Copy Tip 4: Your Goal
Yes, an objective. A goal. Just what do you want to achieve?
You’ve got to be clear on your goal well before you put pen to paper for your copy.
Otherwise, you won’t know what you want prospects to do once they read, view or listen to your message!
Sounds pretty simple, but there’s two really important insights to share.
Firstly, when you know your objective in advance, it helps you figure out the type of copy you need to create.
Getting people to sign up for a $20,000 per year coaching program is going to take different copy than booking in for dinner Saturday night at your local restaurant.
As well as a different message, the presentation and vehicle you use to get that message across will also be very different.
Your coaching program may need the vehicle of a seminar or face-to-face presentation to persuade your prospects to become clients, whereas you might use email online or offline postcards to fill the restaurant seats.
Secondly — something that’s often overlooked — make sure your message is focussed on achieving only the objective you set in advance.
What do I mean by this?
Let’s say you’re using lead-generation marketing to attract qualified prospects to your service.
Your first step might be — wisely — low cost advertising to attract interest in what you do. Your plan then is to have prospects request a free, valuable report, which you use to build credibility, and position yourself as the expert solution.
So your objective with the low cost advertising is NOT to sell your services … it’s simply to “sell” prospects on asking for the free report.
That means your initial message — even your testimonials and credibility copy — is focussed on convincing people it’s valuable to them to ask for the free report. Your testimonials would be more focussed on that objective than saying how good your service is or the results achieved (that’s for later, in the free report).
So when you create your initial message, all you focus on is getting across the value of the free report. Get it?
Once they’ve done that, you have the contact information and you can market more persuasively in your free report on the next objective you may have (eg consultation, audit, evaluation, meeting, booking etc).
So there’s two great things about knowing your objective (the first “O” in my MOOVE marketing formula)… it’ll set you up to create a responsive, successful message.
Copy Tip 3: A Viable Market
Okay, I jumped a little ahead of myself yesterday in getting to know your market.
(I can’t help myself, I’m excited about sharing these copy tips! I love this stuff!)
Before you get to know your market, you’ve got to make sure it is viable!
First of all, your job is to find a “starving crowd” — famously illustrated by the late, great Gary Halbert — if you’re missing issues of the Gary Halbert Letter, then you’re really not serious about this stuff!
He says it better than me of course, and that’s my source … so I’m sharing my source with you. Here’s what Gary Halbert said:
Think about it. When it comes to direct marketing, the most profitable habit you can cultivate is the habit of constantly being on the lookout for groups of people (markets) who have demonstrated that they are starving (or, at least hungry) for some particular product or service.
I would add this extra trait to look for and make real sure exists: do they have the capacity to buy your product or service?
If you pick a starving crowd without money to buy/invest/spend, then your chances of making profit just got splattered like an unfortunate frog crossing a busy road.
You could argue that the right message and persuasive communication can help create the capacity to buy — but still you might have a market with little money to spend.
I know a friend who once had an internet cafe serving international students and backpackers. Lots of competition, often really hard at it competing on price (there’s stacks of things I would advise, but that wasn’t my place and I sure knew less way back then than I do now). Imagine having 20 computers online som someone could come in and pay as little as 50 cents to check their emails and spend time online (this was really before the Web 2.0 stuff was around to attract much more attention and computer time!).
You open and setup the shop. Add in all the equipment. Keep in maintained. Add in utilities like electricity costs. Your online connection costs. Staff in the shop. And you’re collecting just 50 cents.
There are markets with a better capacity to buy than this!
To find your crowds, do your research. And read that Halbert article. That covers a whole heap of ways to find crowds with the right habits — who are actually doing the buying, not just saying they’ll buy.
And of course, now with all the power of online research, search engines, forums, groups, setting up tests … finding your starving crowd is a whole lot easier year by year than it was a decade ago.
Once you have your market — and you get to know them — you can get to know your objectives, create offers, find the right vehicle to reach them, evaluate what you do … and I’ll be sharing how copy is all a part of that process over the coming Copy Tips.
Copy Tip 2: Know Your Prospect
Tip two: really understand who you are targeting.
Get to know them.
Get answers by asking these questions:
What are their main fears, frustrations, goals, dreams? What worries them? What do they watch, read and listen to? What magazines do they read? What ads run continuously in those magazines?
Ask your customers, survey them, find out more about them… so you know where to look to find more of them.
Get online and find relevant forums, blogs and discussion groups (for example, Facebook groups, Google groups, newsgroups). I’ve discovered a lot of answers just by viewing forums (without even participating). It helps tell me what their day is like, what they are frustrated about, what they want.
Talk to your prospects. Find out what would stop them from buying (objections you need to raise and answer). Find out what interests them. Keep in mind they may be just being polite though, and telling you what they think you want to hear. So even better — ask buyers!
You can also even use your website stats or analytics software (like the free Google Analytics) to see if people are looking up your list of Frequently Asked Questions, or if you have a live chat box, you can monitor what they’re asking.
The more you know the answers to these questions, the more effective and targeted your copy can be … the more effective your response.
Copy Tip 1: Perspective
Here’s the first tip: write your copy from the perspective of your PROSPECT.
It’s all about THEM, not about you. As you might have heard in the past, be tuned in to WIIFM — “What’s In It For Me”.
Here’s an example in news release writing: you’re writing a release to a newspaper editor about your business.
From their perspective, they want NEWS that is RELEVANT to their readers.
So make sure it is written with that in mind. Find a newsworthy angle. Make sure it relates to the readers of the publication (answer why it is news to the readers).
When you do this, you’ll be more effective.
101 Copy Tips in 101 Days
Over the next 101 days I’m going to add a new copywriting tip each day to my blog … 101 ways to get more effective response from the copywriting you do!