You’re probably not a multibillion-dollar company that has the luxury to focus more on branding than marketing. As such, your sales copy is of critical importance. Good copywriting can sell rocks, but bad copywriting can’t sell free gold. The quality of your copy has a direct impact on whether you sell nothing or whether you can’t keep up with demand from your frantic and loving customers.

Common mistakes that will kill your conversion rates

Even when people understand this, there are several common pitfalls that even “professional copywriters” fall into. Whether you’re writing the copy yourself or approving someone else’s work, I’d like to share with you several of the most common copywriting mistakes that will hamstring your conversions and stifle your growth.

1. Targeting the wrong audience

The first mistake on our list is fairly fundamental, and there’s not much to be said about it. It’s a common mistake, but one that’s relatively easy to remedy. Even if you’ve got the most perfect copy in the world with the greatest marketing and sales teams in the world, if you’re targeting the wrong people, you may not sell a thing. A preliminary to fixing your sales copy is to make sure that you have a very clear understanding of who your perfect prospect is. 

Literally, imagine them in your mind. You can even create a profile on paper of your perfect prospect so that they become real enough to imagine a conversation with them. There are two aspects you need to consider: 

Your prospect’s demographic 

A description of their state in life. You need to know their age, race, gender, occupation, income, family status, etc.

Your prospect’s psychographics

A description of what motivates them to action. You need to know their hopes, dreams, aspirations, fears, doubts, and problems… Namely the problem that your product or service solves; the itch that you scratch.

Invest in the necessary tools

There are many tools at your disposal to make this happen. You can use Google Analytics, data brokers, ad networks, advertising plugins on your website, and of course, good old-fashioned surveys. Use any or all of these to get all of the relevant information about your prospect so you can better serve them.

This is where a certain prowess with your CRM is indispensable. If you don’t have a customer relationship manager, get one, and if it’s not being used to its full potential, you’re pouring money down the drain. Your customers are the lifeblood of your company. If you don’t have the manpower or budget for the #1 CRM on the market, there are several powerful and affordable alternative CRMs better suited for smaller businesses.

Know what makes your customers tick and you can compel them to do anything.

2. Neglecting your copy

In copywriting, there is always room for improvement. You’re never really done perfecting quality copy. To continually improve and achieve better results, you need to keep testing, editing, practicing, and trying new things. Unfortunately, you can’t do that if you fall into these two issues. 

Outsourcing to save money

How much is it worth to save pennies on your sales copy if you lose even one sale because it’s somehow deficient? Five sales? Ten? A hundred…? It’s hard to estimate lost opportunity cost until you have good copy to test against, but if you never invest in a good copy, the world may never know. As mentioned above, your copy must be uniquely tailored to a very specific prospect that you have in mind. You can picture them and imagine a conversation with them, you’re their best friend and you understand them. 

An outsourced talent doesn’t have that. He may be able to throw something together based on your descriptions, and if he’s good, he’ll craft copy that may influence your customer. But using cheap labor to communicate your message to prospects is at best dubious.

Quantity over quality

The objective of your copy is very specific. The bare bones of sales copy are minimal and direct, the principles are few but very powerful. That’s not to say that all copy needs to be short, in fact, some of the highest-grossing sales copy is over 10 printed pages long. However, if it’s between 10 pages of mediocre copy and half a page of good copy, the half-page will win every time.

Not because it’s short, but because the essentials are there. The most essential quality of your copy must be clarity. Not wittiness, not “punchiness”, clarity. The moment your prospect finds your copy confusing or irrelevant, he’ll be gone without a trace. If your copy is going to be one thing, it must be clear and simple. The rest is just details.

3. Talking about the wrong things

Talking about the wrong things is still possible even if you know your target audience. Here are some examples. 

Vanity copy

An easy trap to fall into when trying to influence your prospects is to start making everything about you. As if the buying decision was based on the person who’s selling and not the one who’s buying. Details like “we make everything in-house”, “we are nationally acclaimed”, “we take our job seriously” are nearly irrelevant to the buying decision a prospect makes when deciding who to patronize with his business.

