For more than a decade and a half, marketing gurus have been extolling the virtues of content being king. Despite this, a staggering majority of business owners still treat copywriting as nothing more than a job to fill up the whites on the website. Truth is that copywriting can make or break your business. Right from the moment a customer reads about your business in either an advertisement or third party article till the time they hit the ‘buy’ button, they go through several pages of content that was written by a copywriter. You would not have a customer if any of these copies failed to do its job.
In one of his talks, John Paul Dejoria, the founder of Paul Mitchell Systems points out that if businesses move away from selling to building relationships, growing a business becomes easy. Called relationship selling, the technique focuses on building genuine and honest relationships with prospects who then turn into loyal customers. In the internet marketing world, copywriting is one of the most critical aspects of relationship selling. When businesses focus on building trust through content, copywriting becomes a vital channel to build customer loyalty. Here are some top ways to do it.
Generate Useful Original Content : In recent times, business owners have been placing increased focus on creating viral content over vital content. While the former strategy can bring about a lot of footfalls, the visits are fleeting and don’t often convert into customers. The harder alternative is to do unique research and build insightful content that will be useful to potential customers. For instance, a recent media statement by a credit repair company showed that their research report on bankruptcy in America generated nearly 150% more leads than advertising for the same budget. Customers don’t like to be led, but would prefer to have the facts for them to walk the path themselves.
Be Upfront About Costs And Features : A good way to build customer relationship is by not being sneaky. Does your product have a shipping fee? Include that up-front. Do you not offer accessories to your product like your competition does? Let the customer know. When a prospect realizes that you have been completely upfront about everything, they tend to trust your business more. This means, when they are caught in a dilemma between where to buy from, they will essentially veer towards your business because of trust. Running a business is not about making that first sale, but is all about making repeat orders. And that is only possible when the customer trusts your business.
Teach Customers To Solve Problems : Every business exists to solve a particular customer need or problem. Effectively, when customers buy from you, they are primarily solving a problem. Your copywriting must be geared towards solving this problem. By writing less about the virtues of your product and instead focusing on solving a problem, you help customers understand their problem better and trust your business for solving it.
The job of a copywriter is to build content that helps the business close sales. While it seems quite logical to sell the product through content, this is seldom the way sales happen. By being truthful, helpful and genuine, copywriting can help customer trust your business better and thereby build more relationships, and in turn, sales. What are your thoughts?
Anand, this is so refreshing to read. I’ve been talking about relationship-building since I started my business several years ago and I find it’s still a very unusual approach. Thanks for giving me some new elements to think about and for putting this important article out there for business leaders.