Writing posts that convert - A copywriting structure that makes working with you a no-brainer

Using a copywriting formula for writing posts makes your writing more effective...

When you’re talking or writing about your offer, you shouldn’t feel uncomfortable, doubtful, or out of your depth.

Feelings of unease or doubt show in your message – and who’s going to work with you when they sense that you’re not 100% confident about your solution?

Being unsure about how to talk about your offer leads to babbling, incoherence, and a very confused audience who doesn’t take you up on your offer.

Making an offer is not a spur-of-the-moment thing – unless you are already super-well prepared and can deliver your pitch in your sleep.

There are certain things you need to know before you start talking – or writing – and proven structures that give you coherence and provide your audience with all the details they need to know to take you up on your offer.

So, let’s look into two things that make taking you up on your offer a no-brainer…

The clarity you need before you start writing (or talking)
A structure that gives your audience all the details they know to make a decision

You need clarity before you start writing

Do you remember exams that you sat in your past? If the exam mattered, there was no way you were winging it. You prepared diligently with the intention of scoring 100%.

Offering your audience your solution should come with a similar intention: converting prospects to clients.

Breaking that down further, you must understand your ideal clients and their journey:

Who exactly is your ideal client and what traits qualify them to be your client?
Who does your client want to be at the end of the transformational journey?
What do your clients need to learn to get from where they are and who they are now to their desired end point?

You also need to know all the features of your offer:

The learning stages of your offer (detailed understanding of what’s included in each stage). You might call these units steps or modules
The features that are included in these stages (videos, worksheets, 1:1 sessions, email support, support group etc.)
The length of your programme (your clients need to be able to plan and consider their time investment and urgency)
The methods you’re using to teach or empower your clients – could be NLP, creative problem-solving methods, group coaching, Reiki…

Also, you must be able to articulate the benefits and long-term outcomes of your solution. What will your solution enable your clients to do, feel, or achieve at each point of their journey?

And lastly, you need to know what makes you the best person to work with? The person who delivers their desired results better and faster than anyone else.

I have written many other articles about all of these topics and if you want to learn more about the how-to and the theory behind these topics, then head over to my blog page by clicking on the image below:

Eliminating confusion & pushing conversion through a structure

A confused mind doesn’t buy – and the best way of avoiding confusion is to have a clear structure that leads to the goal that you want to achieve.

There are many copywriting structures that are based on how the human brain works and that are suitable for different kinds of goals.

There’s one structure that I find particularly useful for writing social media offer posts. This structure is called PASO – which stands for:

P – Pain or Problem (that your client experiences)
A – Agitate (the pain)
S – Solution (that you provide)
O – Outcome (that your clients achieve)

Cover these points and then add a call to action that tells your audience exactly what next step you want them to take.

Let me walk you through this structure in a bit more detail.

But before I do that, let me point out that in the process you need to add a lot of specificity so that your audience can personally connect with your writing because they feel deeply and personally understood.

P - Make them feel the pain to grab attention

This might sound brutal, but all I want you to do is pick one aspect of your client’s larger problem and dive deeper into this problem.

Here are a few examples:

Feeling like there are never enough hours in the day can be a symptom of struggling with productivity
Suffering from brain fog can be a symptom of not knowing how to optimise your food for optimal brain performance
Facing endless objections at the end of a sales call can be a symptom of not understanding the stages of a sales conversation…

To grab attention, you pick just one tiny (but painful) symptom or experience that regularly shows up for your clients.

Then you isolate this symptom and the emotion that comes with it and turn it into a headline or first sentence.

That’s the hook that grabs your audience’s attention and draws them in to read your post.

This glimpse of their very personal and daily frustration that you have captured and understand is the connection point with your audience.

And then you transition to a more detailed description of your audience’s problem or the pain point they are experiencing.

It is very important that you expand on the pain point you mentioned and describe it in more detail. Let’s take our first example from above of feeling that there are not enough hours in the day.

Here’s what your ideal client might experience:

Frustration at the end of the day when they were not able to finish their to-do list but still feel that they’ve been busy all day…

That they have problems accounting for the hours they’ve spent with very little tangible results…

The awareness they are lacking when they drift off to scroll through Facebook or watch videos on YouTube…

The anger that they feel when they blame themselves for doing the workout they committed to in the morning…

That they are getting into a rut that affects their health and their business.

