Growing a Business
Copywriting tips for your small business
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When it comes to brand communications – whether it’s through a website, a mailer, a display advertisement or an Instagram Story – the visuals are only half the battle. The other equally important half is the copy. That’s why it’s important to brush up on the latest copywriting tips to ensure your advertisements portray a clear message.
When designing, you’ll need to think about the words you use alongside, below, or within your ad. This will help qualify what you’re saying and drive a message home to your target market.
Remember, a pretty picture doesn’t necessarily mean much unless it’s accompanied by some sort of copy for context.
For example, think about an image-heavy platform like Instagram. People often leverage their content with a written caption under each post. Pairing this with visual branding makes your message impactful – especially for folks who like to read copy to get more details. It may even give someone that final nudge to make a particular purchasing decision.
Successful ad content maximizes the power of both words and images.
It creates harmony to craft a targeted message that evokes a particular feeling. This tango between art and copy is the backbone of most traditional advertising. And a good team will often consist of a Copywriter and Art Director working in tandem to develop ideas.
Key copywriting tips to boost your content game
Now that we’ve established the importance of copy to your brand communications, it’s time to build up your copywriting skills. Here are 10 copywriting tips to help your ads resonate and most importantly sell.
1. Create a narrative arc
Like any good story, copy works best when there’s a narrative arc present. A newsletter, for example, should contain a beginning, middle and end. The same goes for a blog post or even a captivating Instagram caption. Think of the structure like this:
- Beginning: An introduction to guide your audience through
- Middle: Content that’s substantial, but not overwhelming
- End: A conclusion that ties everything together and leaves your audience feeling satisfied, inspired or wanting more.
Crafting your copy in this way helps paint a picture that can really hit home with the person reading it. Visual tools are constantly evolving and a properly crafted narrative can help you pull the customer along. Advancements likecarousels in Instagram can help encourage viewers to scroll to the next slide.
Similarly, you can produce video content with the same arc. Start by introducing the topic and drawing the reader in. Then, deliver your main message (or call to action) and end with something memorable or punchy.
2. Calls-to-action
At the end of the day, sales copy is only as good as the actions your customers take to engage with it. Your goal may be to sell something, but your message may need to be more subtle.
One way to do this is to create brand awareness.
For example, your copy should encourage your audience to do something at the end. Think of what you’d like to accomplish and consider the following questions:
- Is it to subscribe to your email database for future updates?
- Aiming to have them buy a product?
- How about getting them to browse your website?
- Should you ask them to give their opinion on your next product?
Whatever your goal is, it’s important to make their next step in the customer journey super obvious and super easy.
3. Keep your customer engaged
We’re in an attention-driven economy, where brands are constantly vying for consumers’ eyes, hearts and wallets. Any content you write needs to offer the consumer something in return. This could include:
- Information that’s helpful to their lives or something educational
- A highly unusual or thought-provoking post
- Something that’s extremely relevant to the time
- An entertaining post that’s funny or light-hearted
You could even consider a blend of the concepts above. Just make sure you’re not writing filler text for the sake of taking up space. You don’t want to broadcast irrelevant information to your potential customers.
Instead, focus on the engagement. Think about what you want to say and how you can say it in a way that keeps your customer’s time in mind. This will help encourage viewers to read your message and, hopefully, take action.
4. Know your target audience
If you know who you’re marketing to, you’ll be in a better position to make more sales. The key is to know your target audience’s pain points, needs, and desires.
To solve these, you’re going to need to do a little research. Find areas where you can help and offer them things like:
- Information
- Resources
- Price deals that’ll suit their budget
Combining graphics and copy helps build a strong line of communication between you and your audience. Take time working out who it is you’re talking to and the language they respond to. Examples of different languages styles could include:
- Formal
- Informal
- Chatty
- Businesslike
Remember, the approach you take should be relevant to your brand. You’ll want to take proactive measures to stay ahead of the game. You can do this by:
- Conducting marketing research (surveys or polls)
- Spending time where your customers are online
- Noting what they respond to and how they engage with the world
Make sure that what you’re saying resonates with them. That way they’ll be more likely to continue interacting and buying from you.
