No matter the marketing strategy you use,
your efforts will be wasted if you don't know
who you are speaking to in your copy.

Why?
you ask.

I want you to think of your website’s home page as being
your very own store window, which essentially it is.

Now, when someone lands on your website,
(if your store window is doing its job correctly)
it will get your ideal customer to stop in her tracks and fascinate.

What do I mean by fascinate?

Fascination is the neurobiological state of intense focus.
It is the essence of a truly phenomenal world-class brand.

The word comes from the ancient Latin word facinare.
It means to bewitch or hold captive so people are powerless to resist.

Your store window does not need to show us everything that's in-store,
but it needs to make 3 things clear, within seconds.

1) What you offer?
2) How it helps?
3) Who it helps?

Let's get imagining here,

You're walking down the high street on your way to pick the little ones up.

The boutique window catches your eye.

Oh look, you think to yourself,
they have new special occasion shawls for winter in stock.
And children's ones.

You need something for your triplets to wear to an upcoming event.
You're heading straight in.

But wait.
This is the web!

You're not dealing with mannequins and shawls here,
you’re dealing with copy.

Just like a store window,
the difference between someone landing on your site and saying…

“Wow, that's exactly what I need”

or saying

“don't know what this is, I'm moving on”
is all down to the copy you use in your marketing and how you phrase the copy.

 

The copy you use will make or break your online business.

So the magic question…

How do you write copy that resonates with your ideal client to make your home page
(and website) your best unpaid marketing machine?

Essentially, your ideal customer needs to know she is in the right place.

She needs to realise that this is just what she has been looking for!

It needs to be clear and speak directly to her.

 

Who is an Ideal Client Avatar?

An ideal client avatar (ICA) is a single person who would be the
perfect customer for your offering.

Someone who makes you say:
“OMG! if every customer was like this person, my business would flourish!”

 

The key to marketing and selling anything online.

The key that really unlocks the magic when it comes to creating a successful
online business is imagining talking to this one specific individual whilst
you're creating your website, writing your copy and marketing your offering.

This one step alone will dramatically transform your business.

It is the foundation of your website and is a chance
to set yourself apart from your competitors.

Now before we go on,

I can already hear you saying…

“But my business can serve all types of people”?

Now, I hear you,
but if you want your website & ultimately your business to be successful,
you cannot talk to everybody.

I cannot stress enough that if you’re talking to everybody on your website,
paradoxically, you're actually talking to nobody!

If you take any business course in the future,
this will be something they will get you to do.

Nothing I suggest to you is going to get you any less business,
it’s going to get you much more,
and that, I can promise you!

 

The riches are in the niches.

Let's say you were starting a “swimming class for all” in the pool at your local gym on Thursday evenings.

Do you know what Thursday will be in the pool?
Ghost town.

But, if you advertised a swim class for post-pregnancy women,
you would have a queue outside.

 

How to get inside your ideal clients head?

The most successful copywriters on the planet spend hours and hours
interviewing real customers from their target market because this is the
key to writing words that sell.

Think about it…
How else would you know what your target clients deepest pain points were, or their innermost frustration, or deepest desire and what they want most in the whole world?

I know, I know…

It's the thing people most hate in this world, going out of their comfort zone,
but it's outside of this comfort zone where the magic happens.

When I started my journey,
I decided to live by these words:

“You never change your life until you step out of your comfort zone, as change begins at the end of your comfort zone”
– Roy T Bennett

The secret to this is understanding what your ideal buyer dreams, frets,
and sweats about every day and in the middle of the night as it relates
to your business, so you can find the words that will make them say:
“How did you get in my head like that?” or “That's just how I feel inside!”

It’s also possible that your ideal client is an earlier version of yourself!
Especially if you’re a person who is selling something that you wish you
knew about years ago or something that you wish existed,
but it didn’t, and that was perhaps why you started your business.

