Copywriting that converts is essential to your small business. It’s what will allow your marketing touchpoints to resonate with your target audience, building strong customer relationships and guiding them through their buyer journey.
But how do you steer clear of copy that falls flat in favour of copy that encourages your audience to take action?
Our Copywriting Team have compiled a list of their best copywriting tips – check them out below and apply them to your copy for maximum effect…
Understanding your Audience
The first, and perhaps most important step in writing copy that converts is understanding your audience. When you’re running a small business, it’s easy to make assumptions about your audience. But those assumptions aren’t always the concrete evidence you need!
Before you get started on writing copy, go beyond the demographics of your audience to decipher their needs, desires, pain points and problems. This way, you can begin to understand the kind of copy they will best respond to. Use your copy to address these qualities in your audience and allow them to feel connected to your business in some way.
One of the biggest hurdles your audience will have when deciding to buy from you is trust. Are you really what they need? How can they be sure? Conducting thorough audience research and using your findings in your copy starts to build trust, slowly removing that buying barrier and allowing your audience to feel confident in what you’re saying.
The more understanding you can show of your audience, the more inclined they’ll be to move through the conversion process.
Focus on Benefits
It’s easy to get caught up on features when you’re running a small business. For example, if you’re selling dog collars with tracking devices sewn in, you may want to brag about the technology you’re using. That’s only natural when you’re proud of a product. But it isn’t necessarily what is going to convince your audience to buy that collar from you.
Instead, focus on the benefits. Dog owners will no longer have to worry about letting their dogs off the lead and losing them – they can track them down easily and quickly as the collar connects to an app on their phone.
By addressing this benefit, you’ve addressed an obvious audience pain point or problem, and offered a solution.
If your copy makes a solution seem clear and easy to obtain, your audience will be more likely to buy the product from you. Stick to highlighting benefits over features, always!
Keep it Clear and Concise
We have short attention spans, made worse by how easy it is to have the information we need at our fingertips within seconds. If a website takes more than three seconds to load, are you clicking off? We are! We’ll find the information faster somewhere else.
The same thing is true for your small business copy. Your audience will want to find the information they need as quickly and as easily as possible. It’s your job to ensure your copy allows for this. Avoid including too much jargon or complex language, and attempt to keep your sentences short where possible. This allows your audience to skim read your copy (we all do it!) and find the information they need in the quickest way possible.
If your copy is long and complex, your audience may decide they’ll be better off looking for the information elsewhere. Only say what you need to in order to get your message across clearly. The clearer the message, the more likely our audience is to continue engaging with your business.
Avoid Jargon
We touched on this in the point above, but when you’re running a small business, it can be easy to forget that not everyone is an expert in your industry. So, while suing industry jargon may seem like second nature to you, it can be jarring or an audience that is just discovering your products or services.
To avoid confusion for your audience, stick to simple language where possible. And that’s not to say you should dumb your content down – you definitely shouldn’t! But, again, remember that people want to find information quickly and easily. By sticking to simple language free from jargon (unless it really is necessary), you’re making things as easy as possible for your audience.
Tell a Story
When it comes to copywriting that converts, storytelling is an incredibly powerful tool. Telling stories allow you to create an emotional connection with your audience. Your business becomes more than just a means to an end – instead, it humanises your brand and gives your audience an experience, rather than just a product or service.
Whether it’s a customer success story, parts of your business journey, or more personal stories that relate to the reason behind why your business exists, using this in your content really does help to capture an audience’s attention and keep them engaged.
The more you can humanise your brand through storytelling in your copy, the more your audience will be able to relate to what you’re saying.
Copywriting with The Edwards Company
Of course, there are plenty of other copywriting tips and tricks you can add to your marketing toolbox that will help your copy convert. Strategically placed keywords, thoughtful CTAs, consistent brand voice – they all serve to create copy that is engaging and persuasive in equal parts.
If you’re feeling lost with your small business copy or would like some support in making some changes to boost conversions, we can help.
From website copy to content for your external newsletter, updates for your blog page to social media posts, our team is skilled in supporting small businesses with copy that converts. Feel free to give our fab team a shout for more info!