If crafting compelling copy for your business feels like an uphill battle, you’re not alone.
The hardest business to write for is always your own. But when your goal is to ultimately convert more customers, messaging is not something you can afford to neglect.
To make this process easier for you, we’re giving you a checklist of 10 must-use messaging strategies to turn leads into customers (and avoid the dreaded blank page panic).
All of the tactics mentioned here are found in Nicki’s book “Copywriting Strategies: A No-Nonsense Guide to Writing Persuasive Copy for Your Business”, a fantastic resource for business owners to learn the foundational elements of copywriting and begin putting them into practice!
And the good news is, the more that you focus on these points and practice them as you create your messaging, the easier it will get for you!
Strategy #1: Have a Purpose and a Plan
One of the first things that you need to identify is the purpose of the project. What is your specific goal? Define what you are setting out to accomplish and break copy projects down to make sure that the individual elements are targeted toward that goal.
If you’re building an email funnel for example, it’s important to outline the purpose of each specific email within the funnel and whether it is helping you achieve your overall goal for the project.
It’s common for business owners to just think “oh, I have to send out this email”, without questioning *why* you’re actually writing that email. Nothing that we put out in the world should be purposeless. And if there’s no benefit to the person who’s reading it, they’re probably going to stop reading.
When thinking of the purpose of a particular project, bear in mind that there should be one singular purpose for whatever it is that you’re setting out to accomplish. What is the one action you want them to take? And why is that next step important? If you have more than one purpose for an email, it’s likely readers will just feel confused about which step to take next.
And when you’re telling them which step to take next, the clearer your call to action can be, the better. Don’t make them guess at what you want them to do–simplicity is key. By all means use your brand voice in other places, but for your call to action, think in terms of clarity.
This step is certainly where you want to start the writing process, but it’s also where you want to end it. Reviewing your purpose and plan once you’ve actually written the copy–and before you push it out into the world–will make sure that you’ve hit on everything you needed to.
Strategy #2: It’s Not About You
We say this with a lot of love, but really, it’s not about you. As business owners, we tend to spend a lot of time in our own head. The problem is, when you are always so focused on your own offer, product, or service, you’re thinking a lot about what’s important to you. But what’s important to you is not necessarily the same as what’s important to your target audience.
So when you are writing your messaging, you have to set yourself aside, put yourself in your target audience’s shoes, and figure out what they want and need to hear.
Talking to your actual customers is crucial to find out what they are finding useful about your offer and what they’re hung up on. Even speaking to folks who haven’t purchased is helpful as you can learn what their objections are. Doing this will help you connect better with your ideal audience and find out what kind of messaging resonates the most with them.
Strategy #3: Focus on the Benefit
It’s easy to get the features of your offer confused with the benefits, so let’s take a second to get clear on the difference. Features tell you what you’ll get (the details), and benefits tell you why you should get it (the end result or transformation for the consumer).
Think about a seven-blade razor. A feature would be the fact that it has seven blades, but the benefit might be that they have the smoothest, softest, best shave in the world.
Entrepreneurs often end up focusing on the details of their courses, rather than the end benefit. Group coaching is a common example of this. Group coaching itself is just a feature. The question is, what do they actually get out of the group coaching? Maybe it’s personalized support, answers to their questions, or a feeling of community.
Some people, especially introverted folks, may be more hesitant about signing up to a program with group coaching. That means it’s even more important to make sure they see and understand the value in it.
Whenever you craft messaging for your business, you have to make sure that the benefit to consumers is the number one thing on your mind.
Strategy #4: Be Attention Grabbing (But Avoid Clickbait!)
OK, we’ll admit “grabbing someone’s attention” is probably easier said than done. So here’s how you can actually make your copy interesting and clickworthy.
- See previous point about focusing on the benefit. Ask yourself: what is my target audience going to get out of it?
- Incite their curiosity
Take this subject line, for example:
“The business advice from my Uber driver that you need to know”.
Here, you’re piquing the reader’s curiosity by teasing what’s going to be in that email, but also making it relevant to the target audience. It’s important to not only make it interesting, but to also connect it to your target audience in some way.
However, a word of caution for powerful, curiosity driven headlines or subject lines: if you don’t pay it off, it turns into clickbait versus an effective subject line or headline. If your audience never actually finds out the information that you’re teasing, you will start to lose your audience’s trust.
Remember to take some time with your subject line rather than doing it as a throwaway activity after you’ve written the email. The subject line is the difference between opening or deleting an email, so ask yourself if this is something your target audience would truly want to open based on the subject line you’ve chosen.
One of the most important things when identifying your brand voice is to sound unique. While it’s very tempting to sound like everyone else in your space with similar offers, you want to stand out and be in someone’s inbox with something they haven’t seen before. Otherwise, it’s just going to blend in with the rest.
Strategy #5: *Hold* Your Audience’s Attention
Sometimes, little kids need luring to the table with chocolate before you give them the vegetables (sound parenting advice, we know).