5. Headlines are crucial
The headline will be what draws your user in first and grabs their attention. It should spark interest in just a few words while giving your audience an accurate idea of what the rest of the content is about. This also applies to subheaders within your post (to a lesser extent) and should maintain consistency throughout the text.
In other words, they should be closely related. You can get creative here, but don’t get too obscure or abstract. If you do, make sure that your subheading is close by to qualify what your headline says. You can apply these concepts to copy you create for:
- Flyers
- In-store posters
- Banner ads
- Instagram posts
- Page on your website
Remember, the more strategic you are with headlines the better equipped you’ll be at capturing your audience’s attention.
6. Get your grammar right
Grammar may not be top of mind, but mistakes in your writing reflect badly on your brand. That’s not to say you can’t write informally on occasion. Sometimes jargon or slang can be effective in certain situations.
But it’s always important to remember the basics of sentence structure, punctuation and spelling.
Clean copy can show your customer’s that you’re credible and trustworthy. They often seek this reassurance before they part with their hard-earned dollars for your product or service.
Even if it’s on a subconscious level, good writing can go a long way. That’s why you should always double-check whether it’s “your” or “you’re”; “it’s” or “its.” Taking a minute or two to double-check these things can make all the difference between sounding professional, or sub-consciously sketchy.
7. Be specific
A vague approach is the enemy when it comes to sales copy. Now is not the time to be abstract. If you’re talking about a new offering, make sure to be specific about:
- What it is
- What its features are
- Why your customers should buy it
If you’re communicating about a sale or special offer, try to spell out the details rather than leave your customers guessing. The last thing you want to do is make them confused.
Instead, keep it simple and don’t over-complicate your writing when explaining things. Focus on shortening sentences in the active voice (see below) and use visual aids like lists and bullet points to make your message even clearer.
In turn, shaving an extra ten seconds off your copy helps keep your audience engaged – especially in the age of short attention spans.
8. Use the active rather than passive voice
As we mentioned above, sales copy is all about getting your customer to do something. That’s why a key copywriting tip is to write in the active voice rather than the passive whenever possible.
For example, “Buy two items today and get 15% off!” is far more powerful than “15% off every two items purchased.” It subconsciously etches an action into our minds, as opposed to a concept.
The act of buying something is a lot more vivid than the concept of something being on sale.
Although the difference is subtle, it’s an all-important tool in customer engagement — especially in those precious moments between consideration and purchase.
9. Sell the sizzle, not the steak
This is an old concept, but it’s worth repeating: When trying to sell something, emphasize its benefits over its features. Focus on the details that show how it makes your customers’ lives better, simpler, or more fun.
For example, let’s say you own a juice shop. Instead of listing the fruits and vegetables in your pressed juices, talk about how the vitamins and minerals from each ingredient can benefit someone’s health. You could even explain how it helps them detox or gives them more energy.
The same concept of benefit-boasting applies with services, too.
If you were to market a tax consultancy, for instance, you’d likely focus on how much stress you’d take away rather than your competitive rate. The prospect of not tearing your hair out or losing a week of sleep might be more compelling than saving $15.
10. Develop your brand’s personality
Just like your brand’s visual identity, your copy needs an identity too. Think of your copy style as a person and imagine how they would speak and what they would say. Ask yourself:
- Are they formal or informal?
- Young or old?
- Quirky or traditional?
It’s important to get your tone and style right, that way you can use it consistently throughout all your communications.
Remember your audience is probably interacting with your brand in more than one place, both online and offline.
The way you speak to them needs to remain consistent across all your touchpoints. It’d be weird to find a joke-cracking brand acting one way on Instagram and business-like on their website, right?
