Copywriting crash course: Henneke Duistermaat in How to Write Seductive Web Copy

“Each page needs to have one main call-to-action. In a color that stands out. And that tells people exactly what to do.”

I took the advice at heart to dig into copywriting. I didn’t know anything about copywriting. So this was going to be fun.

With another advisory voice in my head – learn something new every day, read broadly, have wide interests – I purchased Henneke Duistermaat’s How To Write Seductive Web Copy, after doing some research on the web looking for the best books on copywriting. (Why not some webinar or YouTube video? I feel so lazy when I do that. I don’t have that when I am reading. Video learning is challenging to me. Like exercising on a home trainer. Boring. Can’t concentrate.)

So I read the book. This book is outstanding in conciseness. Duistermaat gets to the point and is very practical.

Henneke Duistermaat is an internet marketing expert and founder of Enchanting Marketing and author of a number of very practical books on copywriting, blogging and marketing.

I learned a lot. Very simple messages.

Get a clear picture of who your audience is – write their biography.

Your value proposition is what you write on a billboard: a headline, a few bullet points, and an image.

What is important as well is to have a simple but clear view on the problem you are solving for your clients.

Let’s start with writing your headline. Four different options exist: You state simply what you offer.  You mention the key benefit of working with or buying from you.  You tell readers which problem or hassle you help avoid.  You ask a question to target customers who are right for you.

Your product page shouldn’t be descriptive; it needs to sell your products or services. This is how:  Write for your ideal reader. Focus on the benefits you offer and the problems you avoid.

The question your about page should answer is this: Which problems do you solve for your customers? Don’t talk all the time about your product, your service, or your business because nobody’s interested. Talk about your prospect’s problems. Explain how you solve these problems. Tell your readers how much happier they’ll be if they let you solve their problems.

Gain the trust of your customers. Show them you are not bullshitting or wasting their time. Get personal.

When you engage emotion and the senses, people get transported to a different world. Allow prospects to experience working with you, and their defenses against sales pitches are lowered.

You need to work hard to gain the trust of potential buyers. An easy way is to provide case studies and testimonials, or to include logos of business you’ve worked with, or publications you’ve been published in.

Often people want to get to know you more personally. Rather than focus on an immediate sale, get web visitors to sign up for your e-newsletter.

Also, on your website, Duistermaat provides very clear advice.

Each page needs to have one main call-to-action. In a color that stands out. And that tells people exactly what to do.

Remember that the way you design your web page has a big impact on your persuasiveness.  A few tips: De-clutter each web page and simplify your navigation. Have a lot of white space to create an inviting environment. Use color and font size to show what’s your most important information. Promote readability with large, easy-to-read fonts. Guide your visitors with clear, stand-out calls-to-action.

And links to cheat sheets and other useful materials. Worth every cent.

What to read next.

The Copywriter’s Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Copy That Sells — By Robert W. Bly

Everybody Writes: The Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content — By Ann Handley

Inside the mind of an Asperger: The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.

I got The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time as a present for my birthday. My kids were polite and only later told me it was a children’s book. My son said he had read it for his English class. 51js6g5i9pl-_sy344_bo1204203200_
Mark Haddon has created an extraordinary story about a boy with Aspergers syndrome. I had read two books with a comparable first person perspective of a person with Asperger: The Rosie Project (Which I actually selected hurriedly in an airport kiosk for it’s interesting cover design) and the Dutch book Wat Is Er Toch Met Kobus (What’s wrong with Kobus). The first is written from the perspective of a full-grown scientist, with a light Asperger syndrome. Kobus is even more similar  to The Curious Incident: in it’s first person narrative form, and the young main character is a highschool boy.

Little Insight from Insight Selling

I will (and believe can) summarise Insight Selling by Mike Schulz and John Doerr with a few quotes.51fhppsuv2l-_sx333_bo1204203200_

I managed to get halfway through the book. Concurring with Naval Ravikant who does not read business books as ‘they are very simple ideas wrapped up in a lot of pages’. I also agree to not read books that are not keeping your attention.

As in Tas Universum

Jelle Brandt Corstius fietst naar de Middellandse Zee met een koffiekopje van de as van zijn vader in zijn fietstas.

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Onderweg kijkt hij terug op het Opperlands universum van zijn vader, Hugo. Hij leert fietsen. Hellingen beklimmen. Leest ondertussen de gedetailleerde wereld van Knausgård. (Wiens vader ook van alles blijkt te verzinnen.) Maakt zich steeds zorgen over de gevoelloze lul die hij na elke dag fietsen in zijn broek vind. Geeft een lesje klimmen voor beginners.

