Archives for May 2016

Good copywriting is essential to the marketing success of any small business. If you want to engage your customers, entice them to buy your products or get them to sign up for your newsletter, you need amazing copy to do the job.

Are you getting your start-up off the ground, operating an independent outfit, or running a small-scale venture with a partner? Whether you’re doing social media marketing, inbound marketing, content marketing or direct marketing, lacklustre copy can scuttle your marketing efforts before even they take off.

To make the best impact with your copy, follow these 10 essential small business copywriting tips.

1. Write attractive headlines

To hook your readers, you need an attention-grabbing headline. A catchy headline will compel your audience to click on your blog post, open your email or read your article.

Headlines that work well are those that promise a benefit to readers and offer useful content specific to the reader.

2. Focus on benefits

Your customers are not going to care about the features of your product or service. What they do care about is how your product or service can help them.

So focus on the benefits of your product or service in your copy. How will it make their lives better? What problems will it solve? How can your product or service help your customers do their job better, free up their time, save more money or improve their health?

3. Know your audience

Your copywriting should revolve around your customer. To do that, you need to understand who your customers are and what they’re looking for. One way to learn more about your customers is to create buyer personas.

Knowing your customers’ profile and how they make decisions will help you to create content that speaks directly to them. Provide them with useful and relevant content that will guide them throughout the buying cycle.

4. Keep it simple

These days, most audiences have short attention spans due to information overload. Many consumers, especially those with mobile devices, prefer to skim instead of read.

To maintain your audience’s interest, keep your content simple. Use short sentences, bullet points and lists to break up paragraphs. And leave out the jargon.

5. Write in the second person

Use “you” instead of “we” in your copywriting. When you write, speak to your readers by using “you”. Talking directly to your audience through this “one-on-one” speak creates a better connection with them. No one wants to read a website or brochure where it’s all about the company. When you put the customer at the heart of your content, you’ll get more leads that may eventually translate into sales.

For example, this blog is written for you so that you can learn about ways that can help to supercharge your content and improve the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.

6. Understand your medium

It’s important that you understand the medium that you’re writing for. Writing a thought leadership article to be pitched to a national newspaper is completely different from writing a blog post to be uploaded onto your website. Writing a brochure is also different from writing a newsletter.

Whatever your vehicle, you’ll need to adjust your writing style accordingly.

7. Focus on SEO and your keywords

A web presence is not a “nice to have” but a “must have” for all businesses. But how can your customers find you if you don’t rank well in the search engines for the keywords related to your products or services?

That’s why you need to pick the right keywords to optimise and put in effort to make your search engine optimisation (SEO) a success.

8. Include a call to action

As a small business, you want to get the most out of your content. The end goal of any business is to get customers to buy your product or service. Depending on where they are in the buying lifecycle, you want to bring your customers one step closer to making that purchase by asking them to take a specific action. It could be something as simple as asking them to view another article, comment on a blog post, sign up for a newsletter or register for an account.

So always close your copy with a call to action, even if you are not directly selling anything yet.

9. Create an engaging lead paragraph

Your headline grabs your reader’s attention. But it is your first paragraph that holds their attention and entices them to read further.

Put the most persuasive arguments or the best ideas in your lead paragraph. The strongest points should be at the beginning of your article.

10. Always check spelling and grammar

Always review your spelling and grammar. Sloppy text can make your business look unprofessional.

If you’re not bothered to ensure that your copy is error-free, you could end up losing potential business.

Build your brand with sharp copywriting

If you’re trying to build your brand, sharp copywriting can help you tell your story and connect with your audience.

To get on the right track, follow our small business copywriting tips. But if you’re stuck or find that you have neither the time nor expertise to churn out expert copy, consider hiring a freelance copywriter instead.

Before embarking on a content marketing strategy, you first have to understand your buyer personas. Crafting buyer personas will help you in copywriting or curating meaningful and relevant content that will strike a chord with your customers.

Piecing together a complete picture of your buyer personas takes time and effort. To get the information required, you can tap on these sources:

• Market research
• Surveys
• Interviews
• Social media
• Search analytics
• Observations

Using the raw data from these sources, you can begin to build a comprehensive profile of your buyer personas.

Here’s a list of questions that can help you to get a deeper insight into your buyer personas.

Demographics

1. Gender

Is your persona a man or woman? Men and women value different things. How they shop, what they look for, what they ask, what drives them, what they are concerned with and how they make decisions are totally different.

2. Age

How old is your persona?

3. Generation

Is your persona a baby boomer, a Gen X, a Gen Y or a millennial?

4. Education

What level of education has your persona achieved? Did he finish high school or university? Did he study locally or abroad?

5. Marital status

Is your persona single, married, divorced or widowed?

6. Family lifecycle

Is your persona a teenager, a newlywed, just beginning to start a family, has several children, or is an empty-nester?

7. Size of household

How large is your persona’s household?

8. Location

Is your persona an urban dweller or living in suburbia? Does he live in landed property or a high-rise unit?

9. Income

Which income bracket does your persona fall in?

10. Social class

Is your persona affluent or middle class? Or does he fall at the poverty level?

