I bet every one of you out there, at one time or another, has sat down to read what you thought would be an informative article, sales brochure or website only to be bored to tears within a couple of sentences. This might appear to be a rather strange thing to say but, when you are writing sales copy, the one think you don’t want your reader to know is what a great writer you are.

Of course that means that you have to be a great writer. Why? Because you can’t hide behind showman-ship. In sales writing there is no room for showy, flamboyant writing.

You are merely there to provide the vase in which the flowers go – it is the flowers you want your reader to see, smell and want. The last thing you want is for them to be distracted by the gaudy vase beneath them.

Here are three things to remember before putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard:

• Forget the arty similes and metaphors, tell the reader what it is, what it does and why it will benefit them.
• Forget the jargon – no one is interested in it. If it is essential technical vocabulary, fine, but keep it to a minimum.
• Keep it short and concise – Why use ‘in the interim period’ when ‘between’ will do just fine.

You will effortless build rapport with your readers if you keep your writing simple and conversational.

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 sally@briarcopywriting.com for any copywriting project you may have or for a complimentary webcopy analysis.