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3 Lessons From A Marketing Superstar
I was just rereading Jeffrey J. Fox's marvelous book, How To
Become A Marketing Superstar this week, and had to start jotting
down some notes to pass along. Fox has a wonderful knack for
distilling his hard-won wisdom into two or three page...
Copywriting Makeover: Search Engine-Friendly Can Also Mean Visitor-Friendly
by Karon Thackston © 2005 http://www.copywritingcourse.com When it comes to search engine optimization, copywriting plays a big role. You want to have excellent copy that appeals to both your visitors and the engines in order to create pages that...
Does Your Copywriting Trigger What Makes Your Visitors Buy?
You study your website stats and see the amount of traffic coming through. Nice numbers. But when you compare your traffic against your sales, what do you get? A small fraction of 1%? Wouldn't you love to see those conversions grow? But how can you...
Freelance Copywriting: How to Negotiate Rates
Lots of people who seek out my copywriting services are concerned about money. Rightfully so. I’m a small business owner too, and I know what it is to have that do-it-yourself mindset. (It’s exhausting!) But entrepreneurs like you and I often...
Hello Niche Marketing Enthusiasts
Hello niche marketing enthusiasts,
I am fairly new to the niche marketing community but have been studying and following along for about a year now. I've started my own blog but like to take the time to visit others. The blogs I have found are...
How To Get 50% of Your Freelance Fee Up Front --And a Whole Lot More!
This is valuable content from my free online newsletter, the
FREELANCER'S BUSINESS BULLETIN. In the April 2004 issue I shared
with my subscribers the secret to getting at least 50% of your
freelance fee up front, plus a whole host of other...
How to get your customers to trust your website
You’re welcome to publish this article free of charge provided: - you include the byline - byline includes a functioning link to http://www.divinewrite.com - you don’t change the article in any way - you provide a courtesy copy once...
Secrets of Writing a Business Website Homepage
Think you know how to write a business website homepage? Read this article to make sure.
You probably think you already know what a homepage is. But if you’re like many business website owners, you really don’t. The homepages...
Top 3 Reasons Why Your Headlines Fail
Many professional copywriters estimate that the headline contributes to 80% or more of the success of any ad, article, or sales letter. One direct marketing expert goes so far as to credit the headline with 100% of the success or failure of any ad...
Writing To Overpower Your Competition
by Karon Thackston © 2005 http://www.learn-copywriting.com "We don't have any competition. We're a truly a one-of-a-kind company." I've heard that line from clients for years. I wish it were true, but it's simply not. In fact, it wouldn’t matter...
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Copywriting Makeover: Know Where Your Customers Are In The Buying Process Part 1 of 2
by Karon Thackston © 2004
http://www.copywritingcourse.com
When you begin to write copy for any product or service, there are a few things you have to take into consideration. The first is always your target audience: who you’ll be writing to. Finding out about the needs and wants of the audience members, their communication styles, their lifestyles, and a multitude of other elements are “musts” before writing one word of copy.
But something most people neglect is giving due attention to the buying process as a whole and where your target audience is within their own process. Understanding this can, oftentimes, make or break the success of your copy.
When AEwebworks (an online, dating-site software developer) approached me about rewriting their website copy, it became immediately apparent that their copy could benefit from paying some due diligence to the buying processes of their customers.
The Problems
My primary concerns with the copywriting on this site included the lack of synergy within the copy, the use of testimonials, the lack of focus on the target customer’s buying process, and the inability for the copy to support the search engine goals of AEwebworks. In its present state, the copy contained few mentions of keyphrases.
You can view the old copy in PDF form at this link: http://www.copywritingcourse.com/AEWebWorks-Original.pdf.
When I first read the copy, it felt as though I was being pitched to from all sides. The headline spoke to someone thinking of entering the online dating site industry. The body copy did not support that headline; rather it spoke to someone who had already made the decision to launch or improve a dating site.
The use of testimonials at the bottom of the home page posed a challenge for two reasons. The first was the sheer location. The design of the site was such that it appeared nothing fell “below the fold” (what was first seen when the home page loaded onto a browser). The second challenge was that many of the testimonials were from people asking questions or stating they were considering trying the dating software… not actual customers attesting to the benefits they’d personally experienced.
In addition, while the information included in the body copy was good, the information given on the home page needed to outline why AEwebworks was better than the competition. In its present state, it did not. That meant finding those aspects of buying dating software that were most important to the customer and highlighting them within the copy.
Lastly, I needed to focus the home page copy on only two or three keyphrases and increase keyword saturation for those phrases. This also meant creating a copy strategy that would allow me to use the keyphrases effectively without making the text sound stiff.
The Solution
As always, I started the
project by gaining a good understanding of who the target customers were, what they wanted, their fears, their likes, their dislikes, and anything else I could discover. After a good bit of research, and after reading the completed target audience analysis from AEwebworks, I felt I had a good understanding of those I would be writing to.
In order to combat the lack of synergy within the copy and the lack of focus on the target customer’s buying process, I created a copywriting plan. From my research I found that installation, upgrade policies, and support were the three most common gripes buyers had about dating software. I decided to make overcoming those obstacles the focal point of the copy instead of the actual features and benefits.
That may sound like an odd choice, but that’s where recognition of the buying process comes in. Considering that the majority of visitors to the site had already made the decision to launch a new site or had chosen to upgrade an existing site, they were already well versed in the features of dating-site software and their associated benefits. Yes… the benefits did need to be mentioned; however, other issues proved to be more pressing to this particular group of customers.
The use of testimonials on the home page was easily corrected by simply deleting the ones that did not directly apply to actual users of the software. I chose two for use within the copy and suggested that, as AEwebworks gets more testimonials, they create an entire page that visitors can read.
That left me with overcoming the inability of the current copy to support the search engine goals of the site. I suggested AEwebworks review their keyword choices to be sure they were targeting the ones most likely to bring in qualified customers. After a review, they provided me with a revised list to choose from.
I selected three keyphrases for each page in order to allow an adequate level of both keyword saturation and natural language. For the home page, the terms “dating software,” “online dating software,” and “dating script” were used.
After all the hoopla with Google, AEwebworks was in foul shape as far as search engine rankings were concerned. I had to pay particular attention to creating copy that impressed the search engines AND their site visitors in order to help them regain ground with their positioning and sales efforts.
The plan was in place. Now “all” I had to do was write the copy. In part two of this series, you’ll get all the details on how I turned “OK” into “Wow!”
About the Author
Copy not getting results? Learn to write SEO copy that impresses the engines and your visitors at http://www.copywritingcourse.com. Be sure to check out Karon’s latest e-report “How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)” at http://www.copywritingcourse.com/keyword.
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