How to Improve Your Copywriting Skills: Part 4

Welcome back to part four of our “How to Improve Your Copywriting Skills” series! In our previous section (part three), we discussed how and why you should use emotions in your sales copy. People are very emotional, whether they consider themselves to be, or not. So, when you use emotions in your sales copy, you can see great results. If you did not read it, we recommend doing so because it gives great information on how to get more sales. In this section, we are going to talk about research.

Research? For Copywriting?

Yes, research. It takes a considerable amount of time, but, trust us, it’s worth it. Research isn’t only important for science or product creation. It’s important when learning how to improve your copywriting. Copywriting is much more than writing perfectly crafted sentences with no grammatical errors. It’s more than getting the attention of a consumer. It’s about driving sales. After all, without sales, you won’t have a job to do copywriting for.

With that being said, you need to do research on your target audience’s habits. This is because the more your sales copy is geared towards your audience, the more likely they will buy. So, when you know everything you can about your target audience, you will likely get better results.

You don’t want to be in the dark when it comes to your target audience. In today’s technology-focused world, it’s incredibly easy to find information and statistics on a particular group of people. Whether you are trying to target a specific age group, employees of an industry, or even how many kids they have, you can find helpful marketing information about them. But, knowing what to research is a different question.

What Should You Research?

When you are trying to research your target audience, there are a few things you should do research on. If you have not already, you should do research on their demographics. Consider who would buy your product or services. How old are they? What is their income level? What do they need to solve their problems? All of these things are very important to consider when starting to do research.

It may be helpful to create a customer persona, so you can picture your target audience better. At the end of the day, the more you understand your target customer, the better sales copy you can write for them. Once you have established who your target customer is, you will want to do research on them. Here are some things we recommend doing research on for your target customer.

Their General Demographics

If you don’t know your audience’s general demographics already, it’s vital you figure them out before writing your sales copy. We always recommend to our clients that they create customer personas based on research. These personas are filled with information about their home life, work life, frustrations, family information, and more. However, this information isn’t a group of guesses about who your target audience is and their life. It’s factual information based on statistics.

At Joshua Lyons Marketing, our personas are so detailed, their kid’s names are the most popular ones from the year they were “born.” Also, the year we chose them to be born in are based on the average age of kids of people the same age as our persona. (For example, in Santa Rosa County, the average age of first-time moms is 25, so if the persona is a 40-year-old woman, their child is 15 as of 2020. So, they had their first child in 2005. The most popular boy’s name in 2005 was Aidan, so that’s the persona’s oldest child’s name.) Although we don’t target our customers based on their kid’s ages and names, this level of research helps us understand our customers better. Your personas don’t need to be this detailed, but we believe the more detailed the better.

Having your customer personas will help you get in the mind of your target audience when copywriting. Often times, business owners are not a fair representation of their target audience. For example, our personas are very different from all of our team members at our agency. So, it’s important to have a way to get in their minds and understand them well, before writing sales copy. We have an entire blog post about why and how to create a marketing persona for your business. You can click here to read it and learn more about them.

Their Wants

Some personas go into detail on the basic wants of their audience. However, to improve your copywriting, you will want to understand their wants completely. You can research their wants by looking at buying trends for your target audience’s age group. This is much easier nowadays, thanks to online shopping. Take a look on Amazon and see what the best-sellers are in specific categories. See what customers buy in your product’s category. This will help you figure out what they see as their wants and need.

In addition to looking at best-sellers, you can also look at reviews. Oftentimes, people mention what is so great about a product and how it made their life easier in their review. Taking a look at this key information will give you a great idea as to what they want from a product. So, when doing this research ask yourself, what does your target audience look for in products? How would your product make their life easier?

 

Are you enjoying this post? If so, be sure to subscribe for occasional email updates from our team!

 

Their Fears

Perhaps your product or service makes a customer less fearful. For example, a carpet cleaner can resolve the fear of bacteria growing in a customer’s carpet fibers. Or, the customer could feel failure, and your product helps them be seen as more professional. No matter what you sell, ask yourself if your product or service eliminates fear for your customers. If it does, you can harp on that in your sales copy to show them why they need your product or service.

If your product does help your customers with their fears, it is time to tap into what that fear is. Consider what your customer fears most in the world. This can be done by evaluating someone in your life who matches your target audience. Perhaps it’s your dad, sister, or best friend. Think about what your product would do to eliminate your fears. Then, ask yourself how you can work that alleviation of fear into your copy.

Their Budget

Your target customer’s budget is going to be a primary factor in whether or not they purchase your product. The tighter their budget, the more you will need to prove why they need your product or service. Even if they have disposable income, you will need to prove why you are better than competitors. Everyone likes to save money, but some groups will prefer quality over money. So, consider how your target customer will react to the price of your products or services. Then, you will want to craft your copy based on that reaction.

Objections to Buying

If budget is not the primary objection to buying your product, what other objections are there? Perhaps there is a concern your product is not safe around children. Or, maybe your service requires a significant amount of expertise. Consider what these objections could be and how you can handle them. It is vital you work this into your copy, so you can encourage people to buy your product.

Working objections into your copy can be easier said than done. However, if you know a few tricks, it can be much easier when learning how to improve your copywriting. If safety is a concern, you can mention you have a high safety rating. On the other hand, if experience is a concern, you can quote one of your reviews that alleviates this issue. This may take some creativity, but part three of this series provides helpful insight on how to incorporate problem-solving into your copy. If you are dealing with this issue, we recommend reading that post for some ideas.

Why Do Research?

As mentioned above, when you know the reason behind a customer purchasing your product or services, you can improve your copywriting. This can be done by research into your target audience and their buying trends. Do your best to tap into the reason behind their purchase, and you will likely increase your sales.

As always, if you have any questions on how to improve your copywriting, feel free to contact us. Our team would love to assist you in any way we can. Whether this is through marketing consulting, or writing your sales copy for you, we are here to help. And, stay tuned to part five of this series, where we teach you more copywriting skills!

The more your sales copy is geared towards your audience, the more likely they will buy. ~ Hailey D. #Copywriting #SalesTips Click To Tweet