Page 79 - 100 Great Copywriting Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

33 WHAT DO YOU MEAN
“IF”?

Get people craving or longing for your product (or, to be more
precise, feeling that your product can deliver whatever it is they’re
truly longing for or craving) and you’re almost home. But there’s
still one hurdle you have to leap before you’ve made the sale. Every
sales representative worth their salt knows all about it. Even though
it’s hard to do. Ready?

You have to ask for the order. So let’s talk about the call to action
(again). Whatever you’re writing, from press releases to Google
Adwords, emails to sales letters, you have a commercial goal in
mind. That translates into an action your reader must take.

The idea

From a furniture retailer
When you’re asking for the order, the trick is getting your reader
to take the action using all the word power you can muster. Here’s
what not to write (from a mail-order furniture retailer) . . .

If you would like to order . . .

If? IF??? What do you mean “If”?

You’ve just spent a day, a week, or a month planning, empathizing
with your reader, researching your subject, structuring your
sales copy, writing the damn stuff, then editing, polishing, and
proofreading and you mean to tell me you’re allowing them to
imagine there’s a possibility they won’t buy? No. This is no place for
the conditional mood. Instead, command them to buy. That means
using the imperative mood. Like this:

70 • 100 GREAT COPYWRITING IDEAS