Transcripts
1. Introduction - Getting to Know Your Reader: before you even write a word of sales copy, you need to get to know your reader. Many people make the mistake of guessing who the reader is, or they make the mistake of offering their reader information that they would want to hear . But you can right all the stunning sales copy in the world. But if it's targeted at the wrong person, it's not going to be very effective. In the next few videos. I'm going to show you some specific strategies to help you to really get to know exactly who your reader is That way, you don't have to write for an imaginary reader, and you don't have to guess at who your potential reader is. By doing this, you're writing will be much more specific, much more relevant to your actual customer and as a result, will be much more effective in getting the sale
2. Quick and Easy Market Research: How do you get to know your reader in this video? I'm going to give you some specific strategies to do research into who your reader or potential customer is. The hardest part about getting to know your reader is finding them, and 20 years ago this would have been a monumental task. But today, with all of the transparency on the Internet, there's a world of information out there that people willingly and readily share about their interests, their needs, their desires and their problems, which makes it much easier for you to connect with them and learn what they need. I'm going to share three of my favorite strategies for getting to know your customer, and I'm going to save my favorite one for last because it is just dynamite. The 1st 1 is forums. Forums are a great place for people to go and connect with other people. Ask questions of people who are more experienced on subject than they are and complain about issues that they have. Because of that, forums are great place for you to go to learn a ton about your customer. So if you're trying to sell gardening supplies on a website the way to really figure out what people need and what people want this to go to the forum and read about their problems . If you do this enough, you'll start to see themes. You'll start to see common threads, questions, issues that come up over and over in the forums and those air really good indicators of who your customers are and what their needs are. The second strategy is just to ask people. This could be a simple as asking your friends, family or neighbors what their interests, desires and needs are. But be careful that you're asking the right people again. If you're trying to sell gardening supplies on a website and you ask your neighbor about gardening, who's never even touched a plant or thought about gardening, you're not going to get the kind of feedback that you need. A better way to do this is to start to build a network, whether this is an email list or a Facebook group that you create, or even just a Facebook group that you join and participate in to get to know people. Once you spent just a little time connecting with people, then you can either just ask a simple question like What are your needs? Or you can even create a poll. I'm a huge fan of Facebook polls when they're shared with a targeted audience, because you're able to include a specific criteria. For instance, when we use our gardening supply. Example. If I want to know what product to sell to potential gardeners, I can create a poll saying, which is your favorite gardening tool, and I can list the gardening tools that I may have available. I can also add an option for people to add their own idea, and I find that often that's where the most valuable and interesting feedback comes from. And finally, the third strategy for getting to know your reader and my personal favorite is Amazon reviews. As we all know, Amazon is huge and they're connected with millions of people, and they've created a robust and effective review system that allows people to share their feelings, their thoughts, their desires, their gratitude, all of the things that they feel about any specific subject, whether it's a book that they've read about gardening or whether it's a gardening implement that they've purchased. It's all out there so If you want to sell gardening tools, you can go to Amazon and you can look up each and every tool that you might consider selling. And you can go and you can read hundreds and hundreds of reviews from your potential customers. And what I recommend is that you read five star reviews, four star reviews to starve, use one star reviews and really pay attention to the pain points that people are sharing on those reviews. Oftentimes you'll see the same issue over and over in one and two star reviews of people saying, You know, for instance, I wanted to love this garden trial, but the handle just didn't fit my hands correctly. And if you hear that over and over thing, you'll realize how important it is to people that they have a garden tool that fits their hands well. And that gives you clues to who your reader is and how you can best serve their needs when you go to write your sales copy for your product, if you can, then emphasizing your sales copy how comfortable this garden implement is going to be in their hands, then you've really solved a problem for a lot of people, and you've connected with them on a level that you could not have otherwise achieved without doing that research. So before you write any sales copy, go to forums or do Facebook polls or get on Amazon and really come through those reviews to find out exactly what your readers need.