Final thoughts
While you may be tempted to judge a book by its cover, it’s ultimately the words on the inside that counts. The same goes for branding. If the words across your content don’t live up to your reader’s expectations, they probably won’t get to the final stage in the purchasing journey.
And while visuals are important, words are potentially even more powerful in retaining attention. They keep your customers engaged, help make strong calls to action, and direct your audience to do something.
By keeping these copywriting tips in mind, you can really stand out in a crowded marketplace. Crafting quality copy can make all the difference between generating casual views and acquiring loyal, repeat customers.
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The idea for sharing community management tips came to me about a year ago. That’s when I synced up with the GoDaddy Community team to host a webinar for small business owners. As hundreds of attendees rolled into the Zoom, I had a realization: “GoDaddy has a strong community.”
Behind every good brand and business, there’s a solid community of supporters, stakeholders, and sometimes, even haters.
But building a community and maintaining connections is one of the most misunderstood and least talked about topics within the small business world. For a business with fewer than five employees and a handful of customers, community building might seem like just another marketing tactic that is just out of reach.
To help small businesses build and manage an online community, I asked other business owners and marketers what community management tips they had for creating meaningful connections with customers.
14 community management tips to create meaningful customer connections
Given that creating and maintaining a strong community can help retain and attract customers, consider following these 14 community management tips:
- Be quick to address negative experiences
- Filter out spam
- Showcase success
- Send a postcard
- Get your customers involved in important decisions
- Bring Up topics that encourage engagement
- Provide talking points and engage with your community
- Engage regularly
- Be the face of your brand
- Choose a channel that works
- Create content that addresses customers’ specific needs
- Consider a brand ambassador program
- Reward loyalty
- Recognize the importance of inclusivity
Read on to learn more.
1. Be quick to address negative experiences
A bad customer experience can quickly escalate to a brand reputation crisis, and the company’s response must be fast to revert the situation.
Monitoring social channel mentions is an easy way to keep an eye on conversations surrounding your brand and detect potential concerns.
Once a customer posts a comment that threatens your brand reputation, listen, honestly apologize and be willing to solve the issue in the best possible way. Your unsatisfied customer will feel appreciated and perhaps even become a brand advocate.
-Rebeca Sena, GetSpace.digital
2. Filter out spam
The most important thing you should be doing in regards to community management is interacting with your community, and you cannot do that properly if you have to work through a bunch of spam. There are many programs out there, even some within the different social media sites, that can filter out spam in your comments and messages so you can focus on addressing your community. Plus, getting rid of the spam and moderating harmful comments creates a better space for your community to contact you through.
-Jacob Dayan, Community Tax
3. Showcase success
Develop case studies from your successful community members. This is a practical way of propagating the core values of your online community and encouraging new users to join your community.
The more these members contribute to the community, the more impact these case studies have. You can start by creating basic reports to identify the members who are actively contributing high-quality content, assisting other members, and elevating the community.
-Hasan Farahani, Yocale
4. Send a postcard
Many of my customers spend $15–$20K on medical care in Latin America. I send my customers handwritten postcards to remind them of their journey, thank them for their business, and to stay engaged while they recover from procedures like dental implants or plastic surgery.
The cost in time and money is very low, but a human touch in the healthcare space is increasingly rare.
-Wesley Jacobs, Apollo Medical Travel
5. Get your customers involved in important decisions
Taking the time to follow up with your most active customers and getting their insights on important decisions makes them feel like their opinions are truly valued and cared for.
In the long run, this forges a strong connection between you and your audience that relies on more than simply a transaction.
An added benefit of doing this is that you may even get some eye-opening suggestions and creative ideas that could end up benefiting your business.
-Harry Morton, Lower Street
6. Bring up topics that encourage engagement
Meaningful connections need to originate from a common source that offers a moment of relatability, which can further build brand trust. Social platforms offer numerous opportunities for these types of exchanges. When managing your social community, bring up topics that encourage engagement so you can connect on a level that goes beyond the basic company/customer relationship. In doing so, the consumer will feel more at ease to comment, ask questions and even provide more detailed feedback.
