Apprendre à rédiger des textes convaincants avec les maîtres du copywriting
Masterclass sur le marketing de contenu : Sixième partie
So the content creation part of this Masterclass has made you hungry for more copywriting tips and tricks, huh? Good call – learning how to write compelling copy is one of the most powerful things you can do for your marketing and your business.
While I have certainly written my fair share of converting sales pages, email sequences and blog posts, when I’m teaching copywriting I always go back to the wisdom of the original masters of the (direct response) copywriting art.
While we do live in a different world than they did – they weren’t exactly concerned with bounce rate or SEO – they were absolute experts at influencing something that has hardly changed since the early days of advertising: the human psyche.
So come along for copywriting 101 and swipe some ideas from the folks Don Draper’s character was based on. ‘Cause there’s no school like the old school.
This post is Part Six in a brand spanking new Masterclass Series on Content Marketing. We believe it’s an incredibly important topic – and according to a little survey we did, you do too. Trouble is: there is so much content on content marketing out there (talk about meta) and a lot of the intel is conflicting.
Nous vous proposons cette Masterclass en partenariat avec Anouck Meier, Chief Storytelling Officer chez Ampersand. Anouck est une rédactrice spécialisée dans la conversion et une stratège en marketing de contenu qui a travaillé avec de nombreuses marques, grandes et petites, pour les aider à atteindre leurs objectifs commerciaux grâce à un contenu stratégique. Nous allons faire le point sur le contenu une fois pour toutes dans un guide complet. Vous êtes prêt à vous lancer ?
- Jeroen Corthout, Co-Fondateur Salesflare, un CRM commercial facile à utiliser pour les petites entreprises B2B
Copie ou contenu
Before we get started, I just want to touch on the difference between copy and content. This is a Content Marketing Masterclass after all – why are we bothering writing a whopping 2300+ words on copy?
- CopieTraditionnellement, ce sont les mots que nous utilisons pour faire la vente. Pour utiliser John E. Kennedy’s definition, it’s salesmanship in print (or pixels, as the case may be). Its very aim is to persuade. The result of effective copywriting is your reader taking a specific action.
- ContenuLe marketing direct, quant à lui, consiste à créer et à partager un contenu de valeur afin d'attirer et d'engager un public, de démontrer votre capacité à résoudre ses problèmes et de créer le type de confiance qui pourrait éventuellement conduire à un achat.
La copie existe depuis un certain temps déjà.
Le contenu est le nouveau venu.
However, if you’re a smart cookie, you know to steal an idea or two from the old techniques of direct response copywriting. Believe me, the classic elements of persuasion will make everything in your content work better.
Si votre blog présente un contenu de qualité mais n'a pas de lecteurs pour l'accompagner, un peu de copywriting classique peut être tout ce dont vous avez besoin.
Maybe your headlines are too cute and clever – without showing any reader benefits. Maybe you haven’t focused on those reader benefits enough throughout your content. Or could it be that your calls to action aren’t specific enough?
Work some copywriting techniques into your blog and you’ll get your audience to subscribe, opt in and share your content with their peers. That, my friend, is how you build a large, loyal audience.
Without further ado – here are 7 strategies you’ll want to swipe from the rich tradition of direct response copywriting.
1. Écrire avec les oreilles
If you can’t turn yourself into your customer, you probably shouldn’t be in the ad writing business at all.
– Leo Burnett
One of the most common misconceptions about copywriting is that it’s some form of creative wordsmithing.
I cannot tell you how many emails I get from aspiring copywriters, telling me they want to make a living writing copy because they have a way with words. Because they’re creative writers and their friends love their witty wordplay and puns. Or – heaven forbid – their poetry.
It doesn’t matter how creative your 3rd grade teacher thought you were.
It doesn’t matter that you wrote a haiku a day all through college.
Even your rich vocabulary and eloquence will not do much for you as a copywriter.
Le secret d'un bon copywriting n'est pas d'être intelligent ou sexy avec des mots.
It’s good old research.
