The landing page for your product is the single most important page on your entire website and it is important that you communicate well on that page to connect with your customers. If you don’t speak your customer’s language, they are just going to close the tab and move on to the next page. Worse, they might have a totally different understanding of your brand or product and might never convert in the future.
Using the right language and words in the copy will make sure that you hit the right nerve when the customer reads it. It creates the kind of brand loyalty that Apple enjoys. But how would you know what your customers speak and expect? Here are 6 ideas to read your customer’s mind and write better copy.
Speak to your customers (duh!)
If you already have a few customers, talk to them. Ask them why they are using your product and how their life has become better because of you. More important, ask them how it was before your product. Ask them to explain in their own words the problems they faced and how you solved it. What problems does your product solve?
If possible ask if you can record the interview. If not, take copious notes. Make sure you note down whatever they say verbatim and not your understanding of their words. Never paraphrase.
Ask them how they searched for your product, more specifically what keywords they use in a search engine. This will help in using the right set of keywords in your landing page to improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Always ask for a testimonial. Try to get a few kinds of quotes from them. You can experiment with different quotes and see which converts better.
Don’t have Customers yet?
You don’t have customers yet? No problem. Go out and talk with your potential customers and leads. Try to listen to the choice of words they use. Sometimes, the way you as a creator/founder of the product might have a different viewpoint than the customer who is using it.
If you are building a consumer product/app, head out to a local coffee shop and interview people. Offer to buy them coffee in return for a 15-minute interview. Ask them about their current problem (related to the one your product is solving). Don’t pitch them or give them the solution yet. Remember, you are trying to understand your customer’s problems and the language they use. Don’t seed their mind with what you want to hear.
Meetups and Conferences
Another place to meet new people is to attend local meetups and conferences. Check out meetup.com to see what meetups happen in your city and attend them. Talk to the people there and talk with them. People attend meetups and conferences to network. Talk to them and ask about them and their problems. Ask how they are solving it today and how painful it is.
Facebook Groups
Check out if there is a Facebook group that has potential customers and people discussing the problems you are solving. See what topics that they are talking about and check how others respond to the posts in the comments section.
For example, let us say you are building a website to allow people to search for apartments/houses to rent. There are many groups on Facebook, split into cities which have rental information available. But one common complaint you would see is the spam on it. Anyone can post anything and there is very little moderation process. You will learn this only by reading each comment. Maybe your USP is the zero spam tolerance.
Another example: You want to start a website where people would resell movie/sporting event tickets. There are many Facebook groups which already do this and it is quite popular. But one fear users have with these groups are safety of their money. The buyer is sending money before seeing the ticket and there is no way to get back the money if the seller has cheated. Your service might talk about how you handle the money safely and securely. “You money will only be transferred after you verify your ticket is valid” is a much more powerful statement.
There is this saying, “If it exists, there probably a subreddit for it”. Go check out Reddit if your specific niche has a subreddit. Most popular subreddits might have memes or jokes. But there are some serious subreddits, which has a pretty good discussion. If the post has the [serious] tag, especially in the AskReddit sub, the discussions are high quality.
Check for topics that are in your niche. See what people talk about and identify common patterns. Redditors are pretty polarizing and it is a good thing. You understand their problems much better.
Similarly, check other online discussion forums and groups too for such conversations.
Amazon Book Reviews
If you are selling a product/service/website which already has numerous books written about it, be prepared for a gold mine of customer’s words about the niche.
Goto Amazon and search for books about your product. Check out the reviews and start reading through each one of them. Take notes of repeating patterns and use this in your copy.
It is important to read 5-star as well as 1-star reviews. 5-Star reviews show which words made the most impact on the readers, whereas the 1-star reviews show which parts of the book are bad and you can avoid those in your product.
For example, you want to sell a baking course. Just search for all kinds of baking/cooking books and start reading the reviews. Checking this one review about a cooking book, you can see that this particular user is particular about “having very nutritious food, but at the same time do not sacrifice on flavor” and care about animals and against animal cruelty. Also, photography of the recipes is very important.
Conclusion
Using these various techniques you can easily understand what kind of words your customers use. All you have to do is just reuse the same words in your copy. It might feel like cheating, but it is just market research and explaining your product in using the words your customers understand.
By using their own words to describe the solution to their problems, they would feel like you are a mind reader and would convert more. It would also help create the most loyal fans for your product.
What other sources do you use to learn about your customer’s language?