How well do you know your ideal customer?
Do you know how your product or service could genuinely improve their lives?
Because your prospects don’t just want or need your product. They have hopes and dreams for how it would make their lives easier and more enjoyable.
It’s these hopes and dreams that you have to target if you want your content to resonate with your ideal customer. If you want your copy to convert.
And that means you have to spend a bit of time finding out what matters most to them.
The emotions involved in a purchase
You might be thinking that “hopes and dreams” sounds a bit dramatic. But it really isn’t.
Imagine you’re looking to buy a new phone. Your current phone is a few years old and the battery life is getting worse by the day. It’s also become increasingly clear that your friends’ Instagram photos look a lot sharper than yours.
In this scenario would you just think about how you’d quite like a new phone? Or is there more to it than that?
There are normally a lot of emotions at play when you’re making a fairly significant purchase. You think about the peace of mind you’ll get from knowing you don’t have to carry a portable charger around with you all the time. You might smile as you imagine all the great shots you’ll be able to share on Instagram.
You think about how your life will improve with the new phone.
Writing that reflects your ideal customer's hopes and dreams
Good content taps into your prospect’s emotions.
Copy that’s designed to sell phones, for example, doesn’t just talk about the features of the phone. The focus is on how these features become benefits that can add value and colour to your everyday life.
Sure, somewhere the copy will have to cover the number of megapixels the camera has. But that won’t be front and centre because most of us don’t care too much about megapixels. Instead, you’ll see words such as colours, memories, powerful, and artistic.
These are the kinds of words that reflect your existing dream of being able to post more impressive, professional photos on your Instagram feed. So they resonate with you.
Sell the sizzle. Not the steak.
Become a mind reader
The first stage in reflecting your ideal customer’s hopes and dreams is knowing what they actually are.
You have to understand what motivates your prospects. What currently frustrates them? And how can your product eliminate that frustration and improve their life?
The goal is to be able to write copy that makes your ideal customer nod along to themselves and think “that’s it - that’s what I need.” To make them think you’ve read their mind somehow.
To be able to do this you need to speak to existing customers or prospects who fit their profile. You need to speak to stakeholders within your company - salespeople and customer service staff - to uncover insights from customer feedback that they’ve received. You can even read reviews of your product or products like it online and make notes of the kind of language used there.
Market research is a powerful tool if you want to write engaging content. Just assuming what your ideal customer’s hopes and dreams are isn’t enough.
The end result should be an ideal customer persona that you can refer to when you create your brand’s content. Something that helps you to check that what you’re writing is going to mirror their hopes and dreams.
I help brands to understand what matters to their ideal customer. Then I write content that uses emotion to convert.
Find out more about my services, here.