The Simple Key to Copy That Converts
How to Stand Out in a World Flooded by Narcissistic Content
Your product or service is fantastic. You’ve completely reinvented the widget and everyone who’s experienced the awesome is a raving fan. Next step: world domination. You know you need content — blog posts, newsletters, ads, website copy — and you have so many things to tell potential consumers that you can hardly decide what to write about first. Its speed? Simplicity? Cool factor? So many great features!
But how do you write content people will actually read — and click through? The answer lies in a simple paradigm shift that eludes far too many of your competitors: empathy.
Stop thinking about what you want to say and start thinking about what your consumers want to hear.
Answer the Right Questions
Every piece of quality content is ultimately an educational tool that answers a question. With digital content, this is often quite literally a question typed into a search engine. Take the time to discover what questions are leading people to your content and develop it to answer those questions further. Don’t have the research? Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and wonder what they wonder.
Problems Before Solutions, Benefits Before Features
You know to research your consumer’s pain points — but are you addressing them in your content? All too often, content focuses on the great features a product or service has to offer; unfortunately, these are pretty meaningless. I’m really not interested in how many Mbps my Wi-Fi is capable of; I just want to quickly download massive files and binge-watch streaming shows without interruption. Speak your customer’s language and to their needs, not your industry’s.
Provide Value
Whether you’re writing a white paper or a short-form blog post, your content should provide value even if the reader never buys. Readers can tell when you’re pitching hard. Perhaps counterintuitively, your intention to help is more appealing — and likely to result in a conversion — than your hard sell. Remember, value exchange isn’t always monetary. An email address is worth its weight in bitcoin, and it signals a promise. Make good on that promise and give them something that’s genuinely worth reading.
Providing real value like this starts a real, mutually beneficial relationship.
The Golden Rule
I’m grateful for the purchases that bring me ease, joy, and time. I never regret learning more about things that interest me, whether from a late-night click on an IG ad or a downloaded eBook. I have, however, been frustrated by clickbait and seemingly irrelevant information. Haven’t we all? As our world becomes more and more saturated with people telling and selling, those rare marketers who listen are the only ones we really hear.
This article originally appeared in Insights on Marketing.