A website copywriter’s mantra is: “audience, audience, audience”. If you’re writing your own website copy, you should adopt the mantra for yourself, too. Why? To convert your audience into customers you need make sure your website copy is about “them” – not about “you”.
Writing copy for a website is not an exercise in ego-boosting
Contrary to popular belief, your website is not about what you want to share with the world about yourself, your business or your services. It’s about the information your audience wants to find, the problems it wants solved, and the benefits it wants to attain.
Your audience doesn’t really want to buy accounting services, for example. But they will feel compelled to save money and get a bigger tax return. Your audience isn’t looking for broadband internet; they just want fast downloads at a cheap price. Basically, your audience doesn’t want to know about your product or service – they want to know what it can do for them. To compel your audience to become customers, you need to express your features as benefits which will meet your audience’s needs.
Connect with your audience by telling them upfront what’s in it for them. The human brain is wired to consider the needs of the self first, so whether conscious of it or not, your audience will be looking to have its needs fulfilled. If your copy doesn’t clearly do that, your audience won’t connect and won’t feel compelled to convert.
Audience, audience, audience
In order to make your website copy benefit oriented, you need to start by knowing your audience well. You need to know who they are, and what they want. The tighter you can define the demographic of your audience, the better you’ll be able to sell to them by knowing what they are looking for and what appeals to them.
Does your audience want to make more money? Have a simpler life? Impress the neighbours? Have more time? Spend less money? Be the most technologically advanced? Get greater return on their investment?
Once you know your audience, you can figure out what motivates them and what benefits will appeal to them.
Can you tell the difference?
Which of these statements is benefit oriented?
1. At Strong Ideas, we provide specialised website copywriting.
2. With Strong Ideas’ specialised website copywriting, you’ll save time and gain customers.
You got it right if you chose the one that talks about “you”.
A simple test
A straightforward way to ensure you’re talking about benefits to your audience and addressing their wants and needs is to count the number of “we”’s and the number of “you”’s in your website copy. Benefit oriented copy talks about “you”; ego oriented copy talk about “we”.
Don’t tell your audience what you do; tell them what you can do for them
Benefit oriented copy shows your audience that you understand their problems and that you know what they want and need. Benefit oriented copy will create rapport with your audience, and it will compel them to become customers.
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