COPY Messaging Where-Stellar-Messages-Come-From

IN THIS EBOOK
1. A Messaging Strategy Will Keep You on Track .......................................................................................... 3

2. Get to Know Your Customer Before You Write a Word............................................................................ 6
3. Write Copy for 20 to 35% of Your Visitors – Not 100% of Them ............................................................ 20
4. Find & Document Your Features and Benefits........................................................................................ 25
5. Should You Write Copy in the Positive or the Negative?........................................................................ 35
6. Stop Writing! Let Customers & Competitors Craft Your Messages ........................................................ 39
7. Always Have a [Simple] Messaging Hierarchy in Mind ........................................................................... 49
8. 8 Messaging Tips Too Small for Whole Chapters .................................................................................... 53
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joanna Wiebe is a professional copywriter and messaging strategist specializing in persuasive writing
that converts visitors. Since 2003, she has been writing, editing & proofreading online and offline copy
and designing interactions for tech companies as well as startups. She also consults and teaches writing
for professionals. She holds an MA in Communications & Technology with specialization in ecommerce
communication.
The cofounder of Page99Test, Joanna lives with her hub-bub in Victoria, British Columbia.
Twitter: @copyhackers Hacker News: bloggergirl Website: copyhackers.com
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© 2011 Joanna Wiebe
1.
A Messaging Strategy Will Keep You on Track
When people think about writing for the web, they tend to jump right into formatting.
Bullets, headlines, buttons – scannable copy.
But before you start formatting, you have to have something to format.
That is, you have to have copy. And copy is really just the treated text that expresses your
message for your customer. (Okay, it’s way more than that. But I could write at least, oh,
four ebooks on the topic, so let’s not go there!)
Which means that, before you begin writing a word, you need to have a clear grasp on
your messages. That includes messages about your company and about your product,
service or other solution.
But where do your messages come from?
That’s what this book will help you understand.
It will teach you that you need to look to your customers – to research and to the keywords
they use – to develop the groundwork of your messaging. (But never ask your customers to
‘approve’ your copy! The moment people are aware of copy, everything changes for them.)
It will teach you why all the master copywriters since the beginning of advertising believe
you should aim your messages at a small group of people, not at everyone.
It will teach you to document your product – its features and benefits – thoroughly.
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And it’ll give you the tools you need to assess your competition, develop a messaging
strategy and hierarchy, and – best of all – to THINK before you write.
What’s a Messaging Strategy?

Speaking of thinking before you write, a messaging strategy is intended to force you to do
just that. Think. And then write.
A messaging strategy outlines the principles you will follow when the time comes to write
your copy. It will also help you set a tone for your copy.
This is the pain a messaging strategy solves: it gives you a rationale for the decisions you
make when writing. Because, most of the time, new writers wander off in various paths –
led astray by something they ‘like the sound of’. When you’re busy, that gets even worse.
Here’s some great news: your messaging strategy doesn’t have to be long. Or detailed.
For example, this is a 1-paragraph messaging strategy for Page99Test.com:
The copy on Page99Test.com is short, friendly and to the point. It assumes that
visitors to the site want to spend their time reading book excerpts and rating them –
not reading our web copy. That’s why words are kept to a minimum and, when used,
are clear, powerful and memorable. Where a screenshot, press logo, button, video
demo, or icon can be used, it should replace copy – without sacrificing clarity.
As you can see, a simple messaging strategy – which is all you need as a startup – outlines
the guiding principles of the copy you will write. Copy hackers refer to these short, concise
strategies to help decide if a block of text is working or not.
What to Consider When You Write Your Own Messaging Strategy

If the goal of a messaging strategy is to keep you on track, then you need to shape that
‘track’ by defining your principles. There are dozens of principles you can choose to follow
with your copywriting, such as the following biggies:
• Let copy guide design; good writing is good design

• Recognize that some visitors want to read a lot… and some don’t… and both are your
customers
• Support messages with social proof, such as testimonials or media reviews
• Support key concepts with video demonstrations
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• Just because you say it, doesn’t make it true – prove it!
• Always strive for clarity above cleverness
• Rather than focusing on ‘consistency’ or ‘matching messages’, let the message
match the medium at an exact point of need
• All visitors can be persuaded to join or upgrade
• Engage visitors with exciting or interesting online content, web experiences or
options for mobile/app experiences
With your most important principles in mind, you can craft a simple messaging strategy.
Your Messaging Strategy Is a Living Document

