From a reader:
“How does one determine what style & vocabulary to use when writing to one’s customers?”
To determine this…
Answer 2 questions:
(1) Who are the people in your audience?
(2) Who are you?
…and then also note this general principle:
(3) What you talk about – is much more important than how you talk about it.
So let’s go through those 3 things in order…
(1) Think about your audience. How do they talk – when talking with their friends? What do they talk about? What do they think about? What sorts of things do they find interesting? Funny? Inspiring? Infuriating? Answer these questions. And then try to talk how they talk – while ALSO lowering the “complexity bar” a couple notches. From how your market normally talks. Even in a market where people talk with very sophisticated language… you should strive to be simple. i.e. don’t use more words just to use more words. Keep sentences short. To the point.
Then…
(2) Think about YOU. Especially when you’re writing for *your own* products… doing *your own* marketing… in *your own* voice. It’s important that you bring YOUR personality into your writing. And don’t just try to say whatever you think your audience wants you to say… in exactly the way you think they’d want you to say it. That’s being a sellout. And it makes for bland copy. Personality-less copy. See what I just did there? I made up a word. “Personality-less.” Because that’s just how I speech. I make up words. And use words like “speech” as a verb. And it makes my copy more interesting. At least, in theory.
Write with the enthusiasm, or the calculated-ness, or the humour, or the bouncy-ness… that you normally talk with.
…and use your common sense. Maybe you’ll find yourself writing an Ad in a market that would hate and distrust your WILD ENTHUSIASM!!!… because they’re all data scientists who live by numbers, and run 15+ calculations before they make any decision. In which case, you should probably tone down your enthusiasm for that ad.
But finally…
(3) Worry more about what you talk about… and less about how you talk about it. I can’t stress this enough. Great copy is much more about nailing what you say. Getting the underlying ideas right. It’s not about using a few magical “trigger” words that push your readers’ buttons… and magically cast a spell on them so they buy your stuff.
It’s about doing the basics in a way that’s suited to your audience – the basics being:
Reminding your audience that they have a problem…
Promising a solution…
Proving that your solution works, and then…
Creating a killer offer. And asking for the sale.
Style can make a big difference in your copy (and with that in mind, refer to my first 2 points about writing with proper style).
But it won’t affect your bottom-line conversion rate nearly as much… as your execution of the fundamentals.
