A Copywriting Checklist of Do’s and Don’ts

When you’ve written and rewritten, and lost all objectivity on your sales copy, use this checklist to remind you of some ways to strengthen your piece and avoid marketing mistakes.

Almost all of the principles below apply whether it’s a sales letter designed to arrive by mail, a Web page, an email or a flyer to be stuck under cars’ windshield wipers.

The Big Picture

Can someone looking quickly through your piece tell who you are, what you’re selling, how much it costs and what they need to do as a next step? They should.

Are the tone, colors and graphical presentation consistent with your desired image and in keeping with the expectations of your target market? This creates a foundation of credibility and rapport.

Given your type sizes, fonts and color combinations, is the piece readable? Something comfortable for 20-year-old eyes may require great effort from someone 40+.

Headline

Do you have an eyecatching headline? Omitting a headline altogether is a common and damaging oversight.

If your headline were read by itself, would the reader accurately understand at least the subject matter of your marketing piece? If not, add clues to the headline.

Does your headline involve an appeal to emotions or basic needs? That always works better than something cute.

Is it at least implicit in the headline who the marketing piece is targeting? Don’t be afraid to preface your headline with the audience, like: “Overweight? We have a doctor-proven solution.”

Layout

Have you used paragraphs seven lines long or shorter? If not, break up the copy into smaller chunks.

Have you broken up the copy every couple of paragraphs with subheads? This makes the text more reader-friendly and more scannable.

Are the columns narrow enough that the reader can always find the beginning of the next line easily? The rule of thumb is that the smaller the type size, the shorter lines of text need to be.

Have you emphasized important concepts with bold or color without going overboard? Use underlining and italics for emphasis very sparingly.

Have you checked for and fixed unfortunate page breaks and paragraphs with a line missing? Sometimes these occur when you change copy at the last minute.

Credibility

Have you included fully attributed, concise testimonials to increase confidence in your offerings? Longer than seven lines may be too long.

Do enough other facts about your company counteract readers’ skepticism? Media reviews, industry certifications, date of founding, a photo of your manufacturing plant, your street address, client list and number of customers served all help.

Have you restated your credentials even if you believe readers know you? Master marketer Dan Kennedy says omitting his qualifications is the most disastrous mistake he’s made when he should have known better.

Have you backed up any claims you’ve made? Cite an authoritative source for a fact, results of your own testing... something to substantiate your contention.

Have you adequately and appropriately justified your price? An improbably low price needs as much explanation as an uncommonly high one.

Do you back up confidence in your product or service with some sort of guarantee? The longer the time of the guarantee, the more it adds to your bottom line.

Are your promises consistent with what you actually deliver? Promising less and delivering more is a powerful route to customer satisfaction.

Offer

Have you built your marketing piece around an offer rather than just “call us” or “we’d like to do business with you”? Offers make it easier for new and old customers alike to respond.

Is your offer clearly and unambiguously stated? When readers can get the wrong idea, or not get it at all, they will.

If you’ve called something “free,” do you mean completely without cost, no strings attached? If not, you’re in for misunderstandings and possible legal hot water.

Would someone reading quickly understand your offer accurately? If not, rewrite so that even a sloppy reader gets the right idea.

Have you done your mightiest to anticipate and head off questions and doubts about your offer? Explicitly address the most likely objections and suspicions.

Do you have a catchy name for your offer that people can enjoy asking for? Often this turns a so-so promotion into a winner.

Is the “small print” clearly laid out? Conditions of the sale need to hit home as part of the offer.

Do readers find a special reason to act right away? Setting a deadline for an offer – a real one – heads off procrastination.

Voice

Does the text come off sounding the way you’d like prospects to view your organization – for example as accessible, authoritative, trustworthy, compassionate, hard-headed or precise?

Is the vocabulary used consistent with your company image and the knowledgeability of your target audience? When you use jargon, technical terms or abbreviations, it’s best to slip in explanations for those who are not “with it.”

