It is typical when you get started writing marketing copy to think, “Who wouldn’t want this? Our target market is everyone in the whole wide world!”
If you are currently thinking this, you’re being overzealous. In the excitement of a new product or service, it’s not uncommon to think of reasons why people from all walks of life would want what you have to offer. But in reality, your target market is small. More importantly, from a practical standpoint, you can’t reach everyone. You need to focus. You want your copy to speak to the people who are most likely to become paying customers. If you try to be too broad, you’ll end up connecting with nobody. So how do you figure out how to connect with that smaller portion of the population that is more likely to buy what you're selling? You have to start by asking big, broad questions, and then narrow it down until you know exactly who you're talking to, and how they think.
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Elmore Leonard was a famous novelist and one of the unique writing voices of the last 50 years in America. He rose from pulp magazines to best seller lists, and one aspect of his that was often cited for this was his authentic voice.
My favorite quote on writing from him is this: “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” That should be your mantra as you write anything: web copy for your startup, a script for a TV spot, an article, your memoir. For many years, I was a copywriter in ad agencies that specialized in pharmaceutical advertising, writing copy about prescription medicines. Outside of any feelings anyone may have about that industry, it was a great challenge for any writer to wed hardcore medical science with the soft fuzziness of marketing.
One aspect of this industry that can be hard is that every piece of marketing that goes out to consumers is heavily scrutinized by a cadre of internal experts. This is done to make sure that all the information that they put out about any medication is completely accurate and balanced, making sure that any possible side effects are clearly indicated. So my copy was always heavily edited. My first job in advertising was for a website called Home Made Simple. It supported some of the biggest products in home care. It was owned by Procter & Gamble and is what marketers call a lightly branded site. Kind of a Martha Stewart Living that just happened to mention Dawn, Cascade, Febreze, Swiffer and Mr. Clean over and over.
It was content marketing before that term had been coined. I'm revealing how old I am, but we sometimes referred to it as an ezine - an ancient term from the early 2000s. The site's target audience was women, 28-45. The type of woman who does the shopping for her home, and does a fair (or unfair) bit of the cleaning as well. We had come up with a fictitious editor for the site who was supposed to represent the idealized version of our audience. Her name was Julie B. As the primary writer on the site, I was, for all intents and purposes, Julie B. |
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