“There is your audience. There is the language. There are the words that they use.” – Eugene Schwartz
Copywriting is one of the most underrated topics in Marketing. I see so many marketing conversations around the data, the advertising, and the design… but if you don’t have content that connects with your audience you’re going to make your job a lot harder and you may attribute bad results to the wrong thing.
I always remind myself of examples like this SEOmoz Million Dollar landing page with a boring design, but thoughtful copy. Red Clay Creative helps businesses create amazing websites but if the copy isn’t equally as amazing, our clients aren’t going to see the results they want.
Here are a few tried-and-tested copywriting techniques that you can apply to your business.
Speak to your customers emotions
Despite how rational we’d like to believe we are, we’re often guided by a gut feeling. When you’re crafting copy your goal is to speak to that feeling and create an emotional connection with your audience. If your pitch doesn’t connect then your chances of making a sale decrease considerably.
But how do you do this? Sales expert Geoffrey James explains that all buying decisions come down to a mixture of the following six feelings:
- Greed. “If I make a decision now, I will be rewarded.”
- Fear. “If I don’t make a decision now, I’m toast.”
- Altruism. “If I make a decision now, I will help others.”
- Envy. “If I don’t make a decision now, my competition will win.”
- Pride. “If I make a decision now, I will look smart.”
- Shame. “If I don’t make a decision now, I will look stupid.”
Choosing which to focus on depends on your customers and your products. Ask yourself these questions: What will resonate most with them? What emotions does your product spark?
Focus on how your product will change your customers lives
We put so much time into creating special products and the features they offer, but companies often fail to show how these things will change their customers lives. While the product features are certainly important, product features don’t form a deep, close bond with your customers.
Instead of saying this: Our pen can write, erase, and change colors.
Say this: Everything in one pen. It’s the only one you’ll ever need.
Then talk about how that pen does that.
Instead of saying this: This trash can has voice and motion sensing technology.
Say this: Life is messy! Open our trash can without lifting a finger.
Benefits are what pull customers into purchasing; they go beyond what the product is and address a lifestyle impact for the customer.
Personalize your copywriting for each product
Every product you sell is different in its own way and you want to reflect this in your copy by personalizing every single product description.
There are two major benefits to this:
- It helps avoid duplicate content, which your customer might breeze over and can impact your search engine ranking.
- It brings out the individuality of each product so it can connect with buyers in its own special way. All of your products probably aren’t perfect for all of your customers, so you want to tailor the copy for the unique benefits of every product.
Yes, this can be very tedious and time-consuming. But can you afford to leave money on the table? By personalizing your copy for each product, your store will become more successful and you’ll convert more customers.
Don’t forget about grammar!
Always check your grammar before you publish anything. If mistakes are made then this can really hurt your conversion rates. You also have to consider your audience. Some acronyms may make sense to one group, but not others. Some people may be offended if you don’t use Oxford commas, while others don’t even know what that is.
Internally, we use Grammarly to double-check ourselves. It saves us from publishing mistakes and makes us look like we’re smarter than we are!
It can be time-consuming and frankly annoying trying to craft the perfect copy for your website or marketing. Trust me, it will all be worth it. As business owners and salespeople we have to do everything we can to create connections with our customers. And at the end of the day, there’s a reason humans created language in the first place: So we can connect and grow together.
