Write about something your readers care about

(This originally appeared in my newsletter. Sign up now to get content like this, for free, every two weeks.)

One of the louder drums I'm always beating is that individual words don't really matter that much. If you're talking about something your reader doesn't care about, then it's not going to matter how beautifully-written your copy is. Conversely, if you are talking about something your reader cares about, that reader will be a lot more forgiving if your writing isn't 100% perfect.

One easy way to test whether you're talking about something your reader cares about is to ask "how did they get here."

Here's what I mean. Every piece of marketing material has some sort of pathway to get in front of its reader. Maybe a salesperson left a brochure behind at a meeting. Maybe the reader clicked a social media ad that led them to a landing page. Maybe you signed up for a newsletter ages ago, and are reading it right now.

If you ask yourself how someone ended up in front of your copy, you can start to make some pretty good guesses about what they care about - and what you should be talking about.

Sell the demo!

Here's a classic example from the SaaS (software as a service - sorry for the jargon) world. Lots of SaaS software marketing is all about pushing people towards signing up for a demo of the software. That gets them into a controllable environment where they can see the software in action, and starts a conversation with a sales person. Makes sense.

So the SaaS company's marketing team will run search and social media ads that talk about how valuable the software is, with a link to sign up for a demo. That link takes them to a landing page.

This is where the wheels come off the wagon.

The landing page also talks about how great the software is!

This doesn't really make sense. Anyone who has come to this page has done so because they're already sold on the value of the software; now they want to book a demo.

With that in mind, the landing page should focus on the demo. It should give details such as:

• How long the demo is

• What kind of information will be covered

• Why a demo is a better option than, say, browsing the company's website or Youtube page

You can still put information about the value of the company itself, but it should be prioritised underneath the stuff you've written about the demo.

(I wrote about this on Linkedin a couple weeks ago - there's some good discussion, so take a look and weigh in).

Put it to work

There's a bit more to it than asking "how did the reader get here." You should ask yourself questions like:

• What does this person already know?

• What action have they already taken?

• What do I want them to do next - and what information would they need to be persuaded to do that?

Take a look at some of your existing copy, and look at it through this lens. I think you'll be surprised at how many opportunities you find to improve things by thinking about how they got there.

Let me know how you get on.

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