Is anyone ever happy with their website copy?
I knew, when I titled this article, that we could all start together in the same place. No one feels like their website copy is good enough. Right? But feeling cruddy or frustrated is just the start. It's not where we want to end up. If you want to know how to improve your website copy, it comes down to learning how to ask four questions. On a regular basis!
The four questions that will change your website copy
These four questions will do everything you need them to do. Asking the questions isn't the hard part. It's who you ask them of, and how often you ask them – that's the real work if you want to improve your website copy.
Here they are:
- When you discovered us, what were you looking for?
- What had you tried already?
- What made you decide to try us?
- How easy was it to get started?
The trick is that you have to ask your customers. Not your advisor. Not your coach. Not your mom, dad or sibling. Not your friends. Not the folks you share office space with. None of them.
You have to ask the people who already chose you. Who spent money with you. Who decided that you were the one.
And that's not the hardest part.
The hardest part is that you have to keep asking all the time – to everyone who not only choose you last year, but last month, and this month too.
Each question will help you write better copy
Remember the goal is conversion. So let's dig into these four questions and see what they're actually give you. How do they help you improve your conversions.
The First Question
The first question should introduce you to both customer pain and customer goals.
No one buys your product or service as their final destination. They are on a journey and they're buying your product or service to take them somewhere.
You need to know where that somewhere is. That's the goal.
And you need to know why their current approach wasn't working for them. That's pain.
And it's painful enough that they decided to look for an alternative. And you know it must be painful when status quo isn't cutting it.
The Second Question
The second question helps your website copy because it gives you the short list of your competitors. And you need to know who your customer considers your competition, not who you've defined (internally).
Once you know who customers thought was your competition, you can start the work of differentiation.
Contrast and differentiation is everything when it comes to conversions. You need to be able to position yourself as a solution, but also as a better solution than alternatives. And to do that, you need to know who the alternatives are.
Again, the ones your customers define as real alternatives. You may be surprised by who they name as viable alternatives.
But you don't get to choose the playing field. You simply get to compete. Remember, competition is good.
The Third Question
You want to know how to improve your website copy?
Simply take the answer to the third question and push it back out to your prospects. Nothing is easier.
When a customer tells you why they chose you, you take their words and present it to others (just like them). It's likely better than any marketing copy you could write.
Authenticity leaps out at prospects. So don't hide it in little slider boxes that fly off the page. Take the content and turn it into your headlines!
The Fourth Question
I'll be honest, the answers to this question aren't always fun. And when you heard stuff that makes you cringe, it's simply data to help you improve.
But when you hear great news – about how easy it is to get started with you – it's pure gold.
The goal, with all of these answers is to embrace contrast. Your customers will likely shape their answers in the context of contrast. You need to accept and leverage that.
When they tell you how much easier it was to get started with you than with the last company or product they used, they're giving you the contrast you need. That's what you need to use when setting yourself apart from the competition.
Embrace the fact that you have competition
In other words, you shouldn't attempt to tell prospects that you have no competition. Embrace the fact that you have competition. And then highlight why you are better for them than their competiton.
And if you're not better for everyone, that's fine. Maybe it's a certain segment. Find and articulate who that segment is, and again, create that contrast so that it's easy to see that, for that segment, you're better than your competition.
Embrace the fact that there's competition.
Embrace the fact that you're not the best for every segment in the market.
Embrace that for the segment you care about, you're awesome.
And then use your customer's words to help with that contrast and positioning.
All by asking four questions. Regularly.