You've got a great product or service. Now, how do you make buyers sit up and take
notice? How do you get them excited
about what you're offering? You have to
pull the trigger.
There is at least one trigger for every product or service
on the market today. Finding it is the
hard part. Once you determine what will
set your customers in motion, you've won half the battle. This was the case with
ExampleWebsite.com.
With a new site, the owner of ExampleWebsite.com (let’s call
him Jared) was unsure of what to do with the copy in order to connect with his
site visitors and cause them to take the action he wanted them to take. Not to
mention, Jared wanted to rank highly with the engines as well, so search engine
optimization (SEO) had to be taken into consideration, along with the selling
aspects of the copy.
The Problem
The only real problem was finding the right trigger. The original site had little to no usable
copy. That's not an insult; it's the
truth. Jared knew he needed help from a
professional copywriter, so he spent little time on the site content.
The Solution
To determine the most powerful trigger, I took a look at all
the segments of ExampleWebsite.com's audience.
It was broken down into three distinct types of customers. They were all interested in the most reliable
weather forecasts possible, but for three very different reasons.
One group was made up of meteorologists. Their obvious interest was in being able to
provide the most accurate forecasts to their viewers and listeners. A second group was compiled of weather risk
managers. It is the job of these
professionals to accurately assess weather for industries such as the stock
exchange, construction, transportation, national defence and more. The last group needed weather forecast
accuracy for personal reasons, usually as a hobby or for sports reasons
(coaches, etc.).
While the last group was primarily interested in the weather
as amateurs, the first two segments (meteorologists and weather-risk managers)
have a lot on the line when it comes to weather forecast accuracy. Their reputations and their jobs are on the
line.
And that's the trigger!
I put it right up front in the headline, which read:
ExampleWebsite.com
Because Your Reputation
Depends on Being Right About the Weather
The headline hit the nail on the head. It got the attention of weather
professionals, was of great interest to hobbyists and included part of one of
Jared's key phrases. The last word in
the headline (weather) tied into the first sentence of the copy and, thus,
created a key phrase.
Keep in mind that engines don't read spaces or line breaks
or punctuation within the copy, so having one word of a key phrase in the
headline and the remainder of the key phrase in the first sentence of the copy
is an excellent way to make the copy flow and keep in line with SEO protocol.
Now, the task would be to keep that same emotional twist and
energy throughout the copy. With the old
copy, Jared had no rankings with the engines for his chosen key phrases, so the
optimization of the copy needed to give him a presence.
The Rewrite
In the opening paragraph, I touted the praises of weather
professionals, letting them know their expertise was recognized and
appreciated. I also used one key phrase
twice and the second key phrase once. In addition, I used the individual word
"weather" and substituted "specialist" for "risk
manager" in some instances to add to the flow and give a well-rounded
environment for the spiders and bots.
Next, I provided a good overview of what ExampleWebsite.com
offered. Again, a key phrase was used in
the headline (because it worked for both the visitors and the engines, not
strictly for SEO purposes), and a key phrase was used in the paragraph.
Finally, the copy was broken out into segments that targeted
specific individuals. This gave them
precise information on what benefits ExampleWebsite.com offered them. Boxes for
meteorologists, weather risk managers and weather enthusiasts were created.
Within the copy for each block and again in the anchor text for links to
internal pages, key phrases were used where appropriate. These boxes lead each visitor to information
that was most relevant to him/her.
The Results
I always like to let the customer take over in this
section. Here's what Jared had to say
about the rewrite of his home-page copy.
"Traffic has steadily increased, and I've gotten a lot
of leads and my largest non-weather-company business customer from Internet
search. The rewrite helped me with more
than just the website. It helped me to
define my business goals and to articulate them in other marketing materials as
well." In addition, rankings
continue to rise with current positioning in the top five for one of his key
phrases.
Take the time to do a little research. Put yourself in your customers’ place. Uncover what's most important to them, and
you'll be rewarded with greater conversions in the long run.
Comments