Writing good copy for your product or website can be intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be.
Keep the goals of your copy at the front of your mind and remember to keep your copy simple, clear, and direct. Keep in mind that the more commitment you’re asking of your target audience, the more copy you will need to write to overcome their objections and doubts.
This article will walk you through 3 simple steps for writing compelling copy for your website.
Step 1: Plan your Copy
Planning your copy is crucial and there are two main steps to focus on at this stage:
- Know your audience and
- Know your end goal
Know your audience
When it comes to knowing your audience, get really specific and go beyond demographics. Knowing your target audience’s age, gender, and income are all important parts of the process, but you also need some insight into their personality and emotions.
Consider your target audience’s everyday frustrations and the goals they have for their life. What do they want out of their life? What do they fear most or what keeps them up at night? What makes them angry, sad, frustrated, confused, or disappointed?
And most importantly, how can you or your product help make their life better or easier?
You might find it helpful to think of one specific person in your life who is your target audience and write your copy with them in mind.
Know your goal
Yes goal. Singular. Just one goal for the copy.
Your end goal for the copy is often referred to as a “call to action” or CTA for short. All good copy focuses entirely on convincing the target audience to take that call to action.
Having too many CTAs confuses readers, making them more likely to leave your site without doing anything.
The key here is to break down each step of the customer’s journey, turning each step into a CTA that turns prospective customers into actual customers.
For this reason, each page of copy should have just one specific CTA for your audience to take.
Determining the CTA in advance is crucial because the CTA determines what you’ll say and how to say it.
Step 2: Write your Copy
Focus on One Main Idea
Fight the temptation to cover every aspect of your product when writing copy. You’ll want to cover every pain point and every benefit or feature your product has to offer, but this can lead to long, rambling content.
You’ll end up leaving your reader confused or irritated.
Instead, focus your copy around the biggest problem your audience needs solved. Highlight the troubles they’re having and the consequences of not solving those problems. Then shift the focus to how things can be different when they do solve that problem.
Using these pain points to guide you, write to show how your product solves that problem and makes your target audience’s life better or easier in some way.
Emphasize benefits over features
Remember that your copy is not an owner’s manual or an ingredient list. It’s meant to be persuasive.
Rather than listing all the bells and whistles included, focus on how the product or service will benefit the target audience.
Keep your focus around answering the question: how will this make my life better or easier?
Here’s an example: Imagine you’re selling an online course that includes a 30-minute consultation. It would be logical to list this as a feature. Something like: “includes a 30-minute consultation!” right?
The problem here is your audience may not be connecting the consultation to a benefit they need.
Instead, explain the benefit of the consultation by stating: “get clarity and guidance with a 30-minute consultation after the course ends!”
Here, you’re advertising the benefits – clarity and guidance – because you know the problem your target audience really needs solved is the problem of not knowing what direction to go.
Step 3: Edit your Copy
Speak like your target audience
Now that you have your copy drafted, it’s time to go back and fine-tune your word choices, tone, and style to ensure your copy speaks directly to your target audience.
In step one, you did some research on your target audience. You learned about their problems, fears, and frustrations, their goals, and their dreams. And you learned about their overall personality profile.
You’ll want to put this research to use by incorporating the voice of your target audience into your copy. Use the words and phrases they use to describe their problems and frustrations. Talk about those specific dreams and goals that your product will help them achieve.
Not only will using customer voice in your copy help you connect more strongly with your target audience, it will also score you some major bonus points with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) since your copy will be using the exact words and phrases your target audience will be searching.
Tighten your Copy
Writing tight copy means that every word and sentence adds value and moves your audience towards the desired call to action.
This means cutting any extra words or “fluff” and limiting stories and examples (don’t worry – you can add them to the social proof section at the end of the landing page).
Aim to reach an 8th-grade reading level with your writing. Why? No matter who your target audience is, they’re busy and distracted, so you want to keep your copy “easy” and accessible to ensure it gets read.
For more technical content, your writing can benefit from being more difficult and higher-level. It depends on the role and position you are trying to take. Are you writing a piece to cement yourself as an industry expert, or are you trying to educate your customers?
Bonus Step: Update Old Copy
Sometimes, updating old content can be just as effective as writing new blogs and articles. Old content will continue to generate traffic and get new visitors to your site, but once they find your article with outdated information, they may leave to find a more accurate article.
Updating content will ensure this doesn’t happen while improving page ranking once re-crawled by Google. Things to look out for include:
- Update content that may no longer be true in the current year
- Remove products or services you no longer offer
- Restructure and update targetted keywords based on analytics
- Remove photos with old branding and add alt text to images
- Fix any broken links, both internal and external. Link old content to new content you’ve produced.
Conclusion
When writing good copy, keep your target audience and goals in mind and remember that less is more when you get to the editing stage. Clear, simple, and direct copy is always your best bet.
Finally, never let writing copy delay your product launch. Do your best with the research and information you’ve collected and move forward with the launch. You can always add more proofs, case studies, and testimonials at a later time.
If you’re ready to start writing your copy today and would like to work with a dedicated marketing team, schedule a free consultation with us to see how we can help your business grow. Please email us at info@starfox.media or give us a call at 760-385-3117. Or fill out our contact form for more information.
