Module 2: Focus on the Point of Conversion

Learn how to relate your core message to the conversation going on in your customer's mind.

Understand Your Customer

You need to have a thorough understanding of your audience and your offers before you can start writing copy.

In this module, you’ll uncover the key information you need to know about your customer and draft the core message you want your product or service to convey.

Lesson 1: Your Customer Journey

Learning Objective

Learn how to describe your ideal customer in detail so that you can write copy that makes them feel you’re speaking directly to them.

The Journey

Before a prospective customer is ready to buy, they will usually have gone on a journey with you.

Let’s have a look at the Customer Lifecycle Marketing model, a simple three-stage model depicting the steps that lead up to the point of purchase and beyond:

This model is a newer way of thinking about the sales process rather than the traditional sales funnel approach. Its goal is to win more customers and keep them for life.

The Three Stages

Stage 1: Attract – Consumers get to know your brand and your offers, and you provide useful content to help them identify their needs.

Stage 2: Motivate– You continue educating and helping prospects to figure out if your offers are right for them. For those who’ve made this decision, you help them buy. You keep contact with those who aren’t ready to buy yet.

Stage 3: Delight – You provide exceptional customer service and support after the purchase to keep customers happy and encourage them to promote your brand.

This marketing model clearly shows the progression towards the sale. Your sales copy falls into the second part of the motivation stage where its purpose is to encourage action.

Revisit Your Ideal Customer Persona

Before you get to the point of purchase, you need to know exactly whom you’re selling to. There can be a disconnect between what you think your prospects are looking to buy and what they’re actually looking for.

The realities of the market change all the time, and so do your customers. That means you can’t necessarily rely on an ideal customer persona you created for a previous project.

You may resist it, but it’s time to refocus on a description of your ideal customer. If you don’t do this, you can’t write copy that speaks to them.

An initial description of your ideal customer is a useful place to start. You’ll add to this as you research.

Let’s recap on the two key elements:

Your Customer's Key Elements

• Demographics (e.g., age, gender, location, income, education, family status, etc.)

• Psychographics (e.g., interests, hobbies, attitudes, lifestyle, aspirations, etc.)

Part of lifestyle is someone’s use of social media and whom they follow. Pinpointing the social media platforms they use will provide you with a vast data source. Go to these platforms to mine for more data if you’re having trouble getting specific enough.

Remember, you’re looking to describe someone you can give a name to with a life you can define. Then you can reflect this persona in your marketing.

Uncover Their Challenges

You want to find out what your ideal customers are asking about, what solutions they’re seeking, and how they’re feeling.

This is a crucial aspect of copywriting. If you aren’t familiar with the issues your prospects face, you won’t be able to write copy that resonates with their challenges. And you won’t be able to offer them a vision of their desired outcome.

Find out:

Three Key Customer Questions

• What they’re struggling with (their challenges)

• What emotions these challenges are bringing up for them (their pain)

• How they want things to be different (their dreams and aspirations)

Listen to What They’re Saying

You need to discover not just what your audience is saying, but how they’re saying it.

When you’re recording the results from your research, note down the precise words people use. These are words to put in your copy. If you paraphrase, you’ll be using your language and not theirs.

For example, you’re selling a start-up accountancy package to sole traders. You consider these people to be “entrepreneurs” and you intend to use the word in your copy. However, your target customers don’t identify as “entrepreneurs” and therefore they can’t see themselves in your copy. They move on to another ad and buy from someone else.

There are a variety of methods open to you to find the data you need:

Find Out What Your Audience Wants

Speak to your customers regularly. You don’t have to wait until you have a specific offer or launch coming up. You could ask for a 1:1 call with existing customers or even hot leads to discuss their current needs. People like to be asked their opinion so they’re likely to be willing, but make it clear this isn’t a sales call.

Survey them. Devise a quick but thorough survey for those on your list. Give an incentive for them to complete the questions such as a 10% discount voucher. It’s a tried and tested way that works especially if you have lists of engaged followers.

Here are a few examples of questions you can ask:

• What's your number one obstacle to business growth?
• What’s the most frustrating thing about your current situation?
• How would you like things to change?

You’ll need to adapt your questions to your business type and your customers. Make sure each question will give you the data you’re looking for.

Use social listening. As most of your would-be customers are probably on social media, you can tap into data from social channels and discover exactly what they’re asking about and what solutions they’re seeking.

Use social listening tools to help you such as Hootsuite, Buffer, or Radaar.

Action Steps:

• Create a detailed description of your ideal customer persona including name, age, demographics, and psychographics.
• Gather data about your ideal customers through interviews, surveys, and on social media by answering these questions:
• What challenges are they struggling with?
• What emotions are these challenges bringing up for them?
• How do they want things to be different?
• Delve into the language they use and record words and phrases they use for:
  • Their challenges
  • Their pain
  • Their dreams and aspirations

From the total data you’ve gathered, identify 3 issues or challenges and 3 wants or aspirations for your ideal customers.

Lesson 2: Identify Your Core Message

Learning Objective

Craft the core marketing message that will attract your ideal customer so that they’ll be motivated to take the next step and buy

What Makes You Different?

In the last lesson, you looked at the key things you need to know about your customer before you can write a word of copy.

