Breaking This Copywriting Rule Boosts Profits

The other day I was asked the fol­low­ing ques­tion: “Should I use active or pas­sive voice in sales copy?” My answer may sur­prise you.

The premise behind this ques­tion is sim­ple. Tra­di­tional rules of good writ­ing state that we should use active voice. When it comes to copy­writ­ing, it makes per­fect sense.

For instance, active voice engages the reader and makes it easy for them to quickly under­stand the copy. They don’t have to sort through a sen­tence to under­stand it.

For those rea­sons, writ­ers are told again and again to focus on using active voice. But I’m telling you that, in some cases, you shouldn’t. And here’s why…

Active voice is best for web con­tent and in the body copy of a mar­ket­ing piece. But pas­sive voice can increase both read­er­ship and response because it front-​​loads impor­tant key­words, espe­cially in head­ings, cap­tions, bul­lets, and lead sentences.

There’s some inter­est­ing eye­track­ing research behind this the­ory, which reveals counter-​​intuitive results based on the first few words of the open­ing sentence.

I think this is par­tic­u­larly applic­a­ble in copy.

With the active voice, the object of the sen­tence typ­i­cally appears at the end. For exam­ple, “John throws the object” is bet­ter than “the object is thrown by John.”

But the idea is that peo­ple never read sales let­ters. They first skim, scan, and scroll.

Eye­track­ing stud­ies show peo­ple only read the first few words. They also show their eyes tend to grav­i­tate toward promi­nent mark­ers. Peo­ple scan for these mark­ers in an effort to make a deci­sion on whether the con­tent is of inter­est to them and worth reading.

(For exam­ple, think of the times you’ve bought a news­pa­per or mag­a­zine, and quickly scanned the head­lines and pho­tos to deter­mine which arti­cles you wanted to read.)

Of course, pho­tos, graph­ics, and mul­ti­me­dia pro­vide eye grav­ity. But in copy, mark­ers include head­lines, lead­ing sen­tences in para­graphs, sub­heads, bul­lets, and captions.

The pas­sive voice allows the object to appear ear­lier dur­ing those cru­cial first words. So when peo­ple scan for these mark­ers, impor­tant key­words appear at the begin­ning and there­fore may be able to stop scan­ners more efficiently.

They may be able to per­suade more effec­tively, too.

From a usabil­ity per­spec­tive, front-​​loaded key­words in header tags increase things like SEO effec­tive­ness and read­abil­ity. They also increase trac­tion as front-​​loaded key­words appear first in search engine results, which in some cases are truncated.

But from a copy­writ­ing stand­point, this idea of pas­sive voice con­struc­tion in your sub­head­ings can also help in many ways. For instance, pas­sive voice can:

• Stop scan­ners since they have to stop scan­ning to read the full sen­tence in order to under­stand it, and there­fore, even for a moment, they are forced to focus on it.
• Push read­ers to start read­ing what fol­lows. It’s harder to under­stand a pas­sive sen­tence at a glance, which in many cases can be a good thing. Read­ers now have to really dig into a sen­tence to grasp it, and once they do they’ll con­tinue reading.
• Com­pel read­ers more effec­tively, as per­sua­sion and psy­cho­log­i­cal tech­niques can be applied to those first few words, such as focus­ing on words that build curios­ity, increase desire, cre­ate men­tal imagery, and drive action.

Here’s an exam­ple of a sub­head using active and then pas­sive voice:

Active: “Aus­tralian sci­en­tists dis­cover three enzymes that beat stom­ach cancer.”

Pas­sive: “Three enzymes that beat stom­ach can­cer are dis­cov­ered by Aus­tralian sci­en­tists.” Or, to make it pithier, which is start­ing to sound like a news­pa­per headline…

Pas­sive: “3 stom­ach cancer-​​curing enzymes dis­cov­ered by Aus­tralian scientists.”

From an SEO stand­point, peo­ple wouldn’t search for the phrase “Aus­tralian researchers,” unless they knew about it before­hand. But they would search for words like “enzymes,” “stom­ach,” “can­cer,” and “cure.”

From a copy­writ­ing stand­point, the key­words are now promi­nent. They lead the reader. And they also tease, cause read­ers to learn more, and force them to read the rest — which is the point of a good head­line in the first place.

By the way, if you didn’t notice, I broke another rule in the above exam­ple. Nor­mally, the rule is to spell single-​​digit num­bers, and to use numer­als with double-​​digit num­bers or greater (such as seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, etc).

I use numer­als because the mind doesn’t have to read the num­ber, and it can instantly grasp what it means, which is par­tic­u­larly cru­cial dur­ing those first few seconds.

The bot­tom line is, the less hoops the mind has to go through, the eas­ier it is to read, the more effec­tive the copy is, and the more sales you will make.

Nev­er­the­less, to improve usabil­ity and SEO, apply the pas­sive voice to your web page title tags, meta-​​description tags, header tags (such as H1, H2, H3, etc), anchor texts in links, lead copy, excerpts, ALT tags, even domain names. (For exam­ple, Heather Kirk, who is a graphic designer, owns “Graph​ics​By​Heather​.com.”)

How­ever, apply the pas­sive voice to strate­gic ele­ments in your copy, too:

1. Head­lines
2. Sub­heads
3. Tes­ti­mo­ni­als
4. John­son boxes
5. Guar­an­tees
6. Bul­lets
7. Cap­tions
8. Calls to action
9. Titles (in multimedia)
10. Email sub­ject lines
11. Nav­i­ga­tion menus
12. Above-​​the-​​fold sections
13. Order forms or response devices
14. Lead copy (introduction)
15. Lead sen­tences (first sen­tence of each paragraph)

Look at your cur­rent saleslet­ter or mar­ket­ing piece, and try to reword those promi­nent mark­ers into the pas­sive voice or in a way that places impor­tant key­words at the begin­ning. This tech­nique will boost your sales and profits.

(Or should I say, your sales and prof­its will be boosted by this technique?)

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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