7 Sales Copy Rules that Always Convert + 3 Examples

Sales copy is a persuasive text designed to push customers into taking some kind of action, like buying a product, signing up for a course, or subscribing to a service. It’s typically shown to informed customers, which is why it’s considered a bottom-of-the-funnel type of copy. You can encounter sales copy in product pages, pricing pages, sales pages, display ads, targeted emails, and social media campaigns.

What Makes Sales Copy Different from Other Copywriting?

Broadly speaking, marketing involves three pivotal writing-related disciplines:

• Copywriting (umbrella marketing term)
• Sales copy (broad implementation)
• Direct response copywriting (specific implementation)

Copywriting is an all-encompassing term that includes all forms of writing within a marketing context. In other words, it’s just a larger bucket of writing. Copywriting incorporates sales copy, but it also includes other types of marketing for other stages of the buyer journey—such as content writing, email marketing, or brand storytelling.

In the hierarchy of marketing-related copywriting, sales copy sits right in the middle between copywriting and direct response. While sales copy and direct response copywriting are similar types of marketing copy, they have some differences in terms of their implementation, realization, and goals.

For example, sales copy can be structured in a way that broadly addresses a sizable chunk of its intended market segment, hoping for long-term effects, while direct response copywriting speaks directly to a smaller contingent of its target audience, demanding instant action. So, while all direct response copy is sales copy, not all sales copy is a direct response.

It takes time to master writing great sales copy. Thankfully, there are existing rules and tactics you can apply to get better results in a faster time frame. Follow these seven steps to achieve sales copy mastery and convince your prospects to make a purchase right now.

1. Craft a Compelling Headline

The most actionable, most important, and most impactful tip for writing great sales copy begins with composing an eye-turning headline. Think of your headline as a condensed indicator of your sales copy, in the sense that it reflects what your value proposition is going to look like further down the funnel, ending with your call to action (CTA). It’s the first thing customers will read, and sometimes the last one if your headline doesn’t capture their attention instantly.

There are several ways to approach writing a great headline, but only a few that bring immediate results. To start, hunt down a headline you really like from an adjacent industry or a proven historical direct response copywriter, adapt it to align with your goals, and use it to spearhead your sales copy.

Additionally, you can also follow a headline formula to craft a compelling headline. However, make sure you’re not deliberately creating “clickbait” headlines since shoppers have become smarter over the years and are increasingly wary of headlines that overpromise and underdeliver. Some internet users even use clickbait headlines as a signal to avoid certain publications, so make sure your site doesn’t end up amplifying this negative trend.

If you’re unsure, you can perform an A/B test to determine which headlines perform the best, which ones are just average, and which headlines underperform and are ready to be discarded. Relying on hard data will bring you one step closer to tightening up your copy to match an ever-shifting, competitive marketplace.

2. Address Your Target Audience in the Second Person

One of the key aspects of an engaging copy is to have readers identify with your main message on a more fundamental, emotional level. You can achieve this with great storytelling, careful word choice, and by addressing your target audience in the second person.

The kinematics of this rule are simple: use the pronoun “you”, including its possessive form “your”, whenever appropriate in the sales copy. Thanks to its flexibility, you can incorporate the second-person form to address a single individual, or to speak to a group of people—using the same grammatical structure.

Often, you can combine the second-person form (you, your) with the first-person point of view (I, mine) to demonstrate your understanding of the audience’s problems. Ultimately, what matters is for your customers to feel like you’re directly speaking to their wants, needs, and desires, as long as you’re honest and forthcoming in your sales script.

3. Focus on Your Product’s Benefits Instead of Its Features

This rule appears to be overemphasized in most marketing circles, yet copywriters often overlook it in favor of a more hybrid approach that merges together features and benefits in the same copy. Given the increasingly shrinking attention spans of audiences worldwide, this hybrid approach to writing sales copy is more detrimental than useful in the long run.

Product and service features have their place in sales, and it’s typically reserved for product descriptions, technical specifications, and user manuals. Interestingly enough, some of these elements exist outside of the sales funnel and don’t drive as much sales as a benefit-dominant copy. 

In fact, the percentage of technically apt customers is very small, meaning that most people are influenced by the following factors on their path to making a purchase:

• Design, or the overall look and feel of the product/service
• Pricing, or how cheap or expensive the product/service fares to its closest competitors
• Persuasion, or the specific words, syntax, and storytelling that goes into the product/service’s public presentation

So, listing your product’s specifications can become a bit too dull and technical, and eventually turn into a perseverance struggle on the customer’s part.

Take this copy for instance: 

“The Thermaltake CA-1Z1-00M4WN-00 chassis measures 550 x 420 x 286.4 mm and supports different fan configurations, including up to three 120mm fans, two 120mm fans, or a single 120mm fan, and adds options for two 140mm fans or one 140mm fan at the top. Additionally, it accommodates one 120mm and one 140mm fan at the case’s bottom.”

