Writing Sales Copy, The Martha Stewart Way

Baking a cake is fun.

Writing sales copy, for most people, is probably less fun…

Trying to get down all the important points AND make it sound engaging AND make your reader take action is tricky.

And when things are tricky, fixing that leaky tap, washing the dishes or bleaching your bath tiles instead of writing sales copy suddenly looks very appealing.

A great way to get over this hurdle is to think of it like baking a cake.

For example, Martha Stewart doesn’t achieve delicious fluffy cake goodness by mixing in the ingredients, baking it and icing it all at once, and neither do you create fabulous and compelling content trying to get your headline, opening paragraph, seductive benefits and objection busters done in one sitting.

So let’s follow Martha’s tried and tested stages for wonderful cake making and see how it applies to your copy.

Get your ingredients together

Get together all the things you’re going to need to write your copy and make a bulleted list highlighting them. Some important ingredients to include will be:

• Your product / business details
• Special offer details
• Possible objections
• Benefits
• Language, themes, imagery ideas
• Customer profile details

Sift the main ingredients into the mix

This is the hardest layer because you have to fight the urge for your copy to be fantastic at this stage.

Think of your cake. How appealing does a bowl full of flour, baking powder and butter look? It still forms the foundation of a great cake.

Pour out everything you can remember from the ingredients. Don’t worry about it reading perfectly, but make sure you write it from beginning to end including:

• Headline
• Opening paragraph
• Stuff in the middle
• Call to action

Leave to set in the refrigerator

Walk away from your copy at this point and do something else or take a break to let your mind refresh.

Stick in some eggs and bind together

Okay, so you come back to your mixing bowl and now you need to pull it together to form the body of your cake copy.

Start to chop and change so that you can group all the relevant sections together such as:

• The opening paragraph
• What relates to you and your credibility
• What relates to your customer’s problem
• What relates to the solution of this problem
• How happy your customer will be when you provide the solution

It still doesn’t have to look pretty, but it should form the basis of a coherent piece of copy at this stage.

Mix in the chocolate chips

This is where we take it from a soggy cake mix and turn it into soggy cake mix WITH exciting bits.

This is the spot where I’d be looking to include or tidy the:

• Bullet points
• Sub-headings
• Specific examples
  

When I say specific examples I mean changing things like

“Our business coaching makes you less stressed”

to

“When you know you are taking focused action in your business, you no longer feel guilty for taking time off with the family.”

Bake

Leave it, do something else or take a break and come back to it when it’s cooled.

Add your jam and cream layers

At this stage you should have something which is starting to look like pretty good sales copy. But we want delicious sales copy, so start adding more lovely parts like:

• Attention grabbing sentences
• Overcoming objections
• Specific product details
• Product bonuses
• Motivating techniques

Get it iced!

This is the final stage, here you’re polishing up your language, and you’re making sure your language is direct, simple, personable and packed with punch and emotion. You’re including a sense of urgency into why your reader should eat the cake take action. You’re proving that your cake is amazing by showing testimonials, and you’re picking the right headline to set it all off.

Stand back, let the icing set once more, come back for a final review and you’re done.

Take it to the bake sale!

You’re done, so get that copy over to your client or up on your website and give yourself a well deserved pat on the back.

Working in layers means you stay motivated with your copy and each time you add the next layer you’re fresh and have the energy to be creative.

It gets you used to completion which is the most important part of getting anything done and it shows you where you’re up to in the finishing process rather than just thinking “I haven’t done it , I haven’t done it…”

This isn’t the only way to work and I’d love to hear more from you. How do you bake your sales copy? Let us know in the comments below!