Unless it’s for ideological reasons, your prospect doesn’t care about who you are as much as what you do for them. It’s simply a reality that humans are selfish little creatures, everything is seen through the lens of, “how will this benefit me?” If you spend your time trying to convince your prospect to choose you because of how great your company is, they’ll buy from the first of your competition that focuses on the customer, not themselves.

Product exposition instead of prospect conversion

This is perhaps the most common mistake of the lot. It’s not as blatant as vanity copy but still woefully misses the mark of high conversion copy. If your sales copy is geared toward telling your prospect about your product, you’ve fallen into this mistake.

Your prospect only cares a little bit more about your product than they do about you, but it’s still not #1 on their mind. This is often referred to as “features without benefits.” Your copy cannot discuss your product separate from its impact on your prospects’ life. Your prospect doesn’t care about the features of your widget except insofar as it will make his life better.

Your sales copy cannot be show-and-tell, it must be go-and-sell.

Too much and too little

If your copy is irrelevant, it doesn’t matter how short it is, you’ll lose. If your copy is relevant, it doesn’t matter how long it is, you’ll win. It’s simply a fact, people will read if they’re interested and they’ll dump you the second you lose their interest. 

There are two principles at play here:

Less is more

This is a general principle. If the thought could be expressed in four words instead of 10, go with the four. Oftentimes, condensing copy naturally results in having to choose more powerful and meaningful words which can only help your messaging.

The more you tell, the more you sell 

This principle governs specifically customer-centric copy. If you’re able to craft a story around your prospect targeting his hopes, dreams, fears, and doubts, etc, the more you can tell him, the more you will sell him. In essence, the more you can show how his life will be improved, the more he’ll want to consider what you offer.

4. Speaking the wrong language

We’re not talking about foreign languages here. Rather, focusing on your brand’s personality in your copy is vital. It should reflect your business and the expectations of your customers. Here are some issues that can cause you to “speak the wrong language”.

Devoid of humanity

Because so much of the sales process is now handled by apps, software, AI, or a faceless bureaucracy, many people forget that buying and selling is a deeply human interaction that, at the end of the day, is based upon the decision of individuals. When this fact is overlooked all of a sudden buying and selling ceases to be human and becomes impersonal, amorphous, and distant.

This can easily result in copy that poorly expresses your company to your prospect and fails to adequately represent your prospect to your marketing and sales teams. In the former example, it would be difficult for your prospects to justify buying from you if any of your competitors had a more human individualized expression. In the latter, it would be impossible to have a sufficiently detailed profile of your ideal prospect, you would certainly be losing money because of a lack of precision in your target marketing.

The best way to avoid this is to continually return to the basics. Whenever you’re writing an ad, a landing page, or an email campaign, remember that an individual is going to read it and they want to feel like an individual has written to them, not a vague large corporation. When you write, imagine that you’re sitting across from someone having a conversation with them. They express the problem that you solve and it’s your job to be their new best friend and explain how you can help them improve their life.

Too technical/shop talk

Another failure in language style is if the copy is more technical than it needs to be. Unless you’re an IT company selling to other IT experts, filling up space with technical details is often a waste and leaves the reader feeling confused and overwhelmed.

When it comes to technical language, unless you’re in a highly specialized niche, it’s best to follow the rule of thumb “ less is more”. Even the more universal jargon of advertising and marketing that we are all familiar with should be kept to a minimum unless your prospect is an expert in the field.

Part of the challenge and thrill of copywriting is taking complex ideas and terminology and boiling it down to the best possible expression for the prospect. It’s true that tasteful use of select jargon can indicate knowledge and credibility, but depending on your prospect, it can also come off as off-putting, or at the very least, confusing. Employ it at your own peril.

Selling apologetically

This final mistake is most common near the end of the sales process, failing to close the deal. This is sometimes called “selling from the heels”. In an effort not to hard-sell the prospect, there’s a lack of precision and of powerful and clear calls to action. Instead of saying, “here’s how this product will make your life better and here’s how to get it”, the salesman says “here’s our product, if you like it you can buy it. But you really don’t have to if you don’t want to.” 

