My speciality is sales copy and this week’s episode is all about sales messaging and how to build the right message for the right audience.
I’m going to show you how the different audiences that we sell our products and services to may need to be treated slightly differently and I’ll be helping you figure out if you need to separate your messages for the different groups of people you serve.
The point of this podcast is to help you strengthen your messaging to make more sales and this episode in particular will enable you to:
- Work out for yourself if you need more than one sales message for your audience.
- Uncover what message you should be using to sell your product/ service.
- Understand why different people might require different communication strategies.
- Target the best audience for your product/ service (examples included).
- Avoid cluttered and unclear messages.
As ever, I have thrown in a few sketches to entertain you all. This time, using my love of wine, sausage rolls and pork pies as an example of my pain points (true story), I’ll show you how people are motivated to buy products for different reasons and to solve different problems.
After listening to this episode you’ll be able to determine whether you need separate sales messages to reach your audience and if so, what those messages need to say.
Please feel free to post any comments or queries below and remember, every Thursday at 4:00pm UK time, I’m going to be online for 30 minutes doing a Q & A session so if you have anything you’d like to ask me or if you’d like me to review your copy and do a copy critique, I’d love to see you then.
- Watch the first free lecture (28 mins): How to Sell When Your Confidence is Low
- Register for the Thursday 26th Q&A session
- Write with Influence course https://writewithinfluence.com/course/
Show Transcript:
Amy:
Welcome back to another episode of Write with Influence, the shortish podcast about writing better copy to make more sales in your business. Now, right now it is a bit of a difficult time for many businesses so, for the time being, I’m offering some free services that you might find useful. Let me give you a quick rundown of what’s what and then we’ll dive into today’s podcast.
First of all, starting this week, I’m going to run a weekly lecture series that is free with new sessions being released every Monday. They’ll probably be around 30 minutes long and right now if your business is quiet, it’s a great time to work on your marketing message and to make yourself visible. So I’m going to be sharing practical techniques for improving your marketing copy and your sales copy. Now, I do already have ideas for the individual sessions I’d like to run, but if there is something specific that you’d like to learn, let me know and if I can create a session for it, I will. The other thing that I would like to offer is, if you would like me to review your copy and do a copy critique in one of these sessions, it will be publicly shared but I am very, very gentle and very good with my feedback (this isn’t something to be feared), if you wanted to do that, if you wanted to give me a page of copy or have a look at your website and give you some tips to improve it, I’ll absolutely do that as well – just either put a message in the comments or email the show. So, the next thing is that every Thursday at 4:00pm UK time, I’m going to be online for 30 minutes with a sort of open-door policy for anyone who wants to drop by and ask me a question so you can login to the link and you can ask me anything about copywriting. I mean, my speciality is writing sales copy but you can ask me about being a copywriter or working from home or just say hi! I will be online at 4:00pm every Thursday and in the show notes, I’ll explain to you how you can find out more about that and register for a Q & A session.
OK, today’s episode is all about building different messages for different audiences and it’s important to pick the right message for the right audience. You know, we’re not 100% the same with everyone that we meet. We are very different with our close friends compared to how we are with our business associates and we have to make sure that we are presenting the right message and saying the right things to the right people that we meet and we may have different audiences that we can sell our products and sell our services to and they may need to be treated slightly differently. Now, I once had a particularly crappy boss, for example, who definitely had a different message for different people and this is not what I’m talking about. . .
[New Scene]
(Office Environment)
Boss: Amy, I’d like you to meet Sandra, she’s going to be joining the marketing team.
Amy: Oh, hello.
Sandra: Hi.
Boss: Sandra used to work at my local coffee shop, but I could tell the way she sprinkled that chocolate that she had so much more to offer. I gave her a job on the spot.
Amy: OK.
Boss: She’s 23.
Amy: Many happy returns!
Boss: Not today. I just like telling people she’s 23.
Amy: Right.
Boss: So, tell me Amy, what are your ideas for the new online adverts to promote our new welding range?
Amy: I thought we could encourage people to take an online quiz, erm, help identify, you know, some of the biggest challenges that they’re struggling with and then we can use those responses to showcase the new range of equipment that we have.
