Copy doodles are handwritten notes and doodles typically used on websites where you’re asking prospects to take a particular action such as to buy or to subscribe.
Therefore most commonly used on salesletters and optin pages.
However they can be used pretty much everywhere, for example banners, popups, blogs and other websites, emails, guarantees, order forms, power points, sales letters, ads, chat boxes, ecovers, Facebook ads, etc…
They’re also widely used in direct mail.
Here are a few examples:
They’re used like annotations, to highlight and draw attention to particular areas of your copy, page or wherever you happen to use them.
They also add a personal touch. They give your copy “life” and make it more fun to read.
They are like icing sugar on a cake, they can make any sales letter, website (or wherever you use them) more appealing.
They are most commonly used on sales pages to make them more lively, interesting and attractive.
On your sales letters copy doodles can keep your audience engaged with your copy until the very end when you ask them to buy your product.
They draw in eyeballs which is exactly what you want especially on sales pages.
So basically they’re handwritten notes scribbled on a page or where you happen to use them.Table of Contents
Proof That Copy Doodles Work
They’re proven to increase conversion rates.
Here’s what people who used them are saying about copy doodles: (I gathered these from various ebooks, blogs and so on.)
- My response rate went from 4% without copy doodles to 11% after adding a few copy doodles.
- I simply added a handwritten image that said “Sign-up Now” and a handwritten arrow pointing to my optin form on my website. My optin rate doubled the very first day.
- His optin page had a 53% conversion rate with the doodled version versus a 17% conversion rate without the doodle. In the split test the doodled version resulted in 86 more subscribers.
- I even had copy doodles embedded into our live chat box on our website which boosted our inbound chats 25%.
- My response is around 32% better than with the non copy doodles ads.
- My readership in my newsletters have increased easily by over 50%.
- Sales from new customers also went up 22%
Of course if you want to be 100% certain whether copy doodles work well for your business you can set up a split test.
But there’s absolutely no reason why they shouldn’t.
Copy doodles can be be shapes like light bulbs, arrows, etc., text, numbers, or symbols.
Here are examples of copy doodle shapes:
Here are examples of copy doodle numbers, these are most commonly used in lists, instead of using plain numbers or bullet points.
Here are examples of copy doodle text:
Any handwriting font is also considered a copy doodle, because that text looks like a handwritten note.
You can use a handwriting font for testimonials or the money back guarantee.
Here’s an example:60 Day Money Back Guarantee
“I’m so confident that you will be happy with your purchase that you get my 100% Money back Guarantee. If you don’t like the sound of me, what I have to say, what I write about, or you plain think it stinks – I will send you your money back in full and without delay. All I ask is that you spend 60 days trying out my XYZ product.”
You can be as creative as you want. You can use different colors and sizes and combine shapes, text, icons, and images. Use your imagination.
This is a skill and just like anything else it requires a bit of practice to master it.
The best way to learn how to use them is to see a lot of examples and then just use a bit of your creativity.
Keep in mind copy doodles can be simple text with some arrow or icon, you don’t have to create anything fancy.
Each time you come across a sales letter that uses copy doodles study it. Look carefully at what doodle they use and where they put it.
If you do that and you practice using doodles in your copy, over time you’ll start to understand on a deeper level how to use them.
At first, maybe you just add a few simple doodles in ideal locations, perhaps an arrow with some text.
But as you gain more competence using them you can try something more than just an arrow.
You can create doodles just like the ones you see other people using. Model other people’s doodles.
You can search google for “copy doodles” to find lots of doodle examples.
Shapes are usually, but not always combined with text to give the doodle some meaning.
In this example you see text, the dollar icon, and a stick figure image:
Russell Brunson placed a hand drawn toilet flushing dollars in his sales letter, next to the copy that said “Miss just ONE of these steps and prepare to flush your advertising dollars down the toilet!)”.
That’s a creative doodle, but of course before you use such a crazy doodle think about how might your particular audience respond…
I’m sure Internet marketers will be amused by something like that, I think we love to be entertained.
Copy doodles aren’t an indispensable tool for your business. You can absolutely do fine without them.
However you may want to try them and the easiest place would be your sales letters.
Just have fun with them, use them where you think your copy needs the most attention.
Or use them to highlight particular sentences or phrases especially benefits, because those surely interest your prospects.
If you have a video you can put an arrow point to it and say something like “Watch This Quick Video Now!”.
I personally use them in almost every sales letter since they don’t take much time to implement and they can make a big difference.
They make my sales letters look more interesting, fresh and lively.
Perhaps you’ll realize you’re actually good at placing these doodles in ideal locations. Maybe you actually love them. They can be fun to use.
Now let’s see some copy doodles in actual examples.
Copy Doodles In Ecovers
You can place doodles in ecovers too even though they’re more commonly used and useful on sales letters or optin pages.
Copy Doodles In Sales Letters
Example #1
This sales letter was physically mailed to prospects. It had a lot of copy doodles because the letter had no other images or colors, just black text.
You don’t necessarily have to use this many doodles, especially if your sales letter already has other images.
Always have a balance between text and images on your website – aim for 70% text and 30% images – in other words there should be much more text than images on your website.
Click images to see the full image…
Example #2
This sales letter is also plain text, with no images apart from the copy doodles.
Click images to see them in full.
Example #3
This sales letter from Agora Financial can be seen on Swiped.co.
Swiped.co is basically an online swipe file, it contains lots of sales letter examples, but not all contain doodles.
Note: If you disable the annotations you’ll be able to see the sales letter better.
The option to toggle them off will appear on the right side after you scroll down the page.