Think of your messaging strategy as flexible. Not etched in stone. As you develop a tone, as
you get to know your customers, and as you update your solution – or add new solutions –
you may find your messaging strategy needs to be updated to reflect those changes.
Once you know what your messaging strategy is, you can start to get a feel for the style of
your copy, the length of pages, and the organization of copy elements with other elements,
such as visual design assets.
You can also share this strategy with your team or any freelancers you use (e.g., for design)
to help them understand your brand + approach to messaging and copy.
NEXT STEPS
~ Apply What You’ve Learned Now ~
When you think you’ve sorted out the guiding principles for your startup’s messaging
strategy, write it out. Refer to the earlier points, and think through your own philosophy.
Don’t try to get your messaging strategy to 100% on the first, second or even third try. Let
yourself write as long as you need to – because there’s no point in censoring yourself yet!
Just write it all down. And then edit. (Editing’s a skill you’ll sharpen the more you write. No
pressure.) So, there, go do it…!
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2.
Get to Know Your Customer Before You Write a Word
Writing for the web is using words, typography, punctuation and images to communicate
your messages in ways that will engage your visitors. Yes, that’s it. I’ve worked and
reworked that statement, and no matter which way I turn it, it fits. If you disagree, please
stop reading immediately and accept my apologies for screwing you out of whatever you
spent on this thing. If you agree, then let’s try looking at that statement in a way we can
use, like in this handy diagram:
As you can see, your message can be divided, at minimum, into What and How:
• What you say – Your message

• How you say it – The words (i.e., copy) and visual effects that display your message
Getting your What and How right is usually what professional copywriters do for you.
But let me tell you where the problem can arise with that.
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Because copywriters generally focus on turning YOUR What – that is, the message you
provide to them, whether in an interview or by forwarding your existing copy docs – into
their How, the resulting copy may get your team totally jazzed.
You may all read the copy and jump around, shouting, “Yes, yes, yeeeeeessssssss!”
You’re high-fiving about how Big Time you sound.
You’re screaming, “That’s it! That’s exactly what we want to say!”
You’re filling out checks and starting to recruit – preparing for some serious growth.
…But, wait, you do realize that that oh-so-exciting copy may totally tank, right?
It may completely fail to convert visitors. No matter how much you like it.
There you’ve gone and shelled out $250/hr you don’t even have to a freelance writer with
great references and an English degree (which I have, BTW, but that’s not the point), and
what did you get? You got your messages… wordsmithed.
“Wordsmithing” is what junior copywriters and marketing managers think copywriting’s all
about. “Wordsmithing” is an insult. You do not want to wordsmith your copy.
You want copy that sells.
You don’t want anyone – least of all yourself – to wordsmith your messages. Why not?
Because what you want to hear doesn’t matter. Because the tiny clause at the end of that
big statement you saw earlier is actually the most important clause:
What you say and how you say it mean very little when it comes to writing compelling,
effective web copy. Rather, every message you write needs to be a message your ideal
visitors want to see.
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That’s why your messages don’t come from you at all. Nope, they don’t. At least, they
shouldn’t.
You may have a head full of messages that exactly match why you built your product… but
what if the reasons you built it don’t resonate with the reasons your ideal customer
would choose it?
Your messages come from people you don’t even know yet. They come from your potential
customers.
Take some time to think about that, if you’d like. Go put on some tea or stare out the
window or whatever it takes. Let it sink in.
Because if you proceed with writing copy based on messages you want to say, you’re SOL.
And I’m not going to let you blame me for the sucky copy you’ll produce because you
missed this one very important point. So sit with it. Let it sink in.
Your messages come from your customers.
Only Research Can Help You Know Your Visitor