If you truly believe that your product or service is something worth buying, you would be doing your prospect a disservice by not trying everything to help him get ahold of it. If your product or service will make his life better and you deprive him of that through poor salesmanship, then your competitor deserves his business more than you do.

There are three things to remember that will help you close a deal:

Shoulder all of the risk 

Remove all of the burdens from your prospect so that only a crazy man would refuse the offer.

Create urgency 

Offer a limited-time opportunity that will add value to your prospect’s life on top of what you’re already offering him. Throw in the kitchen sink if you have to, at this point in the selling process, the prospect is barely holding back, he just needs the last reassurance to make the move. 

Provide a fool-proof call to action 

Provide a simple, clear, and powerful call to action that will make the buying process fast and painless. (Don’t forget the opportunity for upselling…)

Nailing copy takes time and testing

Sales copy is an art, but there are certain aspects of it that are a science. Buying and selling are deeply rooted in human psychology. Having a firm grasp on the psychological elements of salesmanship allows you to craft a message whose principles are foolproof and timeless. Products and services may come and go. Old markets will disappear and new ones will be born. However, the principles of salesmanship will continue as long as human beings exist and exchange one good for another.

The next step is to avoid the most common errors that plague the vast majority of sales copy in existence. In doing so, you will instantly set yourself apart and open opportunities for enormous growth and success. Go out there and sell.

COVID-19 has made sure that everyone is engaging with social media. People from all walks of life have hopped on board, whether it’s to stay up to date on current news or merely as a way to kill boredom during the lockdown. And with 70% of the U.S. population owning at least one social media profile, business owners know that this is a good time as any to build relationships with consumers and boost brand awareness.

Moreover, there is an undeniable power in numbers. With a whopping 3.8 billion social media users around the world, you know there is a considerable potential behind social media marketing (SMM). Unfortunately, merely throwing a few things together and hoping that your social media profile will magically connect with your customers is asking far too much.

People are pickier than ever. They won’t settle for anything but the best. And if you want to get ahead of the competition, you’ll have to do more than you already are.

So are you ready to discover some great ways to market your brand on social media effectively?

Let’s dive right in.

1. Write a plan

The world of digital marketing continues to develop and grow. And there are multiple aspects that you need to take care of; social media is just one of them. Akin to all aspects of life, you need a well thought out marketing plan in order to be successful. And social media marketing is no different. By doing so, you will have covered an essential part of digital marketing. 

You’ve probably already read this piece of advice a dozen times, but I’ll repeat it. You need to start by writing down your plans. Whether it’s on paper or your laptop, stating your goals and objectives can make them feel relatable and realistic. 

So make sure that you cover the main points, which may include the following:

What do you want to achieve by being on social media? 

A list of objectives can keep you on track. Knowing what you want to achieve can help align your team members’ efforts.

Who is the target audience?

You need a clear understanding of who you want to reach. If you aim to target everyone, your message won’t reach anyone.

Which platforms do you intend to use?

The list of social media platforms is lengthy. Knowing where your customers are and identifying a budget helps make it easier to choose how many social media accounts are actually beneficial for the brand.

What content do you plan on sharing?

There’s a variety of content you can use, including blogs, videos, images, memes, GIFs, infographics, webinars, and podcasts. What do your consumers prefer? What can be effectively promoted on your selected social media platform? 

When are you going to share?

There is no one-size-fits-all solution. The best time to post depends significantly on your audience. Studying the behavior patterns of your target audience can help you devise a posting schedule that has the most engagement.

How are your competitors driving engagement?

From keyword research to competitor analysis, you need to be on top of your game 100%. Being aware of what’s going on in the industry and keeping track of current trends can get you ahead of the competition. 

As always it’s best to start this process by creating or reviewing your business plan to help determine what works for your business. For an in-depth guide on how to leverage your business plan, check out this guide on Lean Planning.

2. Create high-quality content

This is one of my favorite topics. What you post on social media creates an image of your brand. And we all know that bold, eye-catching visuals define the world of social media. So depending upon the platform, you intend to use, create content that attracts and engages your target audience. Therefore, posts must be:

• Relevant 
• Valuable
• Unique
• Shareable across multiple platforms

But one of the crucial aspects of your content, no matter which types you create, should be to build a consistent visual brand image across all networks. To help you achieve this, consider the following points:

• Ensure you use colors and fonts in your images, graphics, and videos that reflect on your brand.