3. Write for People Who Already NEED Your Product: one of the most important reasons to get to know your customer while is that you can then write specifically to people who need your product. People who are already in the market to buy your product. Let me give you an example. If you're trying to sell a small handheld garden shovel, there are a number of types of customers that you can try to sell your shovel to. You can try to sell to people who are not even interested in gardening or gardening shovels and try and convince them that they should be. You can try to sell to people who are mildly interested in gardening but have no interest in a gardening shovel and try and convince them that they should use a shovel. You can try to sell to people who already have a shovel and try to convince them that your shovel would be better than the one they have. Or you can try to sell to people who are in desperate need of a shovel. They know they need a small handheld shovel and they want one, but they haven't found the right product yet of those four scenarios, which is going to be the easiest person for you to sell to naturally, the one that's already looking for a shovel and desperately needs a shovel. This may seem like fairly obvious advice, but I'm amazed at how many people I see out there beating their head against the wall, who are marketing to people that are uninterested in their product and their spending all of their advertising time and money and effort trying to convince people that they should buy their product. The most efficient way to connect with customers and reach the perfect audience for your product is to speak directly to the people who already want it or already need it. If you've done your customer research correctly, you should be writing copy for a product that already has a built in market. And if that's the case, then you'll have plenty of people who are already interested in the product and just need to be convinced that your product is better than the other products out there. So as your proof reading your sales copy, make sure that you double check to make sure that you are writing specifically to people who are already in the market for your product, rather than trying to convince people who are not ready to buy to buy your product. The only convincing that you should be doing is convincing them that your specific garden shovel is better than the other garden shovels out there. That's how to make the best use of your sales copy so that the highest number of potential readers converts into sales.
4. Make Your Sales Copy About What THEY Want: sell them what they want, not what you want to sell them. This principle applies not only to the actual products that you promote, but to how you write about them. Let me give you an example. Let's say that your customer research has shown you that people are looking for a garden tool with a comfortable handle, and specifically they've said they want a padded handle. But let's say that you've just finished designing a new ergonomic handle with a plastic grip. It's very easy to think that your handle is going to make your customers happy. But if they're specifically asking for a padded handle than in spite of the fact that your handle maybe more comfortable, your sales are still likely to suffer. So it comes back to focusing on what the customer really needs or really wants and delivering that now the same idea applies to the way that you write your copy. If it's been very clear to you from your research that people are looking for a comfortable padded handle for their tool, that it's very important that you talk about that and emphasize that in your sales copy, you can talk about the tools, durability or the sharpness of the blade or the colors with craftsmanship, or how lightweight it is all day long. But none of those things were going to connect with your reader on an emotional level, like talking about the comfortable padded handle. So the way you want to go about this is to first address their frustrations and their pain and their disappointments with not being able to find a product exactly like yours. And then you can go on to demonstrate the benefits that they will receive from using a tool like yours with a padded handle. Maybe they won't have blisters like they have in the past. Maybe they'll be able to garden longer and more comfortably because their hands won't hurt . Maybe they'll get a better grip on the tool, and they'll be able to weed more effectively. And even if this particular garden tool is the lightest tool on the market, if that's not what your customers care about, then don't spend much time talking about it because that's not what they're looking for. And that, in a nutshell, is why it's so important to do your research so that you know your customer well enough to write effective copy
5. How to Not Over or Under Sell Your Product with Your Writing: a large part of understanding and connecting with your customer is representing your product or service accurately. Most people who are new to copyrighting either over sell their product or they undersell their product. Take a look at this phrase from a Kindle book description. As an example of someone under selling their book in this book, I've tried to help you become a better Gardner. The reason this example under cells is probably pretty obvious to you. The fact that the author is saying that they've tried to help shows a lack of confidence in their book. Customers are unlikely to buy a book by an author who has a lack of confidence in their subject matter. In addition, it doesn't show any benefits to the reader of why they should read the book or address any of the readers concerns with learning to garden. It also doesn't connect with them on an emotional level at all. Better examples would be by the end of this book, you'll be growing your own fresh vine ripened garden tomatoes, or you can finally create your very first garden with the information in this book. Over selling usually sounds like bragging insincerity or sometimes outright lies. One of my favorite examples comes from an instructor who reached out to me to ask me if I wanted to teach a course with him. I naturally went to his profile on the platform and read his short bio. I was impressed when I saw that he was the author of a book, so I went to Amazon to see more about the book, but I couldn't find it. I searched for it on Google. I looked for it everywhere, and I couldn't find the book. Finally, in confusion, I messaged this person back and asked him where I could find a copy of his book. He responded by saying that the book hadn't been published quite yet and that he didn't have a copy available to see the least. I was astounded because, to me on Instructors, biography is one of their most important pieces of sales copy. It's the sales piece of them, and he put an outright lie in his sales copy in his bio about himself. And that's one of the fastest ways to lose sales, lose credibility, lose followers and ruin your reputation. And many beginning sales copy writers do similar things like that that maybe aren't as blatant of a lie but still