Have an upcoming flash sales but don’t want the same old copywriting? If you have worn out copywriting ideas for your marketing and promotions, then power words will be to the rescue.
Power words will give your flash sales a little more punch to boost your conversions. This will also give an extra personality and life to your writing — getting your target audience to pay close attention to your promotions.
At the end of this post, you will understand more about power words and how they could help your online store’s flash sales to get all their much-needed recognition.
Plus, you will get instant access to a list of 600+ power words. You can simply download it and keep it as your handy reference guide whenever you’re launching a new sales promo or just wanting to amp up your store’s copywriting.
What are power words? What makes them powerful?
A term commonly used by savvy marketers and smart copywriters, power words are often one to two words injected to a phrase or sentence to make it more convincing. They are added to trigger a response or an action from readers.
Power words can be any word. What makes a word a power word is how you use it. It should be set off by either psychological or emotional triggers to make your audience feel connected enough to take action.
The term ‘power’ is generated from its colossal force to influence and persuade people. Most importantly, a power word should have the natural ability to change a thought or idea through its:
- Mood: evoke emotion and imagination
- Meaning: convey a message or persuade to do something
- Motivation: the reason for completing an action
You may have encountered power words from the contents you’ve read over the past weeks. But, you’ve never really understood what they are and their purpose in marketing. In general, power words are used in marketing to persuade people to interact and act upon a call to action.
A perfect example is how Buzzfeed incorporates power words into its headlines to immediately captivate the attention of its audience. This way, people are drawn into reading their contents. This pushed them to go viral and trending in social media.
This Buzzfeed article’s headline alone has 4 power words in it.
Why use power words in flash sales
There’s a huge difference between talking and writing. We can use facial expressions, body language, or even some hand gestures to further convey our message. This gives more meaning and emotions in our words. However, in writing, we don’t have those physical manifestations.
This is why power words can make a huge difference in your promotional campaigns like flash sales. You need to add power words as a substitute to those physical gestures. This will give more weight into the headlines or copy you use in your flash sales campaigns.
In short, adding power words can help you capture your audience attention even more. Thus, increasing your chances of conversion. In fact, an A/B testing revealed that when a power word was added to a call to action, visitors were found out to 12.8% more likely to convert when presented with a power word CTA versus the original CTA without any power word.
How to use power words in flash sales
Let’s see some examples of how you can use power words effectively. Below are three actions that power words incite which you can use to your flash sales:
1 – Arouse emotion
A study on the relationship between emotions and virality found out that people’s emotion is a key driver why contents become viral.
It was reported that high-arousal emotions like anger and happiness have a higher tendency to generate more engagements compared to low-arousal emotions. Examples of highly emotionally charged power words are “hilarious”, “abused”, and “betrayed”.
If you want to arouse emotions in your next flash sales, use words that could bring lots of excitement to your audience. Power words like “huge savings”, “special offer”, “lucky”, etc. can ignite a highly positive reception among your customers.
For example, Rubber Stamps used the word “bonus” as a power word to arouse potential customers about their upcoming flash sale.
Another great example is how Lazada injected the word “crazy” into its flash sale call to action. It immediately makes the flash sale a lot more rousing.
Aside from positive emotions, you can also instill highly aroused emotions into your flash sales through negative feelings like sadness. For example, you can say “Feeling blue? Perk up with our flash sales!” or something like “Worried about spending too much? Our flash sales will give you more savings while you spend.”
2 – Manipulate control
The same study above also confirmed that highly popular contents in social media have a great connection to feelings of dominance or control.
The feelings of either having control (e.g.: inspiration or admiration) or less control (e.g.: fear) can steer people to engage with a social media post and share it with their network. Examples of power words that can manipulate control are “inspiring”, “thought-provoking”, “beware”.
You can manipulate control to your flash sales by using the fear of missing out psychology. It states that people are highly inclined to do what other people are doing. They want to join in and don’t want to be left out.
A highly popular technique is to control how you present your supply and demand. Low supply items will stir the fear that customers will miss out buying the products if they won’t purchase them now.
