What’s the point of having a website when nobody scrolls past your hero image?
If your value proposition doesn’t catch your prospect’s attention and fails to lead them past the following copy, you’re losing business faster than a descending aircraft.
Your homepage is the most important real estate online. And a bad homepage can tarnish your reputation.
Homepage copy should highlight the benefits your reader can reap out of working with you. It should talk about how you’re capable of pulling them out of their current situation and building a bridge that enables them to move closer to their goals.
Use these simple homepage copywriting techniques to empathize with your audience:
Replace “I”, “We”, “Our”, “Ours” with “You”, “Your” and “Yours” to make your copy appealing to your prospects instead of tooting your own horn. Let the message on your website invite them already. Show them you’re here..solely..to serve them. Prove it to them that they are your priority and you’re nothing short of value.
Make sure you state what you do – loud and clear. You could be a startup owner, creative entrepreneur, agency owner or an angel investor – whoever you are – Say it. Declare it. Announce it. But do it in a way that highlights the one biggest benefit you offer, the one big problem you solve for your prospects.
Highlight the outcome of your product or service. You are in business for a reason. You work hard for that one purpose – to help your clients. But a majority of the homepage copy found online barely scratch the surface of communicative marketing.
Explain the outcome and let the message sink in. Let them relate, imagine, desire and own the outcome. Then, they’re ready to buy.
Offer an incentive. A homepage without an incentive is a waste of your online real estate. You are letting your hot leads slip away in a snap instead of catalyzing the opportunity to bring them closer to your brand.
Show them what it’s like to work with you. Let them taste your work. At first, give immense value. And then give some more. This goes without saying.
Include conversion metrics in your testimonials, include real stats from real people and bring the number game on. This makes your prospects trust you more. It’s like feeling safe to get treated by the same doctor who treated your uncle earlier rather than landing up in a certain Dr. Strange’s office. It’s pure human psychology at work.
Optimizing your homepage is easy. You just have to make sure you’re checking the above list.
3 years ago, I met up with an app developer at a local startup meet. He had a painful story of losing $25000 building an app whose ROI was less than one dollar.
He tried to understand why his product failed when:
the end-users loved the demo
they loved using the app
they appreciated the UX and UI too
the target audience appreciated the idea
they thought it was useful as well
Yet, the product failed.
Devastated, he narrated the story to the crowd, seeking for answers in their eyes.
A sassy marketing expert came forward and asked, -“Did you refer to your market research material while you designed it’s features?”.
After a few seconds of embarrassing silence, the app developer asked – “What is market research?”!
So, this passionate startup owner went straight into building the app ASSUMING all of the features himself and he ran into a debt of $25000 that he had invested out of his pocket.
Lesson? It was an app loved by many, but utterly un-needed.
Learning about the user journey helps you shape your product AND your marketing. You sell well when you know what you’re building, for whom and why you’re building it.
You see? The first step to a successful product launch is to create a product your audience NEEDS and then market around those needs to attract qualified leads.
How to Qualify Leads and Convert Better
To connect with your readers on an emotional level, you should know them inside out.
How do you do that?
By asking questions like:
What makes your prospects happy?
What makes them cringe?
What keeps them worried?
What gets them excited?
What are their priorities?
What are their apprehensions and expectations?
What outcomes do they dream about all the time?
What makes them feel threatened?
What are their biggest challenges right now?
What makes them nervous?
Understanding the underlying problems and creating a solution around these problems gives you a solid product that people actually need unlike the one this passionate startup owner had created.
With a solid product, built on people’s real demands, you can set-base to market.
You now have full permission to go tout about how YOU know to fill that aching gap your audience couldn’t
You don’t qualify leads, you qualify your marketing content. Quality leads begin to flow when they can empathize with content that brings clarity.
If it’s a physical product, they want to know exactly what it’s made of.
If it’s a service, they want to know what they get.
If it’s a solution, they want to know how it works.
Once they know the details, they’re ten times more likely to buy from you.
Now, why does this work?
The ever-curious human mind stops releasing the stress hormone, cortisol, the moment it understands that you are in a familiar environment.
By giving out the exact details of working with you, you’re creating a safe, future environment for the reader by telling the reader’s brain that:
You’re in a safe, familiar environment
You’re with someone who knows how you feel and empathizes with you
You can stop being in the fight-or-flight mode
Marketing is about understanding your audience, empathizing with them and inviting them to know more about your offer – nothing more, nothing less.
You’re here to talk about how you can free your audience from that big fat suffering that’s been hindering their growth and transformation.
How to keep your audience thinking about what you said
The reason you remember the story from the movie you watched when you were 10 but not the history lesson is because you mirrored and experienced the emotions played in the movie.
How you can use this technique to win your audience over:
Pinpoint your audience’s exact pain points and address that in your copy
Identify with their fears and anxieties and acknowledge that in your copy
Promise the desired outcome (and deliver it in your product please)
What not to do in your copy
Okay, if you don’t keep the conversation going between you and your reader, the connection dies.
So, make your reader feel heard, understood and important.
This is how you roll:
It is when you DON’T make them feel zoned out – they start relating to you.
It is when you DON’T make them feel like a faceless speck from the masses – they start valuing you.
It is when you make them feel understood – the chemistry of liking strikes.
So it all boils down to understanding your reader. Inside out.
When you synthesize your audience’s thoughts that they find difficult to express, you win their trust.
When your audience feelunderstood, they take the first step toward trusting you and believing in what you have to say. This tells them that you know where they’re coming from – a point of stress and struggle – a point that YOU have surpassed – a point in place they want to be
How to develop a memorable voice and brand personality through copywriting
Now that you know what to say, let’s focus on how you say it.