-Lindsay McCormick, Bite
7. Provide talking points and engage with your community
It’s important to recognize that community management is an ongoing responsibility. If you want to see your community thrive, you must create opportunities for customers to voice their opinion, communicate with other community members and provide you with feedback. Finding success is contingent on your ability to encourage participation from users, so you must provide talking points and give them plenty of avenues to stay involved.
If you leave your community dormant without your administrative oversight, engagement will start to dwindle as fewer users initiate conversations and take part.
Communities rarely function autonomously, so be sure to play an active role as you connect with and safeguard your community.
This gives you a chance to speak with your customers on a personal level, helping you learn about their likes, dislikes, objections and pain points directly—all of which are crucial in building meaningful connections with customers.
-Mike Grossman, GoodHire
8. Engage regularly
The best community management tip is to engage regularly and don’t neglect questions or threads you didn’t start—even better if they aren’t getting a lot of feedback. If you’re lucky enough to have the opportunity to regularly interact with your customers, make sure you’re commenting often and have a badge next to your name letting them know you’re a moderator or part of the company. That will really cement that feeling of connection and letting members feel heard. Plus, we’ve found that a community manager can really breathe life into a topic by offering input and pushing it to the front of that community for more engagement.
-Sylvia Kang, Mira
9. Be the face of your brand
Revealing the human side of your brand is without a shadow of a doubt an efficient strategy to boost your customers’ connection. It conveys transparency and accountability, building a stronger human bond. Consumers tend to trust people more than a company, and showcasing real people will make you and your brand easier to remember and trust.
-Chiara Sternardi, Passport-photo.online
10. Choose a channel that works
The best way to build an authentic community is to have everyone communicate using the same social media platform. Make that a crucial part of your strategy.
If it’s a professional audience that you’re going after, choose LinkedIn. If it’s a broader audience, use Facebook or Instagram. If it’s a young audience, try Snapchat or WhatsApp. If it’s a politically charged audience, maybe try Twitter.
YouTube is a great way to encourage people to watch videos that provide clear instructions on how a product or service works.
Users flock to YouTube for instructions on everything from how to change batteries on a device to playing scales on a guitar. The comment section can be useful for feedback purposes, and it also can be a way for customers to communicate with one another.
-Joel Jackson, Lifeforce
11. Create content that addresses customers’ specific needs
By creating audience and buyer personas based on different client categories, content marketers can create social content that speaks to people rather than just industries. Learn where your customers hang out online using your social media demographics. Then, narrow those results using audience research to help you define a specific audience and channel. You can then customize communications by researching the LinkedIn profiles of potential customers. Doing so will allow you to identify different stakeholders within the organization and determine their pain points. You can then create better content that addresses their challenges. But it’s all about finding an interesting angle for each segment.
Content that is too broad won’t result in authentic engagement with your followers.
Social media posts that offer helpful information are guaranteed to stand out in your clients’ feeds, resulting in more likes, shares and leads.
-Daniel Tejada, Straight Up Growth
12. Consider a brand ambassador program
A great way to create authentic connections with customers is with an acquisition and advocacy program like a brand ambassador program. For example, if a user can get five people to sign up for a service or product, they become an ambassador.
These brand ambassadors can help your business acquire new users. You can reward them with swag and access to special products or services … maybe even a special event!
-Jennifer Pieniazek, Resume Now
13. Reward loyalty
You can create meaningful connections by rewarding loyal customers to show how much you appreciate them. Just like any relationship, whether it’s personal or professional, people appreciate rewards. Show your customers that they matter and are top of mind in your decision-making. That’s how you create a stronger, more loyal customer base—one that will continue to pay attention for new initiatives and future rewards.
