Want to take your copy to the next level in 2024?
Here are seven copywriting tips that can help you do that…
#1. Clearly Define Your Target Audience
You should start by defining your target audience using the demographic traits of your dream customers. Why?
Because it’s impossible to write persuasive copy if you don’t know who exactly you are trying to persuade to buy your product or service.
As the saying goes, if you try to appeal to everyone, you’ll end up appealing to no one!
Demographic Traits
Demographic traits are objective facts about your dream customers such as:
- Sex
- Age
- Ethnicity
- Nationality
- Education level
- Occupation
- Job title
Of course, not all of these traits are going to be relevant to every company.
You need to figure out which demographic traits matter the most in the context of your business.
The Pareto Principle aka the 80/20 Rule
If you already have an established business, we recommend looking at your historical sales data. Who are the people buying your product?
Ideally, you want to analyze your sales data using the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule:
“For many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes.”
While the exact ratio may not be 80/20, it’s quite likely that a minority of your customers are generating the majority of your revenue.
See if you can identify the demographic traits that these lucrative customers have in common and then zero in on this segment in your marketing and sales messaging.
This can help you increase your revenue by bringing in more of these lucrative customers.
Of course, if you are just starting out, you may not have enough historical sales data to implement this advice.
In that case, you will need to make your best guess when defining your target audience. Who is the most likely to benefit from your product or service?
And keep in mind that defining your target audience doesn’t mean that you are banning everyone who doesn’t fit that description from buying your products and services.
It simply means that you are going to be focusing on that particular demographic in your marketing and sales messaging.
Everyone else is still welcome to purchase your products and services. So there’s no need to feel guilty about “excluding” anyone!
What if Your Business Serves Several Distinct Customer Segments?
If your business serves several distinct customer segments and there either isn’t one clear “lucrative” segment or you don’t want to niche down to catering exclusively to it, we recommend creating a separate sales funnel for each segment.
Meaning, you should clearly define each segment using its demographic traits, do customer research on it and then create marketing and sales messaging tailored to that segment’s unique needs.
Say, if you are in a health and fitness niche and your business caters to both sexes, you will almost certainly have better conversions if you create one sales funnel for men and another sales funnel for women instead of having a single sales funnel for everyone.
#2. Conduct Extensive Customer Research
The better you understand your target audience, the easier it will be to write copy that converts.
That’s why we recommend conducting extensive customer research:
Analyze Customer Feedback
If you have an established business, you have probably received customer feedback in the form of emails, reviews, support tickets, and so on.
Go through all that feedback and see what you can learn from it. If there’s too much of it for you to read, use a text analytics app to analyze it (more on that later).
Use Email Marketing to Learn More About Your Dream Customers
Your welcome email provides an opportunity to learn more about your target audience.
Ask new subscribers what is the biggest challenge that they are currently struggling with and encourage them to respond.
Alternatively, you can send a separate email with that question right after the welcome email and use the subject line “just one quick question…” or something similar.
When a new subscriber responds with an answer about their biggest challenge, make sure to reply to their message and thank them.
If you get the sense that they may be open to telling you more about whatever it is that they are struggling with, you can ask them a follow-up question!
Talk to Your Dream Customers One-on-One
Consider going to events that your dream customers attend and striking up casual conversations with the people there.
Don’t try to sell anything to anyone, simply ask questions and listen to their answers. You might be surprised by how much you can learn when you show interest in what people have to say!
Read Niche Discussion Forums
Niche forums are absolute gold mines for customer research because that’s where people go to ask questions, vent about their struggles, and argue over controversial topics.
You can start with Reddit. Find subreddits related to your niche, sort posts by “Top” and “All Time” and then read through the first page of search results (not just the posts but also the comments).
Doing that should give you a pretty solid understanding of what problems your dream customers are struggling with, how they feel about those problems and how they are trying to solve them.
By the way, if you add the word “old” to a subreddit’s address, it will be shown in Reddit’s old user interface, which many people prefer to the new one.
Say, if you are in the fitness niche and want to check out the main fitness subreddit, you can use either old.reddit.com/r/fitness (old interface) or reddit.com/r/fitness (new interface).
Facebook is another great place for customer research because no matter what niche you are in, you can probably find a bunch of Facebook communities (“groups”) related to it.
Unlike Reddit, Facebook requires people to use their real names, which means that joining these communities can also help you better understand the demographic makeup of your target audience.
Finally, there are also old-school, standalone niche forums. They have been declining in popularity but there still are some popular ones out there.
Follow Niche Influencers on Social Media
Who are your dream customers following on social media?
You should follow the same influencers. It can be a great way to learn what resonates with your target audience.
Popular social media influencers also tend to be thought leaders in their niches so following them can help you stay up to date with the latest trends.
Keep an Eye on Niche Social Media Hashtags
Once you start following niche influencers, you will see what niche hashtags they are using in their posts. You want to keep an eye on those hashtags. That can provide insight into what your dream customers think about specific topics.
Consume Niche Content
You should be consuming the same niche content that your dream customers are consuming.
That can mean:
- Reading niche blogs
- Listening to niche podcasts
- Watching niche YouTube and TikTok channels
We recommend also reading the comments.
Also, if there’s a discussion forum associated with a popular niche blog, podcast, or YouTube channel, you want to keep an eye on the conversations happening there as well.
Say, if a particular podcast that your dream customers are listening to has a subreddit, make sure to check it out.
Finally, see what books are popular among your dream customers and then read both the books and the Amazon and Goodreads reviews.
Use Text Analysis
Text analysis is a machine learning technique designed to analyze large quantities of textual data in a short period of time.
You can use text analytics software to uncover insights that you couldn’t get to by just reading stuff.
Say, a good text analytics app can analyze all customer support chats and then summarize that data in a detailed report that highlights the overall emotional sentiment, common words and phrases and so on.