La citation de Leo Burnett nous rappelle que le texte se convertit mieux lorsque vous laissez vos clients parler. Lorsque vous, en tant que rédacteur, écoutez vos clients.
Cela semble assez simple, mais comment laisser vos clients parler ?
Tout se résume à l'étude de la clientèle (qui est en fait un joli terme pour parler de l'écoute de vos lecteurs). Découvrez comment ils parlent de leurs problèmes, de leurs espoirs et de leurs rêves.
Then you’re going to use those exact same words your audience would use to sell your product. It’s putting the words together on a page. Pretty different from coming up with clever lines for your latest sonnet, right?
You’ll find plenty of tips and tricks for customer research in the post about content strategy as well as the one on generating ideas for your content. Use your research to inspire your sales copy as well as your blog posts.
2. Rédiger des titres irrésistibles
On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.
– David Ogilvy
There is one reason and one reason only your reader will read a single word of the blog post you’ve written: your headline.
If your headline is weak or vague, your content won’t get read – even if it’s the best piece of content the world has ever seen. This is true even if you have a loyal, decent-sized audience. You need to persuade them to give you their attention, every single time you publish a piece of content.
De bons titres y contribuent sans aucun doute. Passer du temps à créer un titre convaincant est un bon investissement de votre temps car il peut faire ou défaire votre article.
When writing your headline, start with the 4 U’s:
- Utile: answer the “what’s in it for me” immediately
- Urgentles raisons pour lesquelles ils devraient lire votre article maintenant.
- Unique: make clear your article isn’t just a rework or recycle of all the other pieces on the subject
- Ultra-spécifique: leur dire exactement ce à quoi ils peuvent s'attendre
Now if your blog post sucks, your headline obviously won’t save the piece. But it will do a lot to increase engagement from quality leads. And you’ll get more shares, likes and links.
3. Faire passer les informations les plus importantes en premier
The web is not a murder mystery. Tell them who did it in the first sentence.
– Gerry McGovern
It’s easily one of the trickiest habits I had to ditch when I said goodbye to the nice folks at Sidley Austin’s Brussels office to become a copywriter.
You see, a legal memo usually goes like this. First, explain what you’re going to discuss. Then, present a detailed overview of the case law and literature. Next, discuss and draw your conclusion. The most important point – the conclusion – always goes right at the very end.
If this structure seems familiar – and you’re not a lawyer – it’s because it’s how we’re taught to write essays as well.
Cependant, structurer vos informations de cette manière sur le web n'est pas une bonne idée.
En fait, vous devez faire exactement le contraire. Les journalistes appellent cette façon d'écrire la pyramide inversée.
Just open up a newspaper and you’ll recognize it straight away: the most newsworthy information comes first, details and background information come second. Even if you only read the headline and the introductory paragraph, you’ll get the main takeaways from the article.
It’s the same on your website or blog: your readers want to know the big picture first. If they’re really interested, they’ll read on to get the juicy details.
4. Faire en sorte qu'il puisse être scanné
“What I am doing here is taking the reader by the hand and leading him exactly where I want him to go. It seems like a small point and, maybe it is, but is the little touches like this that keeps the letter flowing and the reader moving along.”
– Gary Halbert
As I’m writing this blog post, I’m already thinking about the people reading it. Will people actually read it? In this digital day and age, the reality is: only few people will.
Recherche suggère que seulement 16% des personnes lisent les pages web mot à mot. Au lieu de cela, la plupart des gens scannent.
They glance at each new page they stumble upon. They’ll scan some of the text, and click on the first thing that catches their attention or vaguely resembles the thing they’re looking for.
Here’s a checklist for using copywriting techniques in your content to meet scanners’ needs:
- Communicate in your headline what you’re going to talk about
- Utilisez les captions de vos images pour appuyer votre message principal.
- Placez vos points clés dans sous-titres
- Utiliser un système facile à numériser points à puce
- Utilisez bold pour mettre en évidence les mots importants
Votre visiteur est à la recherche d'informations. Veillez à ce qu'il puisse comprendre vos informations les plus importantes en jetant un simple coup d'œil à la page.
