DAY #1: EXAMINE YOUR AUDIENCE AND YOUR CORE OFFER
Understanding your audience and speaking to their core desires is more important than your copy or your design. If you’re not making the right promises, it really doesn’t matter how well you say it or how well the page is laid out. In order for your message to really land and make an impact, it needs to fully match what your audience really wants.
Finding the “Message to Market” Match
Your message should match the deepest desires of your market. It should speak to the thing they really want or care about; the thing that keeps them up at night. It should speak to them not just factually, but emotionally as well.
For example, let’s look at the weight loss market. On the surface, the message might be something like “lose 10 kgs.” But on a deeper level, what the market really wants is to feel attractive. They want to fit in, or even to be envied by others. Or, perhaps they feel like they’re not “good enough” the way they are and want to finally meet society’s expectations.
Often you can’t directly promise these benefits. Instead, you have to “hint” at them. Nonetheless, it’s essential that you know what really drives your market.
The Forehead Slap Test
A good litmus test for whether or not you’ve got your audience down right is to see if you pass the “forehead slap test.”
What is the test? Let’s say someone in your target market is asleep. It’s 2am. They suddenly wake up, slap their forehead and mutter a sentence to themselves. What is this sentence? In other words, what’s the one thing that would wake them up at night?
For instance, nobody would wake up in the middle of the night and say “I wish I knew how to eat healthier.” But it’s quite likely that someone would wake up in the middle of the night and say “I wish I was sexy again.”
Matching Your Core Offer
Your core offer should have a promise that makes your core audience salivate. Your core offer should promise to solve your audience’s biggest problem. If someone in your audience could just snap their fingers and change one thing about their lives, what would that thing be? That’s what your core offer should address.
Do a Customer Survey
Many business owners make the mistake of assuming they know what their market wants, without actually talking to their market. Business owners who survey their customers invariably find that they learn important lessons. These lessons often help them improve their products or their marketing.
Doing a survey is easy. You can either send it out in an email blast, or add it in your initial autoresponder. Use the survey to figure out your market’s pain points, as well as the language that they themselves use to describe their problems. This language can be invaluable when you’re writing “selling the problem” copy.
Once you have a good handle on your market’s core desires to your core offer, then it’s time to start working on more nuanced copy and web design elements. Tomorrow we’ll be talking all about the call to action, so stay tuned!
Your Assignment
- Determine what it is that motivates your audience
- Check your value proposition to determine the value of the features, benefits and so forth you offer
- Re-write your key messaging statements
- Create an elevator pitch for your business
Additional Assignment
- In order to measure and track changes its important to have a way to do that.
- Make sure that you have Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools setup for your site today if you don’t already. You’ll be needing them further on in this course.
Coming Up
Day #2: Optimizing Your Call to Actions
Day #3: Improve Your Lead Forms and Increase Signups
Day #4: Your Headline – Your Page’s Most Important Sentence
Day #5: Keep Attention With Strong Transitions
Day #6: Web Design Tips for Better Conversions
Day #7: Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment by Improving Your Checkout
Day #8: Boost Conversions by Managing Expectation and Relevance
Day #9: Master the Art of Creating Urgency
Day #10: Use Video to Boost Trust and Conversions
Day #11: Add Social Proof to Your Sales Process
Day #12: Accessibility Makes You Real (and Improves Sales)
Day #13: Tailoring Your Guarantee and Return Policy
Day #14: Getting Started With A/B Split Testing
Day #15: More Ideas for Better Conversions