which your business has expertise.

Like all types of writing, you must know your intended audience well and write in their language. Your goal is to explain the primary points or the various details, depending on the readers’ desired level of knowledge. Additionally, format the content so that it’s easy for your readers to absorb the pertinent information, as people don’t consume online content like hardcopy content. They scan, instead of reading it straight through. Use plenty of formatting tricks, such as:

Subheadings
Numbered lists
Bulleted lists
Short sentences
Short paragraphs

2. Writing to Persuade

Also known as rhetorical writing, this type of writing has as its lofty goal nothing less than changing readers’ behavior. When you’re writing to persuade, you make arguments in favor of a certain course of action, whether it’s to buy something, click a button, provide an email address or vote a particular way. To reach its goal, to actually get readers to change their behavior, persuasive writing has to touch an emotional level. To do this, it has to contain more than just facts.

Rhetorical writing presents unassailable reasons for taking a specific action. Some web pages use this; others are just informational. After visitors know enough about your business to trust it, your deeper website pages can push them to take action. That’s the reason for call-to-action buttons and links. You want visitors to take that step since lead generation is the purpose of a compelling website.

3. Writing to Sell

While this and writing to persuade are similar types of writing, this type tends to be more forceful. You’re pushing readers to buy something you think they want or need. You see this type of writing in advertisements, and it doesn’t belong on your website. If you come off as too sales-oriented, you may scare away all but the neediest visitors. Save sales types of writing for your ads and mailers.

You can’t sell anything until prospective customers trust you, your product or your service, even if they really want or need what you’re offering. Remember, there’s another vendor around the corner of the internet. If you’re a known commodity, you can push a little stronger. Otherwise, you have to spend time building trust and providing social proof.

4. Writing to Entertain

While it may seem counterintuitive, there’s room in business for entertaining writing. Just as a little humor in a business meeting can help break the ice and engender goodwill, a little levity in business writing can earn kudos from its audience. The right kind of entertainment, aimed at its target market, can actually help your company sell its products or services. Entertaining types of writing:

Is memorable
Gains trust
Connects readers to your company
Often hits readers at an emotional level
Promotes your company’s brand

This type of writing may not find a home on your website, but it definitely has a purpose in social media, in relevant blog posts and in newsletters, especially as an engaging opening. Writing to entertain reminds potential customers that there are real people behind your business. And people like to do business with companies and people they like.

These four types of writing sometimes overlap in their purpose. Use all four wisely. Mix and match where appropriate. Wield your words with authority and sense of purpose, and you’ll help your business establish a loyal customer base. But if it’s too much to consider, hire Ray Access to do the hard part for you.

Writing Tips from the Masters

by Mark Bloom | Jan 11, 2021 | Writing

Tips Every Writer Can Use

You may not believe that poets, novelists, essayists and other world-famous scribes and literary masters have writing tips that any ordinary writer can use — even content providers like those at Ray Access. But writing is writing. While composing a stage play is a vastly different exercise than writing a blog post, both are forms of the same type of communication: the written word.

With that in mind, we present a random sampling of writing tips. You may not recognize all the masters below, but please search them out online if you aren’t familiar with their work. They are all great, in one fashion or another, and all are worthy of paying attention to. Good luck, stay motivated and keep writing.

writing tips from Mark Twain? Yes!

Writing Tips for You

Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else. — C.S. Lewis

Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless! — Joyce Carol Oates

Do back exercises. Pain is distracting. — Margaret Atwood

Do not write long sentences. A sentence should not have more than 10 or 12 words. — V.S. Naipaul

Don’t overwrite. Avoid the redundant phrases, the distracting adjectives, the unnecessary adverbs. — Sarah Waters

Don’t use big words. If your computer tells you that your average word is more than five letters long, there is something wrong. The use of small words compels you to think about what you are writing. Even difficult ideas can be broken down into small words. — V.S. Naipaul

