Ready for a harsh truth? No one (but for a very small minority of your potential customer base) cares how many bells and whistles your new product has. You may even find that the only people interested in tech specs are your competitors.
“My ice cream is cold, flavoursome, fruity and creamy. How wonderful am I and my ice cream? Maybe you could tweet your friends and tell them how fantastic I am?”
“Get lost”
What customers care about is how your product benefits them. What can it do for me? How does having 16 thingamabobs help me? What does an unparalleled level of widget reliability offer me? What can it do for me?
And if that makes your customer sound hugely self-centered, that’s because they are. They don’t care about your business, it’s heritage or your ethical standpoint on Taiwanese land snail entitlement to housing benefits. Not up front anyway. If you are trying to sell them something, they want to know what it does for them. Your copy has to be all about them and solving their issues.
One of the surest ways to lose your readers and customers is to talk about yourself. Just like that annoying guy at parties who only ever wants to talk about how wonderful he is at his job. No one cares. In fact they come to hate him for being so self-absorbed.
Next time you set yourself a copywriting task, have a read through the first draft. Is it all “me me me” or “you you you”?*
Focus your copywriting efforts on the customer’s needs and how you can meet them, or you are simply wasting your time and money. And you won’t sell anything either.
Need help telling your customers about the benefits of your products and services? Drop me a line to find out how my copywriting services could help make your marketing more customer-focused and more successful as a result.
* Even “we we we” won’t cut it. Sorry.