Okay, so you want to figure out who you’re talking to and what they want to hear before
you write down a single word of copy for your website. Even before you develop your
tagline. Great. That’s why you start looking for your message by doing research.
Research, research, research.
For most startups, you’ve done quite a bit of research during the process of developing your
prototypes/alphas or producing your minimum viable product/betas. You’ve probably done
user testing, where potential users told you what they liked and didn’t like (essentially)
about your solution. That research is good stuff.
But more important is uncovering the information that your potential customers don’t
even know and couldn’t possibly tell you. There’s so much tucked inside their heads that
they wouldn’t think to tell you. The benefits your product needs to have are woven through
every statement they say.
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Find Out Who Your Target Market Is
When building a photo-sharing solution, you may think your target market is the early
adopter tech group out there, the ones who’ll vote up your “We Just Launched” blog posts
on Hacker News. And you may be right. So you may think to target your messages towards
tech geeks.
But how long will that market use your site?
And how likely will they be to refer your site to influential people or to the masses?
Ask yourself – and be objective, be hard on yourself: Do I really know who my target
customer is?
With a little research, you may find that the prevailing users of your photo-sharing site will
be teenage girls, teenage “EMO” boys, new moms, and retired women. Will the messages
that work on a tech-geek group work on those groups? Unlikely. What matters to those
groups? TBD. Once you figure out your primary target market(s), you can delve deeper to
find out the details that flesh out these faceless, nameless “markets”.
How can you do this research, you ask?
Great question. Here are some ideas for gathering customer intelligence:
• If you have an email list (i.e., for lead gen, for pre-launch signups), send them a
short survey requesting info. Ask them about themselves… and ask them what
interests them in your service. HINT: If you actually ask people to please do you a
favor – use the word “favor” – your response rates can increase. Adding “please” can
only help. I’ve seen it. Test it to prove me right.
• Go out there and TALK to people. I’m amazed by how frequently startups with zilch
dollars think they need to hire a consulting firm to hold a focus group and generate
some useless report. Focus groups are, like, 8 people. Can you not go to a coffee
shop and annoy 8 people? Hell, you could give ‘em all $25 gift cards for their time
and still save tons o’ cash vs. actually holding a focus group. Plus, you’ll get to have
real conversations – and conversations stick much better than a bunch of data in
some report. Oh, and let’s not forget that focus groups often lead to the very ugly
“groupthink”, where a dominant personality in the group can sway others to agree
with her… leaving you with skewed, useless data. Blech. Not good.
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• Stay in your office and TALK to people. Okay, to be honest, I don’t like going out and
talking to people. I’ve done it, and I’d do it again if I had to. But I’d much rather chat
with people online, from the comfort of my own desk. So, if you’re like me, get
involved in forums. That does NOT mean SPAMing forums – showing up, splashing
news about your pending launch, and then high-tailing it. That means listening to
what your potential customers are talking about, and engaging them when/if it will
be mutually beneficial.
• Burn your cash and buy a report. Forrester Research has some pretty solid reports
about the behaviors and activities of X markets. But they’re seriously expensive. If
you’ve got the moola, go for it, I guess.
• Save your cash and Compete. A more affordable solution is to simply get a
Compete.com PRO subscription and use their category lists to flesh out any market
research you’re doing related to website usage.
You also need to sort through the demographic details for your target markets or
segments. Knowing the vital statistics for your markets, where they live and more can help
you break your markets into segments. And knowing target segments can really help you
shape your language – to get specific (which is always better than generic).
Once you’ve determined your primary target market (which you’ll divide into segments
next), start by getting to know them. Learn their key demographic data:
• Age group
• Marital status
• Number of children
• Education
• Annual income
• Average consumer debt load
• Favorite websites
• Favorite pastimes
• Shopping preference: online vs. retail vs. print catalogue
• Tech-savviness
Next, Narrow Your Market into Manageable Segments

Unless you’re planning to disrupt a major existing business – like Expedia or the MLS – you
may not wish to try to market to a wide range of people. Instead, you’ll want to segment
your market to determine whom to focus your energy on.
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That is, you want to choose the segment that will visit your site with the most frequency
and be most likely to compensate you in some way for your service – whether that
compensation is actual money paid to you or referrals paid to you.
These segments are the people you are writing copy for. These segments are the people
who are most likely to become your customers.
They may not be glamorous and they may not be rich. But if they have the money to spend
on your product and the network of friends to refer to your service, then they are the new
cornerstone of your business.
Example: Messaging for Moms

