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Content is where marketing wins or loses
You can get your audience, message and channels right. If the copy on the website doesn’t work at the point of decision, the rest is wasted.
Most founders pay for a CMS and a designer, then write the copy themselves. That’s often why the site doesn’t convert as it should.
Here’s seven things worth testing your homepage against.
- Sound like a person, not a corporation.
- Be clear before you try to be clever.
- Know when to stop selling. Make the point and move on.
- Start with the questions your customer is asking, not the ones you wish they were.
- Sell the outcome, not the mechanism.
- Use stories. Real customers, real changes.
- Know a little psychology. Framing, social proof, scarcity — used honestly.
Number 4 is the one to focus on this week.
Drop the question your homepage should be answering in the comments.
Office Hours Thursday 10am to walk through yours.
https://meet.google.com/wwk-zdgj-ekeSandip
Colin Slade, Josephine Rowe and Lisa Henshaw7 Comments-
Yes to all of these!
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Cheers Lisa. I see copywriting is central to what you do. Which of these seven do you think most people trip up on? My money’s on 4 😊
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I agree with you on point 4 Sandip. It’s so easy to use jargon or waffle because you assume the person visiting knows what they are looking at. Number 5 is becoming higher on my objective too.
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@sharroneklo #5 is definitely up there – nobody cares about features or a back story, they just want to know you can solve a genuine problem they have!
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1 is always a conundrum –
A – do you sound like an individual and seem like a small and approachable (and more budget friendly perhaps?) business?
B – use “we” and risk sounding too big for other micro-one-person-businesses or being “found out”.It’s not an easy puzzle to solve – any thoughts @Sandip ?
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@stu This is something I’ve gone back and forth on since day one of stasrting my business! I’m a solopreneur who brings in specialists when the work needs it, so I could just as easily say “we”. For me it comes down to what you’re actually selling. I’m selling my skills and judgement. It’s my read on the problem, my perspective and, frankly, my personality that wins the trust, and it’s me on the hook for delivery even when I pull in help. So “I” is the honest fit.
If you’re selling something where prospects expect a team behind the face of the business, “we” earns its place and gives them the confidence they want in a vendor. But your option B is the real risk. Say “we”, get found out as a one-person shop, and it’s the gap between the claim and the reality that costs you, not the word itself.
The bigger question for me is whether we should be talking about ourselves this much at all. The site exists to answer one thing: will this solve my problem? I’m not sure that starts with “I” or “we”. It starts with “you”.1-
@Sandip Valid point, always about the customer in the end 🙂 but your points are very valid, I tend to do I/Me on my own website (it is my name after all) and we/us on our corporate/business sites.
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