Psychographics

11. Activities and interests

What hobbies does your persona engage in? What are her personal interests and what does she do in her free time? Does she like any particular type of sports, music or movies? Is she interested in fashion, technology or the arts?

12. Values

Does your persona value love, health, fun, comfort, happiness, success, adventure, security, family, honesty, loyalty or relationships?

13. Causes

Does your persona champion causes such as conservation, education, human rights or the environment?

14. Life stage

Is your persona job hunting, climbing up the career ladder, starting a family, part of the sandwiched generation or at the peak of his career?

15. Lifestyle

What lifestyle choices does your persona make? Is she religious, health-conscious, active, organic, high-tech or artsy?

16. Goals

What drives your persona? Does he prefer experiences, ideals, material objects or self-expression?

17. Personality

Is your persona a conformist, a leader, a trail-blazer, an achiever, a wanna-be, a materialistic person, a nurturer or a social climber? Is he laid-back or driven?

18. Attitude and opinions

What would be your persona’s attitude towards your product or service?

19. Networks

Does your persona belong to any associations, clubs or groups? Who does she mix with?

Work details

20. Career

What kind of job does your persona have? Is he a blue-collar or white-collar worker or an entrepreneur?

What kind of role does he play in his organization? Is he a decision-maker, an influencer or administrator?

21. Professional goals

Is your persona success-oriented, power hungry or fame-seeking? Or is she more concerned with wealth accumulation or work-life balance? What does she want from her career?

22. Responsibilities

What is your persona responsible for? What skills and knowledge are required for him to do his job? What tools does he need to do his job well?

23. Professional challenges

What challenges does your persona face at work and how can she overcome these challenges?

24. Purchasing decisions

Does your persona make purchasing decisions at work? Does he need to consult someone or get approval for the purchase?

Consumer behavior

25. Shopping patterns

Where does your persona shop – at the suburban mall or at luxury retail stores? Or does she prefer to shop online?

Does she prefer to pay by cash, credit card or internet banking?

26. Communication preferences

Would your persona prefer to connect with you through email, the phone or through social media?

27. Social networks

Which of these social networks does your persona use: LinkedIn, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Google+?

How often does your persona log on to social media networks?

28. Access to information

Does she tap on social media, get recommendations from friends or conduct research online in order to get information on products or services?

What publications, magazines or newspapers does she read? Which TV or YouTube channels does she watch? Which websites does she visit?

Does your persona prefer to access content online through mobile devices or a desktop computer?

29. Pain points

What are the real or perceived problems (related to your product or service) that your persona has? How would your product or service solve this?

30. Barriers to purchase

What could prevent your persona from buying from you? What would assuage his fears?

This list is far from exhaustive. The questions you ask may also differ, depending on whether you are doing B2B or B2C marketing – whether you are targeting businesses or individuals.

Once you know your persona inside out, you can bridge the gap with your audience by framing your content from your customer’s perspective. Use the same words or language that your audience would use to create that connection with them.

The words will flow easier when you are able to get inside the mind of your persona. You’ll then be able to create content that resonates with your audience and that converts better.

To succeed in content marketing, you need to create the right content for the right audience. Defining buyer personas is a critical step in developing content that is truly targeted.

Copywriting becomes much easier after you’ve built your buyer personas. By putting together a composite sketch of your customer, you can adapt your content strategy to address your audience’s challenges.

What are personas?

Personas are detailed profiles of your customers. Building a persona is like putting together an exhaustive dossier on the demographics, as well as needs, wants, goals, fears and challenges of your target customer.

What are their likes? How old are they? What is their job? Where do they live? How do they shop? What do they want to achieve?

Knowing everything about your personas will help you understand how your customers will behave throughout the buying cycle.

Most businesses have at least two personas. Some may have many more. For instance, a huge e-commerce outfit may have many different personas as each product can be targeted at different segments of consumers.

Personas for B2B and B2C marketing will also differ. In B2B copywriting, it is important to consider the persona’s job in the organization and his or her role in the decision making process.

You might even want to name your personas. Visualizing them as real people will help you to vary the tone and style of writing for each persona and tailor your messages accordingly.

Why should you map out your buyer personas?

The number one reason for sketching out a composite of your buyer persona is to understand what they want so that you can adapt and tailor your content and message to address their needs or pain points.

Mapping out your buyer personas will help you to determine the type of content you need to create, the topics you should write about, as well as the tone of voice and delivery style that will make a greater impact with your audience.

You need to consider the different types of personalities who may be interested in your product and service. Each persona has different desires and challenges. So you would not necessarily provide the same content or write in the same style for each of them.

When you target the right people and give them content which they will find relevant and interesting, this will align yourself with your buyers’ goals or priorities.

For instance, potential buyers of a new condominium project could include couples with no kids, young families or multi-generational families. Each of these segments would have different objectives in buying a home. So you’ll need to adjust your sales copy accordingly.

Another good example of persona targeting is in movie marketing. Have you noticed that there are usually a few versions of movie trailers and posters? This is to appeal to different segments of moviegoers.

Build your copywriting and content strategy around your personas. This will help you to better answer your audience’s questions and express your message more effectively.

Coming up: How can you create buyer personas and what questions should you ask?