If you’re writing copy for your photo-sharing site, and you know your visitors are primarily
married young stay-at-home moms without post-secondary education, under $55K in
annual household income, $20K in credit-card debt, and high tech-savviness, you’ll probably
steer your messages towards how affordable your solution is. And probably steer them
away from ease, knowing that this market is at ease with technology.
And if you know these young moms generally have smart phones with apps to keep their
kids busy in the back of the Dodge Caravan while they drive to and from the grocery store
because they can’t afford a babysitter, then you might offer a free or low-cost game-style
app to win their loyalty. You might even put a link to download that app front-and-center
on your home page.
Example: Messages for Career-Oriented Women

On the other hand, if you learned that your primary target segment was middle-aged
career-oriented women with low consumer debt, high household income, and a propensity
towards spending time on Skirt.com and Oprah.com, would you talk about how affordable
your solution is? Not if you want results. In fact, you might adjust your pricing – and
messaging – strategy to play into the idea that high prices equal better solutions for this
group. You might also talk about ease, if you learned that this segment was not tech-savvy.
Do you see how knowing your market will shape your primary messages and even your
positioning as a brand?
There are 100s of different messages out there for this reason: each segment has values
and motivations that only a few messages will meet. You can’t reach your hand into the
grab bag of messages and use whatever you pull out. You need to target specifically.
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What Keeps Your Visitors Up at Night? Uncover and Address Pain
At a high level, there are 2 sides to crafting a message:
1. Targeting pain
2. Reflecting motivation, including values
Your product needs to either address and neutralize or eradicate a critical pain for your
market or market segment… or to pinpoint one of their key motivations.
Let’s start with pain. Find out what the pains are that your target customer experiences
and that you can solve. Here are some ways you can start to uncover pains:
• Ask yourself, what keeps my customers up at night?

• Audit your competitors’ sites to see what pain points they hit on
• Use the Google Adwords keyword tool to find phrases that your audience is
searching
• Test PPC ads with certain pain points in them to see which get clicked most often
• Monitor people in your ideal customer segment on Twitter and/or in their blogs to
see what pains they mention
• Find out what websites they commonly visit
Once you know the pains your customers feel, you can start thinking through how your
product/solution benefits address or eradicate those pains. And use that very useful
information in your copywriting.
Research: Interview to Find Pain Points

In Pain Killer Marketing (2008), Chris Stielhl and Henry DeVries show that 12 to 15 one-on-
one interviews will generate about 80% of all possible pain points for your segment. That’s
the same amount as 7 focus groups with up to 12 participants in each. One-on-one
interviews can save you thousands of dollars – with the same high quality of results.
Now on to the topic of motivation, which is what great marketing campaigns remind
people of and further instill in people. “Motivation” is the driving force behind the actions
we take. When a user comes to your site, they are motivated to do so – motivated by forces
that live outside the virtual walls of your virtual store.
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You cannot create motivation on your site.
But you can – and must! – reflect your visitors’ primary motivation in the copy on your site.
At least on your home page. But also across the primary pages in your user flow.
Motivations run deep and are the sort of insights into a person that only their closest
friends would talk about. But they’re real for all of us. You won’t necessarily describe
motivation in your copy; rather, you’ll want to reflect your market’s motivations, like:
• Reclaiming their childhood innocence

