How Much Factual Backing Should You Use?
As already noted, it’s important to include some type of assurance that your claims and products are backed up with some facts and data. This can be shown through analogies, referencing other websites, specifying certain statistics, adding charts or graphs or using insightful imagery.
However, a common mistake that businesses make is information overload. At the end of the day, effective copywriting is more focused on who the reader is, and identifying a problem they have – you then draw them in, and provide a solution to this problem or something that can benefit them as a person (creating desire for your product or service).
If, however, you are using this particular piece of content as a landing page to generate email signups, your factual backing would be more limited. You would likely build a rapport, then quickly hit them with an incentive to make them act on the signup request. With this in mind, you’d want to keep the material short, snappy and informative – perhaps around 500 words.
On the flip side, if you’re selling an Internet marketing course, for example, you want to provide proof of your claims, which means the initial rapport section will require something a bit more extensive and detailed. Writing material for a sales page could easily stretch into the thousands with regard to word count, so proper formatting is highly recommended. Think of how the page looks; is it all one big block of text? If so, divide it up with imagery, infographics or smaller sentences.
A good way to decide what data to include is by first creating a facts sheet for your business. This allows you to dip in and out, sprinkling relevant and interesting facts throughout the writing, where needed.
