I did this, we do that, I’m the bee’s knees’ at XYZ…
Take a step back, look at your own website, your own social media profiles and your latest advertising pieces. How many often are you talking about yourself?
I mean, you may well think that’s what you need to be doing when promoting your business and services. Your spending money on promoting yourself…so make it about you, right?
Take a minute and have a good look at printed adverts and online promo’s that do this and ask yourself – ‘who cares?’
Who cares?
Genuinely, who gives a flying f-bomb, if your business has been around for 100 years, or that you’ve invested tonnes of cash in super-duper machinery, or your team are trained to XYZ standard.
The average reader is only interested in how any of these things that are essentially just features of your business or service, actually impacts or interests them – their own lives, their business or their pocket.
Within the copywriting and marketing world, many of the top experts ensure every single statement published by their clients pass the ‘So What..?’ test.
They demand their clients are honest and brutal with every sentence published, asking them – ‘So what?’
So what…your business has been around for 100 years?
So what…you’ve invested heavily in machinery?
So what…your team are highly trained?
If your reader finds themselves saying ‘so what’ to a statement, you’ve lost them. Instead, try accompanying a statement (if it’s really needed) with a clear, tangible benefit to the reader.
So, the above features behind your business can easily turn into clear benefits which pass the ‘So what’ test…
Clear benefits
You can relax knowing that, with 100 years of expertise behind everything we do, your widget is in safe, capable hands.
Get your products produced faster and for less with us. Thanks to our investment in the latest, quickest and most efficient machinery in the industry.
Don’t let technical queries slow down your production. Solve your post-production questions immediately by calling our highly trained staff.
Most of the time, we couldn’t care less about you…especially if your advert / cold call / email is interrupting our day. We all only really care about ourselves, so keep it about US.
P.S. Weirdly, as I’m doing my own research on copywriters and competition across the UK, so many copywriters just talk about themselves vs. their client, or how they can solve the clients problems.
Baffling really, but if it works for them and they’re bringing in the clients they need – good for them.
Next up, more research – I’ve been reading loads into John Carlton and Dan Kennedy’s work. I really enjoy the more ‘Americanised’ direct response side of copywriting, so I’m hoping to be able to adopt it, and perhaps tone it down / hone it more to a UK audience for my own clients.