5 Writing Prompts & Copywriting Exercises For A High-Converting Sales Page

Writer's block is no fun, especially when you have a big sales page to complete and a looming deadline ahead. So in this video, I'm sharing five of my go to copywriting prompts and exercises that help me get started. Hey guys, what's up? It's Alex. Welcome back. Now, as a copywriter or a creative entrepreneur, I don't need to tell you what it's like to have a big sales page you need to complete and a looming deadline ahead and you sit down on your computer and nothing happens. Yeah, copywriter's block is the real deal. And sometimes the more you have to do and the longer you put it off, the worse it gets. And despite all of the templates and formulas and tools available online, I am still guilty of sitting on a sales page for way longer than I should because I can't seem to ignite that creative spark for such an important and challenging piece of copy. Where do you even start? Start. It can seem like an impossible task when you're staring at that blank page and that flashing cursor. I feel you. I've been there a million times. So in this video I'm sharing five of my go to copywriting prompts and exercises that help me get started writing a high converting sales page. And for more copywriting tutorials to strengthen your skill and ignite your creative flow, you can count on me for weekly videos, guides and examples. So if you're not already part of the posse here on YouTube, all you got to do is click that button below to subscribe and then ring that bell to be notified when my next video goes live. Live next week, I'll be sharing the biggest mistakes I see people make when writing sales pages. And trust me, you will not want to miss it. Alright, now let's start with copywriting prompt number one, the USP Statement Generator. The magic ingredient of any sales page is the unique selling proposition, or usp. This is the statement that communicates your big promise and the one benefit that makes your product stand out at its core. A USP should quickly answer the question, what? Why would someone buy from you over your competition? A specific, clear and consistent USP gives you, as the copywriter or the business owner, a strong theme across all communications and helps guide marketing decisions. That's why it's something that should be established well before any campaign or sales page is written. It becomes the guiding light, the key concept that you're trying to get your prospects to believe and understand. A great USP clearly defines who your product helps, how and and why, which brings me to the simple fill in the blank USP statement generator that I created to help my students come up with a clearly defined USP as a starting point for their sales pages. So it goes like this product helps audience with problem achieve benefit through unique solution. Now, while this statement might not go in your copy or your website exactly as it's shown, and yeah, you may want to change up a few words, it's a very helpful exercise to expedite the sales page writing process. It gives you a clear direction in which to point your pen. It helps you answer the question, okay, what am I trying to say here? What do I need people to know about my product in order to make a purchase? So here's an example of my USP statement for my copywriting coaching program, the Copy Posse Launchpad. The Copy Posse Launchpad helps aspiring copywriters who have no idea how to start write a complete and high converting copywriter portfolio through personalized guidance, coaching and support. So that is my USP statement. That was the guiding light that helped me write my sales page. And if you want to see the final sales page in action, you can click the link in the description below. All right, moving on to prompt number two, the Pain Problem Pain Loop so it is scientifically proven that we as humans are more motivated to avoid pain than to gain pleasure. And as a copywriter, you know this. It is so, so important to address and empathize with your customer's pain in your sales copy so that they believe you can actually help them overcome it. But be careful though. A common mistake copywriters make is confusing pain with the problem. The problem is not the pain. The problem is what causes the pain. And simply describing the problem will make your reader think, yeah, I know that already. That's why I'm here. It's sort of like selling a weight loss product and constantly telling people that they're overweight. It's a little bit cringey. Plus, there's only so much you can say to someone about that one overarching problem. How many different ways can you tell someone they need to lose weight? But if you first focus on the core emotions your prospect is feeling, it will allow you to explore the more specific issues they're experiencing as a result of that larger problem at hand and ultimately go deeper into understanding their pain. So a really easy exercise to help you with this is my Fill in the blank Pain Problem Pain Loop. Now, the goal here is to illustrate a bunch of believable and relatable scenarios that stand speak to what your prospect is struggling with and how that might show up in their daily lives. So it goes like this. You are negative emotion, experience or pain because specific problem. And as a result, you negative emotion, experience or pain. So, using the weight loss example again, here's what that might look like. You are feeling anxious because your clothes no longer fit. And as a result, you're embarrassed to go out with your friends. And then you continue through the pain problem pain loop. So you are embarrassed to go out with friends because you don't want to feel judged by your weight gain. And as a result, you feel lonely. You feel lonely because your skinny friends just won't understand what you're going through. And as a result, you feel frustrated. You feel frustrated because you've tried so many different diets and none of them seem to work. And as a result, you feel helpless. So see how much deeper I was able to go into this customer's emotional experience as a result of that one big problem they're dealing with. And now, even though it might feel a little bit redundant or repetitive at times, the goal is to keep going through that loop until you have a long list of emotions and specific problems your customer might