• Feeling connected to other people
• Keeping up with the Joneses
• Hosting the perfect family Christmas
• Attracting the person everyone else would want
• Being the person everyone else would want
• Never feeling hungry again
• Finally getting respect from their father or mother
• Becoming the ultimate lover
• Guaranteeing their family’s financial well-being
• Protecting their loved ones from predators, including disease and bullies
• Loving what they see when they look in the mirror
Let me better explain motivation on the web with an example. Pretend your name is
Teresa, you’re 39 years old and 65 pounds overweight, and you go to JennyCraig.com
because you want to learn how to lose weight effectively.
If JennyCraig.com were a site filled with info on losing weight, you’d think Teresa would be
in her glory and sign up immediately. But the problem is that her motivation is not to learn.
Teresa’s real motivations are to lose weight in order to prove herself against the skinny girl
next door (keep up with the Joneses), to attract the ideal partner, to earn her cranky
mother’s respect and to love what she sees when she looks in the dressing room mirror.
She skips through all those deep motivations because they’re hard to confess – and she tells
herself that she wants a great website with info about losing weight.
But the smart copy hacker knows that, in addition to giving Teresa the info – which a million
sites, books and blogs do – you need to tap into her motivations with your messaging.
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That said, would you write, “Become the Size Zero You See in Magazines”? No! You simply
know that Teresa (and millions of women like her) desire that… and write useful copy that
reflects that motivation, like, “Embrace the Woman in the Mirror”.
You might also support that copy with photos of two friends coming out of the dressing
room smiling. With testimonials that have real women discussing how they love shopping
now. And with rich case studies – video and print – that build on those testimonials.
Why Are People Coming to Your Site?

For startups, visitors can come in rather specific waves in the early days (i.e., pre-launch and
immediately post-launch):
Wave 1: Beta sign-up brings friends, contacts & family; these people get on your email list.
Wave 2: Media gets wind of your beta sign-up site and writes about it, sending specific
segments of visitors, such as developers (from HackerNews) and technophiles (from
TechCrunch); these people get on your email list.
Wave 3: Your site launches, and everyone on your email list floods your site; many of these
visitors like your site on major social networking sites. Other media, likely from more niche
sites or even foreign press, drives a range of traffic to your site.
Wave 4: Invitations to try your service, blog posts, and recommendations on social sites
bring Lookie Lous.
In each wave, you may have different markets with different motivations. Your friends,
family and business contacts in wave 1 may be curious about the basics of what you’re
working on; your mom just wants to support you, and your ex-coworker, who’s secretly
jealous of your successes, just wants to pick apart your latest idea.
But in both cases, they’re looking for a certain amount of information – and that
information is all related to the basics of what you’re doing.
The same may be true for wave 2 people, but they could be looking for more specifics – for
the kind of info your mom doesn’t care about. Waves 3 and 4 will see people motivated to
learn about your new solution, learn about your company, and – this is the kicker – identify
if your solution will solve X pain for them.
Each wave brings with it a specific motivation. Your goal is to ensure you explicitly reflect
that motivation in your copy. Sometimes motivation is covered off in your value
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proposition; however, depending on the motivation of visitors at key points in time, that
may not always be the case. You will likely have to write lines of copy specifically focused on
reflecting visitor motivation.
Once people know about your solution – that is, once waves 3 and 4 start – you can begin
to work your copy such that it reflects more specific motivations of your visitors.
Motivation Is Marketing
As I mentioned, you cannot create motivation on your site. You can only reflect existing
motivations of your users – and, when you’re really good, build on those motivations.
At its core, “motivation” is created by marketing and PR.
That doesn’t mean that you, as a startup with limited resources, have to go out and do the
marketing and PR yourself. Not at all. If you’re competing with an existing solution that is
already heavily marketing itself, you can piggyback off the motivation that those marketers
are creating.
For example, let’s suppose you’ve created a personal finance management tool. Motivation
already exists for such a solution. Big companies like Intuit and major banks have done the
heavy lifting of convincing people that they need to manage their money. Television shows
like Til Debt Do Us Part have added to that motivation. The recession and debt crises (at the
time of publication of this book) reinforce that it’s a good thing to watch your finances.
Your visitors are primed. They have a pain; they know that solutions exist.
You don’t have to motivate them anymore than they already are.
All you have to do is remind people why they need your solution.
So, to continue the personal finance management example, you might write a callout below
your hero section that reads like any of the following:
Americans who use software to manage their money sleep better at night.
Find out where you’re leaking cash so you can save more money & invest in your future.
Categorize your expenses! Over 30% of Americans spend $1400 annually on coffee.
Money problems are the #1 reason for divorce in North America.
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(NOTE: When it comes to claims, make sure you have support for those claims. That could
be as simple as a link to the Newsweek article where the research was first published.)
If you know the pain you’re solving for your customers, you can begin to craft copy that
speaks to the very thing that motivated them to go to your site in the first place. This copy
will not necessarily convert each and every visitor, but it should at least:
• Confirm that your solution is what they thought it was

