B-to-B Copywriting: 10 Modern and Classic Techniques

4. Have a secondary promise: If customers don’t believe your big promise, have a lesser benefit that the product also delivers, Bly said. “It’s not as large as the big promise,” he noted, “but it gives reason enough to order the product, and is small enough a promise so it’s easily believed.”

5. Implement the four U’s: Urgent, Unique, Ultra-Specific and Useful. Score each headline in your catalog with a 1 to 4 scale (weakest to strongest) for each of the four U’s. Every one must score at least a 3 or 4. For instance, he pointed out, “Free whitepaper” scores only a 1 or a 2. But “Just made available: Free whitepaper on reducing hardware costs through software asset management” scores a 3 or a 4.