Here are some example questions that you can tailor to your specific
service/offering and ask your ideal prospect:

1) What’s most frustrating or painful? What do you wish you could change or make different and why?
2) What does this [problem, frustration, issue] cost you in terms of lost time, money or aggravation?
3) What is the dream solution to this problem?

 

How to use this information in your copywriting.

For example, let’s say your business was selling skin cream.

A client is not interested in a pot of cream,
they are interested in the problems the cream will solve.

Here’s another example:
When a bank sells a mortgage, nobody wants a mortgage, right?
But many people want their own home!

They sell the feeling/outcome – not the product.

 

Beyond surface level.

Emotions matter, so when writing your copy,
help them get in touch with what these goals mean to them.

Let’s say you got a natural product that cures Acne.

Your ideal customer is a 25-year-old single woman who is constantly on social media.
She is extremely self-conscious but dreams of finding love.

She may think to herself, If I start that gym class,
people are going to see my skin and they’re probably going to think how awful it looks, so her surface pain is that she doesn’t feel comfortable to be seen make-up free.

But her deeper pain,
the source of her sleepless nights,
is some shame/embarrassment and frankly loneliness.

So this customer’s surface desire is to have pretty normal skin, right? we get that.
But her deeper desire is to feel beautiful/confident and to eventually find love?

So with that, let’s take a look at some sample text that would speak directly to this Ideal Customer Avatar:

“Say goodbye to embarrassing boils and hello to a confident, fresh-faced and sexy you!”

Now, you’re probably thinking to yourself…

“but if I have a natural remedy for acne –
I want to sell it to everyone who suffers from this skin condition”

And yes,
you will!.

But, appeal to your ideal customer first.
That is the secret here.

Not to say that you’re not going to attract a different type of person,
other than your ideal customer avatar because you will – they’ll buy too.

But if you’re trying to stand out as the go-to brand,
you’ve got to pick a single person to speak to,
and the others, I promise you, will follow!

“Bits of copy”

Your home page shouldn't have long pieces of text.
It should have small bits of copy.

The words that your ideal customer use (and how they phrase these words) are clues to the copy that will make your homepage convert visitors into customers 24/7.

For example
At 3am your client may wake up with thoughts like:
“Cant someone wave a magic wand and make this anxiety disappear!”

Might translate to:
THERE'S NO MAGIC WAND FOR ANXIETY,
WANT THE NEXT BEST THING?

Please always remember, none of what I mention is about
losing yourself or not injecting any of yourself into the copy.

But knowing who you’re talking to, seeing life from your prospects
perspective and showing them you care enough to understand who they are as
a human being on this deep emotional level is one major piece of the copy equation.

 

Another little tip for you to keep in mind.

You never want your visitor to finish reading a page on
your site and think “so what do I do next?”

You need to tell your readers exactly what you want them to do
by giving them the next step.

How?
By adding what is known as a call to action (CTA).

Calls to action are those little bits of copy that tell
the visitor what to do next.

The good news here, unlike in real life,
when people are online, they love being told clearly what to do.

The last thing you want to do is put all of this work into creating
some amazing copy and then you don’t guide them to take action,
because you will have just wasted your time.

While I know this might seem obvious,
you’d be surprised at how many people forget to include a call
to action within their copy and just leave their reader wondering:
“What the hell do I do next?”

A CTA is kind of like an anxiety tablet.

It’s gotta have clear instructions if it’s gonna work,
so this is the place to be super obvious.

Always remember by guiding the client to take action, you are benefiting them.

Real marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem, their problem.

 

What copy should you use on your call to action button?

Remember, your readers are always asking,
“What’s in this for me?”

So why not tell them in your call to action button copy.

For example, on an opt-in form, you might wanna use
“download your free guide” instead of “submit.”

Obviously, both are fine, but “download your free guide”
focuses on the benefit to the reader.

Ready to turn your website into your best (unpaid) marketing machine?

Download my FREE guide to see how to build out your homepage HERE.