What does it take to write copy that works?
In this day and age—where technology and creativity are inextricably linked—it’s getting harder and harder to respond to the requirements of search engines, capture the interest of your readers, and still be able to sell. (We are marketers after all!)
What you need is a tried and tested formula; one that combines ingenuity, SEO, and what your visitors need.
That’s where the SPIN selling model by Neil Rackman comes in.
SPIN is an acronym that stands for—
- Situation
- Problem
- Implication
- Need-payoff
Technically these are all supposed to be questions you’d ask in a sales setting. However they can be applied to copywriting as well.
Here’s how:
1. Situation
Use the first few sentences to pull your visitors in by starting with a situation statement or question. This gives your visitors time to take a minute and process how relevant the entire article is to them.
The idea is to hook your page visitors in with something that they can connect with—enough to make them stop and think what this article is worth to them.
Take the question I posited at the beginning of this article for example.
“What does it take to write copy that works?”
How do I know it works? It got you reading this far, didn’t it? 😉 But in a nutshell, it’s direct to the point, it speaks to fellow marketers, and it’s meant to give you an answer to one of the trickiest parts of digital marketing.
- Keep it brief—do not overwhelm them with numerous statements or questions. I like to focus on a single question.
- Do your research—base your statement or question on how well you know your audience, what they need, what they want, what you think they need to learn.
- Ask a question that probes into something with a clear purpose and goal.
2. Problem
Once you’ve established the situation, give your page visitors an idea of what problem they can potentially face.
In this case, we establish it by touching on the realities of what they have to face when writing for online copy:
“In this day and age—where technology and creativity and are inextricably linked…”
As the second stage of SPIN selling, it’s meant to engage the audience by tugging on something that will prompt your readers to think: Maybe I should start thinking about whether or not I have this problem.
3. Implication
At this point, the situation is already laid out and the problem is already a looming possibility in your audience’s mind. Now you have to spell out what its implications are to them.
“…it’s getting harder and harder to respond to the requirements of search engines, capture the interest of your readers, and still be able to sell.”
4. Need-payoff
This isn’t so much you talking about your product as it is you being the first to present the solution to the problem you established.
“What you need is a tried and tested formula; one that combines ingenuity, SEO, and what your visitors need.
That’s where the SPIN selling model by Neil Rackman—SPIN Cycle—comes in.”
This is where you can identify the real benefits of what you want to sell.
The great thing about using this method when writing copy is how you can easily position yourself at the head of the line with the solution. Remember that writing with your readers in mind means focusing on what they need and how your product can answer that.
Try it out with this Seriously Simple Marketing hack—
- For your next blog post, try and incorporate the SPIN selling technique.
- Once you publish it, be sure to track how effective it is in terms of page views, time spent on page, and conversions. (You can use Google Analytics for that.)
- Peg these statistics with previous articles and see how well it does.
– Mercer
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