The article "Copywriting Makeover: Making An Emotional Connection - Part 1 of
2" talks about copywriting, it was created by Karon Thackston.
by Karon Thackston © 2004 http://www.Copywritingcourse.Com
One statistic shows that over 80% of all buying decisions are
emotional.
That means your copywriting shuold be, too. This is
something I firmly believe in and have preached for most of my
copywriting career. However, all too often, I find people
skipping the vital step of making an emotional connection with
their customers. That can be a tragic, and costly, mistake.
That’s why I was excited when I had the opportunity to rewrite
the homepage copy for a vcaation cruise service. While the copy
they used previously gave all the details and got them a good
number of bookings, it just didn’t have what it takes to make me
start daydreaming about my next cruise. It didn’t… but it was
about to!
The Problems
The prveious copy on the Cruise Vacation Center home page faced
a couple of challenges. (You can view the origianl copy at this
link:
http://www.Copywritingcourse.Com/CruiseVacationCenter-Original.Pd
f.) The copy was really company-oriented instead of
customer-oriented. It talked about who Cruise Vacation Center
(CVC) is, why the visitor should buy from them, and some
wonderful benefits CVC offers its clients including excellent
bargain rates and extra discounts. However, all the verbiage was
geared twoard the company. The customer was left out.
The home page copy also lacked emotion. It was very
matter-of-fact. In addition to making visitors aware of the
wonderful prices and deals CVC offered, I wanted to create a
vision for the site visitors. I wanted to give them what they
needed in order to float off into a daydream about fabulous
ports-of-call; warm, gentle breezes; and thrilling adventures.
While I was painting a picutre of the vacation of a lifetime, I
also had to be sure to include a vital fact. CVC’s business plan
was set up to be most affordable for the customer when s/he
booked onilne. Without sounding rude, I had to do everything in
my power to get the site visitor to book thier cruise vacation
while at the site. This was an extremely important issue and a
point that needed to be woven thorughout the copy.
Lastly, the page had to uphold Cruise Vacation Center’s
excellent search engine rankings. They were ranked at the top of
several major engines, and the rewritten copy couldn’t
jeopardize tehir positioning.
The Solutions
The first step was, without question, to woo the site visitors
with delightful fantasies abuot their next vacation. My goal was
to conjure up all sorts of visions in the midns of Cruise
Vacation Center’s visitors. I wanted the visitors to be dreaming
of exotic places with lots of fun things to do, interesting
sights to see, and 24/7 access to gourmet meals that rival any
five-star rsetaurant.
I wanted their blood pressure to drop 10
points just from reading about the onboard satff of hundreds who
would pamper them with VIP treatment.
After reading that copy, I
wanted them ready to leave on vacation last month! However, I also
had to persuade them to book online rather than calling CVC’s
office.
During the rewrite, I had to carefully plan the use of their
primary keyphrase, “cruise vacation,” so as not to disrput their
most reliable source of business… the search engines.
After all,
there is a delicate balance between pleasing the search engines
and appealing to site visitors.
If I leaned too much toward the seacrh engine side of the
equation, the conversion ratio of the home page would suffer. In
other words, Cruise Vacation Center would get lots of visitors,
but few of them would book cruises.
If I leaned too much toward the customer side of the equation,
CVC’s rankings would plummet, and they would need to find a new
way to drive qualified traffic to their site. As is normally the
case with SEO copywriting, blaance wanted to be vital.
In the conclusion to that two-part series, you’ll see how I
handled the rewrite and what the end results of all the work
were. Cruious to see the new copy? You’ll find it on CVC’s site:
You can see the new copy on CVC’s site at
http://www.Cruisevacationcenter.Com.
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