Selling

How to Write Sales Copy: My Guide With Examples

By Artur Neumann. Updated October 10, 2026.

I used to sell products for €5,000 to €30,000 on the phone. Often in 30 minutes, to people who had never seen me. Sales copy has to do exactly that. Without a voice, without a smile, without a second chance. With words alone.

That’s why you can learn to write sales copy like a craft. In this guide, I show you my system. With the rules I work by and with before-and-after examples from practice.

Copywriting is selling in its purest form

Sales copy strips away everything that usually helps you sell. You can’t pull up at the customer’s place in a Porsche. No Rolex, no suit, no small talk about golf. Your reader only sees letters on a screen.

So sales copy is a sales conversation in writing. With one key difference: the customer can’t answer. You don’t hear objections, and you get no feedback. So you have to foresee every objection and answer it in the copy. A single open objection is enough, and the customer won’t buy.

The good news: you don’t need a talent for writing. This isn’t about poetry or literature. It’s about structure, psychology and practice. If you’ve ever sold on the phone or door to door, you’ll learn copywriting faster. Everyone else learns it with a system.

Before you write: find hungry buyers

An old saying goes: a good salesperson sells refrigerators at the North Pole. I advise against it. It costs time, money and nerves. Sell water to hikers in the desert instead. Then your entire sales copy reads: “Water, €5.” That’s all you need.

The American copywriter Gary Halbert was once asked which single advantage he would wish for. His answer: a list full of hungry buyers. People who urgently want your offer and can’t find it anywhere. With a list like that, the market forgives even mediocre copy.

That’s why all good sales copy starts before the writing. Know your customers’ problems. Become an insider in your industry. And build your own audience. I show you how in the article Build an email list.

The big idea is 80 percent of success

Before I write a single line, I set the big idea. It’s the frame around the whole campaign, the angle you sell from. In my experience, this idea makes up 80 percent of success. The copy itself optimizes the remaining 20 percent.

An example. You sell an online dog training course. You can sell the same product in completely different ways:

• “Learn to train your dog the right way.”
• “Become your dog’s lion tamer.”
• “Control your dog as if by remote control.”
• “A loyal companion is sleeping inside your dog. You just have to wake him up.”
• “Ex-police dog trainer tells all.”

Five ideas, five completely different texts. Each idea hits different triggers and attracts different buyers. That’s why I always test big ideas against each other in ads, never single words. Swapping two words barely changes your click rate. A different big idea changes everything.

Sell benefits, not features

Nobody buys features. Nobody wants 256 video lessons or 300 hours of material. People want to know what their life looks like after the purchase. That’s what they buy.

My approach: first, I write a feature list with all the facts about the product. Then I write a benefit for each feature. And for each benefit, a concrete scenario from the audience’s daily life. Here’s what that looks like:

• Before: “This mug weighs only 50 grams.”
• After: “Take this mug on every camping trip, without dead weight in your backpack.”

And for a technical audience:

• Before: “This computer has 32 GB of RAM.”
• After: “No more lag when you edit videos for your social media profile. Your exports run five times faster.”

The benefit always depends on the audience. For architects, I translate the same memory into faster renderings in their CAD program. For video producers, into shorter export times and more free time. Technical companies in particular sell numbers, data and facts too often. Translate every number into a picture of a better daily life.

How to build the copy: headline, hook, story, cliffhanger

Every good piece of sales copy I write follows the same loop. The headline makes the reader curious. The hook pulls the reader into the text. The story explains the point of the headline. The cliffhanger leaves something open and pushes the reader on to the next headline. You repeat this loop until your offer comes.

The first sentence has only one job

The job of the first sentence is to get the reader to read the second sentence. The second sentence gets them to the third. That’s all. Test every sentence with this question: does the reader want to keep reading after it? If not, cut it or rewrite it. This way, you hold attention all the way to the call to action.

The hook pulls the reader into the story

A hook is an emotional opening that works right away. A low point, a crazy moment, a quote, a line of dialogue. Two examples similar to ones I use:

• “The vet told me that my Great Dane Freddy would probably not survive.”
• “I looked at my hand. Blood was running over my fingertips.”