Now, you need to be crystal clear about the benefits of the product or service you’re offering and what will entice people to buy. Think like a customer when you identify the benefits and outcomes they’re looking for.

You’re also marketing your difference from competitors when you talk about your products and service. So identify what you do to solve your ideal customer’s problem that’s different from others.

You might offer a unique system, same day delivery, customization or a "no questions asked money-back guarantee". Your values and personality are unique, so focus on this if it’s part of your brand. It’s whatever you do that sets you apart from others offering the same or similar.

Turn Your UVP into a Core Message

Sometimes business owners jump right into writing copy without knowing exactly what they want to emphasize about their product or service. Then they’re surprised when their sales copy doesn’t entice people to buy.

Don’t make this mistake. Take time to turn your Unique Value Proposition (UVP) into a core message, so you’ll be right on target when it comes to drafting sales copy.

These three steps will get you there:

Three Vital Steps

Step 1: Nail your UVP

Use this template to help you:

We (company name) provide (product/service name) to (target market) who (challenge) by (benefits/differentiator)

For example:

YogaTreats organizes exclusive yoga retreats in luxury locations for executives who need a break from their everyday business life. We provide a calm, no-stress, well-being experience.

Step 2: Turn your UVP into a marketing message

Emphasize how you solve the problems that are concerning your ideal customers:

We provide the break you need to get away from the day-to-day turmoil of business. We guarantee to transport you to a stress-free environment where you can recharge and find inner peace.

Step 3: Be customer-focused

Your core message needs to have the focus on "them" rather than "me/us".
Lead with the solution your audience is seeking to make your copy more compelling:

Regain your calm center and recharge your batteries. Take time out to de-stress and energize in our exclusive luxury retreat.

The core message addresses an emotional level as well as a factual one, and that’s what you’ll put forward in your sales copy. We’ll go into this in more detail later when you find out how to paint a picture of your audience’s desired state.

Avoid working on too many marketing projects at once. One of your actions from this lesson will be to choose a piece of copy that you need to write. It might be for a new offer or for an existing offer whose copy isn’t converting. You’ll work on that throughout the course to practice all that you’re learning.

Action Steps

• Identify a piece of sales copy you need to write:
  • What product/service is the copy for?
  • Write down all the key benefits you want to get across about this offer to your ideal customer. E.g., saves you money, helps you get fit.
  • Compare these points to the list from the last lesson of the 3 challenges and 3 dreams and find the best matches. E.g., if your customers are struggling with the cost of living, that will match with 'saves you money'.
• Choose the most compelling match.

Draft a core message of 2 or 3 sentences for your chosen piece of sales copy, emphasizing the match.

Lesson 3: Where Your Copy Connects with Customers

Learning Objective

Find the point of contact where you influence a potential customer to take action and buy.

Where Your Sales Copy Appears

You’re clear who your ideal customers are, and you know the key message you want to get across about your offer.

Let’s look at the point where you put the two together and use your sales copy to direct them to the shopping cart and motivate them to buy.

This can happen in a variety of places including:

• Web sales pages
• Social media posts (if the platform allows you to post a direct link to a shopping cart – you may need to set up a business or professional account for this)
• Paid ads on social media or in the press
• Online stores such as Shopify, Squarespace, or Odoo
• eCommerce applications on your own website such as WooCommerce
• Learning platforms such as Teachable or Thinkific
• Emails
• SMS text copy
• Direct messages (such as in Messenger/Twitter/Instagram)
• Online chat with chatbots
• Call-to-action (CTA) buttons

What you use will depend on how your business makes sales.

I’ll be looking in detail later at the formats to use on different channels.

Speak Your Copy

When we talk about copy, we’re usually talking about the written word. And you should always start with that.

But your sales copy can exist in a spoken version to great effect. For example, selling from a webinar might fit your business model better than long sales pages. If you’re running a webinar from which you’ll make an offer, first write out the copy where you identify your key message to help you stay on point. When it’s time to make your offer, you’ll be clear and direct and use resonant language with your audience to motivate them to click through to the shopping cart.

Here are some examples where you write your copy first and then deliver it in a spoken format:

Spoken Sales Messages

• TV and radio ads
• Promotional video and audio
• Webinar and stage presentations
• 1:1 sales conversations

Your spoken delivery will be more fluid and conversational than words on a page but writing the basic copy first will give you a good starting point.

Don't read the copy. It's a better idea to list the talking points from your copy and either memorize them or use them as notes that you glance at as you speak. But just speak naturally.

Identify Your Success

You’re in business and already making sales. This means some of your copy is working for you right now.

If you can identify what type of copy is converting to sales, then this will help you create more successful copy. Conversely, if you can pinpoint product launches that have flopped and compare them, you’ll learn a lot about what needs to be improved.

Action Steps:

• List all the places you currently use copy to sell (e.g., SMS, email, sales pages).
• What copy is working for you and leading people to buy? Note down this information:
  • What are they attracted by?
  • Where are they finding the sales copy?
• Identify a piece of copy that isn’t working and analyze why. E.g., it’s not using resonant language, it’s about us and not about the buyer.
• Choose where you will place your chosen piece of copy (e.g., sales page, online store).