Don’t wait for inspiration. Discipline is the key. — Esther Freud

Each sentence should make a clear statement. It should add to the statement that went before. A good paragraph is a series of clear, linked statements. — V.S. Naipaul

Editing is everything. Cut until you can cut no more. What is left often springs into life. — Esther Freud

Go easy on conjunctions such as “but,” “and,” “yet,” and “however.” The prose may feel fluid to you when you use these; but if you go back and simply remove them the prose may be even more fluid. — Anne Rice

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. —George Orwell

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. — Elmore Leonard

Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft. The greater your vocabulary the more effective your writing. We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it. — P.D. James

Limit the use of the verb “to be.” There’s almost always a better verb. — Saul Stein

Never send [what you’ve written] … on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning — and then edit it. — David Ogilvy

Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.” — C.S. Lewis

Never use a long word where a short one will do. —George Orwell

Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass. — David Ogilvy

Never use the passive where you can use the active. —George Orwell

Never use the word “then” as a conjunction — we have “and” for this purpose. Substituting “then” is the lazy writer’s non-solution to the problem of too many “ands” on the page. — Jonathan Franzen

Never use words whose meanings you are not sure of. If you break this rule you should look for other work. — V.S. Naipaul

Prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them. — C.S. Lewis

Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very;” your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. — Mark Twain

Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs. — David Ogilvy

Use the right word, not its second cousin. — Mark Twain

[Write] every day. Make a habit of putting your observations into words and gradually this will become instinct. This is the most important rule of all and, naturally, I don’t follow it. — Geoff Dyer

Write the way you talk. Naturally. — David Ogilvy

Writing for a General Audience

by Elle Ray | Aug 24, 2020 | Writing

Stay True to Your Values without Insulting Potential Customers

In this day and age, it seems like everyday personal choices are being politicized. You get dirty looks from one side of the political spectrum or the other for the kind of food you buy or how much you recycle. And don’t even get us started on the politics of wearing masks. It’s become difficult to keep your business writing neutral.

But business owners small and large know that every customer counts when it comes to the bottom line. If you can refrain from insulting any current or potential customers, you’re walking a thin line. Sometimes, your decisions pit strong opinions against profits. The goal of business writing has been and should remain to be to reach everyone. And you can only do that by writing for a general audience.

How Do You Write for a General Audience?

Even though your business may cater to a more educated audience — say with at least a college degree — not everyone reads and understands in the same manner. It’s wise, therefore, to follow the journalist’s creed and write to an 8th grade education. That means avoiding big words and writing in shorter sentences.

A general audience also shares a multitude of varying political, social and cultural views. What may seem like sarcasm to you may be taken as a racial slur or political putdown by someone else. So unless your business is designed specifically to reach a biased clientele, it’s best to keep writing for a general audience that spans the globe, focusing solely on your products or services.

What Does Neutral Copy Look Like?

In addition to keeping your writing simple and easy to read, there are a few other hallmarks to hit when writing for a general audience, including:

Avoid making opinions sound like facts. Be clear when you insert an opinion. Even a general audience appreciates honesty and transparency, even if they choose not to buy from you because of your opinions.
Keep copy positive. Whether you’re writing a newsletter for your mailing list, a blog post to hit all your social media channels or a page for your website, turn any negative side effects or consequences into positive points. Aim for feel-good sentiments that can be shared by all readers.
Keep it clean. Off-color references, violent images, sexual innuendos, cussing and strong language definitely turn off some people — guaranteed.
Know your target market. If your target is the right wing of a political party affiliation, for example, then it doesn’t hurt — and may actually help — if you insult those on the other side of the aisle. But that’s not a general audience. If you’re selling your goods or services to a broad market, writing for a general audience allows you to reach both sides of any aisle.

Neutral copy is inoffensive and appeals to a wide range of socio-economic, cultural, political, educational and regional audiences. Your best friend, your grandmother and your preacher should be able read your writing and understand your message. Idealists and traditionalists alike become willing to buy what you’re selling. And they’ll gladly forward a reference to everyone they know.