In that sales letter there are 4 doodles, here they are:
Example #4
Almost all my of sales letters contain some copy doodles, usually to highlight key areas in paragraphs.
The first one has a big arrow and is using the page number of the ebook I’m selling. This is a very common tactic when selling ebooks. It creates a sense of desire to own the ebook and flip to that page.
This is a simple asterisks to attract attention to that particular paragraph.
And it also makes this huge pile of text look much better, otherwise they appear pretty boring.
I’ve seen a similar version to this doodle somewhere, so I made one like it using Snag It.
I used green color so it matches with the headline and subheadline color of this sales page.
The first one creates a sense of curiosity. Curiosity always work really well in copywriting – people are naturally curious.
You’ll wonder what ‘Shoot, Fire, Aim’ is all about, and that curiosity may be all you need to read the paragraph.
You obviously want your prospects to read preferable your entire sales letter. Because it’s your copy that’s going to convince them to purchase your product.
The doodle clearly points out something interesting within all that text.
Prospects are now more likely to read at least the middle paragraph, out of sheer curiosity instead of skimming through.
Copy Doodles On Order Forms
Most shopping carts allow you to customize the order form, so you can add doodles there too.
The following examples are order forms that accompany sale letters sent via direct mail.
Putting copy doodles on order forms isn’t the easiest thing for the obvious reason that there’s usually little copy on order forms.
You’d have to find the ideal and important words or sentences to highlight.
Click image to see the full image.
Example #1
Example #2
This one has a lot of arrows and text doodles on the sides.
Copy Doodles In Images
In this example the image was marked with a circle, and an arrow added to attract attention towards it.
The doodle is highlighting the leather notebook that the copy is referring to in the P.S. Click image to see it in full.
Copy Doodles In Subheadlines
This doodle is highlighting the number of bonuses and their value. Click image to see it in full.
Copy Doodles In Paragraphs
An ideal place for a copy doodle is where you have a lot of boring paragraphs in your sales letters.
Sometimes you can use bold, italics, underlines, highlighting and even images to make such paragraphs more interesting.
But you can also use copy doodles. Try to find something interesting or important in one of the paragraphs and highlight it with a doodle.
Here’s an example:
People love stories and this doodle is clearly telling them there’s a story…
More Copy Doodle Examples
More examples can be found on CopyDoodles.com by Mike Capuzzi. I don’t recommend his membership site. I think it’s too expensive.
In the early stages of your business it’s best to invest your money on other more important products or perhaps paid traffic.
You can draw your own doodles using a cheap tool like Snag It or other free alternatives that I list further down.
Copy Doodle Best Practices
- Most of the time copy doodles are used to highlight important parts of your copy, to attract attention to them.
For example if you have a video you can put an arrow, with some text:
Benefits are also another target for copy doodles, because your prospects are interested in how your product is going to benefit them.
- You don’t want to use too many doodles. Always have a balance between text and images on your website – aim for 70% text and 30% images on any page.
Copy doodles with just text are also considered images (because they’re actually images). - If you’re going to use a handwriting font to create text for a doodle use the same font in all doodles for a given page.
Don’t create several doodles using different handwriting fonts, they’ll look messy. - You can use any color for your copy doodles but use the same color for all doodles on a given page. You don’t want to have several doodles in different colors.
Ideally use the same color you’re using in the headline and subheadline of your sales letters. If they are black, red would be a good color for copy doodles.
Since my business and brand color is green (specifically #008000) my copy doodles are usually green too, just like my headline and subheadlines.
The point is, make sure the color matches well with the rest of your sales letter or they won’t look nice. - The easiest place to use copy doodles are sales letters because they contain a lot of interesting copy that you can highlight.
- When using text in doodles they can be as simple as “Look Here” or “You’ll Like This”.
They’re perfectly fine. But if you want to come up with more ideas use your copywriting skill, especially what you’ve learned about power words, persuasion and psychology.
For example the following doodle (A Word of Caution!) grabs eyeballs because it implies some sort of danger.
People usually pay attention to warning signs.
Everyone likes to know a secret, so here’s another good copy doodle:
Curiosity always works well, people are naturally curious, so you can say something as simple as “Gold Mine!”.
You’ll be inclined to read those paragraphs to find out what’s that all about.
Now let’s see some tools and resources to help you create doodles. Doodles are images.
Tools To Create Copy Doodles
You can use a tablet and a sketching app like Bamboo Paper or Paper to create doodles.
There are many apps that allow you to draw doodles and then share them. Some of these app also work with a stylus like the Apple Pencil.
Here’s a list and review of the top 10 doodle apps for ipad or iphone, some are free. If you have the Apple Pencil these drawing apps are specifically designed to work with it.
You can search Google Play for ‘doodle apps’ if you use android.
I personally used Snag It. Technically speaking it’s a screen capture tool but it can edit or create images with lots of shapes, callouts, arrows, text and so forth.
Here’s a list of free alternatives to Snag It.
If you use Windows a much better alternative to Paint is Paint.net. The domain is www.getpaint.net not paint.net. It has many more features and easy to use.
Their website looks old but the software is good and up to date. Paint.net is used to edit images, so perhaps you find it useful when creating doodles.
Conclusion
The whole point of using copy doodles is to make your copy more interesting. Have fun with them. Don’t over use. Perhaps start with simple arrows until you get the hang of it.
Remember just use a bit your imagination and model what others are doing. Use google to find several copy doodle examples and use doodles like those in your own copy.
Copy doodles are an optional tool that you can use especially in sales letters or optin pages – but they’re proven to increase conversion rates!
So do you have any questions about creating and using Copy Doodles? Leave them in the comments below.