5. Don’t go off on any tangents
Vos lecteurs doivent être tellement pressés de lire votre texte qu'ils ne peuvent pas s'arrêter avant de l'avoir lu en entier, comme s'ils glissaient sur un toboggan glissant.
– Joseph Sugarman
Oncle Joe sure knows what he’s talking about. Each sentence you write should make your reader want to read the next one.
Cela signifie qu'il faut s'en tenir à son point de vue, se concentrer et, surtout, ne pas se disperser : désencombrer votre texte. Traitez votre texte comme le ferait Marie Kondo : débarrassez-le de tout ce qui l'encombre, réduisez le bruit et ajoutez de l'espace blanc.
Non seulement cela facilitera la lecture de votre texte, mais cela permettra également d'augmenter la confiance perçue. Et susciter la joie, bien sûr.
Consider the visual appeal of your copy too – it impacts the readability of your text and whether or not your reader can find what he’s looking for quickly or not.
6. Une clarté cristalline
Il faut être capable de s'exprimer brièvement, clairement et de manière convaincante.
-Claude Hopkins
If you can’t reduce your argument to a few crisp words and phrases, there’s something wrong with your argument.
– Maurice Saatchi
If I’m quoting not one but two godfathers of advertising, it’s because I’m really trying to make a point here.
Hopkins se réfère au triptyque du copywriting : la clarté, la brièveté et l'utilité.
- We’ve talked about making your content relevant and useful for your reader extensively in part 3 of this Masterclass on content ideas. If it’s not relevant for your ideal customer, don’t even bother writing it. But even if you pick a useful topic to write about, no-one will actually read it unless you can make your points clearly and succinctly.
- La concision n'est pas nécessairement synonyme de texte court – it’s about trimming the fat and using as little words as possible without rendering your message ineffective. Delete the words that are just window dressing (see, this is where your experience with haiku’s may come in handy after all).
- Clarity is about writing words your ideal reader can actually understand. Whenever I work with clients in the legal or professional services industry, they always give me this “you gotta be kidding me” look when I tell them to get rid of jargon and gobbledygook. What is hidden behind this look is the fear that they’ll share too much of their knowledge and that clients will no longer need their advice (why yes, I see right through you, guys and gals).
This is absolute nonsense, of course. I think the opposite is true. I believe it’s Einstein who said: ‘if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough’. The guy was no marketing expert by any measure, but not exactly an idiot either…
7. Faire en sorte qu'il soit possible de passer à l'action
Writing direct response copy always serves a specific purpose. If you’re doing it right, your content should also serve a strategic goal and stimulate a specific behavior: subscribing to your email newsletter, reading the next blogpost in a series, downloading a white paper, getting in touch,…
To get action, you’ve got to ask for it.
(Cela semble tout à fait approprié à l'ère post-#metoo-, n'est-ce pas ?)
Ou comme le dirait ce bon vieux Gary Halbert :
“Relieve (the reader) of the burden of trying to figure out what he is supposed to do when he finishes reading a particular page.”
Get rid of any friction and make the next step easy. Clicking a button. Sharing a link. Typing an email address (but not necessarily full account information—even that amount of effort can scare people away).
Plus l'action est simple, plus votre public se sentira suffisamment motivé pour la réaliser.
And that’s it! Seven solid copywriting strategies to inject your content with and get better ROI.
Of course, rules are meant to be broken, and I am as guilty as anyone. And putting the wisdom of these old gents (the original Mad Men) in practice can be a daunting task – but it’s worth the extra effort.
Trusty old Gary (Halbert) knew what he was saying when he said that “the written word is the strongest source of power in the entire universe.” Use it wisely.
Are you using copywriting techniques in your blog posts? Any particular copywriting challenges you’re wrestling with? Let us know in the comments!
And don’t forget to check back next week for Part Seven of our Content Marketing Masterclass about distributing your content!
Nous espérons que cet article vous a plu. Si c'est le cas, passez le mot !
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