Boss: OK, OK, look, OK, let me tell you what’s going to happen if we do that.
Amy: OK.
Boss: People love quizzes. They’re going to fill out that quiz, then they’re going to share it with their friends, posting about it on Facebook, and you know, who’s on Facebook?
Amy: People?
Boss: Unhappy housewives who drink too much Chardonnay. Not our demographic, but suddenly we have 8,000 miserable housewives, probably in the midst of contemplating an affair, who are not our target market. . . they’re now coming to our site, they’re filling out the quiz all at the same time until our servers crash. That’s going to cost me thousands to get it fixed and I’m going to have to hire an engineer out of hours to now solve that problem. That’s what’s going to happen.
Amy: I think that situation is unlikely.
Boss: I promise you that will happen.
Amy: OK.
Boss: If I’m hearing you right, you’re saying that our entire online advertising strategy should be to burn down the site by creating a viral quiz for housewives. That’s what you’re saying.
Amy: I don’t think you’re hearing me right.
Boss: That’s what you just said. Unless I completely misunderstood you?
Amy: I think you erm. . .
Boss: Sandra, Sandra, if you were trying to attract a welder, what would you do?
Sandra: Wear that outfit from Flashdance then hang around a repair shop.
Boss: That’s erm, that would work Sandra but if you were trying to create an online advert, what do you think a welder would want to see, hey Sandra?
Sandra: A pug! Pugs are adorable and they work on anything – handbags, sweaters, I have a t-shirt that says ‘Pugs, not drugs’, it’s hilarious! Why don’t we put pictures of pugs on all your stuff and people would defo, defo buy them and then we make a cute little advert that shows people what we have with all the pugs on them?
Boss: I like it Sandra.
Amy: You are kidding me!
Boss: Don’t be so negative Amy. This is much better than your idea to destroy my business, which is what you basically told me to do before.
Amy: I really, really didn’t.
Boss: That’s what you said. Sandra, I love this idea and I think we need to iron out the details so do you have time to talk it over, over dinner?
Sandra: Sure.
[End]
Now that boss definitely used to have different messages for different employees based on, well, who he liked! But this isn’t about playing favourites when it comes to your audience, this is about figuring out if you serve different groups of people, do you need separate messages for them? And this, I would say pretty much crops up as a question in every workshop that I’ve done and with most clients that I’ve worked with, because we don’t usually serve one uniform person who is exactly the same throughout. So, let me give you an example, a few weeks ago, I was working with a coach who ran classes in person, teaching people who worked in marketing departments to be more efficient. When I asked about the target market for the class, this coach told me that sometimes it was individuals, freelance marketers who were perhaps in between jobs and looking to improve their skills to make them more employable. Sometimes it was people who were working in a company, but were choosing a class for themselves, but sometimes it could also be managers of a marketing department that were looking to improve the skills of an entire team. So, we had these two main levels of people there, we’ve got the practitioner, someone who wants to improve their individual skills, and we’ve got the management or the executive level, someone who wants to improve the efficiency of an entire department or a team that they manage. Now, I knew from talking to the coach that based on those two audiences, you would need different messages to be effective and I’ll explain in a minute or two how to work out for yourself when you need different sales messages because it’s not just about selling to different people with different backgrounds and experiences. Here’s another example that came up in a class that I was running – one company sold panic buttons for elderly relatives and they weren’t certain if they needed a separate message when selling to the person using it or to someone buying it for their mum, dad, grandma, grandfather etc. When we looked at this case, we worked out pretty quickly that the same message could be used. So, what is the difference? How do you know when you can use the same message for different people and when you need to build a separate message from scratch? Well, it boils down to pain points and motivation. If people have similar pain points, similar motivations to solve a problem, you can usually use the same message but if people have different pain points and different motivations, you will need to build a separate message and sometimes a completely separate copywriting profile.
