As with many people I talk to, writing for marketing is not very fun. It’s hard to know where to start, and feel like you’re unsure if you’re writing something that’s very effective.
Does it make sense? Will my audience be drawn to these words?
Whether it’s for a Facebook ad, a new targeted landing page on your website, or a Google search ad, your content marketing needs to be precise and well-thought out in order to not waste your time (and dollars).
Let’s walk through some of the common pitfalls you should avoid when writing for marketing so you can be more successful in reaching your target audience.
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1. Not knowing your audience
Creating any form of marketing is meant to reach somebody who is hopefully going to buy from you. Otherwise, what’s the point?
So before you even begin creating your content, you need to define who this ideal customer is. Ask yourself:
- How do they talk? (Professional, casual, fun, lingo, etc.)
- Why do they want to buy from my business?
- What pain points do they experience?
- How old are they?
- What are their hobbies?
All of these, and more, will help you narrow down the exact type of person that’s prone to buying from you. This will help you cater the content to speak to this ideal customer specifically.
If you don’t take the time to define this, your marketing will be too generalized and probably not very successful.
2. Forgetting about goals
So once you’ve gotten ideal client figured out, what do you want them to do? What’s the goal for your content marketing? Are you wanting them to buy a product? Capture their email address? Download an e-book?
Whatever that might be, you need to set a clear goal so that the action you set within your marketing is setup to lead them down that path.
So how do you do that? Use call-to-actions, or essentially a line or button of text that is asking the user to take action on something. Such as:
“Download Now”, “Get Access”, “Get Started Today”, “Help My Website Rank”.
These are all good calls-to-action that are directly telling the user to do something and they know what that button or text is going to do. An unclear call-to-action will cause user confusion, and therefore they’ll be hesitant to click it.
Without a goal, and a clear call-to-action, you’re basically setting yourself up to fail.
3. Use industry jargon
One of the biggest mistakes you can make in your content marketing is using too many words that your audience just won’t understand.
Sure, you as the professional know exactly what you’re talking about — but does your customer? More than likely, no.
For example, say you sell SEO services and are creating an ad with this copy:
“Get help with your website SEO: Keywords, metadata, backlinking and more!”
The average Joe is going to have no idea what “metadata” or “backlinking” or “keywords” are — let alone, what “SEO” stands for.
Instead, if you wrote something like this:
“We help get your website to appear higher on Google search results!”
This is far more clear, and the type of result that your ideal customer might be looking for.
So always remove your professional fancy jargon, think about your ideal customer, and write in more simple terms that they will understand.
4. Being too wordy
A detriment to a lot of content just being too “wordy.” With the attention span of many of us these days, nobody is going to stop and read multiple lines of copy.
Be clear, be concise, and always choose quality over quantity.
This can depend on a few things, though — if you’re writing a blog post as part of your marketing, then a longer, more thorough article might actually be the solution. This is because your customer might be looking to learn about a specific topic, and is led to this blog post through Google or some sort of search that they’re looking for.
However, if you’re putting together a Facebook or Google display ad, you want to be as concise and clear as possible. These types of ads are seen very quickly, so catching attention, and quickly stating your service/product/call-to-action is important.
Refer back to your ideal customer, what your goals are, and create some copy that will help achieve an end result that will trigger action.
Improve your content marketing today
I hope that these mistakes I’ve laid out above on what to avoid with your marketing helps point you down the right path to creating compelling, successful content.
Remember: think of your audience first and what they’re looking for, and what you can do to help lead them down a path that ends with YOU.
Avoiding the mistakes above, and following the tips and advice included, should help prevent the writers block you might have and draw in more customers.
