Namaste.
Practising yoga helps calm body and mind; it also enables you to see new perspectives.
As you flow through poses, your mind is freed from the hustle and bustle of daily thoughts. Serenity brings clarity. As you breathe into your downward facing dog, you begin to see new viewpoints.
Copywriting should have the same effect.
I’m not suggesting that the best copy is written while holding yoga poses (mind you, I’ve never tried), but you can apply the principles to gain a better insight into your audience.
Copywriting from the outside
IMHO someone outside of your organisation writes the best and most successful content.
When working in a business, your knowledge of its products and services is second to none.
You understand the inner workings; the background theory and how to fix things when they go wrong.
What you don’t understand is what it means to your customers.
You see, when you write marketing content, your focus is on what you do. You can talk for hours about what your product/service does (its features). That’s great, up to a point.
The problem is, if you do that, there’s a good chance (about 100%) that:
- Your readers will get bored and go elsewhere
- They won’t believe your offering is what they’re looking for
If they fall into the second category, you’ve got a real problem.
Your customer is the centre of your universe
Believe it or not, your audience will only consider your product or service, as a potential purchase if you show them it will solve their problem and make their life easier.
Waxing lyrical about your business won’t do the same thing, even if you list every feature that you know will help them.
In other words, don’t make them read between the lines – because they won’t.
Every word you write has to be about your customer. It’s imperative you show them how you’re going to help them, how they’re going to benefit from what you offer, and how you’ll always be there for them.
That means resisting the urge to talk about your business.
A lack of knowledge is a real advantage
The best way to achieve all that I’ve mentioned so far is to use an independent professional copywriter.
Don’t get hung up about whether they’ve got experience in your industry – that doesn’t matter. It can be an advantage if they haven’t.
You want someone who can speak your customers’ language, tell them what they want to hear, and convince them you’re the company they should be dealing with.
All of that means creating content that’s completely different to everything else that you see in your industry.
Rather than getting cold feet and re-writing the exceptional content written by your copywriter (yes, sadly that does sometimes happen), trust their instincts. They’ve been doing this for many years. Even though they don’t know your business as well as you do, they do know how to write for commercial success – and that’s something you don’t know.
If you were working with a lawyer, builder, architect, designer or landscape gardener, you wouldn’t ride roughshod over their ideas because you think you know better; you would accept their advice and expertise because they are the professionals in their field.
The same goes for copywriting. Just because you write every day doesn’t mean you can write persuasively. You don’t understand the ins and outs of SEO; you don’t see what your customers see when they look at your business, and you don’t have the experience to be able to use different techniques to encourage an emotional response from your readers.
You copywriter can do all that and so much more.
Sally Ormond is a professional freelance copywriter and yoga addict. Call her on +44(0)1449 779605 (sally@briarcopywriting.com) for a chat about how she can bring a new perspective to your marketing content.