There are many business owners, including those who own a fitness business, who have started digital marketing campaigns but who feel they are not getting the results they were hoping for. One of the reasons suggested for this by digital marketing specialists is that the written content, or ‘copy’ as it is more accurately called, that is used for content marketing may not be converted as it should.
Part of this goes to the principle that every page on your website should convert visitors by encouraging them to take some kind of action. These ‘calls to action’ can include making a telephone call to the business, entering their email, filling out a survey, or completing a form on the contact page so that someone can call them back. The ultimate call to action is ‘Buy’, where the visitor actually makes a purchase and enters their credit card details.
Not every website has a purchase as the main call to action, given that not every type of business is suited to that. For example, professionals such as lawyers, accountants, dentists, and, in this case, fitness experts who all consult with their clients, are unlikely to have a ‘Buy Now’ button on their website, given that each client’s needs will be different.
Nevertheless, their websites need to have some means of converting a visitor so they get closer to becoming a paying client or customer, and the means by which that is achieved is what is written on each page of the website. If the website has been professionally built, the text is likely to have been written by one or more copywriters, who have the writing skills to create copy that converts.
It should be noted that sales copy and content are two very different things, and simply because someone is able to create blog posts and articles does not mean they can write sales copy that converts. This is not to diminish what content writers produce, and many of them create awesome articles, blog posts, reports which inform and entertain to a very high level. However, these are not designed to convert in the same way the material written by a copywriter is expected to.
Copywriting is a highly skilled craft and the ability to ‘sell in print’ is something that very few marketers and online business owners can achieve. This is why copywriters command high fees given that what they write can measurably generate sales, and thus revenue for a business. However, not every piece of sales copy is e designed to generate a sale.
In your fitness business, it might be that your goal is for prospects to enter their email address and thus allow you to market to them via email. Alternatively, you might be set up to take inquiries via telephone or a form on your website. Ultimately, any visitor is not going to do any of these or take any other action without being persuaded to do so first, which brings us to a copywriter’s skills of persuasion using the written word again.
Their words can stir up emotions in people that cause them to take action. The main 3 emotions they can spark within individuals are fear, excitement, and urgency. Specific examples for your fitness business could be the fear of being poor health through lack of exercise, the excitement of losing weight, or the urgency of a special offer you have closing for a fitness course you created. Emotions cause actions, and emotion is what great copywriting generates in others.