• Remind them that they need a solution like yours if they want to solve their problem
• Help them stay on the page longer… and consider your offering
• Get them to begin nodding along with what you’re saying
• Move them to the next part of the experience, where you can work to convert them
What Motivation Is Not

Motivation is not a discount. It’s not a limited-time offer. Although your customers may be
price-sensitive and motivated to save wherever they can, their motivation runs deeper than
that. If you want to write quality copy that keeps new visitors on your site longer, you need
to get to the core of visitor motivation – the core of what your solution actually solves.
Motivation is not your value proposition, either. Your value proposition speaks to the
unique, highly desirable solution you offer. It doesn’t speak to the pain your customer feels.
Examples of Sites That Cater Well to One Market or Market Segment

The following includes 3 examples of well-known websites that clearly understand their
target market segments and have written & designed their sites to speak to those markets.
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SITE: Disney’s ClubPenguin.com
PRIMARY MARKET: Children under the age of 9, motivated to play.
SECONDARY MARKET: Parents, motivated to protect their kids online.
WHY IT’S GREAT: The only copy kids will read is “Play Now” – the picture in the primary real
estate is the copy for the kids. The rest is for parents.
SITE: PointAbout.com
PRIMARY MARKET: B2C in E-commerce, motivated to make money.
WHY IT’S GREAT: Appmakr/PointAbout lets companies make their own apps so they can
make money – and the copy speaks only to that (and is supported beautifully by meaningful
design).
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SITE: WildFireApp.com (WildFire)
PRIMARY MARKET: Marketers in social media, motivated to build their followings in order
to make money.
WHY IT’S GREAT: Making no bones about it, the copy on this page says exactly what the
visitor wants to hear and supports that with easily identifiable social logos.
REMEMBER: Your Message Isn’t YOUR Message at All

Your brand and your message alike need to be targeted to the market or market segments
that will be most likely to sign up for your service or buy your product. So before you write a
word of copy – hell, before you even name your company – you need to think of the
expectations of your target market… and align everything you say and do with those.
If you want to have a real business.
If you’re just killing time and money on a tool that you’re going to be able to tell your mom
you built – a tool with only your mom as your user base – then forget all of this. Put this
book away. And be on your merry way.
I assume that’s not what you want, though.
So there you have it – the tough love you need.
None of the words on your page will be your words.
They will be words your customers need to hear.
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They will be words that express your customers’ pain and reflect their deepest motivations.
Which means you need to get to know them ASAP.
Learn Low-Budget Market Research from Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek and The 4-Hour Body, is a creative problem-
solver. When naming his first book, he bought PPC ads and tested various titles in those
ads. The winning ad became the name of his book.
When determining the cover artwork for that same book, he printed out different covers
and put those covers on other books in a bookstore – just to see which ones customers
gravitated to. The cover that attracted most people became the cover for his book. Pretty
effective… and low-budget.
NEXT STEPS
~ Apply What You’ve Learned Now ~
Go gather customer intelligence using a survey. This can be an emailed survey, if you have
the list to bear it, or a phone survey, or an in-person survey you conduct in a real location.
Ask questions that will get people to reveal themselves to you – in terms of demographics,
favorite services/products, and motivations.
After you’ve surveyed at least 12 people, document everything and analyze what you’ve
learned. It’s important that you do not try to simply validate your assumptions. Look for
new info that will help you write copy to build your business rather than your ego. Highlight
the surprising stuff and the repeated stuff.
Find your ideal market segments by determining the groups of people who will both:
 Visit your site frequently

