Why?
That is one question we learn to ask at a very early age. Any of you with children would have experienced the perpetual ‘but why?’ phase that all children go through.
If you are selling to a person face to face it is easy to keep the other person’s interest. When you talk to someone directly you can keep their attention with eye contact, your body language, the intonation of your voice and of course dialogue. Of course, when you are using the written word you can’t use any of those techniques.
But fear not, all is not lost; there is a very simple technique you can use to stimulate a ‘conversation’ with your reader.
Ask Questions
If you are not used to writing in this style it can sound a bit obvious. But it does work. Even if you are using a written medium for selling, if you ask a question your reader will think of an answer.
Why?
Because its human nature.
They can be:
- Closed questions – those that have a yes or no answer. These are great for closing a sale. They force someone to make a decision to buy.
- Limited questions – those which offer a choice from a set of answers (e.g. which do you prefer, white wine or rosé?) to engage people.
- Open questions – those which have no fixed answers. By using these you hand over conversational control to your reader. They can take their time considering their answer. People love this type of question.
Try it, it will work.
Sally Ormond
Sally Ormond is a professional website copywriter, SEO copywriter and advertising copywriter with extensive experience in B2B and B2C copywriting markets. She can be contacted at +44(0)1449 779605 or online at http://www.briarcopywriting.com for any copywriting project you may have or for a complimentary webcopy analysis.