be experiencing. And after you've done this multiple times, you can then select the most poignant pain points to integrate into your copy. Got it? All right, now let's move on to number three on my list. The feature to Benefit Converter. So let's say you need to write a sales page for a product that has a lot of features, parts, or steps to highlight. Well, a good place to start is to list out all of the features or parts your product has, or the complete step by step framework if it's say, a digital program. But you don't want to stop there. So another big mistake people often make on their sales pages is to put all their focus on product features, and they completely neglect the benefits. Now, if you're new to my videos, let me give you a really quick distinction between these two concepts. Features tell people what your product or service has or is, whereas benefits describe why they would want to buy your product based on the outcome they'll expect. It can be kind of tricky to turn your features into benefits. So that's why I created my super simple feature to Benefit Converter. So you simply start off with one of the features you listed out. So, for example, let's say it's batteries included on a children's toy. Now let's go ahead and turn that feature into a benefit using just five simple questions. The first, why is this feature notable? Well, batteries included, it's ready to use. Question number two. What problem does this feature solve? Well, it saves you that extra cost and that extra trip to the store to buy batteries. Question number three. What is the core pain point that this problem creates? Well, frustration, disappointment, maybe an upset child or anger. Now, question number four. When does this matter most? Well, Christmas morning. Maybe a birthday, Some sort of celebration when you're giving your child a toy. Right. And question number five. Why does your customer need this? Well, to remove stress. Peace of mind. Right. So now what's the benefit of batteries included? Having a stress free Christmas morning with your family at home. Voila. Now here's a bonus tip. By simply adding three little words so you can, you can beautifully describe any feature as a benefit right on your sales page, batteries included, so you can have a stress free Christmas morning with your family at home. Now repeat this exercise with each one of the features you've listed out. And to help you out, you can grab my copy of the featured Benny converter at the link below. All right, moving on to number four, what I call the no delete cheat sheet. So if you've tried the first three exercises and now you're struggling to weave your USP pain points and benefits into compelling sales copy, here is a fun exercise. So open a new document or sheet and write whatever comes to your mind as fast as you can for 10 to 20 minutes straight without stopping. And whatever you do, do not touch the delete key. This practice, known as free writing, was actually developed by English professor Peter elbow in the 70s and has made its way into writing classrooms everywh now. It might take some getting used to, because, yes, there will be resistance at first. The editor in us always wants to interfere and provide feedback as we write. I know I am a recovering perfectionist, but the point is to leave all that polishing and correcting and structuring until after you're done. No matter how many grammatical errors or aimless meandering it may entail. By removing any quality filters and completely minimizing gaps between thought and action, you'll actually tap into the most creative and emotional part of your brain and and leave your inner critic out of it. Learning how to get your thoughts onto paper in this way is an important part of strengthening your writing game. And it's super fun too. All right. Lastly, number five, the copycat. No, I am not telling you to swipe someone else's work. I am not endorsing plagiarism. That is a big no. No. And if you do that, you're really no copywriter at all, are you? But if there is anything that us copywriters can learn from songwriters and filmmakers and screenwriters is that sometimes you don't have to reinvent the wheel to create. Some things work well for good reason. So here's my copycat writing exercise. Find a great and relevant sales page that's already out there on the Internet and write each sentence in a notebook by hand. So research has actually proven that handwriting notes helps improve your creativity, cognition and memory. So by handwriting sales pages, you'll really get the cadence and flow of great copy burnt into your brain and spark more creativity in the process. Now, I know plenty of copywriting experts already teach this powerful exercise, but I like to take it one step step further. So after you write out each sentence, go ahead and rewrite it in your own words by replacing the nouns, the features, the benefits or pain points with your own. See if there's anything you would add, change or remove to make that sentence even more powerful and precise. So the goal here is to get into your copywriting brain before you start writing your own sales page, not to create copy that's a slightly modified version of someone else's work. This handwritten exercise will really help you break down your ideas and infuse relevant emotional triggers so stories and information into your copy. And if you're looking for great copy to use as inspiration, check out swiped CO for a whole library of ads and assets that you can write, rewrite and reverse engineer for practice. All right, so there you have it, guys. Five copywriting prompts and exercises to help you get started on writing your high converting sales tape. Give me a thumbs up below if you found this video helpful and I really hope you give some of these a spin. Comment below and let me know how they go. And if you missed my video last week, make sure to check it out. I shared eight of my go to copywriting tutorial tools that will make you a better writer. You can watch that next right here and I will see you next week with a brand new video where I'll be sharing some of the most common mistakes that copywriters make when writing a sales page that absolutely kill conversions. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss it. And until then, thanks for watching. I'm Alex. Ciao for now. Miss it. So subscribe.