-Alyssa Berman-Waugh, Level Home, Inc.
14. Recognize the importance of inclusivity
To create meaningful connections with customers, recognize and accept diversities within your community. Each of your customers will differ in terms of their culture, orientation, ability and life experience. It’s imperative that you celebrate these differences and welcome input from individuals of all walks of life as you advocate for equity and inclusivity. This will develop your community’s reputation and attract diverse groups in greater numbers.
Communities that cater to just one group of people almost always become echo chambers, creating a suboptimal environment for connections to form and important discussions to take place.
By listening, asking questions, and welcoming input from diverse groups of individuals, you’ll cement your community as a welcoming place for diversity and insight to flourish.
In doing so, your ability to build a rapport and create meaningful, lasting connections with your customers will blossom.
-Patrick Casey, Felix
The community management tips used in this article were gathered using Terkel.
Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published.
Have you ever made a dining decision based on a review you saw on the internet? You may have picked a product because it seemed “more trustworthy” online. It’s also a deal breaker if it isn’t handled correctly.
Customers are more inclined to believe in your company if it presents itself well on the internet. Whether a startup or a large corporation, your online appearance and behaviour matter to your consumers if you own an offline or online company.
Why Should Your Business Go Online?
In addition to being available for your consumers, here are other reasons to consider your online presence.
It Improves Your Company’s Accessibility
When you don’t sell anything online, a solid online presence can help you make more money from the internet if you aren’t engaged on social media.
Before making a purchase, most consumers do internet research to learn more about the company and the goods. Being at the right place at the right time is simply good business.
It Takes Care of Your Marketing and Branding
An internet presence provides a steady supply of customers for your company. Customer feedback and social media participation may help boost purchases. It’s easier for consumers to identify your online presence with a website or social media account.
It May Boosts Your Company’s Credibility
Having an online presence is essential for your organisation to be taken seriously. A startup might have difficulty being accepted as a legitimate organisation in its early stages. It’s essential to have a strong internet presence before people take you seriously. It’s easier to get quick loans at gdayloans.com.au to expand your company.
It Aids in the Comprehension of Your Target Market
When you have an online presence, you can engage with your audience in a two-way conversation to get valuable feedback or evaluations. In addition, it helps you learn more about your prospective consumers and the things they’re looking for. If a restaurant uses polls on its Facebook page, it may determine which specials and goods are most popular with its patrons.
How Can You Evaluate and Enhance Your Company’s Web Presence?
Analysing your online reputation simply means monitoring what others say about you online. Then you make it work for you.
You can monitor and enhance your company’s online appearance by following these three steps.:
Monitor Mentions of Your Business
Monitoring your company’s internet mentions can help you track what’s being said about you and mitigate unfavourable publicity. This can also help you identify communication gaps.
Google Alerts can help you track online references of your company. Set up notifications for your business/product name and relevant keywords, and you’ll be alerted promptly whenever you’re mentioned anyplace online.
Analyse Your Website Traffic
The source of your traffic (and how much) might assist you in evaluating your internet presence. It may be necessary to expand your internet activities beyond your website. For example, low social media traffic might imply a poor social presence.
Tracking your website’s traffic with Google Analytics might reveal secret traffic sources that your Google search may have overlooked. It will also help you find unnoticed remarks or backlinks.
Assess Your Social Media Engagement
Your social media presence affects your online reputation as well. Active consumers on your social media platforms help build trust and confidence.
Consider checking a company’s and a competitor’s Facebook accounts. You may observe that one firm interacts with clients while the other has a few likes but no comments. Which do you prefer?
Bottom Line
An active social media presence gives the impression of reliability while also conveying a sense of humanity and authenticity. Your audience will be more engaged as your social media presence improves.
To keep up with your target audience, you need to be one step ahead of them online. The first step is to become well-versed in everything your consumers discover about your company through the internet. Your internet presence must be understood, monitored, and improved to reach this goal.
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