When to Draw the Line

The dilemma then becomes: when and where do you set boundaries for those you attract? An even broader question may be: should you even set a boundary when it comes to business? Your answer obviously is personal. Discuss it with your partners or board members. What kinds of goods and services you sell may drive your ultimate decision about whether you want to be writing for a general audience or targeting a specific type of clientele.

If you’ve got a healthy cushion and can afford to be picky about what kind of customer you serve, then you may be able to be more outspoken in your business-related communications. On the other hand, if you can’t afford to turn away paying customers, then you may have to stick to writing for a general audience and reserve your personal opinions for the dinner table.

Business Owners Make Difficult Decisions Everyday

It’s not always easy to swallow your convictions in the name of paying the rent. And sometimes the effort isn’t worth it; your beliefs may play too big a role in your image. Deciding whether to put your profits on the line in defense of a position or keep your marketing content neutral is perhaps one of the most difficult decisions a business owner makes. But it can be done effectively. If you’re having trouble sorting out your ability to remain unbiased while marketing your business, contact Ray Access for customer–neutral writing that saves your income while maintaining your integrity.

Priorities drive your ultimate decision. But understanding the consequences of your writing style and content is vital. Stop and think about it before you post a raving rant about anti-maskers or left-wing protestors. Consider that perhaps there is a time and place for boundaries when you’re doing business. No matter how you decide to proceed in your writing, be prepared to reap the results.

The Difference Between an Amateur and a Professional Writer

by Mark Bloom | Jun 10, 2019 | Writing

Professional Writing Help for Your Business

Professional writing help gets you started and keeps you going

Anyone who can craft a sentence can be a writer. Anyone who can formulate an idea on the page can write a blog post. Yet there are a number of differences between an amateur writer and a professional, not the least of which is what the title suggests: a professional is paid for the work. If you want to join the ranks of the pros, here is some professional writing help in the form of tips and advice.

The most succinct difference between an amateur and professional writer has little to do with talent. But there is an enormous difference in terms of output. Professional writers write all the time, even when they’re not at the computer. It’s their job. Amateurs tend to write piece by piece as the muse hits them. Here’s the first bit of professional writing help that’ll turn you into a pro: show up every day to write.

How You Approach the Craft

Professional artists take their craft seriously. Painters, sculptors and even interior decorators spend time learning how to do what they do. They experiment. They take chances. They learn from their mistakes. They go back at it again and again as continuing education. Amateurs, on the other hand, are weekend artists or occasional creatives. It’s not their life’s focus.

Writing is the same. A professional writer doesn’t — and really can’t afford to — wait for the muse to arrive. There are deadlines, and the next project is always waiting. Professionals work hard to do the absolute best they can do for every project. An amateur, in contrast, may spend an inordinate amount of time on one project “to get it right.”

It has to do with your approach to the craft. Do you focus on goals or process? A professional writer understands that each project has a trajectory: a beginning, a middle and an end. Once you’ve developed a process that works for you, you can employ it for each and every project, regardless of the inherent differences.

How You Approach Success

Even amateur writers can enjoy successes. But they tend to view success as the goal, not a milepost. Professional writers understand that each success is just a feather in an already full cap. You can’t be a successful professional writer without a string of successes. It’s not that each success means less to a professional, but that’s not the end goal.

The opposite of success is failure, and how you approach that outcome is just as important as how you deal with success. Do you give up after a failure or do you consider every failure just another step toward your evolution as a writer? If you want to become a pro, the professional writing help you need is all mental; in other words, approach writing as a job.

Professional Writing Help for Amateurs

Amateur writers are well-served to learn the differences between where they are and where they want to be. Some of these differences include:

Amateurs often think they know everything they need to know. Professionals realize that they still have a lot to learn, and every project presents an opportunity.
Amateurs too often take criticism personally. It stops them in their tracks and cuts them to the quick. Professionals, on the other hand, actively seek criticism and recognize the difference between negative and positive criticism. (They ignore the former and value the latter.)
Amateurs want every word to be perfect, especially at the beginning of every project. Professionals know that it doesn’t matter where they start writing, since the initial beginning rarely makes it into the final cut.
Finally, professionals listen, while amateurs boast. Yes, this is a generalization, but professionals know that listening is the key to delivering the best results.