 Compensate you with cash or referrals/likes
When you have a shortlist of possible segments to target, buy some PPC ads on Google and
target them to each segment. The test here is to see which segments click thru. Yes, you’ll
have to spend some money to get there… but it’s money well-spent if you end up
pinpointing the single best fit for your business.
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3.
Write Copy for 20 to 35% of Your Visitors – Not 100% of
Them
If you’ve ever tried to sell a house, you’ve probably been told to neutralize and
depersonalize it. Pull down the wallpaper. Paint everything beige. Remove family photos.
Make it smell like vanilla, not like the spicy curry you so adore.
Real estate agents want you to neutralize a space because they believe that doing so will
offend fewer people – people who may have different tastes than you have. Real estate
agents take this approach because they are looking for just 1 buyer for that 1 house. Just 1
pre-qualified person to stumble on your house and buy it.
You, on the other hand, are looking for 100s of buyers for your 1 product or service. Which
might make you think that neutralizing the space in which you sell your product – that is,
neutralizing your website – is an even better strategy. After all, if you want to get 1000
buyers, you have to appeal to 1000 visitors. So you’d better make the whole thing one big
beige blob.
NOT SO.
If you try to make every visitor to your site happy, you’ll find that you end up saying
nothing compelling enough to get anyone to buy.
Your copy will suck.
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Do you think it’s an accident that the average website for a large organization converts at
just 2%? It’s not.
That’s what happens when you try to please every single person visiting your site: you get
maybe 2 out of 100 of them.
When you’re a big company and can afford to buy traffic or hire entire teams for demand
generation, that’s fine (although still silly). But when you’re a startup, that’s unacceptable.
Trying to please every visitor with your copy is what’s going to put you out of business.
Imagine the work it takes to drive 100 visitors to your site. Or 1000. Or 10,000. You need a
serious write-up on TechCrunch to get 10,000.
Now imagine if you put all that work into attracting 10,000 visitors only to sell your solution
to 200 of them. Admittedly, that doesn’t sound too bad…
But what if you could have sold your solution to 500 of those visitors?
A Simple Trick for Converting More Visitors into Customers

If you want to convert more people, try to convert a smaller number of better-suited
people.
That is, go for the low-hanging fruit. Not the apples on every branch of the tree. Only the
apples that are closest to your hand, the apples that won’t cause you to change anything in
order to pluck them.
You should be targeting your copy towards the select but perfectly matched few if you’re
serious about converting visitors into customers.
Legendary adman and copywriter Fairfax Cone taught his copywriting team – people who
went on to become presidents of major advertising agencies – that you should write to a
single individual, not to the masses. Writing to the masses will weaken your copy.
Let’s refer back to the home-selling example.
Remember how your agent told you to douse your home in vanilla to cover up the odor of
ethnic food?
21
Well, what if your home is perfectly suited for a couple that might feel more at home in a
space that smells of the food of their ethnicity? You could try to appeal to every possible
buyer out there in the hopes that one buys. Or you could focus on whomever the house is
exactly right for, target them explicitly, and actually find yourself in a bidding war.
If you try to please a select few, you just might. If you try to please everyone, you please no
one.
Same goes for your product.
If your product is built for one small market segment, own that fact and speak directly to
that segment in your copy.
Be the company that ‘gets’ that segment.
So what if only 20% of all visitors to your site are in that segment? Imagine if you could
convert half of those visitors! Suddenly your conversion rate becomes 10%. Even converting
a quarter of that segment would result in a 5% conversion rate – which is more than double
the average conversion rate for those willy-nilly, not-ready-to-speak-to-qualified-traffic-
directly Fortune 500s.
Consider the highest-converting advertisements of the last decade.
You may be surprised to learn that direct mail – that ugly junk mail most of us throw into
the recycle bin without opening – continues to convert higher than mass media and most
websites. What can we learn from direct mail copy? Take this line from the envelope of one
such piece for example:
How to Legally Rob Slot Machines in ANY Casino!
The majority of people disdain casinos, and almost everyone would shy away from the idea
of robbing anybody or anything. So why did that headline convert well enough that the
piece was sent out multiple times in 2005?
Because it took the risk of being highly desirable to a select few over being recycled by
the rest of the world.
(See more about writing direct mail-style copy in the upcoming Copy Hackers Book 5: Long-
Form & the Sales Letter.)
The lesson: Don’t try to write copy that will speak to 100%, 75% of 50% of visitors. You will
end up converting no one.
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Instead, write copy that will please your most qualified traffic – even if that’s just 22% of all
traffic – and thus stand a far better chance of converting a ton of those specific visitors.
BONUS: Qualified traffic that converts is more likely to stay with you and, if they’re
really happy with you, recommend you.
EXTRA BONUS: Once you get the message right for that segment, you can buy more
traffic for that segment and enjoy better ROI than buying traffic that won’t land on a
page with targeted messaging.
Examples of Startups That Get This Rule Right