“Het klimmen kun je beter in een rustig verzet beginnen, om daarna de berg te ‘voelen’. Op een gegeven moment heb je een een ritme waarvan je weet dat je dat een half uur kunt volhouden – langer is zelden nodig. Over het algemeen hebben bergen een redelijk constante hellingsgraad, behalve helemaal aan het eind: daar komen de haarspeldbochten. Daar moet je je laatste energie voor bewaren.”

Jelle vertelt over de continue pesterijen van zijn vader. Dat dit niet alleen in diens columns aan de orde was maar dat dit door ging in zijn dagelijks leven. 

Over het plezier dat zijn vader beleefde aan burgerlijke ongehoorzaamheid, hoe hij dit zich als doel op zich leek te maken.

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Het eigen Malle Hugo universum van zijn vader. Waar waarheid en fictie doel elkaar lopen. Waar wereldvreemdheid en publieke figuur met elkaar in gevecht zijn. Waar onverklaarbare zaken werden afgedaan met de uitleg: “Pirelli”. Waar kinderen kunnen weglopen en naar huis terugkeren zonder dat vader iets in de gaten heeft gehad.

Maar die ook een vader is die zijn kinderen leert te overleven door ze naar spartaanse zomerkampen te sturen.

Opperlandse Taal en Letterkunde stond bij ons thuis in de boekenkast. Ik vond het een heerlijk voorbeeld van zinloze wetenschap. Toch fantastisch dat iemand zoveel tijd besteed om met zoveel precies de meest onwaarschijnlijke taalwereld te scheppen.

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Jelle heeft ook zijn universum, en lijkt de denken dat zijn universum de normale wereld is.
Het is een universum van een vriendelijke vervreemde reiziger, verdwaald in de echte wereld. Waar hij zich verwonderd over mondaine zaken, maar waar hem net als zijn vader vreemde zaken overkomen omdat hij vreemde zaken onderneemt.

Hugo Brandt Corstius./Hugo Brandt Corstius.

“Waarom trek ik toch altijd dit soort mensen aan? Zijn het de vragen die ik stel? Of is het andersom? Ben ik zelf op zoek naar dit soort mensen?”

Het is een universum dat ik ook vind in Murakami. Maar in Murakami overkomt het de protagonist echt.

Jelle is een zelfverkozen Murakami-karakter met een eigen wil, omringt door gekken. Geen gevaarlijke gekken, maar vriendelijke gekken.

The lightness of Purity

I wrote about the darkness of suppression of a totalitarian regime and how that influences the lives of people, when I discussed The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes and Jonathan Doerr’s All The Light We Can Not See.
Purity by Jonathan Franzen is the third book I recently read that is dominated by the totalitarian overcast. In this case, the dictatorship is the DDR, East Germany, during the Iron Curtain era.

In long descriptive sections, we learn how Andreas grew up under the suppression of the DDR. He became a critic of the regime, and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he started an organization like WikiLeaks. But his personality was damaged for good, and the organization became an instrument for expressing his grandiosity.

“Well, you say you’re about citizen journalism. You’re supposedly in the business of leaks. But isn’t your real business—” “Cow manure?” “I was going to say fame and adulation. The product is you.”

Andreas is unable to shake off this state of mind. He keeps feeling unsafe, haunted, and unable to be happy. We have also seen this state of mind in The Noise of Time and All the Light We Can Not See. When his girlfriend turns him down and leaves him, his madness takes disastrous forms.

He’d never experienced grief like this. It seemed as if he really loved her after all. Grief passed, however. Before he was even home again, he could see his future. He would never again make the mistake of trying to live with a woman. For whatever reason (probably his childhood), he wasn’t suited for it, and the strong thing to do was to accept this. His computer had made a weakling of him. He also had a vague, shameful memory of climbing onto Annagret’s lap and trying to be her baby. Weak! Weak! But now his mother, with her meddling, had given him the pretext he needed to be free of both her and Annagret. A double deus ex machina—the good luck of a man fated to dominate.

Thus, he reaches a megalomaniac mindset, convinced that the world and everyone revolve around him. This contrasts massively with Pip (Purity), the second protagonist in the story.

Both of them grew up under the burden of a very dominant mother. Purity is betrayed by her parents. She finds out about that but refuses to blame them for anything. Andreas, however, escapes, leaves his mother behind, and is unable to forgive and take responsibility for his own life.

In contrast to Andreas’s self-destructive conclusion, Purity can reconcile with her past. She faces her mother, forgives her parents for what they have done to her, and even arranges to settle her mother’s problems.