It’s simply too dry to be useful. A better approach would be the following attempt: 

“The latest Ferrari-yellow Thermaltake chassis is highly flexible in its design, delivering optimal cooling both during intense gaming sessions and under focused work-related tasks. Its roomy 550 x 420 x 286.4 mm clearance allows for multiple fan configurations, letting you define your ideal airflow setup without compromising on performance, appearance, and power. With up to three 120mm fan mounts at the top and one 140mm fan at the chassis’ bottom, you get industry-leading heat dissipation for a fraction of the cost.”

This version sounds, reads, and feels better. It’s the preferred option on all three major accounts, featuring evocative design, competitive pricing, and a persuasive storytelling approach.

In summary, technically dominant copy has its place in the sales funnel, but it’s typically not the first thing you want to show to incoming customers. Lead with your product or service’s benefits, then provide a visible link to its technical features to round off your copy.

4. Use a Copywriting Framework Like AIDA or PAS

Copywriting frameworks are shortcuts to great sales copy. They combine all the rules of an effective copy into a single tried-and-true scaffolding, saving you time and effort you can spend on growing your business instead of worrying about placing the right word in the right context.

There are several popular frameworks you can pick from, such as AIDA and PAS. Both of them have their pros and cons, but they all have a single unifying purpose: to make people buy your product or service.

The AIDA formula is one of the most popular copywriting blueprints today. It works in four distinct stages:

• Attention—Make the reader shift their attention to your copy, usually with an engaging headline or intriguing hook.
• Interest—Turn the reader’s attention to genuine interest, achievable by weaving an interesting story in the beginning paragraphs of your copy.
• Desire—Convince the reader they need to own your product or service, outlining the benefits and painting a before and after picture of how their lives would look like with and without accepting your offer.
• Action—Make the reader take action such as buying a product, downloading an ebook, or subscribing to an online course. An enticing, prominently displayed CTA will do just that.

The PAS formula works by inconveniencing the reader into solving a problem they didn’t know they had in the first place. In many ways, it acts as a condensed version of the AIDA framework, meaning it’s tighter and more focused than its AIDA counterpart.

This framework unravels its magic in three stages:

• Problem—Identify a pain point in the reader’s daily life, something they didn’t actively think about in their day-to-day activities. Knowing your target demographic well is a key prerequisite for coming up with their biggest problem.
• Agitation—Blow the problem out of proportion, but not to a point where it becomes satire. You can use superlatives, analogies, and comparisons to drive the audience’s most pressing issue to its logical extreme.
• Solution—Offer a genuine solution to the problem, attainable through your product or service. Typically, a solid explanation of how your customers will lead better lives thanks to your product/service will do the trick.

In addition to AIDA and PAS, there are other effective copywriting formulas out there such as BAB, DAGRAM, REAN, and OATH. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide which one will best serve your goals.

5. Engage Your Audience Through Captivating Storytelling

Customers are drawn to good stories—even in sales copy. A common misconception about story-first text is to make your product the hero of the story, but this is misleading. The best way to win the hearts and minds of your audience is to make the reader the true hero of your story instead.

A good place to start is by introducing conflict, which is equivalent to the pain point of your target audience. Then, make the reader experience that pain point firsthand by transporting them into your copy’s world. Here, you can use real-world scenarios, vivid language, and sharp dialogue to make them feel like they’re participating in the story.

For example, instead of saying “I didn’t know how to play the trombone, but I took some classes and now I do”, use a variation of John Caples’s approach and start your copy with something like “They Laughed When I Picked Up the Brass Horn—But When I Blew My First Note!”

Once the hero’s journey is nearing its end, introduce your product or service to drive the point home. Lastly, be careful: good storytelling doesn’t necessitate purple prose. Instead, make sure your discourse conveys the right message without being too ornate, esoteric, or convoluted.

6. Leverage Social Proof

Social proof is a highly contagious (in a good way) force that makes buyers copy other people’s behaviors—broadly defined as social influence. It was first coined by Robert Cialdini in the mid-80s and it remains highly relevant in the sales world to this day.

There are different types of social proof you can use in your sales copy, the most prominent being case studies, testimonials, user-generated reviews, and user statistics.

A case study is an in-depth research revolving around a goal your product or service helped or participated in achieving. If you’re selling supplements, an example case study could focus on the role of creatine in sports performance and brain health.

Testimonials are the condensed feedback of the actual customers using your products. You can get them through written follow-up forms or via detailed one-on-one communication with contended patrons.

User-generated reviews are more comprehensive client testimonials. Excluding paid reviews, user reviews are typically more objective than testimonials because they aren’t solicited by the product maker. Also, neutral or unhappy customers might include what they consider your product or service’s setbacks as well.