hurt their credibility. Other examples would be claiming that you have the sharpest gardening tool on the market without providing any proof that that claim is true, or by saying that it's the lightest tool on the market without having the weight of the tool listed on the sales page. Remarkable and awe inspiring claims are fantastic and sales copy as long as they're true and that could be backed up. And a final example of over selling is just using too many adjectives that don't specifically describe your product. Referring to your product as amazing or incredible. Or the best is far less effective than giving specific reasons why it's amazing or why it's incredible or why it's the best and specific riel ways that it will benefit your customer. So the take away from this video is to look long and hard at your product and how it will benefit your customers. Don't apologize for your product, and don't be afraid of extolling the benefits of your product. But be very careful about claiming things that aren't true and do your very best to represent your product accurately and in a way that your customers Kenly late to on an emotional level,
6. Take Immediate Acton On What You've Learned: Let's take a quick look at what you've learned, and then I'm going to give you an awesome action steps. You can put this into practice right away. You now know how to do research to find out exactly who your customer or reader is. You can go to forums, read comments, ask people questions. You can join our create Facebook groups. You can create Poles and Facebook groups. You can create an email list of your own. You can contact friends and relatives where you can go on Amazon, search for relevant products and read reviews there. You also learned how important it is to write for people who already need your product, who are already in the market to buy your product, rather than trying to convince people that they even need your product in the first place. The only convincing you should be doing is convincing them that your product is the one that they should choose over something else in the market. You learned the importance of selling people what they want, not what you want to sell them and how to keep your copy relevant to exactly what your research shows that people want and you learn the importance of connecting with your customer on an emotional level based on what you've learned about them. And then finally, you learned how to walk the fine line between over selling and underselling your product by representing it accurately, honestly and with confidence. Now I have an action step for you because any time you learn something new, it's critical to take immediate action on it to put what you learnt into practice. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to go to Amazon and find a popular product related to what you're interested in selling. So if you're trying to sell garden tools, you can do a search for gardening tools and pick one that, preferably has at least 500 reviews. If it's a small niche, this probably won't be possible. But for most items on Amazon, you should be able to find one with 500 reviews, then read 24 or five star reviews and read 21 to 2 star reviews and right down to things that customers were happy about and two things that they weren't happy about. In other words, to unmet needs that customers have and I'll just give you a quick example of this. I was just looking at running socks the other day. So here we have Sal Kony Men. Six back performance, No show socks, 1700 reviews. Perfect click on that and they were just going to sort the reviews. Got to get all the way down to him. Here we go. Let's go to star reviews. There we go. We scroll down a little bit. So here's one complaint. Not no show, but a good sock. So they're saying it claims to be a no show sock, but it shows. So that's a good thing to keep in mind as you're developing a product, whereas your marketing a product developed holes. Obviously, that's not good. It's wearing out. I kept slipping off my heel. I've actually had that problem with Socks, and I know how annoying that could be. Here's another one, not a no show cut. Here's the 3rd 1 Not no show. So right in the 1st 4 reviews here, we're seeing a critical issue with this particular product that if you were going to be developing a no show sock, you would want to make very sure that you fill that need for your customers. Okay, let's do some five star reviews. All right, go down here. Excellent. Breathe ability and fit. Okay, that's good. Blisters went away completely. Okay, that's huge. That's a really critical reason why people buy socks. Here we are soft and we see the breathe herbal again there. There's some interesting feedback. The unique pattern and bright colors make it easier to find in the laundry. We've all had that problem. The design and pattern make it easier to put them on correctly. That's good, too. So those air really valuable piece of feedback, like the colors and design again Here here we're seeing the breathe herbal again, and even in a five star, they're criticizing the no show issue. So even the good reviews were talking about that. So that's a really big flag for you to think about. These were game changers. Now, the interesting thing is, that doesn't help you at all, does it? Knowing that their game changers doesn't help you, you need to know why their game teachers, which is what's beautiful about these reviews because as you get into it, you see that there worried about the fit. But the great news is, these fit great. They're talking about other ones that road down into my shoe, leaving blisters on the back of my upper hell. No such issues with these. And this person even goes on to explain why their a game changer and goes on further to talk about fit and so that he had an existing blister and even the existing buster didn't hurt. So you can see how, in just a couple of minutes of pouring through positive and negative reviews, we have really learned a ton about our customers. They don't just want socks. They want blister prevention. They want fit. They want style. They want color so they can find it in the dryer. They want designs to help them match the sock to their foot so they don't put it on backwards and have to mess with that. They want the sock to do what it claims it will. If it says it's of no show sock, they want it to be no show. So what I want you to do now is I want you to choose a product that you either want or need to write some sales cop before, and I want you to look it up on Amazon, and I want you to do just what I did. I want you to look at 24 or five star reviews and 21 or two star reviews and then come up with two awesome things about that product and two ways that that product could have been improved or pain points that it didn't solve for the customers. And then I want you to share it here, and I just want to give you one final reminder, and that is, every time you go to write sales copy, spend a little bit of time to get to know your reader so that you can write your sales copy specifically to your target customer.
Steve McDonald, Excel and Photoshop Geek