Team Rubicon used the power word “last” to tell shoppers that the supply is limited so if they want not to miss out the flash sale deals, they have to purchase as soon as possible.
On the other hand, highly demanded items are signs that a huge number of people are using them. If people know that a product is highly demanded, they will fear that the product will likely sell out soon. So, they want to get a hold of the product as soon as possible.
If you want to increase your average order value, don’t forget to pair up your slow moving stocks or unpopular items to your highly demanded ones. This way, you’re shedding some attention to your not so popular products. What you can do is to cross-sell your unpopular items to your popular products.
You can use Boost Sales, an upsell and cross-sell app, to automatically set up your cross-selling strategies.
3 – Pique curiosity
People are naturally curious about anything that they want to know or learn more about. This natural curiosity is a primal psychological impulse for us humans.
This is why curiosity is a highly recommended strategy to prompt people’s inclination to click, read, or share contents. Examples of power words inciting curiosity are “mind-boggling, “unheard of”, and “secret”.
To pique the curiosity of your audience in your next flash sale campaign, don’t be afraid to use power words that would elicit questions and imagination like “sneak peek”, “mystery”, etc.
For example, the mystery flash sale from Shoes.com is a perfect example of how you can awaken the interest of your shoppers.
4 – Drive urgency
Time is always of the essence. You want to make more people buying from your flash sale. This is why it’s important to set a deadline or time limit to your flash sale to drive your potential customers to urgently take an action and not delaying their purchase.
To increase urgency in your flash sales, use power words that remind people that the deals offered in your flash sale have an expiry. If people see that the deals will expire soon, the shoppers will immediately act on them because they know that they won’t have plenty of time to avail them.
The power words “you have until” from Queens Boutique’s flash sale is a perfect example of how you can intensify urgency.
You can even increase more urgency to your flash deals by including a countdown timer at the checkout page. You can automatically add a countdown timer to your flash sale or any other last-minute deals using Checkout boost.
Epic list of power words for flash sales
Like what we’ve said at the very beginning, any word can be power word. The secret to making it effective is knowing when to put the right word at the right time to turn into a power word.
There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of power words out there waiting for you to uncover. To help you find the right power words for your next flash sales or any other sales and marketing promotions, we have compiled a gigantic list of effective power words.
To save you time and effort, we have categorized these power words into different categories of feelings or emotions that you can use for your next flash sale copywriting:
| AROUSAL | CURIOSITY | EXCLUSIVITY | FEAR | LOYALTY |
| Allure | Banned | Elite | Agony | Invitation Only |
| Arouse | Behind the scenes | First | Backlash | Limited Access |
| Bare | Black Market | Insider | Collapse | Exclusive |
| Beguiling | Blacklisted | Only for you | Cripple | Members Only |
| Brazen | Censored | Sneak-Peek | Crisis | Confidential |
| Climax | Classified | Yours | Danger | Must Buy |
| AUTHORITY | EXCITEMENT | HAPPINESS | INDULGENCE | MEMORABILITY |
| Absolute | Bold | Alive | Guilt | Captivate |
| All-Inclusive | Exciting | Healthy | Guilt-Free | Genius |
| Authentic | Fascinating | Heartwarming | Indulgent | Impressive |
| Backed | Intriguing | Inspiring | Obsessed | Memorable |
| Bona Fide | Riveting | Light | Ravenous | Undeniable |
| Proven | Tempting | Profound | Satisfy | Unforgettable |
For the full version, just simply leave your email in the box below to download this epic list of power words.
Now, just copy and paste your desired power word anytime and anywhere you need it.
The Power of Words
Power words are an extremely powerful tool. They can evoke emotions, arouse curiosity, and increase the urgency to your flash sales. With the right power words, you can effectively engage and communicate with your customers and potential buyers alike.
Because any word can turn into a power word, you have a limitless supply of words to use. You just need the right contextual usage to make this word impactful.
With our massive list of 600+ power words, you have all the needed resources to achieve a high converting flash sales and a powerful selling online store.
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