User statistics are data about your clients, some of which might include the average number of your customer base, the number of hours they spend running your app or browsing your site, their average return on investment (ROI), and other measurable improvements in their business that could be relayed back to using your merchandise. 

Impressive user statistics like this can facilitate a positive impression on future customers, not to mention integrating any of these types of elements can nurture a genuine desire in buyers to become loyal brand patrons.

7. Create an Irresistible Call to Action (CTA)

If headlines are the most important openers in a sales copy, a call to action (CTA) is the key closing element that enables prospects to convert into paying customers. It’s the real-life equivalent of a mutual handshake after the main deal has gone through.

Typically, an effective CTA button is short and concise, but it can also be a longer link, a spacious banner, or a visually striking image if your copy necessitates that kind of approach. If you’re unsure about what type of CTA to use, stick to a clickable button with contrasting colors, action-oriented language, and some kind of a visual indication (animation on mouse hover, visible borders, additional visual elements pointing to the CTA button) to make it stand out on the page.

Here are some examples of high-converting CTA language:

• “Buy now”
• “Try our product today”
• “Subscribe now so you’ll never miss an update”
• “Get started immediately”
• “Click here to sign up”
• “Download your free copy”

If you’re running a creative business, like a video game studio, an electronic music shop, or an arts & crafts online store, you can defy the existing conventions and come up with your own unique CTA. However, make sure it’s sufficiently visible and it’s NOT buried under a heap of visually noisy design or badly formatted walls of text on your page.

Sales Copy Examples to Get Inspiration From

Sometimes, you might hit a wall and struggle to string together a sentence, let alone compose an entire piece of copy from scratch. Thankfully, a small burst of inspiration is all it takes to break this cycle and rekindle your creativity. Here are three inspirational, high-performing sales copy examples to kick off your own writing.

Example #1: Earnable by Ramid Sethi

Ramit Sethi’s Earnable course features a comprehensive 18,000-word landing page packed with engaging, practical, and highly effective sales copy. It guides the reader through an unforgettable journey—starting with Sethi’s childhood, his family’s hardships, and the invaluable lessons he learned over the course of his upbringing—culminating in powerful testimonials from clients who have applied his methods and matched or exceeded his level of success.

Sethi’s approach is an excellent primer on the slippery slide technique, propelling the entrepreneur’s page to sales stardom. The term “slippery slide” was coined by legendary copywriter Joe Sugarman, who proposed that your copy must hook the customer, keep them engaged, and never let go until they’re finally ready to buy—like riding a slippery slide.

When done well, the slippery slide technique removes friction, easing the customer into a purchase they’ll consider undeniably natural.

Example #2: LinkedIn conversion copy by Jon Davids

Jon Davids’s posts gather hundreds of thousands of views each month, cementing his status as a social media thought leader all thanks to the power of aptly-designed copy. In his content, he talks about entrepreneurs from various backgrounds, whether business owners, digital creators, or even movie stars, who have defied the initial odds to build sustainable long-term businesses.

Jon follows a similar approach to his fellow digital creator Justin Welsh, as both use the AIDA formula to write their copy and transform a steady stream of followers into customers with each consecutive post they publish on the most popular social media platforms today.

His copy starts by presenting a successful individual to the audience in order to generate interest in readers: “This is Dani. He sells jackets. And last year he made $1 billion doing it.”

Then, Jon weaves in an intriguing background story to liven up the narrative, creating genuine interest. All of this is built on top of three major story beats: the history of Metro Sportswear’s origins in 1957, the forays of oil riggers and explorers into the Arctic wilderness, and the eye-opening stagnation Dani’s business experienced in 2001.

At this stage, Jon enters the aspirational phase of the AIDA framework. He builds desire by name-dropping celebrities and positioning Dani’s brand, Canada Goose, within a luxury context.

Lastly, Jon ends with his signature take, which is in fact the action part of the AIDA framework hiding in plain sight—thus completing the copy cycle on a strong note.

Example #3: Facebook ad for a Kickstarter project by Stealth Techwear

Sometimes, keeping it as simple as possible can pay massive dividends down the road, as demonstrated by this Stealth Techwear Facebook ad promoting its upcoming Kickstarter project.

The project was created by Mathew Glen, featuring a modest $5.5K budget cap that’s already been fully funded, exceeding its original expectations by more than 35%.

In terms of the copy, it’s as direct as it gets. It opens with the brand’s name and instantly delivers the core value proposition to potential backers in the form of a relevant benefit—the modern-day invisibility cloak.

Then, Mathew lists some of his jacket’s features following the rule of three, including hidden pockets, RFID-blocking, and weatherproof materials.

Lastly, the copy concludes with a simple CTA, urging readers to click on the ad and back to the project.