The trick behind it: zoom in close on one scene, like a film clip of a few seconds. Then slowly zoom out and tell the story around that image. The reader wants to know what happened. So they keep reading.

Delete your first paragraph

Almost everyone starts a text with general warm-up talk. Only after that does the real story begin. My advice: write freely, then delete the first paragraph. Sometimes the second one too.

• Before: “Self-confidence is important to many people, because we need it everywhere in life.”
• After: “My hands were shaking as I walked into the conference room.”

Every reader already knows the first version. The second one drops them right into a scene.

How long should your sales copy be?

I hear this question all the time. My rule: the higher the price, the longer the copy. The length follows the hurdle your customer has to clear.

For a free e-book in exchange for an email address, a few lines are enough. For a product that costs €2,000 or more, you need 20 pages or more. That’s the only way to address every objection. Long copy also warms the reader up. Afterward, they know how you think and are more willing to trust you with their money.

The fear of long copy is a mistake in thinking. No customer says: “You informed me too well, so now I won’t order.” People who are convinced scroll to the button and order right away. People who still have doubts keep reading. That’s exactly what the copy is for.

Write for scanners and readers at the same time

There are two kinds of visitors on your sales page. Scanners only skim the headings and the bold text. Readers go through the page sentence by sentence. Most people are hybrids: they scan first and then read when something grabs them.

So your copy needs two paths. Your subheadings alone must tell the whole story, without giving away the answer. Someone who reads only the subheadings must understand the benefit and get curious. Add formatting and design: large, bold headings, highlights in the text, short paragraphs. That way you reach both types of readers.

Answer every objection and reverse the risk

On the phone, I hear objections and respond to them. In copy, I can’t. So before I write, I collect every concern a customer might have. Too expensive, no time, will this work for me, what will my partner say. I address and answer every single objection in the copy. I explain the psychology behind this in detail in the article Sales psychology.

The strongest lever against the last doubt is risk reversal. Structure your offer so that you carry the risk, not the customer. A few versions from my practice:

• A money-back guarantee, no ifs or buts.
• A trial period, for example 14 days for €1.
• A results guarantee with fair conditions, such as proof that the customer used the product.
• Personal support until the result is there.

Yes, some people abuse guarantees. Most don’t. The math is what counts: with risk reversal, you sell far more than the few refunds cost you.

Lead to the close: the call to action

Without a call to action, the best copy is worthless. You’ve convinced the reader for two hours but triggered no sale. At the end, tell your reader clearly what to do.

I use a psychological trick here: the double action. Name two steps instead of one. The reader then already thinks about step two and no longer hesitates at step one.

• Before: “Click the button.”
• After: “Click the button and pick the time slot you want.”
• Or: “Enter your email address, then confirm the link in your inbox.”

On long sales pages, I place the call to action several times. Some readers are convinced halfway through. Give them several chances to order.

My step-by-step guide

Here’s how to approach your next piece of sales copy:

1. Choose an audience with real pain, meaning hungry buyers.
2. Become an insider: collect your customers’ problems, language and objections.
3. Write your feature list and turn it into a benefit list with scenarios.
4. Develop several big ideas and pick the strongest. Test them in ads.
5. Write in the loop of headline, hook, story, cliffhanger until you reach the offer.
6. Answer every objection and reverse the risk.
7. Add clear calls to action with a double action, several times on long pages.
8. Delete the first paragraph, format for scanners and polish only at the end.

Drop perfectionism for the first draft. You can improve a finished, mediocre draft. You can’t improve a blank page. And build a folder of good ads and sales pages. This archive gives you ideas for every new piece of copy.

How to write sales copy with AI

Today my first drafts come together much faster, because I use AI as a tool. The system stays the same. I set the audience, the benefit list, the big idea and the structure. The AI delivers variations of headlines, hooks and whole sections. I choose, sharpen and check every objection myself. I show you this workflow in detail in the article ChatGPT for business owners.

Once your copy is done, the second part of the work begins: bringing visitors to the page. Two links help you with that: the guide Get customers with AI and all other articles in my AI overview. And then the most important advice in this article applies: write. Pick a product and practice until your copy sells.