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In your business, do you have one clearly defined customer profile that you address?
Or do you find that you have an overall idea of people that you want to reach, with different specific profiles within that group?
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For example, let’s say you provide fitness training resources and services.
Your overall audience might be someone who is interested in fitness, health and well-being.
But if your web content or sales page copy simply says:
This is for you if you’re interested in fitness, health and well-being
It doesn’t really distinguish you from the competition, or make it clear exactly who you help. One of the challenges I see in organisations is making content specific enough to connect to an individual reader, while being broad enough so that it doesn’t exclude target buyers.
So here are a few tips to help:
Reach the individual by writing in groups
One of the reasons I see businesses struggle with the concept of the customer profile is the concern that if the content includes specific details about one type of person, it will exclude other readers that the business wants to reach.
This is how we can fall into the trap of writing more vague, but all encompassing terms that don’t exclude anyone, but don’t really identify with anyone either.
A simple technique you can use is to group your different segments together in your content, but highlight individual traits and characteristics.
Let’s continue using our example of the business offering fitness training and resources. Their audience might be:
Now, if you offer a number of different products, it might be that some are tailored for the different groups, but what about your health canada pharmacy homepage content? Or your about page content that acts as an overall introduction to what it is that you do?
In this case, you can group people the following ways:
How would they describe themselves?
Within your overall target audience, think about your different groups of people and ask how they would describe themselves.
Are they an individual? A small business? A larger organisation? Are they in a certain location? Or in a particular industry?
In our above example with the fitness training business we might have:
The products we offer are perfect for individuals and small businesses whilst our tailored 1:1 services are more suited to businesses with more than 50 employees.
Or you might have:
We work with individuals and small businesses in the South East London and Brighton area
Or perhaps:
We provide services for small to medium size businesses within the financial and insurance industries.
Think about your business, can you segment your audience based on:
If so, you already have a few ways you can write copy specific to your customer personas without alienating the different groups you help.
The results they want
Another way to distinguish segments within your overall group is to talk about the results they want to achieve.
This is a very common copywriting technique. You may have noticed it in sales pages where the writer presents a range of possible results, for example:
Whether you want to lose a couple of pounds ahead of your holiday, or transform your body shape…
Whether you want to earn a little extra spending money each month, or replace your full time income…
To use this technique in your business, think about some of the different results your audience groups want to achieve and list them in your content. Some words and phrases which can help you think about this include:
The problem they have
Another way you might segment your audience is by the problem them want to solve.
In the case of our fitness business example, we might want to talk a little bit about the different problems our audience groups might be facing.
For example:
Our intensive training sessions can help you if you’re worried about an upcoming sports competition. If you struggle with motivation for your day-to-day fitness, then our ongoing personal training services may be better suited for you.
Using these 3 ways to break down your audience into different groups lets you write strong content which lets you connect with a group of readers, without using vague or fluffy language.
Do you have multiple segments of people you’re trying to reach with your copy? How have you managed it? Do you find it a challenge to write to your different readers? Let me know about it below…
[…] Including testimonials is also a great way to illustrate the range of customers you work with. […]