Copywriting only has one goal.

It doesn’t matter if you’re writing a blog post, capture page, sales letter, or email. You want your copy to help move your prospect down the marketing funnel until they hit the “Add to Cart” button on your eventual sales page.

So then what’s the main goal? It’s to sell stuff right?

Yeah, but that’s a little too general. Let’s see if we can’t nail it down any further.

Let’s say I have an ad that clicks through to a capture page offering a download for a free blogging success report, and that capture page goes to a sales page for a 4 week blogging course that costs $297.

Got all that? Great!

Let’s say that I’m posting these ads on Facebook. Should my ad say “Awesome blogging course – buy now for $297”?

Even if you’ve never written an ad before, you should have some kind of alarm blaring inside your brain. If it were that easy to sell, I’d walk along the street and just ask everyone I ran into if they’d hand me their credit card.

That Facebook ad approach might work if you’re Best Buy selling a flat screen TV for half price – but I’m guessing you don’t have the reputation they do.

Your ad has to advertise the value they’ll receive on the next page. People aren’t going to click if they’re just going to be sold something. If you tell them in your ad you’re giving away a free report about blogging success, some people will actually click because they’re interested!

Now, should your capture page advertise selling the $297 product? Nope, because that’s on the next page. The page they’re on now should convince them that your report is worth exchanging their information for.

You don’t actually start selling your blogging course until they hit your sales page!

If you’d asked for the sale up front, you’d get an abrupt no and probably some weird looks. But, with your funnel, you’re asking for the sale after they’ve clicked an ad, read your capture page, and opted in to receive a free report. Aren’t they now in a much more receptive frame of mind to buy something from you?

Absolutely!

So… the one main overarching purpose of copywriting is this.

Get your prospects to take the next step.

And that’s it, really.

Think about it: if your emails sold stuff in the subject line, would anyone open it? You need a chance to convince them, and that requires the right frame of mind.

Get your prospects to open the email, click on the ad, or actually read your blog posts before you ask them to pull out their wallets.

It’s like boiling a frog.

If you stick a frog in a boiling pot of water, it’ll jump out.

If you stick a frog in a cold pot of water, it will sit there because it’s comfy. Then, you raise the temperature so slowly that the frog doesn’t even notice. Eventually, the water’s boiling and you’ve got frog soup.

Keep your readers comfy in the beginning, and then slowly raise the heat, asking for more and more commitment from them as you go along.

That’s something all great copywriters understand, but most mediocre bloggers and Internet marketers never get the hang of.

Have you used this copywriting tip before? Did it seem to work well?

Author Bio: Cameron Smith is a blogger, copywriter, and owner of Build It Blogging. He is an avid reader and eats pizza at least twice a week.