• Logos, banners, bios, social handles, etc. should be consistent on all channels.
• Post regularly.
• The content should align with audience preferences as well as your brand.

The key to creating exceptional content, however, comes from knowing how to use different social media platforms for marketing. Honing in on the unique features that each platform has to offer can make your campaign that much more effective.

3. Establish and measure KPIs

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This law holds true for SMM as well. The only way to identify whether your campaign is bringing in positive results is by monitoring and analyzing the right metrics. With accurate insights, you can refine your strategy and target the audience better.

But because each social network has a different audience demographics, brands need to identify the right KPIs. Once again, the metrics you choose will depend on what your business and social media goals are.

There are thousands of daily interactions across social media platforms. But in order to develop a relationship with consumers, increase brand awareness, and improve ROI, you will need to be active and responsive. Keeping track of key metrics such as shares, impressions, CTRs, conversion rates, traffic from social channels, etc. will allow you to get the most out of your social media marketing campaign. 

It takes time to develop a strong presence on social media. Even renowned brands like Nike are where they are today because of consistently being aware of their audience. Implementing the right strategies will help you improve your brand online.

Final thoughts

This may seem like a basic plan, but it’s often the simplest things in life that have the greatest impact. So if you want viewers to latch onto your brand, working on the essentials is the perfect way to build a strong base for future growth.

Sometimes, even with extensive planning, things don’t go as we want to. But that’s okay because it is from these very mistakes that we learn the most. All you need to do is take a step back and evaluate the situation. Assess and adjust your current strategy and dive back in. Giving up on your brand is not an option.  

Ready to give your social media your best shot?

At Skylift, we helped firefighters cut half the time in extinguishing wildfires. We did this by enabling them to focus all their attention on extinguishing the fires and letting us handle the short-range logistics. As a result, we helped save millions of dollars in economic loss and firefighting costs for the nation.

You’ll notice I don’t have to tell you about our product for you to understand the impact it has on the world. I don’t have to tell you the inner workings of our technology or that it’s patented. 

Instead, what you read is how to communicate product-market fit.

What is product-market fit?

Product-market fit describes how well your business’s product and your target market’s demand for your solution are aligned. Sometimes achieving product-market fit requires you to change how you talk about, or brand, your product. Sometimes it’s about shifting to hone in on marketing to the specific segment of the total addressable market (TAM) that is your ideal target market. 

We ended up receiving a $5m term sheet from investors, dozens of government customers from all across the western United States, and several offers to acquire us for 10x the initial investment.

Getting there was a struggle. My investor meetings would be long and scattered because my business’s mission was. I’d hear feedback on my pitch presentation that made me want to crawl up and die:

“You need to map your product development with your market development.”

“Your slides didn’t align — unit economics were for a different solution.”

And the worst iceberg that sunk my heart like the Titanic breached from a very important decision-maker at one of the world’s largest aerospace companies:

“You had my interest at first. Then you talked about a completely irrelevant market problem.” 

I’ll go through our journey sort of like a case study. My aim is to give insight on which you can take action to achieve product-market fit for your business. Your resulting story will increase your chances of getting an investment.

Why does product-market fit matter?

Product-market fit is when your customers gain so much value from your solution that they’d be very disappointed if they didn’t have it anymore. It’s when you have paying customers and can show both customer growth and customer retention. 

Getting that customer validation becomes especially problematic when you seek funding to help get to the next stage of your business. Investors aren’t ready to invest until they see that next stage reached — the classic “chicken and egg” situation.

“Most investment funds would rather wait until something proves itself in the market. For someone to go out there and close a $3-5 million round, they’d have to have a couple million dollars in the pipeline, either signed or coming on soon.”

– Vitaly Golomb

Author, Accelerated Startup

But when you do, it’s an absolutely thrilling feeling. Seeing an audience of investors glued to your presentation energizes every fiber inside you. It alleviates the struggles you’ve experienced as an entrepreneur. It validates the progress you’ve made.