For business owners, this translates as giving customers what they really want to hear before giving them the extra information you think they need. Once they’re in the program, and you’ve sold them on the chocolate, that’s when you can teach them (aka give them the vegetables).
To do this, you’re going to need to get a little ruthless in what you’re choosing to put out into the world. So as you go through each piece of copy, get clear on the purpose of this communication right now and if it doesn’t serve that purpose, cut that copy.
Ask yourself: Is this a point that they really need to know? Does it connect back to the main topic? Is this something that is going to make them want to take action? If not, save it in a separate document so that you can always repurpose it further down the line.
The point here is we don’t want to distract customers away from the main purpose and benefit that you’re trying to communicate in this piece.
Strategy #6: Use Words Your Audience Uses
In case strategy #2 had slipped your mind, remember you always want it to be about your ideal customer, not you. That means that when you (or your copywriter) is writing copy, you have to understand which words your audience is actually using.
How are they talking about your offer? Is it different to the way you talk about it?
A lot of course creators create programs because it solves a problem that we used to have. And so we think of ourselves as our own target audience, when that is not strictly true. Since you were in that place, you’ve had a lot of transformation and you’ve learned and grown a lot. It’s highly likely you are no longer speaking the same language as your target audience.
Talk to people who have and have not purchased from you to find out the words they use to describe their struggles, what they want and need, and what success would look like to them.
When your audience sees the words they use in your materials, they’re going to feel understood, which is so important for making them comfortable enough to purchase from you.
Strategy #7: Don’t Waste Words
OK, here comes the hard truth: no one is going to read all of your copy.
In fact, the more that you try to pack into messaging (which is very tempting for business owners), the lower the chances are that they’re going to read it all.
Writing is not just the act of putting words down on the page, it’s also coming back to it and editing it, whether that’s changing the words, making them more effective, or taking them out.
There has to be a reason and a purpose for every single word in your final piece of copy. Ask yourself: “Why does this piece of information need to be in there?”
Keep sentences short and break up longer paragraphs so it’s easier for people to consume–and don’t be afraid to break grammar rules! The more it sounds like someone speaking to you, the easier it is to digest as a reader. Try reading your work out loud to identify longer passages of text.
Strategy #8: Be Consistent
All of your messaging should sound like it comes from you. Even if you hire a copywriter for support, they should be able to hop in and pick up your tone of voice so that it sounds like you. Your messaging should not sound like two different people from one day to the next.
Having a tone guide can help you stay consistent in your messaging by identifying exactly what your brand’s personality is (and isn’t!) and which words you use and don’t use.
If you are inconsistent–even with things like capitalizing headlines– it’s sending the message that you might not be as trustworthy or as serious of a brand.
And when it comes to the messaging around your program or offer, don’t worry about repeating yourself in multiple areas. People need to see and hear that same message multiple times for it to register and for them to build trust in your brand.
Strategy #9: Use a Single CTA (Call to Action)
A call to action simply tells readers what to do next. We mentioned earlier that every piece you’re working on has to have a purpose and direct your audience to do something.
A mistake we see often is when people use a bunch of different calls to action. “Click here to purchase!”, “Read this blog post” and then “Follow us on Instagram” – all in one email!
One person is only capable of taking one action at a time, so make it clear to them what the main action is that you want them to take.
If you do have a secondary action like “read this testimonial”, make it clear through the design that it is less important (e.g. reducing the size and weight of the CTA).
Strategy #10: Editing is Just as Important as Writing
You mean I just spent all this time writing and I’m not done?!
We hate to break this to you…but copywriting is not done just because you’re done writing.
Editing is just as important as writing. And it should bring a bit of relief knowing that when you sit down to write something, you don’t feel pressured to get it perfect in one shot.
When you build in “sleep on it time” (or at least *some* time to walk away and come back to it), you can review everything that you’ve done with fresh eyes. Does it make sense to your target audience? Is the benefit clear? Is it obvious what action you want them to take next? This checklist is the perfect tool to help you go through the editing process effectively.
Don’t forget that there are always opportunities to test your copy to see what resonates most with your audience. Even if you have done tons of market research, you still can’t perfectly know what’s going to perform best. Looking at your metrics consistently can help guide decisions around messaging so that you’re putting your best foot forward to help boost those conversion rates.
The better your messaging is, the better your business results will be. So this is not something that you want to *completely* outsource. It’s still crucial for you as the business owner to understand these fundamental concepts, even if you go ahead and hire a copywriter (more on the best time to do that here).
Communicating how your offer is unique is a tough task. But the last thing we want is for you to risk losing out on potential customers because of poor brand messaging.
Embedding these 10 messaging tactics into your writing process will not only make this task feel easier for you, it will also help your audience understand why YOU are the best person to serve them.
Watch More
In this Energize Your Online Business podcast two-parter, Nicki and Kate dive into the essential copywriting techniques will not only make the writing process a lot easier, but will also convert more customers. Listen in to Part I for advice on portraying the deep benefit to the customer, and don’t forget to check out Part II for information on how to edit like a pro!
Your Turn!
Which of these messaging strategies will you be focusing on first for your business? Let us know in the comments below!
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