Writing your website’s copy can be one of the most frustrating, time consuming and difficult tasks for any business owner.
How do you know your words will resonate with your target customers? What’s running through your customer’s mind as they land on your page?
This article features three of the best copywriters in the business; each sharing one of their best tips for crafting landing page copy so you can start converting words into cash:
Tip one: get inside your customer’s head with a survey
If you’re not using customer surveys, start. Here’s why:
Customer surveys are inexpensive to deploy (Typeform, for example, offers pro features at just $35/mo), but invaluable for figuring out a few crucial pieces of info, like…
- What was going on in your customers’ business when they chose to hire you (perfect for refining pain points)
- Which features of your product or service are MOST important to real customers (so you know which to emphasize on the page)
- How customers describe their needs (great for swiping their quotes to flesh out your messaging)
- How customers describe their ideal solution (again, great for using to refine your offer)
Once the page is live, you can also use onsite surveys (like Hotjar) to find out why people leave the page and improve what you’ve created. Are they missing information? Are they asking questions you can’t answer, or worried about the risk of the transaction?
Your copy is only ever as good as your research – so make sure you do some.
Joel Klettke is the owner and chief conversion copywriter at Business Casual Copywriting Ltd.
Tip two: message matching and awareness matching
My top recommendation for businesses to target their landing pages is this:
Mentally draw a line across your page, separating the top 10% from the bottom 90%. This tip is for the top 10%.
The top 10% of the page is all about matching: message matching and awareness matching.
Message matching simply means taking the [keyword] phrase your visitor saw before landing on your LP and putting it on the page; you can and should message match with copy and design.
Awareness matching simply means knowing the stage of awareness visitors to your page are in, and targeting your headline, subhead, etc. at that stage; for example, if you know your visitors are going to be in a “pain aware” stage, match their pain at the top of the page instead of leading with, say, an offer or a product shot.
The original conversion copywriter, Joanna Wiebe is the creator of Copy Hackers, where startups learn to convert like mofos. You can follow her on Twitter and read her popular blog.
Tip three: be your customer’s copywriting parrot
A parrot ‘speaks’ by mimicking the words and intonation of the people around it. My parents used to have an African Grey and it was alarming exactly how much it sounded just like them (as well as the things they said!)
And if you really want to write landing page copy that hits home with your target audience, you have to be their copywriting parrot.
You need to use the words they use when it comes to talking about their problem, and solving it.
Instead of doing this, most businesses put words and phrases through the marketing machine. The result? A lost connection with you and your audience.
For example, you might promise your customer that your task-management software is a:
“Complete online organisational solution for your business”
But that’s probably NOT what your customer is talking about. If we were being the copywriting parrot, it would sound more like:
“Stop using spreadsheets to organise your business.
Our task-management app shows you at-a-glance what you need to do and when to stay on top of things.”
How do you make this technique work for you? Spend time with your clients finding out exactly how they describe their pain points and aspirations, use that language in your copy and like a parrot, make your customer think: “Wow, that sounds just like me!”
Amy Harrison is a copywriter, speaker and host of AmyTV a sketch show all about copywriting and content marketing.
The bottom line
So there we have it. Some actionable advice to help you get to know your customer, prioritise the most important areas of the page for the right messaging and mimicking the type of language your target customer uses.
Use these tips from the experts and start converting your words into cash.
About the author
Adam Rowles in Managing Director of Inbound Marketing Agency, Perth based SEO and online marketing specialists. Since 2007, Adam has had a strong passion for helping businesses grow their leads & sales through results-driven inbound marketing activities.