And it helps you realize you’ve finally achieved market validation.

When you have that fit (or validation), you can quantify and communicate:

1. the problem you’re solving for your customer
2. your solution’s impact
3. the market size and growth potential 
4. your strategy to capture that market
5. your competitive advantage

1. Defining the Problem

The first step you need to take is to profile your customer and identify the problem that customer faces. I’m making this sound easier than it is.

Skylift started as a company that produced heavy lifting drones for any industry. And we struggled for two years to find customers willing to pay us. What gave us successful traction was narrowly defining who the specific users were and why they’d use our tech.

Learning Lesson

Don’t put too much emphasis on perfecting the product before even attempting to test it in the market. Start asking people right away what they think of your idea or solution. 

You want to eventually say “customers love bringing their kids to enjoy family time and amazing, healthy meals” instead of “we have the best food in town!”

Our Process

We needed to say “firefighters are faster because they don’t have to carry hundreds of pounds of equipment” instead of “we have the most advanced drone technology!” 

We asked firefighters what issue they faced the most, or even if they had an idea of what to use a logistics drone for. Their response was almost unanimous: “move our hose packs.” Transporting these 20-40lb rolls of hose frees the firefighters of carrying the weight, but more importantly, frees them from having to repeatedly trek the rough terrain to the fire truck and back. It saves time and gives them more energy. It lets them do what they signed up for, which is to fight fires. 

You’re selling a solution.

That statement implies so much: that you have something worth buying and that you’re solving a problem for the customer. 

2. Articulating the solution

The second step is to look at the benefit of your solution from your customer’s perspective. 

When we decided to pursue the firefighting market, we knew we’d use our heavy-duty drones for moving equipment. Our parameters were based on the limitations of our technology’s lift capability. That’s all. The other half of the equation was missing: a specific use case.

Learning Lesson

Find alignment between your customer’s pain point and your solution’s value proposition. A simple way to achieve this is by finding the answers to “does it save money, make money, save time, or make operations more efficient?”

Just having an application for your tech doesn’t satisfy the need for product-market fit because it leaves you to create wild ideas about its applications. 

Our Process

It wasn’t until we quantified what a firefighting result should look like (i.e. preventing a 10-acre fire from turning into a 10,000-acre fire) that we had a goal to build results toward.

The coolest part? 

We didn’t even need the drone to show that it made sense. 

We just placed the hose packs where the drone would have delivered the equipment and timed the firefighters during a hose lay training. (Firefighters conduct training to simulate the real-life laying of hose from the fire truck to the fire line). We proved that firefighters would be at least 50 percent faster if they had the hose readily available, say 500 to 2,000 feet ahead of them.

3. Quantifying the Market

The third step to creating fit is to quantify market size and growth to determine if you can scale. 

In our first investor deck, we referenced a 2015 IbisWorld report on the Courier and Express Delivery market. We made the same argument as almost every ambitious entrepreneur, “Should we attain merely 1percent of global market share…” Global market size was $246B, growing at 1.9 percent a year. Just imagine what we assumed our first year’s revenue would be.

Learning Lesson

Find how many more of your specific type of customer exists in a targeted region or industry. Many entrepreneurs struggle with this because they take a top-down approach only. But quantifying a market requires you to take both approaches: top-down and bottom-up.

When you take a bottom-up view, your focus shifts from the superficial and sometimes fabricated “we have a multi-billion dollar market” to the reality of how many people deal with the problem you’re solving.

It’s still important to know that a market has enough space for your business to grow and become profitable. Just be cautious. 

Our Process

When we took a top-down approach we didn’t fully understand our obtainable market, and subsequently overlooked the difficulty of getting just one customer, let alone a percentage of a total addressable market. 

With a targeted customer who validated our product-market fit, we could define our markets from the viewpoint of how the customer pays. We defined our TAM (total addressable market) as the $75B of combined county budgets, our SAM (serviceable addressable market) as public safety budgets, and our SOM (serviceable obtainable market) as fire control budgets. (Check out this article on TAM, SAM, and SOM to learn more about this approach)

We found this approach because we had the bottom-up data:

• Wildfires gave us regions to target and quantify (300 fires/year in the western states). 
• Fire departments gave us a customer profile (31 counties in California wildfire danger zones). 
• County buyers gave us personas and budgets we could target ($3.2B in 31 counties)

4. Developing the Strategy

The fourth step is to develop and execute a series of sales objectives. 

