Know your audience and speak to them

Nov 30, 2015

On your website, you want to start a conversation with your audience – as you would in real-life – and persuade them to take action.

If you don’t fully understand who your audience is, then that’s the first step to take.

Who is your ideal reader? Apart from thinking about their age, gender, family and financial situation, you should also think about what makes them tick? What keeps them up at night? What do they constantly get frustrated about on a daily basis?

You need to think about their needs and how your product or service can provide a solution. Try to stay within the mindset of your ideal audience as you produce your copy – this will help you to avoid becoming too ‘salesy’. Because as we all know, blatant advertising can be extremely annoying!

The content needs to feel like it is speaking DIRECTLY to your reader. Almost as though you are a stalker and know exactly what they are thinking! You want to have them nodding their heads while reading your web copy and make them smile knowing that they’ve finally found a solution and your business can provide it.

Use plenty of personality – while still upholding a level of professionalism – and show your passion for your product or service.

And make it FUN! No one wants to spend their web surfing time reading a boring essay.

It’s important to do adequate preparation of your copy and create a comprehensive list of features, benefits and objections. It might be blunt to say but – people don’t really care about your products and services. They care about themselves!

What’s in it for ME? Why should I keep reading?

So it’s a good idea to write out a full list of features and specifications about your products or services and then write down the benefit for your audience after each point. For example – you offer a hot stone massage – this will be highly beneficial for someone with pain in a particular part of their back.

You should also write down any possible objections that might arise from your audience – too expensive, don’t have the time, can only do evenings, etc – and think about how you can meet their needs – by bulk billing or opening until 9pm on Thursdays etc.

When actually writing your copy, make sure you address all of these areas. You will then be able to see quite easily which parts of the website this information should be featured on. Perhaps you’ll have a ‘Why choose us’ page to feature answers to possible objections and use the ‘homepage’ to grab the reader’s attention about the benefits of your business.

On either of these pages, it would be ideal to feature a value proposition – consisting of a headline, possibly a subheading and three to five bullet points. E.g. If you come onboard with us, we will provide you XYZ. Web visitors are often in a hurry and have a limited attention span – so keeping it short and concise is what you want!