Copywriting – The Problem with Being Too Vague:

There are many business owners who approach their marketing and copy writing with an focus on “be everything to everyone approach” and it’s really tough to make that work as a small business owner. These business owners may sell candles online or cosmetics or a similar product and the business owner will say their target market is simply women. The problem is, if you sell those things, not all women are your target.

Consider…

There are plenty of women who don’t care much about candles and they’re content buying the typical drugstore cosmetics or no cosmetics at all. Those women are not your target market.

Even a woman, who thinks candles are lovely and wears a little makeup now and then, but doesn’t readily spend her money on those items, is not your target market. You need to understand the woman who really wants to buy your product and that she’ll buy it over and over again. That is an ideal customer.

Imagine Your Ideal Customer:

• What are her wants and desires?

• What problems does she need solved?

• What are her beliefs?

If you don’t already know the answers to these questions, try surveying the customers that you already have. Ask them a few questions about themselves, why they bought the product, what they like about it and what they don’t like. In return, offer them a coupon or a free gift or something, just to get that feedback. This information will be very valuable to you.

Think about your product:
What is the single most important reason your target audience would want to buy it? You need to be able to empathize with your target market, identify their problems and show how your product solves that problem. If you think too generally about your target market, the passion is lost in your copy and it’s tough to get anyone excited about anything.

For example, if you sell acne medication and you simply talk about the embarrassment of acne, you might get some sales. But if you know that your target market for a specific ad campaign is teenagers, talking about being teased at school, worrying that they won’t find a date and having a case study of a teenager who overcame that – your copywriting will be much more powerful.

You will sell more to a highly-targeted group of people than trying a lukewarm approach with the public in general. Leave general marketing to Amazon.com, Walmart and other huge companies.

To-Do: Start writing a list of all the characteristics of your typical customer. Use information gathered from customer surveys, as mentioned earlier in this section, and write at least 15-20 specific characteristics. This list will help you as you make your way through this lesson.

I hope this part 2 of The Basics of Copywriting has been helpful and will serve as one of your guides in writing better copy, and copy that is focus on your true target market.