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As PPC advertisers at a digital marketing agency, it’s difficult for us to separate marketing from day-to-day observations. Much like how a film director can’t watch a movie without appreciating the finer details and work that takes place to show a given scene, it’s hard for us advertisers not to notice the subtle, excellent pieces of copywriting that surround us on a day-to-day basis.
Luckily, drawing from everyday ideas can be a great way to get copywriting inspiration – so long as you’re formulating your thoughts in a manner that helps drive sales.
Today, we’re going to share with you a framework that will not only help you write better copy, but also gain inspiration from the most important people to your business: your customers.
Listen First, Talk Later
Have you ever had an interaction where one party simply dominated the conversation? These one-way conversations rarely end well, because there’s no feedback or engagement between the parties.
Sadly, many marketing campaigns only speak about the business to the customer.
“We have the lowest price, we are trusted by hundreds around the world, our customer satisfaction is guaranteed, we’re the best, you can trust us.”
When a brand doubles down on promoting themselves, they forget to show that they understand and care about their market.
Next time you’re at a bus stop or waiting at a clinic, take a look at some ads that stand out to you. Which ones are the most effective? Are there any that speak to you directly?
Let’s flip the marketing conversation from “What do we offer” to “What do you need?”
In our previous blog on conversion rate optimization by telling a story, we discussed the concept of personas and why they are necessary but sometimes misleading. Nobody fits perfectly into a persona, but many people relate to specific problems.
“Are you a new parent who needs help raising your children?”
“Are you having difficulties in school because the internet keeps stealing your focus?”
“Are you sick and tired of shoes that don’t fit?”
“Have you ever had coffee spill in your backpack and had to clean it up?”
“Have you ever arrived to an event 30 minutes early because you were scared that you’d miss your bus?”
Consumers relate to demographics – they relate to problems. As a brand, it’s your responsibility to find the problems that your customers relate to, and then address them in a professional and relatable manner.
It all starts with the way you treat your customers.
Treat Your Customer As A Friend
Good marketing should be executed in a way that doesn’t seem aggressive or condescending – much like how you would speak with a friend.
That’s right – your customer is your friend. They’re not your “boss,” and they’re definitely not your “servant.” A good friend is understanding, willing to help, wise yet humble. Be that good friend!
A good friend listens before speaking but, unfortunately, it can be difficult to listen to your customers with all the conversations going on via social media. Your customer’s voice can get lost in the noise!
Here are some actionable tips on how you can segment out your core customer’s needs, and address their pain points:
Listen To Their Aggregate Needs
In the past, we’ve given some marketing strategy advice on leveraging customer reviews and crafting strategic copy using themes from existing reviews.
For many businesses, it may be difficult to find more than a dozen reviews to begin with so some of you may ask – what do you do?
Thankfully, you don’t necessarily need to mine content from your own reviews. You don’t even need to mine for content from your competitor’s reviews. You can mine reviews using a series of boolean search terms targeting one of the most popular online marketplaces – Amazon.
Here’s how it works – try this right now! Type the following into Google:
site:amazon.com inurl:”product-reviews” “tired of” headphones
Instead of “headphones,” type your product category. It can be anything from shoes to cleaning products – you’ll be able to find new gripes and critiques on all sorts of competing products. These are all golden opportunities – any themes that generate an aggregate opinion is worth looking into as a sales point.
Going back to the point of listening to your customer – it’s also helpful to use the exact wording that they use in their reviews. By speaking like your customer, you show that you’ve done your research and are in tune with your audience.
Introspection Is Key
Sometimes it’s easy to get stuck in the marketing grind, after running campaign after campaign. The secret to growth is never to start from scratch – use the data you’ve accumulated from all your past campaigns to see where you can improve.
Looking through your newsletter campaigns – which ones performed best? Had the highest open rate? Highest click rates? Why? Are there any recurring themes, phrases or product mentions?
Take your top campaigns and tweak them each time with prior insights, to show incremental growth and results over time.
Conclusion
Let’s review what we learned today:
- Tweak your marketing message to focus on a problem, not a feature or benefit
- Treat your customer as a friend by relating to their needs, not necessarily their demographics, through systematic research
- Empathize with your customer by mirroring their language to show that you understand their exact needs
- Constantly improve on the above 3 steps by taking the best performing features of each of your marketing campaigns
All of the above are ongoing responsibilities that need to be addressed on a monthly (if not weekly) basis. If you don’t have the time to manage the above – that’s OK, too! Contact our marketing agency and we’ll be able to provide some guidance on how you can improve your marketing through systematic implementation of these growth tactics.
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