Isn’t All This a Bit Much?
We understand that this amount of customer research may seem excessive.
But you need to keep in mind that customer research is the foundation of all effective copywriting.
If you understand your dream customers on a deep level, you will be able to write persuasive copy even if you don’t consider yourself to be much of a copywriter.
Meanwhile, if you don’t understand your dream customers at all, you won’t be able to write copy that converts. No amount of writing talent or copywriting skill can help in that situation.
So invest in laying a solid foundation first. Yes, customer research can be tedious, but there’s no way around it. And you’ll see how valuable it is once you start writing copy!
#3. Focus on a Specific, Achievable Result That You are Confident You Can Deliver
If you want your copy to be persuasive, consider promising a specific result that:
- Seems achievable to your dream customers
- You are confident you can deliver
Example: “$0 to $1K Per Month” Landing Page
Nick Stephenson, a best-selling author who now teaches other writers how to sell more books, has a free course called “$0 to $1k Per Month: Author Marketing Training”.
That’s a specific result that looks achievable to amateur writers!
#4. Speak to Your Dream Customers In Their Own Language
Doing customer research should help you learn the language of your dream customers: the exact words, phrases, and metaphors they use to express themselves.
When you are writing copy, you want to speak to them in their own language by using the same words, phrases, and metaphors that they use.
Example: “6 Principles to Learn the Basics of Design” Landing Page
Marketing Examples provides a great example of this approach:
Design Academy asks every new email subscriber what is their biggest frustration with design. Look at the email copy that encourages people to vent.
They have a huge Google sheet where they record all responses to that question.
Then they use what they learned to speak to their dream customers in their own language:
This is what we meant when we said that customer research is the foundation of all effective copywriting.
“Design principles for anyone wanting to improve their UI/UX skills” may seem like a more appropriate headline at first glance.
After all, your high-school English teacher probably wouldn’t appreciate you using words like “non-bullshitty”, especially in the business context.
But “Design principles for developers taught in a non-pretentious, non-bullshity way” is what resonates with their target audience of developers who want to learn UI/UX design.
If your dream customers complain about your competitors being “pretentious” and “bullshitty”, you should use those exact words in your headline!
#5. Use This Headline + Subheadline Combo
We recommend using this headline + subheadline combo:
- Headline that emphasizes the main benefit of your offer.
- Subheadline that provides more information about your offer.
If your headline grabs someone’s attention, they will almost certainly read the subheadline as well.
This gives you an opportunity to convey the most important information about your offer in a matter of seconds!
Example: “Double Your Freelancing Rate” Sales Page
Double Your Freelancing uses this approach on the sales pages of their flagship course, “Double Your Freelancing Rate”.
Headline: “Double Your Freelancing Rate”.
Subheadline: “Make the Transition from the “Hired-Gun Freelancer” to Highly-Valued Consultant in Less Than 30 Days”.
#6. Add More Curiosity to Your Headlines
If you teach people how to get a specific result, you should be careful to not give away too much in your headline. Why?
Because if they look at the headline and feel like they already know what you are going to say, they won’t feel the need to check out your offer.
If your landing page or sales page isn’t converting, find a way to add more curiosity to its headline. It can do wonders for your conversion rate!
Example: Webinar Funnel
Our co-founder Russell Brunson is widely considered to be one of the top sales funnel experts in the world.
Once, a member of his Inner Circle mastermind came to him and asked for help with his webinar funnel.
Apparently, his cost-per-registration was $24.85, which is insanely expensive. But then only 22.4% of those people would actually show up for the webinar!
Simply put, the math wasn’t working and he didn’t know what to do.
Russell looked at his webinar registration page and suggested adding more curiosity to the headline.
Here’s the original headline:
“How to Add 6 Figures To Your Web Design Business By Copying My Secret Method For Helping Companies Get More (Real) 5-Star Reviews WITHOUT Selling, Spending Lots of Time or Money”
And here’s the revised headline:
“How I Added 6 Figures to My Web Company By Adding This One Easy to Offer Service THAT DOESN’T Require Cold Calling, Spending Lots of Time, Money or Require Extra Resources”
The key difference between these two headlines is this: the original headline gives away the exact method that he teaches while the revised one doesn’t.
What were the results?
- His cost-per-registration decreased from $24.85 to $5.84
- His show-up rate increased from 22.4% to 31.7%
Pretty crazy considering that this was the only change he made!
#7. Provide as Much Social Proof as You Can
Social proof can be extremely powerful so you want to provide as much of it as you possibly can.
The best social proof is customer testimonials, ideally in the form of email and social media screenshots.
The reason why screenshots work so well is that they look authentic. Remember that testimonials need to not only be real but also look real!
Of course, if you want to use a screenshot of someone’s email message or a social media post as a testimonial, you need to get their permission first.
Video testimonials can also work really well, though it may be harder to obtain them as producing them requires some effort on the part of the customer.
Example: ShipFast Sales Page
Marc Lou features a ton of social proof on his ShipFast sales page. Note how authentic all these testimonials look!
Want to Learn How to Write Copy That CONVERTS?
You can have a great product but if you can’t convey its value to your target audience, you will lose out to competitors with inferior products but better copy.
That’s why if you are serious about building a business, you need to learn copywriting.
In fact, we would argue that it’s the single most important entrepreneurial skill.
Our friend Jim Edwards, who is a world-class copywriter and the person that our co-founder Russell goes to for copywriting advice, wrote a book for busy entrepreneurs just like you.
“Copywriting Secrets” covers everything you need to know in order to start writing copy that converts.
This book is available on Amazon where it has over 1,800 reviews and a 4.7 star rating.
But you can also get a copy directly from Jim for FREE.
All he asks is that you cover the shipping!
