Are you comfortable using social proof to promote your legal nurse consultant business? Writing advertising copy can be one of the most difficult tasks for anyone trying to promote their consulting services, especially those who are not trained in writing, marketing, or persuasive rhetoric. It’s pretty common to spend hours writing a blog post, email, or brochure copy, but then decide it’s just too boring or just doesn’t get across the message you are trying to convey.
At the same time, you’re not selling used cars or discounted furniture, so you don’t want to fill your copy with a bunch of hype and ridiculous promises. So how does one find a middle ground, yet still draw attention by creating successful advertising copy?
Good question. Read on for some great advice on creating advertising copy that doesn’t sound like advertising copy, but really works help promote your legal nurse consulting business.
There’s no question that writing effective copy can be challenging. As a matter of fact, that’s why a good copywriter can command several thousand dollars for a single, well-written, profit-generating sales letter.
Really, you ask? Yes.
To begin with, it’s a good idea to understand the services you are writing about. If you are writing about your own consulting services, this can be the easiest, yet most difficult part of the task.
Let me explain. Of course, it’s much easier to promote something if you know what its highlights or perks are, and if you’re writing about a service you provide, you obviously know the things about it you are going to promote in your ad copy. Or do you?
What’s important to you, or what you think might be important to your clients, isn’t always what THEY think is important. This is where things start to get a little tricky.
When you are writing advertising copy, whether it’s on your website, in a direct mail piece such as a brochure, or in an email, your main objective is to get the reader to respond in a specific way – buy your services, sign up for the newsletter, volunteer for the event, etc.
You are your legal nurse consultant business
For a legal nurse consultant business, “you” are the “product” that you’re selling. You are an expert in your field, you may have numerous successful cases in your track record, and you are prompt, courteous, and professional in your dealings with clients.
Unfortunately, most of us have been taught to be humble and to not “brag” about ourselves or our accomplishments, so it’s hard to write those kind of things about ourselves.
This is where a great deal of advertising copy falls down, especially when it is written by someone who is inexperienced in this type of writing. One effective way to accomplish this goal is to borrow other people’s words and to let THEM tell your readers how wonderful you are.
Social proof
Persuasion experts call this using “borrowed credibility,” which is sometimes referred to as “social proof.” You’ve seen it before; think of the late night infomercial in which average looking people rave about how they lost weight or cleaned their carpet or made tons of money in real estate by using the product, service, or training program that is being advertised.
This is extremely effective, as viewers think, “if it worked for them, it might work for me, too.” And when you go to a website and see that hundreds or thousands of people have clicked the “like” button and shared it on their favorite social media site, it gives that website instant credibility.
So how could you apply this to your legal nurse consulting business? Read part 2.
Lawrence Clark PhD presented a webinar for The Pat Iyer Group. His topic was Marketing Your Legal Nurse Consulting Services: Simple Yet Effective Ways to Persuade Attorneys to Request You Again and Again and Again. Watch the replay of this dynamic 90 minute webinar at your convenience.