How to Be Charismatic in Your Copy
5 Steps to Attracting Clients with Customer-centric Copy
What do successful marketers have that lesser businesses lack?
Ability to attract.
The charisma that makes them irresistible to prospective clients and customers. It seems like some mysterious quality that either you have - or you don’t.
But that’s not the case. The reality, is quite simple.
Focus on meeting your customers needs and they will flock to you in their droves.
I’ll ask you another question:
How do you attract anyone in life - be it customers, friends or a romantic partner?
You be what they are looking for. You show them how life with you will be better than without. And you do this by persuading through their emotions, not rationally. At least not at first.
How do you stimulate those emotional juices so they flood with admiration for you and your service?
Focus on the audience directly
I have a friend who is naturally charismatic. When we first met and hung out down my local folk club, within an hour I joked that he was my ‘best pal.’
And he has become a dear friend in time, but I bet many others feel the same way about this person. Why? Because in conversation he always asks me about myself. He seems genuinely interested. And I’ve seen him do this with other people too.
By focusing his attention on his audience he makes them feel good. People like feeling good, funnily enough, so they will stick around a person that does this. Make your audience feel good and they will like you too, you gorgeous blog reader (Caveat: people will sniff out when you are disingenuous).
2. Be the solution
What are customers looking for? I’ve said it before (and this is also no secret - nor is it something I came up with) and I’ll say it again. They are looking for a solution to a problem. Which is why you have to know exactly how your product or service helps them.
This means your copy can’t just list a bunch of details about what your product is and does (features) you need to extract the benefits - the why it’s meaningful to them. Here’s a post that will tell you more on this.
3. Be specific
When you are too general, you attract no one. It’s in specifically directing your copy at the right audience that you get the results you want.
Did you ever hear the phrase ‘Something for everyone?’ Usually on posters advertising some overly commercial Christmas fair, trying to lure in the unsuspecting general public with vague promises of fun, shiny, happy times?
It often means loud, overpriced attractions and inedible junk food that the kids will merrily consume at the time but leave them with a tummy ache later.
When I hear ‘Something for Everyone!’ I think ‘Nothing for Me.’ And the same goes for your customers.
4. Address the ‘you.’
Your thought your website was all about you, right? Wrong!
What is the most powerful word in copy writing?
You.
Although you must clearly convey who you are and what you do in your website, in order to do that you focus on your customer. We call this being ‘customer centric.’
The first thing to do is have a look at your copy, and where you see a lot of ‘I’ or ‘we’ think about whether you could turn it around and say ‘you.’
5. Make your customer the protagonist.
If you think of your website as telling a story about your business, it must relate directly to your customer. Your customer is most interested in why you run the business, and what’s in it for them.
Each element of your website should address this ‘why.’ Even your ‘About’ page. Especially your ‘About’ page, because that’s your chance to show them how only you are the solution to their problem.
Here’s a final one that I thought I would add as I sit here against the clock, trying to get finished before my children get out of bed and we start another day in quarantine.
Build a rapport through sharing a piece of yourself
Copywriter Gary Halbert wrote a series of letters to his son while in prison which you can get as a book called ‘The Boron Letters.’ It is basically a copywriting manual. His writing is a very good example of how to build rapport through addressing the reader directly but he also weaves in his opinions and emotions. Hopes and fears. He offers a slice of himself, without being needy.
You can do this by offering insights to why you do what you do.
That’s it for today, I hear the pitter-patter of feet scampering towards the living room door. Time to get into Mummy mode.