11 B2C Copywriting Tips To Resonate With Your Audience
Your B2C copywriting probably falls a little flat. It’s not an easy thing to do to take your business and your passion, and convey it in a way that resonates with your audience. But that’s exactly what you have to do to resonate with your audience.
Take your passions and your livelihood and be able to relay it in a way that entices your audience.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Business blogs have a high propensity to be boring. They are frequently poorly written and thinly veiled attempts at advertising that fall flat on their face. The truth is that both b2b and b2c copywriting could be a little livelier.
Here’s 11 B2C Copywriting Tips to Help You Succeed
Locate Your Reader’s Problem — Your reader found your website and your blog because they have some kind of problem they are exploring. They are asking questions about your industry, and looking for the efficiency to make their lives easier.
If you can position yourself and your business as the solution to that problem, your b2c copywriting will be working in your advantage and positioning your company for success.
Tell a Good Story — People remember stories. If you can make them laugh or cry, they are far more likely to think fondly of your business and buy from you when they are ready. Do you have a good origin story? A designer I work with talks about the early days of his passion, beginning in childhood. People love hearing about the curiosity of children, and his story is compelling.
Ask yourself how your b2c business can become a lifestyle brand. When you incorporate the whole experience of your product or service into your marketing, it becomes easier to think of your b2c copywriting as a story.
Forget Features — Do you understand the difference between features and benefits? Product features are the list of ingredients. You don’t drink a Diet Coke because of the laundry list of chemicals listed on the back of the can.
No. Instead, good b2c copywriting generates interest in the lifestyle behind drinking Diet Coke by talking about the benefits. Generating interest in Diet Coke is about presenting it as the low calorie alternative for soft drink addicts (the key benefit). It’s about favorably comparing the taste with regular Coke. It’s about making it a viable lifestyle alternative in the health food craze.
Understand Everything About Your Audience — Do you know who buys your product or service the most? What are the key traits? It’s important to understand the gender, age, employment characteristics, hobbies and interests of your b2c audience. The more you know about your consumers, the easier it is to position your business and market to them.
You can start by filling in an ideal customer profile, and filling in all the information that you can about who you want to buy your stuff, and why they would turn to you. The more detailed and creative your profile is, the more useful it becomes. Once you understand who you are after, let that description drive how you market to them.
Understand The Knowledge Gap — You have a naturally high level of expertise about your industry and your business. You know what it takes for your audience to solve their industry-related problem. The trick is to talk with them in a way that they will understand.
Go light on the industry jargon and acronyms. If you have to use an industry word that your audience may not know, explain it. Otherwise it creates a stopping point for your reader, and you may not get them back. Same goes for acronyms. Spell out the first usage, and explain anything that may not be immediately understood.
Make it Visual — When a reader clicks on your blog post or website content to find long, drawn out content that looks indistinguishable from an academic paper, they become frustrated.
Contrary to what many experts say online, long content is ok. Your readers may still invest the time into your marketing materials, but you have to know how to make it easier on the eyes. Subheads, bullet points and shorter paragraphs all help. Break things down into more easily digestible chunks. Multiple photos and graphics in longer content is also a helpful way to make your content easier to take in.
Keep in mind, many readers will access your content through a mobile device, and that creates a lot of scrolling. The easier you make it for people to read your content, the more likely they are to stick around.
Spend Time on Your Headline — Sure, your headline is only a few words long. But that doesn’t mean you should just slap a few words on and move on to the next thing. The headline is the single biggest factor in determining whether someone will read your post.
It should entice your reader to continue. So make a promise, and keep it. Learn how to improve your word choice. Show people how your content, business or offering benefits them. Whatever you do, maximize that real estate.
Write at a Length That Makes Sense — Post length is one of the most frequently debated subjects for bloggers. The minimum length Google requires to index content is 300 words. But frequently it’s the longer content that excels in the search engines.
People will read both long and short website content. What matters is how well written, and how compelling the content is. For example, marketer and philosopher Seth Godin frequently writes between 50 and 300 words. Marketer Neil Patel is frequently explaining a complex marketing concept at around 2,000 words.
If you sell a more complex product, your audience may have more questions about it, and it may take more content to explain. Conversely, some topics are basic and don’t need much more than 300 words.
When you try to expand a 300-word topic into 2,000 words, you can run into trouble. When you leave key information out of a 2,000-word topic, in hopes of shortening the post, you can find trouble as well. Find the length that works for the particular post and your business and go with it.
Stay Curious — So much is made out of being an expert on your field these days. And it helps to be able to convey the information you have in a compelling way. The danger with this mindset is if you take it to a point where you feel there is nothing left to learn. This can happen on a conscious or subconscious level.
Many industries are constantly in flux. New developments, and new efficiencies mean there’s always something new left to learn. So ask questions and talk with people more knowledgeable on the subject than you are. Find the ways that your outside passions relate back to your industry. Movie producer Brian Grazer would find the people he was curious about and just pick their brains. It helped him develop as a person every time. Sometimes it helped him with his work. With the internet, everyone is approachable.
Read Everything You Can Get Your Hands On — Seriously, everything. Blogs, websites and books will help you answer your questions. They will give you new insight into the world and into your industry.
When you spend time reading about your passions outside of work, you are better able to tie them back to what you’re doing for quality, original b2c copywriting.
Have Fun — Good b2c copywriting is easier to produce when you’re having fun, and your passions are on display. If you produce well written content, and you’re able to convey your passions, it can have a significant impact!
Conclusion…
The trick with b2c writing is to produce something your audience will want to read, and act on. You have to create material that will be significant to them. It may not happen right away, but the key is to monitor traffic and responses to the various pieces you write, and adjust accordingly.
Matt Brennan is a Chicago-area marketing writer and copy editor. He is also the author of Write Right-Sell Now.