Have you avoided stuffy company-speak in favor of a more conversational approach? Make sure you talk more about “you” than about “I” or “us.”

Do you use fresh ways of saying things rather than clichés? Don’t be afraid to use unexpected, colorful words.

Have you considered using suspense, even in small doses? Teasers that provide a tempting sample of what buyers get motivate sales.

Have you turned negative statements into positive ones? Double negatives are especially deadly.

Is your copy brimming with personality? It’s OK to have a strong personality, as it will probably appeal to more people than those who dislike it.

Persuasiveness

Do you include a host of benefits instead of a mere litany of features? Making a chart of the benefits of each feature helps you figure out what to say.

Have you counteracted the most likely doubts a reader might have? This includes personal doubts, such as “Maybe I’m not good enough for a BMW.”

Have you hunted for vague statements and made each of them more specific? Specifics are much more convincing.

Did you eliminate all inconsistencies? Saying you’re second largest on one page and third largest on another gets readers scratching their heads.

Have you taken advantage of all opportunities to dramatize the facts about your offering? Compare, for example, “We worked really hard on this report” and “More than 1,000 man-hours went into our research.”

In who they are from and what they say, do your testimonials reflect who you want to get business from and why? It’s tempting to use quotes just because you have them, but an unintended pattern in them can mislead readers.

Did you clearly provide an avenue for folks with questions to ask them before ordering? This helps with general credibility, too.

Pace and Rhythm

When you read it aloud, does it flow? If you stumble when reading it out loud, readers stumble while reading to themselves, too.

Have you either condensed or injected some life into sections of your piece that are boring? Loosen your grip on readers and you could lose them for good.

Do you have variety in sentence length? It’s more pleasing to read something where not all sentences are the same length.

Have you sandwiched less important points between more important ones? People pay most attention to the end and beginning of a piece, paragraphs and sentences and least to the middle.

Have you ended with a call to action, telling the reader explicitly what to do next? Leaving this implicit doesn’t work well.

Details

Are telephone numbers accurate? It’s best to actually dial them to check. Otherwise you may have transposed digits and not spot the mistake until you’ve already lost orders.

Are prices correct, consistent and up to date? Sometimes you change a price while working on the marketing copy and overlook a mention of the old price.

When you’re updating a previously written piece, have you changed dates, issue numbers and other small details that are not consistent with the new version?

Are you accurate in announcing the number of items in a list? For instance, if you have a heading called “The Four Biggest Obstacles to Success,” are there four obstacles listed, not three or five?

Are spelling, punctuation and capitalization of special words consistent throughout your piece? You shouldn’t have “email” and “MIT” sometimes and other times “email” and “M.I.T.”

Did you spell-check your piece and have someone with top-notch English look it over for grammatical goofs? Spell-checking won’t catch every mistake, but it’s a very useful tool.

Have you proofread headlines and subheads especially carefully? The bigger the type, the easier it is to miss glaring mistakes.

Have you mentioned the most obvious facts about your organization and your offerings? Sometimes a fact as basic as a company’s location or a product being a software program gets left out.

Order Form

Did you clearly explain shipping and return policies?
At a Web site, these must appear prior to the point where someone is asked to submit credit card information.

Have you stated where you will and won’t ship or provide service, if there are any limitations?
Even when you do a local mailing, someone may want to order for someone living elsewhere.

Have you provided as many payment options as possible?
Besides accepting both credit cards and checks, you can increase orders by splitting the price into multiple payments.

If someone wants to order more than one of each item, can they?
Adding something like “bulk prices available upon request” makes mega-orders more likely.

Did you remind shoppers of your guarantee on the order form?
Keep in mind that some readers zoom straight to the order form without reading all the rest of your marketing copy.

Can someone with an exceptionally long address or someone from another country fit their data on your form?
Don’t frustrate buyers just when they’re hot to hand over their money!





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