How to Use Bullets Responsibly

Bullets (or bullet points) are one of the number one tools used by high converting copy. They’re easy to learn – but tough to master.

What are bullets?

Technically, anything that can be put into a list and formatted like the items below are considered bullet points:

• Here’s an idea
• And another
• Oh look, a third!

But when it comes to good copywriting, there’s a way of writing them to get across certain concepts that will do more to boost your sales than you might realise.

In copy, bullets are simply bite-sized pieces of information that quickly communicate to the reader key ideas, such as features and benefits. They break up dense chunks of copy so it’s easier to read and digest – in other words, they’re scannable. Skim readers should get all they need from bullets. Thorough readers will treat them like a summary, or return to them later on.

After the headline and the subheads, they’ll probably be the next part of the copy that catches their eye… and this is why they’re especially important to your conversion rate.

What do you use bullets for?

In any form of copy, you can use bullets for the following:

• A list of problems your product or service solves
• A summary of benefits and/or desired results
• The qualifications of an author or expert
• Features (e.g. aspect ratio, screen size, connection ports, and any other technical info)
• Testimonials
• Interesting facts or questions that lead into your sales copy
• Guarantee or warranty

Bullets should be customer-focused, keeping their wants and needs front and centre at all times. Do you have an elevator pitch? This is where it might come in handy. Extract 5-6 of your most important points from your sales letter or elevator pitch, and chances are they’ll make effective bullets for your landing page.

Do long or short bullets work?

Keep bullets as short as possible. You only need two ingredients for a good bullet point – promise + brevity. Shakespeare said “brevity is the soul of wit” – but he neglected to add it’s also an awesome way to make mad sales.

Brevity is not the same as bringing your word count down to the bare minimum. It’s about writing the shortest copy that’s effective.

For example, here’s a short bullet:

• Get faster internet

Three words, but they’re not particularly life-changing or persuasive. Here’s an overlong, bloated bullet that tries too hard:

• Sick of your slow internet speeds? Try ours and experience lightning-quick upload and download speeds that may be up to twenty four times your original rate!

A little bit better, but we feel like we’ve just read the whole sales pitch – not a summary of one specific point. Here’s a bullet that has more words than the shortest bullet, but still hits all the vital notes:

• Boost your internet speed by up to 24x

Remember, long, complex bullet points would defeat their own purpose — to keep your reader moving through your copy.

Now we’ve covered brevity, it’s time to move on to promise. Each of your bullets has to make a plain and legitimate claim of having a feature or quality your prospect is looking for – be that affordability, ease of use, fun, results, or even that they can return it if they’re not happy.

In the above example, those internet speed bullets promise results – specifically, internet that is faster than their old service.

Depending on your product or offer, you may promise the reader security, knowledge, a sexy body, self confidence, a chance at winning a prize – anything that’s relevant to your offer. It should go without saying that you must deliver on your promise. Don’t make up claims or results, you’ll only get into trouble!

The 5 golden rules of bullet points

Back in 2006, Brian Clark wrote an influential blog post over at Copyblogger which informatively sets out the five “golden rules” of writing excellent bullets in your copy. This post has since been revised and updated, but it still holds true as one of the best pieces of advice you can read on the subject of bullet points in copywriting.

We’re summarising those golden rules here, as our experience in-house has been slightly different – but we still keep a printout of these golden rules pinned above our desk to help us while writing.

1. Express a clear benefit and promise. Got some headline ideas that didn’t make the cut? Use them as bullets. You can’t go wrong with a headline formula when you put it into a bullet.
2. Keep your bullet points symmetrical.  One line each or two lines each, keeping your bullets formatted the same and of a similar length is easier on the eyes and therefore easier on the reader.
3. Avoid clutter at all costs. That’s right, Marie Kondo those points – don’t ever add subtitles, sub-lists, or multiple headings. Bullets are designed for clarity, not confusion.
4. Practice parallelism. From alliteration to past or present tense, keep your bullets thematically and grammatically the same. It’s jarring otherwise.
5. Bullets don’t have to be sentences. Let your spell checker put green squiggles underneath your lines all it wants – sentence fragments are welcome here. Whatever gets your idea across concisely and powerfully.

Powerful bullet templates

If this is your first time writing bullets – or your millionth, and you’re struggling to see the woods from the trees – we have a few powerful bullet ideas to get you started:

• The Key – “The key to feeling more alert, wakeful, and calm.”
• The Warning – “WARNING: Your retirement fund is at risk – could you live without it?”
• The Benefit – “Gain confidence in 24 hours or less.”
• The Easiest – “Revealed: The easiest way to listen to music in your shower.”
• The Secret – “The secret to growing cucumbers in almost any soil.”
• The How-To –  “How to lose 2 pounds next week.”
• The Number – “5 ways you can beat the bet exchange at their own game.”

How do you use bullets in your copy? Got a particularly good example of bullet points from someone else? Let us know in the comments!