Your voice is nothing but your thought process – how you identify what to say and when.
Your tone is the language and mood and feelings you use to convey the message.
I’ve always loved Mailchimp copy. And you know what makes readers love Mailchimp? The tone. It’s easy, flowy and minimalistic. Notice the adjectives I used to describe the tone? That’s how you develop a personality around your brand.
Look at this example here.
The above form makes it want to sign up and see how easy it can actually be to get started with a Mailchimp account. You too, right?
That’s the magic of having a distinct voice and tone. People actually listen to you speak.
You too can develop a tone. Let’s run through these examples quickly to find out how.
1. People are addicted to cell phones.
2. Smart screen toxicity is harming youngsters.
What sounds more vivid and powerful to you? 1 or 2?
The first statement is normal that uses everyday words.
But the second one? It’s exactly pointing out who it’s harming the most – the youngsters. What is harming? – Smart Screen Toxicity. It’s done in an unconventional manner – yet without using any jargons that a layman wouldn’t understand. That’s how you develop a voice.
How not to sound in your copy
Let’s get straight to the point.
Don’t sound like you and your competitor are cut from the same cloth
Be different but never be inappropriate
Think aloud, but don’t harm
Don’t force/coax/pressurize/confuse your readers
Don’t limit user personas to a set of demographic data but also care about your audience’s tastes, traits, and behavior in as much.
Don’t talk. Make a statement.
Okay, these are the 6 big tips to follow every time you start with a copywriting project.
To practice, today you go back and pick a page of copy.
Rewrite the page by applying the tips and techniques you read just now and tell me how you feel about it at the end of the exercise 🙂
Your prime offer isn’t selling because you’re not communicating your brilliance.
How do you describe what you do in one powerful sentence?
It so happens sometimes – you either narrate a boringly lengthy story or you go blank, right?
Don’t worry. It has happened to the best of us.
This happens when you haven’t delved enough to understand your brand.
Hang on and you’ll learn how to dissect your brand and come up with the core branding statements that help you rise above the noise and command premium prices.
How to write your USP
The purpose of your messaging strategy is to help you be differentiable so that your prospects pick you over your competition.
Many business owners find it difficult to come up with a compelling USP. This happens because they’re busy joining the race. They want to do what their competitors are doing instead of identifying their unique angle.
What is your unique angle?
You can identify your unique angle when you accept your strengths and weaknesses wholeheartedly and build from there.
What it means is, elevate your strengths and complement your weaknesses to build a powerful brand.
For example, if you’re good at strategizing growth but have no idea how to create content, you should focus on strategizing growth and let someone else take care of content.
The goal is to become extremely and especially good at the ONE thing you love to do. That is your unique angle.
Now take your unique angle and create your USP.
The purpose of your USP is to build a reputation for your brand or reinforce your preexisting brand reputation.
The formula to writing your USP
Your USP describes the purpose, goals, and benefits of working with your company.
Your USP = Who you are + What you do + For whom + Why it is beneficial + How you do it
Let me dissect my own USP.
I’m a copywriter and brand strategist for thriving businesses looking to amplify their influence by expressing their innovativeness.
Who you are + What you do = I’m a copywriter and brand strategist
For whom = For thriving businesses
Benefits = Amplify your influence
How you do it = By expressing your innovativeness
Your turn. Write down your USP with the above formula.
Done?
Let’s move on to writing your mission statement.
How to write your mission statement
Your mission statement describes how you put your USP into action. How you differentiate your work from the others. What is the core function that makes your business what it is, what is it that you actually do? Describe this in one sentence.
Let’s take Content Primer’s mission statement as an example.
Our mission is to help businesses/organizations communicate their ideas + express their innovativeness without the stress and struggle.
Don’t overthink this one. Because your mission is the very reason you started your business. It’s your primary purpose. Write it down.
How to write your vision statement
How is your vision statement different from your mission statement?
Your mission is – what you do.
Your vision is – why you do what you do.
Your vision statement talks about your aspirations whereas your mission statement specifies what you do in the present and how you do it.
Your vision statement tells the reader WHERE you want to be, what inspired the founding of your company, and what’s the idea that sparked the realization and growth of your brand. Write it one sentence.
For example:
Content Primer’s vision is to connect like-minded entrepreneurs who bring about their developmental ideas together to improvise world affairs.
Your turn. Write down your vision statement keeping your company’s place in the future in mind.
How to beat your competition – Carve your identity
When you compete based on the value you are providing to your client/customer, price becomes irrelevant. At this point, you may not believe it because money is everything, right?
Not really.
I’ll tell you how and why you with a well-known example.
You subscribe for Amazon Kindle membership even though you barely read a book.
It’s all about the offer being presented.
Tell me this.
What is more valuable?
You get to read unlimited books for $10/month
Buy a book for $5 each
What is more valuable? Obviously the first option right? If you’re a bookworm who gulps in 2 books per week, the first offer is a steal deal. Even if you want to read just three books per month, the offer is a no-brainer and your natural instinct is to go subscribe.
Got my point?
Now, did you see how price became irrelevant? You chose the more valuable offer even though the unlimited subscription model is priced at thrice the average price. This is when price becomes just a number.
Increase the value of your package to create a juicy offer that sells itself.
Creating irresistible offers that bundle up relevant products/services is a great way to differentiate yourself from the competition.
What’s one thing you bought because the offer was too good to be ignored? tell me in the comments. even better if you can share the link for the offer. If you need further help crafting the core statements that define your company’s identity, we’re happy to help you.
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