Body Copy

The body copy of your website or landing page (or email) is where your ideal customers become convinced that they’re making the right decision. It’s where they are comforted that they’re not alone. And it’s where they gain the confidence they need to take the risk of giving you their money in order to have your solution take away their pains and deliver them to the new, better, future self they so badly desire to become.

Headline > Subhead > Body (> CTA > Button > Micro)

Your headline grabs their attention, your subhead draws them in, your body copy convinces them they were right to give their attention and be drawn in. (And, after that, your call-to-action, or CTA, inspires them to do something about this new reality they’re in, the button copy makes them feel good about doing it, and the microcopy around the button puts to rest any last-minute fears or doubts…but I digress.)

So, as you can see, your body copy is sitting there, right in the middle, like the filling in a sandwich, like a rhythm guitar player in a band or the melody in a song. Without it, the rest would make no sense or at least would ring empty.

More than anywhere else on the page, this is where things have to flow. You can get away with a slightly dis-jointed headline if it does its job of stopping people in their tracks. You can get away with a bulleted story told for scanners in your subheads down the page, so long as each does its job of resonating with a certain reader. But the body copy needs to sing.

You can’t have lumpy copy within a section. Each sentence needs to build on the last. Each word needs to flow into the next. This is the conversation. This is where your tone, your empathy, your understanding, and your authority are proved (or not).

No one wants a wall of words

Regardless of how long a particular section is, no matter how compellingly it’s written, it needs to be chunked up into reasonable looking pieces of text – paragraphs, if you will – or it will simply not get read.

The same information (and amount of information) can look either inviting or daunting to read, simply by how it has been broken up on the page.

In emails, there’s almost no good reason for a paragraph to be longer than a sentence – two at the very most. And it’s true in many landing pages too. Though, to make things as visually appealing as possible, it’s best if there is a variety of paragraph sizes on display.

Now, I’m just speculating here (perhaps someone has studied and reported on this?) but I guess that the reason this is true is that we don’t trust a series of uniform-length paragraphs, at some subconscious level. “How is it possible that all of your thoughts, all of your topics, can be conveyed in the same number of words/lines?!” It doesn’t seem natural or organic, it seems too convenient.

This speculation comes from the same place that makes us less likely to believe a statistic that rounds nicely on a 5 or a 10 (i.e. 83% of people like this website vs 90% of people like this website). When things are too “right” they seem wrong.

How I write body copy

One thing that makes writing body copy easier for me is to use the pre-defined subheads down the page as an outline. This means I’m never writing aimlessly and into the infinite void of page space. Generally, my subheads introduce a pain point or benefit, and the body copy that follows develops my argument as to why my solution relieves or provides it.

I’ll start by making things a little worse (this is for a pain-based subhead and section), agitating the problem a bit, and then work toward a kind of resolution.

The resolution can be final, convincing, compelling (if it’s time to present the solution you’re offering and work toward the sale/close/CTA). Or can be temporary, part of a larger story arc. Enough to signify that “I get you” and “there’s hope for us…just read on”.

Speaking of writing into the infinite void, one technique that has helped me out a whole lot on many a project is to write a personal letter explaining the whole situation of a problem and the offered solution. This is a great Joanna Wiebe tactic and I highly recommend trying it out the next time you want to explain anything, really.

This is where I make use of “flow state”. (When you’re doing something so fully that the rest of the world seems to disappear or fade away for a while – like pro athletes in the middle of a game or race or competition, or musicians when they’re improvising.)

For me, I write to my mum. Most of the copy I write is for the web, a lot of it for SaaS or tech companies, or modern solutions to modern problems. As my mother, quite enviably, lives largely outside of the trappings of the digital/modern world, most products or services I’m writing for need explanation from the ground up.

So, the technique is, I write a “letter” to my mum imagining that I’m telling her about a new copy project I’m working on, and then I go back to the most primary level of explanation needed for any of it to make any sense.

This, essentially, provides me with a thought progression through all of Eugene Schwartz’s stages of buyer awareness: Unaware > Problem Aware > Solution Aware > Product Aware > Most Aware.

Then, I can often use this letter (written outside the constraints of the page or email I’m writing) to inform the body copy for the project, starting wherever on the awareness scale the research has determined the ideal viewer of this marketing asset will be.

What makes successful body copy

Successful body copy keeps the reader’s attention. It conveys the essence of your company or brand. It leaves you better than you were before you started reading (in mind or spirit), and it leads you closer (or all the way) to deciding to buy or act or engage with the solution it exists to promote.

I believe that successful body copy also injects the humanity that headlines, subheads, and CTAs can’t (fully). It is a space to go into more detail and be more nuanced. It can round up all the minor variations of thought patterns that may exist within the already-narrow definition of your “ideal” reader or customer and gather them up in the march toward the logical end of your argument.

Whether it’s as simple as a product description, or as complex as a 5,000-word long-form sales page or letter, the way to success with body copy is the same: precision, personality, perspective, and persuasion.

One last thought from me on the topic: another tactic for writing natural, un-marketing-y body copy is to combine the technique of writing a personal letter mentioned above with the modern “hack” of writing on paper (irony and tongue-in-cheek humor intended).

There are so many reasons why writing by hand is good for you, and for your writing, like the fact that you can’t delete and so are less likely to edit whilst you create (a big no-no) or the fact that there isn’t a ream of tabs on the top of your page beckoning you to look at something (anything) else.

Got thoughts on these thoughts? Let’s connect! Send me a message here.