Ask how your audience got here, the mighty nappy pail, consultant vs vendor
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Rise and grind folks. Welcome to another week. Let's get straight into it, no time to spare:
Tip: Ask how your audience got to your content. The answer tells you a lot about them.
Example: This banal nappy pail is my all-time favourite example of positioning.
Thought: On adding "solve a problem" (consultant) vs "fulfil a brief" (vendor) projects to my overall mix.
Tip: Ask how people got here
The very first question I ask before I write a single word of copy is "how do people get here?"
This question tells you a lot about who you're writing for - particularly their awareness and sophistication level.
For example:
Someone who gets to my page by searching "Sam Grover copywriter NZ" is probably quite keen to know more about me specifically.
Someone who gets there by searching "landing page copywriter" probably wants to hire someone to work on their landing pages, but doesn't have a specific person in mind.
And someone who searches "how to write a landing page" probably isn't ready to hire someone at all - they're just looking for information about the overall problem that I help solve.
All three of these audiences need very different messages. And some of them are less likely to convert than others (in my experience, the people who search "landing page copywriter" turn into actual business approximately 1/1000000 of the time).
This doesn't just apply to stuff on the web. Writing a brochure? Think about whether you're going to be putting it on a stand at a trade show, or having your sales team leave it behind after in-person demos. The two audiences in these situations have significant differences!
Have a think about this next time you're writing something. Pitching your copy to the right stage of awareness is not just half the battle, it's something like 80% of it. And asking how people got to your copy is going to help you figure out that stage of awareness.
Example: positioning turns a boring bucket into a mighty nappy pail
A few years ago, I saw a bucket for sale for $40 in a baby accessories store. For comparison purposes, a regular bucket from the hardware store costs $14. And a cleaned-out leftover paint bucket costs $0.
So $40 is a huge margin! And that margin all comes from one thing: positioning.
Take a look at how they've articulated their benefits:
All looks pretty good! Now let's compare those benefits to a regular old $14 bucket from Mitre 10:
See what's happening here? They are exactly the same. The nappy pail people have turned all these very standard bucket features into solutions to problems people using cloth nappies have.
The 18-litre capacity becomes a day's worth of nappies. The lid becomes a way to seal in odours. The fact that it's plastic turns it into a container that takes boiling water (spoiler: all plastic containers can do this).
This transforms it from a bucket, which has lots of different uses, to a specific tool to solve a specific problem. It's the natural choice if you're in the baby accessory store buying cloth nappies and other adjacent accessories.
Think about this nappy pail when you're articulating the value of your own product. If you can identify some niche use cases, then position your product around those, you may be able to cut your competitors out of the conversation entirely.
Also, once you start looking for this type of thing in the wild, it's hard to un-see it. Hit reply with any examples you come across.
(PS: you can watch a two-minute video version of this segment on Linkedin and Youtube. Leave a comment if you watch it on Linkedin - it's good for my reach).
Thought: vendor vs consultant
Lately, I've been taking on projects that add lots of value for my clients, and are also v satisfying for me: projects where clients come to me with a problem, and I help them put together a solution. This consultant-type work is distinct from vendor-type work where clients come to me with a specific project that they need taken care of - like a landing page or a website full of Lorem Ipsum.
Examples of this consultant-style work include:
Messaging and positioning for a SaaS company's product launch. Used customer research interviews + competitor research to help this company figure out their ideal customer for the new product, how to talk about it, and how to position it in terms of the competitors and alternatives.
A customer research exercise for a government organisation. Talked to a bunch of stakeholders and figured out how they use the content on the organisation's website - then delivered a report with recommendations on how the organisation can make their website do a better job of achieving its goals.
A "recipe" for a SaaS company's integration landing pages. Rather than just writing the pages for them (which would cost them an arm and a leg), I'm helping them develop a system to do this themselves, at scale.
Finally, the ever-present landing page reviews, which are one of my favourite project types
I'm really enjoying adding these to the mix - even though they're a lot harder. They're still a small portion of my overall project mix, but I'd like to increase the proportion over time (perhaps not to 100% - I still like copywriting, after all).
As with everything in my business, it's a perpetual work in progress - if you do have an individual project in mind, don't hesitate to get in touch because I still have to eat. But that's my general direction of travel, and it's what's on my mind at the moment, so I thought I'd share.
That's all for today. Hope you enjoyed. As always, hit reply and tell me your thoughts.
Sam
PS: I am now only taking on landing page reviews. $799 for an in-depth review of your landing page copy. Top 3-5 highest-impact, lowest effort changes you can make, followed by line-by-line analysis of your landing page. Buy one here.
PPS: If you like this newsletter, forward it on! Great for anyone interested in squeezing more value out of their marketing resources by optimising their copywriting, messaging and positioning.
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