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When writing any form of copy, your objective is to evoke a response. An important step in getting people to take action is to understand what motivates them. Ask yourself, ‘What does this person need to believe, know or understand in order to take the action I want by the end of this communication.’

Depending on what you are asking your reader to do, that may be a short answer or a very long answer. For example, let’s suppose you are asking a prospect visiting your website to complete their email details to claim your free report. What do they need to believe, know or understand?

At the very least, they would probably need to believe that you are not going to spam them. They might want to be reassured that you are not going to share their information with other people. They will also want to be convinced that there are going to get some real benefits by downloading this free report. The advantages of doing so have to outweigh the ‘cost’ of handing over their email addresses to you.

In this case, it is not going to be a lengthy sell. You could probably do all of that in a single paragraph. However, if you are asking people to sign up for an eight-week teleseminar program, it’s a very different story.

When Long Copy Is Necessary

From the a reader’s point of view, you may be requiring them to reorganize their lives, arrange for a babysitter every Wednesday night for the next eight weeks and take money out of the account that their partner was hoping would be spent on a new set of furniture; now they are going to invest it in your program instead. You are going to need to work a lot harder to overcome their objections.

Your task, then, is to convince them that this particular course of action is going to make a big difference for them and pay off in so many areas of their lives. That is going to take a lot more copy to accomplish than a simple paragraph.

As you write your initial draft, be sure to include all of the information that supports your end goal; leave out anything that doesn’t. It is always better to write too much and edit it later than to write too little and risk missing important decision-making information. Include whatever you believe is needed to get a response.

Every Single Word Is For Their Benefit

Then, as you go over what you have written, ask yourself once again, “Who am I writing this for?” Sometimes you may notice you have added information that sounds like you were speaking aloud. Are you writing it to convince yourself or to talk aloud to yourself about what you’re doing? You need to be writing it for the prospect.

As you go over your draft copy, edit ruthlessly, eliminating anything that might distract the prospect from taking the action you want. Reinforce what is necessary to overcome objections, and strike out whatever is not.

Each redraft should come closer and closer to providing your readers with exactly what they need to need to believe, know or understand to take action. Anything less than that risks the copywriter’s kiss of death: No response.

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