Web copywriting: where’s the emotion?

Did anyone else out there forget Valentine’s Day yesterday? Not a good move!

It made me think about something else that’s being forgotten these days: emotional advertising.

There’s a lot of buzz these days about writing for the web.  Keywords and SEO are the big thing.  People express themselves in 140-character “tweets”.  Marketers are tapping into social media to reach their prospects and customers.

Progress is good, but we seem to be losing one thing in a lot of marketing copy:

Emotion.

I just don’t see a lot of it. Here’s the thing: when it’s done well, an emotional factor in advertising works wonders. It touches a nerve. It sparks the heart. And it causes people to take action.

Kind of like what Valentine’s Day gifts and cards are meant to do, right?

Marketers: find a copywriter who can do this

Have you ever heard of the late legendary copywriter, Gene Schwartz?  He was a guy who worked extremely intensely for short periods of time (his entire career, he set a timer and worked in 33 minute 33 second spurts, to be exact.)

Gene was mechanical when it came to his time, but extremely creative as a copywriter.  He produced ads for Boardroom and Rodale Press in the 1960’s and 70’s that produced millions in sales.

Gene once said,

“The first rule of all copy”, said Schwartz, “is that it produce an emotional impact…every word must carry image, picture, feeling. 

“Two emotional images, joined together in the right way, can often have ten times the impact that either of these images has by itself.”

A good copywriter delivers a good return on your investment

My job as a copywriter is to help you increase sales, and I do it well.

One reason my copy works so well is because I do what Gene Schwartz did: combine words in such a way as to evoke an emotional response from your reader.

It’s as important on the web as it ever was in Schwartz’s mail-order days.

The key is to do it subtly.  You want to build emotion and mood into your copy.  But it should be virtually unnoticed by your reader.

If you can do this yourself, phenomenal. If not, a good copywriter is worth his weight in gold! I’m not the best fit for every project, but I may be able to help you.

Good copywriting weaves emotion into features and benefits

Either way, see how many different emotions you can pack into a single sentence…paragraph…sequence.  See how much richer and more powerful your copy becomes.  How much more you can say in the same space.

Your headlines and your copy will sing, and your clients will see results.

One last thing, as Schwartz was known to say:

“Always shoot for the moon – it’s one of the few real thrills left today!”