Write Attraction

Yes, I know you’ve heard it all before; you need to know your target market so that you can talk directly to them. Sure, you do. Yet have you considered the concept of not only deciding exactly who you want that target market to be, yet writing to attract exactly those people?

So often in small business our single criterion for an ideal client is quite simply: someone who’ll pay me. And while being paid should always be an outcome, we’ve all worked on projects or with clients that we’ve truly enjoyed. They’re the times when you sit back, sigh and think smugly to yourself, “Wow! They pay me to do this.” You feel a calming sense of completeness; of absolute fulfilment. And if you found one client like that surely there are others out there. Because, quite seriously, don’t you prefer to work with people you like on projects that inspire, motivate and excite you?

Okay then, where do you start? Firstly by listing out all the criteria for an ideal client. You can start with specific industries and organisation sizes, all the usual categories we’ve come to expect in our ideal client analysis.

Yet here’s where you’ll go deeper. After you’ve worked through their organisational information, get personal. Consider this ideal client as a real person; that is, after all, what they are. So who is this person that you’ll be working with? And what are they really like? Think of them simply as a friend you haven’t yet met. What character traits do you like in your friends? Which ones would you like in your clients?

You might consider some of the following:

• Are they reliable or perhaps a little absent-minded?
• Are they easy going or a stickler for the rules?
• Will they have a university degree or have worked their way up through the ranks? Or perhaps their education level doesn’t matter?
• Do they like animals? The environment?
• Are they creative or details focussed?
• And how do they like their sport? Not at all? From an armchair? Or hot and sweaty in the thick of things?
• Do they prefer good wine, a frothy Guinness or freshly squeezed orange juice?

Okay, so now you’re wondering what all this has to do with writing good copy. Exactly this: the words and images you use need to appeal to your ideal client. And to use words and images that appeal to your ideal client, you need to truly get inside that person’s head.

Let me give you an example of how you can attract or repel clients with a single sentence. My partner, Pete and I are getting married later this year. So we were searching for a photographer. One wedding photographer’s site began with the words, “You’ve been planning this day all your life.” If you believe in the whole fairytale wedding concept, you’ll probably salivate. “Yes! Yes!” you’ll agree, quickly followed by, “At last some who understands the importance of my big day.” If, however, you’re like me, you’re thinking, “Get real! I’ve been too busy living to spend my life planning a ceremony with a party attached.”

So this particular photographer will have won one customer and spurned another. To be honest, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. There is definitely a market for fairytale photographers. And if they’re sensible, they certainly won’t want me as a client. Imagine how much fun we’d both have if Pete and I went ahead and hired them; there wouldn’t be much happily ever after in that business transaction.

The words, images and tone you use will attract a certain client; let’s make them someone you’ll really enjoy working with.

Now you’ve got inside their head and you’ve envisaged the type of person they are, look at your existing promotional copy.

• Would your headline attract them?
• Do your pictures grab their attention?
• Are you using words that they would use?
• Will they be able to relate to your descriptions?
• What exactly is it about your copy that will attract them to your business?
• If values are important to them, are you describing your values?
• Does your copy evoke the emotions you’re aiming for?
• Put yourself in their shoes; would you feel a connection to your business?

If your copy is wanting in any of these areas, rework it. Remember, good writing is an awful lot of rewriting. And it is so very easy to fall into the trap of writing from our own perspective and unknowingly spurning our ideal clients; so write, re-write and re-write so ideal clients are spurned no more.

And take heart, the more you know your audience, the easier it is to choose words and images that motivate, inspire and excite them. After all, while you’re enjoying your ideal clients with their ideal projects, they too should be enjoying their ideal service provider. That’s the key to building long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationships – personally and professionally.

A Foggy Revelation

On the long weekend, my partner and I had the good fortune to be asked to join a boat crew for a race from Brighton to Queenscliffe. We put in our weather order: sunny with a 15-20 knot northerly for the trip down and swinging to a southerly for the voyage home. Yes, that would be very pleasant. We could pop a spinnaker (the big colourful sail that makes the boat go fast), sit back, relax and enjoy the scenery.

Unfortunately the weather gods had knocked off early for their three days of R & R and thus failed to process our request. Worse, their office junior could only manage to conjure some fog. And for the non-sailors amongst us, fog means no wind and no wind means bobbing rather than sailing.

Along with six other worthy contenders, we motored out to the start line, hopeful that the fog would lift. After all, the day was still young. There was still time for sun . . . and wind.

The starting hooter blared and we were off and racing . . . okay, bobbing about hoping the currents didn’t push us into another boat. One boat managed to find a gust and disappeared into the fog ahead. Other boats also vanished and we were seemingly alone in our white dome; shivering with a bitter cold.

What a surreal experience; bobbing about, not being able to see more than 100 metres ahead, we could have been anywhere. Then we heard it; the distinctive bark of a Little Penguin. And not just one Little Penguin, or even two, there on the glassy bay was a flock of at least ten Little Penguins. (Still, as one crew member commented, we were clearly near an Antarctic ice floe, why wouldn’t there be lots of penguins?)

We tend to think of fog as a negative thing. Clearly for sailors it isn’t an ideal condition. Yet if we focus too much on what we anticipate will or should happen we can miss the beauty of what is actually happening.

For three hours we watched more penguin groups frolicking. Then a couple of seals joined the party, rolling about waving at us. And yes, we waved back. Nature was certainly putting on a splendid show.

And though we thoroughly enjoyed the wildlife revue, it also served as an ecological reminder to us all. Sitting on land, it’s easy to forget the enormity of life that lives, survives and sometimes even thrives beneath our Bay. Yet out there, on the water, out of our natural element, we become privy to another’s domain. And we must protect that domain and honour all the plants and animals that call it home. Otherwise private penguin parades, like the one we experienced will exist only in urban legends.

After this philosophical reverie, I wondered briefly how far we’d come. Surely we’d be off of Aspendale by now, maybe even as far as Chelsea.

Then we saw it! It loomed out of the fog - orange and triangular. We stared at it, then at each other. For there, in all its orange glory was a Sandringham Yacht Club race marker. In three hours, we’d moved less than a suburb.

Saying to Soar by

We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.

Albert Einstein

Email: mandy@talkingturkey.com.au
Web: www.talkingturkey.com.au

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