How to – find the right needs for your audience, cater marketing messages to the right audience, then use great writing tactics to entice them.
Connecting messages to needs
Going beyond a basic feature
or aspect of your business and connecting to what your customers need in the long
term will have long term payoffs. If you can identify that your product or
service fulfils long term needs that customers may not have been aware of then
you are also educating them, potentially making them more valuable and loyal to
your cause! Tying this in with what we’ve discussed in our SEO
articles, if you are expanding on the basic benefit of your offering by
introducing other relevant subjects and outcomes on your webpages you are also
doing favours for your organic traffic! With that in mind, here are some methods
for catering your message to give customers (and by extension, you) more!
So, what does my target need?
Let’s reuse what we’ve already learnt in previous articles
to substantiate an informed, lasting decision.
In searching for your audience’s
trend and keyword activity in Google, you can gain an idea for what people
are looking for. This should be your first step in identifying needs related to
certain products / services that you are working on or already have. Is “cheap”
or “quick” often associated with your category search? This may not always give
you an immediate answer but in any case should help cancel out needs you don’t
have to address.
Once you’ve done this initial research, it’s time to dig a
little deeper and use your existing channel learning to frame what previous
experiences have taught you. This involves utilising online
and offline communication results to form ideas on what your audience needs.
Finally, one of the most important steps involves a
competitive analysis. Using what you’ve picked up on from above (and the
competitors you already know of) search Google and determine how effectively
your close competitors are addressing needs. Most often this will come up at
the top of their explanation of a particular product or service, what you want
to do is take note of the needs they are paying most attention to and how they
are doing it. No, we don’t want to ‘copy and paste’ what they’re doing, but you
absolutely do want to decide how your service can instil an edge on theirs in the eye of the
consumer. Remember, valuable consumers may see your webpages and your competitors’
in the same search, so make a plan on how you will stick out.
Benefits of emotional vs. technical language
It is very tempting to simply
list each nook and cranny of a product or service, but this may actually make
it harder to stand out and will ultimately affect the memorable aspect of your website.
Technical elements are good when you are reselling (ie passing on an external
product that the audience already recognises clearly), which can help the
customer make quick comparisons and speed up their purchase decision. However,
introducing personality and beneficial outcomes to your services can be
powerful tools to make your audience picture themselves post-purchase, and give
a sense of reality to your product. In
essence: use your customer’s imaginations to your benefit!
Here are some tactics to use whilst writing that can adhere
to the needs of your audience and help you connect with more persuasive
language.
Emotional – reader fears or foresees the consequences of not enlisting your help, or anticipates feeling better about themselves or helping others by using your product.
Example: “Web marketers that are not frequently
researching new advice and ideas run the risk of losing many key website
visitors and customers to those that do.”
Case study – using previous (and ongoing) satisfied customers as evidence
Example: “Psych Press’ SEO advice has been hailed as
always helpful in various ways by service firm SEO marketers themselves.”
Credentials – Using your expertise and statistics as evidence
Example: “We use the advice we give in these articles
ourselves, since writing these articles earlier this year we have experienced
over 3 times as much organic search growth.”
Comparison – What other services tend to do or have done in the past and why you’re better
Example: “There are many fantastic web marketing
advice columns out there, although their suggestions often don’t cater to the
niche needs of those in small Australian businesses new to web-marketing or allied
health clinics.”
Put them in the picture – tell a story using the reader or their business as an example
Example: “We’ve all been there, you have a very
limited time and budget to work with to get more customers to your website, and
you’re not sure where to begin…”
Humour and Social Language – Helps build trust by relating to the audience and showing you’re real people, also helps balance out Emotional or Comparison communication tactics
Example: “Opportunities to persuade and educate your
audience are everywhere. Take the above examples which give a great idea, but are
also a ‘subtle’ hint that if you’ve read this far you should probably give Psych
Press a call!”
Hit List
In my written pieces the customer needs are
clearly identified
Each written piece has a target and a tactic of
how to satisfy needs
I have run the writing past other people and
have done a keywords check
For those in HR / Small business
When connecting your services to
a need, it is worth considering going beyond price needs even when you know
that your users are searching based on price. Eg. “Feeling better and living
better each day is a worthwhile investment” instead of “We give you top quality
for your dollar!” connects on a much deeper need whilst still addressing cost.
This idea can be applied to needs other than price such as – time required,
distance to travel, trustworthiness etc.
Unsure about how this can boost your traffic?
Remember, we don’t only help out when it’s time to put
together materials for a job or event ad, we also use our arsenal of
web-marketing skills to help your website or any other net-based projects
you’re working on! For more info on what we can do for your next challenge be
sure to email info@psychpress.com.au
or call 03 9670 0590.
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