We couldn’t even build a sales strategy without a customer profile. We ran around asking top executives at various firms in all sorts of industries if they’d find a place for our solution. Naturally, they couldn’t help us. Most of them didn’t even think they had a problem to warrant a need for our tech.

Learning Lesson

Engage with your customers. Ask them questions about their challenges. Co-create a solution. And very quickly determine if you could help them at all within the confines of your service offering. 

Don’t try to help them build hardware if all you do is software. Don’t try to force your software to fix a problem that requires a hardware solution. Meaning, don’t try to force a solution onto a customer when it doesn’t actually solve their problem.

Our Process

That investor who said we had no alignment between our product and our market was spot-on. We were pitching a drone that could lift heavy things into the utility market, which required a drone that flew long distances for inspections. The applications were different. Therefore the capabilities of our technology needed to be different.

When we found our fit with firefighting logistics we realized so much more. 

The problem that gave firefighters the most grief wasn’t the same for their superiors. Because we knew who to talk to (chiefs, captains, and buyers) and what each needed to accomplish, we could deliver our product based on their needs and payment structure. 

We started to personalize the entire sales experience in their context. For instance, we needed to get the buy-in from the fire captain of operations before approaching the chief or buyer who could write big checks. So we just needed to take the captain and chief’s support to the county buyers and convince them to purchase our solution.

Commitment like that is important because it demonstrates a need, thus product-market fit.

5. Creating a Competitive Advantage

The fifth step to creating fit is to understand how you have a unique advantage. 

Most entrepreneurs look at the competitive landscape as potential threats from direct competition. We did too at Skylift. We would talk about which other drone companies could take our position, and investors would wonder how well-funded those companies were. That dynamic took the attention away from our company’s unique capabilities and put the attention onto, quite frankly, irrelevant stuff. 

Learning Lesson

Focus your attention on the opportunities you create for your customers. Instead of worrying about who else is out there that could steal your customers, you should view them as validating a market on your behalf. 

Go-Pro is infamous for being paranoid about competition. The company has an internal spreadsheet that lays out all of the indirect and direct competitors. It compares advantages like business model, target market, and product features.

You could take this approach, but I’d caution you to open your mind to the possibility that your competitor can also be your partner or acquirer.

Our Process

When we dug deep in firefighting, we learned that none of our competitors included drones.

• People moved small equipment, but this was slow and created new risks.
• Trucks moved small equipment, but couldn’t reach most areas.
• Airplanes carried large equipment and water, but they were overkill for the small stuff.
• Helicopters also carried large equipment but were expensive and unavailable.

We assessed how things were traditionally being moved, how slow it was, how costly it was, how operationally prohibitive it was. We did not worry about what other drone companies were doing.

The second and third-order outcomes astonished us. We realized that we were very aligned for partnerships and potential acquisitions with one category of competitors: helicopter companies that provided vehicles and services to the firefighting and other public safety agencies.

A partnership with a large helicopter company meant reduced manufacturing costs, increased sales growth, and a strong advantage over any potential drone competitor.

Conclusion

In order to be successful at getting product-market fit, you have to focus on one customer problem. It has to be the best thing to reach what you believe to be successful for you. 

You’re never going to be informed enough to have 100% confidence that you’ve chosen the best option. And you’re probably never going to be satisfied after you had. Entrepreneurs rarely are. 

As Ray Dalio says, “you can have anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want.”

I took the stage at the Gore Silicon Valley Innovation Center in Santa Clara. Before me sat an audience of investors from the likes of Boeing and GE Aviation. 

But this time, my pitch was ready. 

For months after that day, Skylift received calls from investors who weren’t even in attendance. They only heard about our company and its market validation. 

Start by identifying your specific customer segment. Deeply understand their challenges. If you determine you can help, then provide the best service—a service so good your customers would be disappointed if they didn’t have it.