Let me give you another example where people would buy a similar product for different motivations. My brother, my mum and I all have some way of monitoring our fitness activities. My brother wants something to monitor his time so he can improve when he’s running and hit his personal best. He’s a really good runner and he’s super-fast and he’s, you know, all about the time. So, he has one of those fancy watches that marks out where he’s run, how far etc – all the vital statistics that he needs. Now my mum wants something to measure how many steps in a day that she does and this isn’t for health reasons, she’s told us that it’s so she can prove to my dad that she is far more active than he is! So, she likes to show him on a daily basis how many steps she’s done. So she has a simple pedometer watch that clocks that. And me, like my brother, I love to run and I run regularly, but I don’t have the same motivation as he does, in fact, this would be my ideal fitness tracker:
[New Scene]
Saleswoman:
“OK, this is the latest fitness tracker. Now Amy, are you a runner who loves running or a runner who loves cake?”
Amy:
“Cake, definitely cake.”
Saleswoman:
“Then I think you’re going to love this setting here. . .as you run, it not only tracks your GPS to see how far you’ve gone, but it has neuro receptors that pick up on your brainwaves, so while you’re running, simply think of a food you’d like to eat and the tracker will tell you how far you need to go until you’ve burnt enough calories to eat that food.”
Amy:
“No way!”
Saleswoman:
“No, that’s not all, that’s not all. As soon as you have burned enough calories to earn that food, it syncs up to your grocery list and orders it for immediate delivery.”
Amy:
“That’s crazy!”
Saleswoman:
“Why not take it for a quick jog and try it out?”
Amy:
“OK.”
{Amy jogging}
Neuro Receptor:
“Hello Amy, I see that you are thinking of an apple.”
Amy:
“Oh.”
Neuro Receptor:
“I’m joking Amy. I know you’re thinking of wine – Chardonnay, right?”
Amy:
“Wow! Yeah, that’s right!”
Neuro Receptor:
“You would need to run approximately 20 minutes to earn a glass of wine. Shall we do that?”
Amy:
“Yes, let’s do it.”
Neuro Receptor:
“I’m getting your next food through – black pudding, is that correct?”
Amy:
“Uh, yeah, black pudding.”
Neuro Receptor:
“Now I’m seeing a pork pie.”
Amy:
Yes, pork pie, sausage roll. . .”
Neuro Receptor:
“Please slow down Amy, while I calculate it.”
Amy:
“OK, let’s go!”
{Amy back in the shop with the saleswoman}
Amy:
“That was amazing! How, how long was I gone for?”
Saleswoman:
“Seven hours.”
Amy:
“Oh, right. Erm, well, I best be off then.”
Saleswoman:
“You’re shopping? The tracker is registered to this address so it ordered everything here. You’re going to have quite a meal.”
Amy:
“I’d err, I’d invite you to share it but there’s really only enough for one.”
[End]
So, people are motivated to buy products for different reasons and to solve different problems. Now, let’s walk through the previous examples and inspect their pain points and motivations to see why one example would need two messages, while the other only needed one. For the marketing class and the practitioners who wanted to improve their marketing efficiency, their pain points were things like being overwhelmed by marketing deadlines, being under pressure to deliver a heck of a lot of marketing content, having to work amidst a lot of chaos and juggling separate marketing briefs and projects and not being able to really do their best work because they’re jumping around from project to project. They’re feeling rushed and so they felt like if they weren’t doing their best work, then they’re not really showing that they can be of great value to the company. So their motivations for taking the class were things like wanting to work with a lot less stress, wanting to have more time to be creative to do their best work and to be able to show results to department heads so that they were more confident that they would keep their jobs. But the manager had different pain points even though the class was exactly the same and benefited both of these groups, the motivations and pain points were different. So, a manager’s pain points were things like missing promotional deadlines for marketing campaigns, being under pressure to deliver for seasonal campaigns – those deadlines were really, really important and if they miss them, they could potentially miss out on a lot of revenue. Another frustration was being unable to show that their department was actually adding to the bottom line. So, when they were reporting to the level above or to stakeholders, it was difficult to communicate the value that the department was bringing as a whole. It was just difficult for them to get visibility into what work was being done where, but they didn’t share some of the pain points with the practitioners such as, they weren’t too bothered about the stress of doing the actual work or the stress of coming up with ideas for the content. They were more focused on how do I get this team to pull together and be more efficient and produce results that I can clearly communicate? So, their motivations were things like getting better results for their team, for the team as a whole and being able to produce bigger campaigns more frequently and being able to report higher up about the performance and results of their marketing efforts. And also, you know, knowing what marketing opportunities were worth investing in by understanding what has worked where and when. And because these motivations and pain points were different, if we wanted to build a really strong sales message, we would need to spend time speaking to those individual elements – you wouldn’t really want to have them all in one message otherwise it’s going to get very cluttered and unclear. Let’s think about the panic button – here, when we explore it further with this company, the pain points and motivations were pretty similar. So, the pain points, whether you were using a panic button or buying it for someone else, were things like, concerns around safety in case of an accident or feeling nervous and worried about being alone or waking up in the middle of the night needing something and not being able to get help. The motivations and the things that they wanted were a fast response to something that happened, something that was easy to use and wasn’t going to get in the way so people were more likely to use it and a response that was trustworthy, caring and secure. Whether it was a relative buying it for someone else or someone who was buying it for themselves, we could build the same message because the themes and the things that they were interested in were very, very similar.
