There are many strategies for copywriting. Copywriting aims to appeal to your audience’s emotions and get them to take the action you need them to. Feelings and emotions influence many purchase decisions. Psychological strategies can trigger these emotions. Some of them comprise reframing, social proofing, and testing what works, to continuously improve conversion.

Reframing

This is quite a simple psychological strategy that has huge effects on consumers. It is synonymous with calling six chairs “half a dozen chairs” when, in reality, they mean the same thing, although they are interpreted differently in the mind of the reader for different reasons. One popular Reframing method companies do reduce the price of a product by a penny. Rather than call a product $10, they call it $9.99. Of course, the difference is infinitesimal, but consumers have a psychological sense of viewing $9.99 as cheaper than $10. Hence, reducing the amount by a penny or two to call your prices “.99” or “.98” appeals mentally to the user that the item is cheaper. 

Crazy right? But it works crazy, too; many stores had reported a significant increase in sales when they reframed their pricing as such. Reframing is a very effective strategy that allows you to manipulate an item’s actual value without telling a lie. Instead, it focuses on the reader’s mentality.

There are other ways by which businesses reframe their products. Many companies would set prices for their annual packages at $480, which may seem to people a huge amount to pay at once. But it looks pretty much more comfortable to pay $40 per month because you have made it look cheaper. Asking the buyer to pay $480 will come with a bit of reluctance, unlike $40, which is quite easily affordable, whereas they are the same thing. Some may even prefer to pay $1.50 every day because it is incredibly cheap and affordable for them.

Therefore, the business known to produce a yearly service subscription of $480 may come up with a newsletter with a headline that says “GREAT NEWS! You can now gain VIP access to our XYZ product for as low as $1.50.” This will make a lot of sense to people, and it will generate a lot of clicks and conversions because it seems “cheaper,” whereas it is more expensive than buying at $480. After all, after 365 days, a daily subscriber would have paid $547.50, $67.50 more than the person who made a one-time yearly subscription at $480. But who cares? You have reframed, and you have made your profits on the Psychological loophole in your audience. 

This website has a weekly and monthly package, but they choose to make their daily option the front of the advert. Looking at it, 8 cents is a super great deal. But in reality, nothing as changed. It’ll, however, help boost conversion

Social Proof

Social proof is another thing that propels the purchase decision of consumers. People want to learn from other people’s mistakes many times; hence, they resort to using social proof when they’re unsure what to do next.

Social proof is handy when a potential customer is on the fence. You have convinced the reader about your unique value and the benefits you offer, but you have not succeeded in overcoming his objections. Hence he needs proof from others. If you sell a product on a third-party platform like Amazon, the easy way your potential customers will get social proof is by combing through your reviews. But in cases where everything happens on your website or domain, you need to include social proof yourself.

Many social media networks and instant messaging apps, dating sites, and the likes utilize social proof to pin down skeptics. They may write on their homepage that “We have 1,002,785 registered users; 347,238 are online now”. This is to convert the skeptic to complete his registration and be a part of their community, and the good news is that it works like magic because the social proof available helps overcome objections. The potential subscriber may be skeptical because it is not a popular dating site yet, but seeing those numbers, he is more than encouraged to join up and even chat with one of the 300,000+ users online.

Many other businesses also include their results and testimonials in their copy. As you often see them leave featured comments and testimonials in a section of their homepages, they pull over to themselves the skeptics on the fence. However, Social proof is paradoxical because you need to have made sales to have evidence to show your audience. If you are a new business owner, ensure that your items are cheap at the start to generate sales. Speak nicely to your customers to leave a written review to select the best of the bunch as your social proof.

If you offer a service rather than a product, you could make the basic service free for a select number of people at the start, and the premium service at a substantial discount, maybe 50%. This will give you a considerable sample space of people to provide testimonials about your service, and boom! Social proof stands. 

You could create a list of potential objections; this makes you think ahead of your audience. Create the objections he could probably have before he does and squash them. I call this “The First Attack Approach.” Rather than deceive yourself that you are good to go and there are no objections, identify the objections before your audience, because if you don’t do that, your readers will eventually identify complaints. Your conversion won’t hit its peak. The objections could be “Price,” “Season,” “Personal doubts, i.e., will this work for someone like me,” “I already have a product I am loyal to, and I’m not willing to switch,” and many more. Bring everything up, and remove these concerns by yourself, and you have your customers on lock.

Use Irregular Numbers

Another way of exploiting the mentality of an audience is to use irregular numbers. Irregular numbers are numbers that aren’t round figures. 

“50% increase” is a round figure, “100 subscribers” is a round figure. One proven way of exploiting the human mentality from experience is to use irregular numbers, which are more believable than rounded figures. Well, I also agree that it is easier to believe that 978 people subscribed to your premium package offer than when you say 1,000 people. This is because it is quite common to get irregular figures than rounded ones. 

As I have mentioned previously, numbers help give specifics, which is very important for a copy, but you should ensure that you use irregular numbers than rounded figures. From the dating site example that I gave in the last subtopic, we can see the use of irregular numbers. 

“We have 1,002,785 registered users; 347,238 are online now”. This is a lot more believable than saying, “We have over 1,000,000 registered users; about 350,000 are online now”. Although both statements are correct, one looks more honest than the other. And this loophole is a great one in appealing to the psychology of humans. 

Reduce Price Objections: Another psychological approach to convincing your audience is to reduce price objections. This simply means that you want to reassure them that they are not overpaying for a product. You must often have seen a business’ copy that says, “Get Access to this product for a small amount of $5”. You might look within you that it is an unnecessary repetition because it is quite clear that $5 is small. But it doesn’t work that way in copywriting. It would be best to emphasize that the amount you have called is cheap and help them overcome their objections.

A headline example is: “Get lifetime access to eBooks and learning materials on graphics designing at a bargain $59.95” The word bargain removes the price objection from the buyer at this point because, in his mind, bargain signifies to him that if he wants to get that lifetime access, he would be paying much more. 

Beyond the headline, in the copy, you could emphasize the cheapness by reminding the user that a monthly fee is $3.49, which means that the reader could have lifetime access to the product, rather than paying $3.49 for 18 months. This sounds like a steal, and it will get the reader inclined to purchase the product. 

Testing

After combining knowledge with strategy, the next thing you need to do is to test. There is no rigid or hard and fast rule to copywriting. Test your strategy with different leads, different psychological approaches, and even mix strategies to get your copy’s best possible performance. 

This is an example of a headline that has mixed three strategies! “Hurry now, Register with Us And Boost Your Website Impressions by 14%”. This example has added the strategy of urgency and a specific number while using an irregular number. You can even mix more strategies in the content of your copy, depending on your creativity.

Testing will also make you understand what design makes your copy convert better, the emotional words your audience seem to key into, and even the point at which you lose your readers. This can make you tweak and improve your copy till you get the best. It could be strenuous, but once you get a hold of your perfect strategy, you will enjoy the best conversions and better revenue for life. 

Read Next: Unique Value Proposition, Business Writing, Copywriting, Email Marketing, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing.

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