If you’re an amateur and find that the road to professionalism is too long for you to bother with and you need professional writing help now, contact your friends at Ray Access.

Avoid Lazy Writing

by Elle Ray | May 5, 2019 | Writing

Remedies for Writing That’s Become Muddied

Every writer falls into it from time to time: lazy writing just to fill up a page. Filler words and trite phrases slip into your prose unsolicited. And they end up crowding out your message, making your writing clunky, passive and unclear.

Lazy writing disappoints your readers and turns them off.

The tendency to rely on useless filler words comes from academia. From high school essays through Ph.D. dissertations, writers are taught to string together extremely long sentences, as if that’s the primary purpose of writing. Well-meaning English teachers encourage students to fill pages with modifiers, clauses, determiners, adverbs and adjectives that don’t add anything to the meaning.

But you aren’t on campus anymore, Dorothy. Now you’re in the business world, where every word counts! Each nanosecond you waste on a useless filler word constitutes lazy writing, and readers won’t stand for it. With so many alternatives available, they’ll just go elsewhere. As a result, no one will get your message.

Clarity Is Queen

If content is king, then clarity is queen. As time condenses and people’s attention spans shorten, you have to make every word count. Clarity is the means by which you get right to the point in as few words as possible.

You’ve still got to fulfill your mission and get the meaning of your writing across. But doing it succinctly is the best path to the end. And it’s the only way your writing will be read.

Consider your readers. They consume blogs, websites, newsletters, memos and marketing copy on the fly. No busy professional sits down in the evening with an after-dinner drink to read your latest blog. No, they’re more likely to digest your business writing along with a morning muffin on a mobile device. So make it count and make it tight.

Down and Dirty Lazy Writing Tricks

The Content Marketing Institute reports that lazy writing is full of filler and fluff that bores readers, complicates ideas and dilutes your message. They even list words you can take out of your writing right now to make it better.

The Ray Access content experts agree with them all and strongly favor a few. And we’ve got a few of our own to add to the list. The experienced Ray Access editors remove the filler from lazy writing that creeps into any of our work. We recommend you avoid phrases such as:

In order to. There’s never an excuse for this phrase. Just use “to” and continue. Take it out; you’ll never miss it.
Can, may. Does your service help your customers? Or can it? When you write: “Our service can help you grow your business,” you’re using a modifier that negates your statement. Using “may” delivers the same result. Don’t unintentionally hurt your cause. Instead be direct and bold in your statement: “Our service helps you grow your business.”
As a matter of fact, moreover, not to mention. Don’t water your message down. Just say it. Lazy writing is full of these kinds of transitions. Get to the point without all the filler.
Are able to, is able to. Like using the filler word “can,” this phrase is just as useless. Instead of writing: “We are able to get your work out quickly,” write: “We get your work out quickly.” See how much stronger the statement becomes?
There are, there is. When it comes to lazy writing, this phrase often constitutes a major relapse in judgment. You can find better, more direct ways of starting any sentence. So don’t use “there are” or “there is.” Get right to the point. “There are more ways to do it” is a roundabout version of “We offer more ways to do it.” And then explain what they are.

Clean Up Your Act

One of the best tips we give writers is to write like you speak. You may have to clean it up a bit and get rid of the slang and shortcuts translated through your body language. But when you read your work out loud before submitting it (another good tip), it should sound like you: a person who knows what she’s talking about.

And if you just can’t help falling into those old lazy writing habits, leave the clutter for your cleaning lady, otherwise known as your editor! Call on Ray Access to clean up your writing, tackle those lazy sentences and take your message straight to your audience — clearly and on point. And you can save money while tightening up your writing, as we charge half-price for editing any of your writing projects!

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