Now, there are other nuances that may change the shape of your message, but these two key areas are the best way to gauge upfront and answer that question of do I need one or two messages? A follow up question that I tend to get is,
“Well, which sales message should I build? If I have two messages, which one should I focus on?”
You want to build a message for the person that you most want to reach as a business who is also most likely to buy. So, in the case of the marketing class when I was working with the coach, you know, it’d be awesome to target managers who would send in a whole team and then bang, that’s a huge chunk of money for this coach right there. But when we looked at the rest of the coach’s current marketing, it wasn’t geared up to close those sorts of deals or have those conversations with that level of executive. However, they were very good at filling a class of individuals so we decided that the sales message should market to the practitioner first.
Now you might be thinking, well, how do I know who is the best person for me to reach? Well, perhaps it’s some passing millionaire that loves your product but if you’re not set up to cater for that person in the rest of your marketing or sales conversations, it’s not going to work. Having said that, I would always encourage you to aim high. But yes, you want to be focusing on a message that reaches the people who would benefit your business, who are also the most likely to buy.
That’s all for today. Pretty simple but effective way of figuring out if you do in fact have different audiences and need different sales messages so you’re not going back and forth and getting bogged down in a profile and filling out halfway through before you realise that actually, you probably need two separate messages.
Keep believing and remember if you want your message to hit its mark, it’s got to be for the right audience.
[New Scene]
Character 1:
“Sorry I’m late. It took me awhile to find the right room. OK, let’s get started. Now, this is a sensitive subject and how we communicate it is going to be very, very important. So, does anyone have any ideas about how to approach it?”
Character 2:
“I say we come out in front of this story and we focus on the positives. Yes, he’s gone, but it, it doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s a bad thing. We can’t be surprised that this happened. The real question is why didn’t this happen a year ago? I think there would have been some sighs of relief if it had.”
Character 1:
“But he was fine a year ago.”
Character 2:
Not really. I mean, anyone who spent time with him knew that he was well, what the Americans would call a total smart ass.”
Character 1:
“He was the brightest ass we had.”
Character 2:
“I’ll be honest, a lot of people will be thrilled that he’s no longer here.”
Character 1:
“I always thought he brought a lot of joy.”
Character 2:
“Oh, people smiled around him but behind closed doors, not many kind things were said. The next one we get in is going to be 10 times better.”
Character 1:
“I don’t think we’ve even thought about a replacement.”
Character 2:
“That’s crazy! We can’t make an announcement if there’s no replacement, I mean, God just go through the phone book and pick someone out of a hat – you’d definitely do better than him!”
Character 1:
“It seems very cruel.”
Character 2:
“He deserved to go. He wasn’t pulling his weight and I don’t know about you, but I won’t miss his breath for a start . . . am I wrong?”
Character 1:
“The vet said that had cleared up months ago.”
Character 2:
“Why was he seeing a vet?”
Character 1:
“Because he was poorly.”
Character 2:
“Why didn’t he see a doctor?”
Character 1:
“Because he was a donkey.”
Character 2:
“That’s funny. Erm, are we not having a meeting to announce the replacement of the CEO?”
Character 1:
“No, we’re putting together a release to announce the death of our mascot Leonard, the rescue donkey we’ve had for 20 years.”
Character 2:
“Hmm, I might be in the wrong room.”
[End]
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