A – Agitate the pain by digging a bit deeper

This might sound a bit cruel but it’s important that your ideal clients acknowledge the situation they are in and understand that they need to change something to escape their predicament. Being stuck in a hamster wheel of never-ending pain is worse than stepping forward and taking action.

As I said, agitating your clients’ pain might feel unkind but if you do this ethically, then you guide them into a thinking process that allows you to help them end their pain for good.

By agitating their pain, you are connecting with them on a deeper level, and they will feel better understood because you acknowledge their suffering and let them know that they are not alone and that you understand the consequences of what they are dealing with.

Referring once more to our example from above, you could explain why they are not able to finish their to-do list or find time for the things that they enjoy and keep them focused. Be explicit about what happens if they don’t change what they are doing now, what not acting has cost them in the past, what it’s costing them now and what’s going to cost them in the future.

For more details on this, click on the image and head over to one of my recent posts:

Not fixing the productivity problem can result in little or no business growth, lack of consistency and lower conversion rates so that they might be forced to take a job rather than grow their own business.

You can also share with them what they need to do to overcome their problems. This might, in this case, be learning how to prioritise tasks, plan ahead, manage distractions, set intentions, and alternating high-intensity periods with active recovery breaks…

Share your insights so that they understand that you know what you’re talking about and that you have the right solution for them.

And this leads to the next section…

S – Show them your solution!

At this point, you let them know that you have a solution for them and offer it to them as a service (or a product).

You can talk about how fixing their problem will help them achieve the overall outcome that they imagine as the destination of their transformational journey.

Be very specific and add details of what their destination exactly looks like so that they know what they can expect from working with you.

Talk about specific results that they can achieve like…

Starting the day knowing exactly what they have to achieve (and can realistically achieve) instead of sitting down in the morning wondering about what they should do that day
Eat and drink optimally to fuel their brain throughout their working hours
Schedule tasks smartly to alternate tasks that demand high processing power and routine tasks that replenish the tanks
Manage distractions so that they don’t lose time going off task and then getting back into the task…

You can be as specific as talking about the amount of time they can save a day, what activities they can find time for instead of frantically working, the number of extra clients they can serve…

This level of specificity helps them to understand what success looks like as well as the value of your solution.

In the next section, you can give details about your solutions

O – Taking about what sells: benefits and outcomes

You might have heard that features don’t sell. That it’s the benefits and outcomes that get people to buy.

Long-term outcomes are a powerful tool. They help you with what is called “future casting” – which is nothing else but helping your prospects imagine what their future could look like after working with you.

My suggestion is to walk through your programme step by step or module by module and list some of the most important features that you translate into immediate benefits and long-term outcomes.

This will put your knowledge and your programme into context. Namely, into the context of your client's lives and their future success.

You talk about the duration of your programme so that they can plan and set aside time, how you are going to deliver your programme and the advantages of that, the features that are included like videos, a community or live feedback…

There are many options that help your audience understand how you will pave their way to success.

And – don’t forget to show them once more the outcome of what it can look like at the end of their transformational journey.

Our productivity coach might talk about the speed with which they can achieve a task in 2 hours instead of 5, not having to work during the weekend, and having clients and family members that respect boundaries so that they can eliminate time-eating disruptions…

Although we have covered all the letters of PASO, there’s one thing that makes all the difference:

Don’t forget a Call To Action!

Now that you’ve made the effort of writing an offer post that gets your prospects right to the finish line, you need to give them a little tug that pulls them across the line.

Don’t forget to finish with a call to action where you tell your audience what exactly you want them to do next so that they can achieve that future that they have imagined.

You are calling your audience to take the next step by either sending you a DM, booking a call, clicking the “buy now” button and entering their credit card details, joining a waitlist – whatever your next step is.

All that’s left is writing your next offer post

Please don’t put this post aside without taking action!

In this post, I have shared a lot of information with you that can help you write an offer post that connects with your ideal customer on a deep psychological level and that explains a proven copywriting structure to you that you can use to write highly-converting offer posts.

If you feel that you need more help with identifying your clients’ pain points, scenarios, translating features into benefits and outcomes, articulating what you have to offer in a compelling way, and writing a strong offer post…

Then send me a message and we can talk about how we can work together to win more clients with your copy.

Categories: Content Creation, Contentwriting, Conversion, Copywriting, Copywritingskills, Engagement, Marketing, Messaging