What I Learned In My First Week Of Writing Content At Embryo

If, like me, you’re new to the world of content writing and digital marketing, you might be finding it a bit difficult knowing where to start. In my first week here at Embryo, it became clear to me just how important customer-focused research can be. By looking in the right places, you can write cracking copy that comes straight from the mouths of the customers you’re writing for. It’s a great place to start if you’re struggling for ideas, so here are some tips for mining your customer base for content to improve your own.

The Importance of Research

I found that researching online reviews and social media where your client’s product, or others like it, are being discussed can provide great copy right off the bat. Search for a competing product on Amazon or Twitter, for example, and look for recurring complaints by customers. Specific complaints are great because they tell you precisely what customers are frustrated by, giving you an opportunity to push the relevant strengths of your product in your copy.

Also, take note of the lexicon customers use to talk about the product: recurring complaints will often contain recurring language. If you’re seeing a lot of people describe something as ‘inflexible’, ‘uncomfortable’ or ‘unintuitive’, guess what? You’ve just found a load of great copy that you can use and swap around to directly address concerns a customer might have the moment they come into contact with your product.
Digging into reviews is also good for unearthing exactly what customers want from your product. Customers are always going to be less interested in how something works, and more interested in precisely what it can do for them. Finding out the specific benefits people are searching for gives you the opportunity to grab their attention with your own copy, as well as catching the eye of Google and other search engines. Write about how your product can make somebody’s life easier, happier or safer, and not about how your product works. Reading technical jargon will send somebody to sleep – reading about how something can simply and quickly make their life a bit easier won’t.

Knowing Your Customer

The focus on the customer should extend into the language you use to address the reader. Frequent use of ‘you’ over ‘we’ or ‘us’ tells the reader you’re speaking directly to them. It immediately flips the emphasis of the copy from the company to the customer, from what you provide, to what it will actually do for the customer.

So rather than content that says ‘we can do this and we can do that’, aim for more along the lines of ‘with this, you will now be able to do that’. Tap into what the customer really wants your product to achieve for them, and grab them with personal copy that feels like a conversation.
If you have the means to share stories, testimonials and experiences from other customers, this can be a fast track to connecting your reader to the problem they face, and, most importantly, your solution for it. By showing that you understand the experience of your customer, they are going to feel straight away that you acknowledge and understand them, and have a solution right up your sleeve, helping to build immediate trust and credibility in the eyes of the reader.
Great testimonials provide evidence of how your product or service helped people to overcome their problems and how they found the experience with the company, serving as a great recommendation to new customers. In fact, over 80% of people say they trust testimonials just as much as they would a recommendation from a friend or family member. As with everything else, the more personal the testimonial and the greater emphasis on the customer, the better: framing things with some details about the author of the quote is going to make your testimonial more believable and authentic.

Overall, the more you know and understand your customer, the more you can tailor your copy and content just for them. This might sound like stating the obvious, but you can dig deep with this stuff, finding nuggets of language in people’s concerns and turning it around to strengthen your writing.
The more a customer feels like you understand them and the concerns they have, the more able you’re going to be to actively build a trusting relationship with them. By writing your content with a deeper insight into your customer’s needs, you can give them the confidence to give your product a try.
Based in Manchester, Embryo is an ambitious digital marketing agency that has grown rapidly throughout 2019 and shows no signs of slowing down. If you’re looking to improve your company’s digital profile with some high quality content, call us on 0161 327 2635. Alternatively, get in touch with us through our contact page.