Direct Response Copywriting is all about structuring your words (copy) in such a way that the reader is compelled to take an immediate action (direct response). Direct Response has been around for many years but with the proliferation of the web its become even more relevant because website technology helps to facilitate the action more resulting in better ‘responses’ than ever before. In this episode, we talk with Stefan King from Vivid Web Copy about the ins and outs of direct response copywriting and how a small business can benefit from it.

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Mentioned in this episode;

* Stefan’s business; Vivid Web Copy
* Vivid web copy ebook (and sales page)
* Influence by Robert B. Cialdini (book) – Six Principles of Influence
* Customer personas (read our post on how to create customer personas)

Transcription
Nick: Welcome back to the Lead Generation podcast. Today, we’re going to be talking with Stephan King from Vivid Web Copy about direct response copywriting. So thanks for joining us Stephan.
Stephan: Thanks for having me, good to be here.
Nick: Stephan specialises in creating web copy and landing pages for Software Companies but the techniques and strategies we will be discussing today are going to be applicable to many different types of businesses. So, hopefully many of our listeners will be able to learn something from this. Let’s get started by defining copywriting. Stephan, so, what is direct response copywriting?
Stephan: Direct response copywriting is when you want to have the visitor of the page to take action immediately. It originated with the traditional sales letter that you send out in the mail and you want people to act immediately when they read it, based on very little trust but a lot of information. This is in contrast to copywriting for branding where, for example, if you place a Mercedes advertisement in a magazine, then you’re not going to expect to have the readers run to the store immediately after they see it and buy the car.
It’s more like, because the boy throughout his childhood and then adulthood sees a lot of Mercedes ads in magazines and other places, he begins to form a connection with the brand. At some point in the future, when he can afford to buy a new car, he’ll just naturally know that the Mercedes is right for him – so this is at the extreme end of the spectrum. In between, you have TV advertising and radio advertising, where you make people slowly familiar with a certain brand name over time so that brand is top of mind when they are ready to buy. So that is branding advertising and that is in contrast to the direct response advertising where you just want to have people act immediately. You ask for a significant action from cold traffic based on information.
Nick: Cool, cool. So, this sounds like it’s definitely applicable to the web, where people often have the ability to take an action right away a...