Startups are explicitly focusing on niches in their home page headlines already.
CampaignMonitor.com
“Email marketing software for designers and their clients.”
The truth is that any industry can use CampaignMonitor, but they’ve decided to focus on
the people who are most likely to arrive at their site: designers. Why designers? Because
most small businesses that are getting serious enough about their growth to create email
marketing programs are also serious enough to hire a [freelance] designer. Who then has to
do the grunt work. Like finding the right email program. Designers are influencers.
CollegeBudget.com
“Student-only deals, delivered daily.”
This is a case of real focus. CollegeBudget.com could provide local deals for anyone – and
maybe they do – but their copy is committed to one market. So if students wonder what
service they should use for daily local deals, they know where to go – and where to stay.
Reach.ly
“We connect hotels with guests in real time.”
Instead of connecting restaurants, limo services, concert organizers, deal-of-the-day, or
AirBnB rentals with people in real-time – which Reach.ly surely could do – they focus on
connecting hotels with potential guests. Simple. Targeted. As they grow, they can expand
that targeted message.
Trulia.com
“Homes and local scoop for the real estate obsessed.”
Although Trulia has built up what some may argue to be a well-known brand since its
founding in 2005, the company still chooses to target a specific group of people in the
23
headline on their home page: the real estate obsessed. Those who are truly real estate
obsessed – including anyone trying to sell a house in a down economy – would find
themselves quite at home here.
Think This Stuff Is a No-Brainer?

Examples of Startups That Miss the Mark
It’s beyond easy to lose focus on the core value of your offering – especially when you’re
under a deadline, too close to the project or desperately trying to attract VCs (who, you
think, may not be interested in investing in something too narrow).
So before you go thinking that every startup would target their messaging, check out these
examples. Proof that even the smartest startups need copywriting help.
lal.com (LikeALittle)
“Hello! Welcome to LikeALittle! Connect with people near you”
LikeALittle is a website that – in its current form – gives people on campus an anonymous
way to flirt with other students. It’s entirely targeted to university students. …And yet the
headline could be confused with that of any number of social networks. It could take a
lesson from CollegeBudget.com.
LearnVest.com
“Take Control. Afford Your Dreams.”
The goal of LearnVest is to help women organize their finances and be financially savvy. Yet
there is no mention anywhere on the home page of focusing on women. Miss? Yes.
NEXT STEPS
~ Apply What You’ve Learned On Your Site Now ~
If you’ve already written a website or copy for it, refer to that copy and ask yourself if it
targets the market or market segments you identified in the previous chapter… or if it tries
to please the larger majority. Make the headlines more specific, at minimum, to target.
The more neutral and bland your copy is, the more likely you’re not targeting a segment. So
target one! Revise that copy to speak directly to 35% of your visitors.
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4.
Find & Document Your Features and Benefits
If you were only to focus on the things your customers want to hear, you’d probably end up
saying a bunch of stuff that was only half-true or that sounded a lot like what everyone else
is saying.
Your messages must be what your customers want to hear… but let’s not forget that they
also need to be unique to your product.
The things that are unique to your product will make people want to buy your product –
versus buying the competitor’s or not buying at all.
Remember the center piece of what makes effective copy:
Your copy will be first and foremost about what your user wants. Secondly, your copy will
be about how your product satisfies those wants.
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Which brings us to the purpose of this chapter: listing out the best features of your
product and matching them with the benefits that your users are looking for.
What’s the difference between a feature and a benefit? Here’s how I think of them:
Feature: A light switch on a lamp.
Benefit of the Feature: You can easily fill a room with light or darken it.
By the time you finish this chapter, you’ll know what your features and benefits are.
Know Your Product: Document All Your Features

When I was writing websites for Intuit, I would keep something I called the product
positioning document (created by the dev team) open on one monitor and the Word doc
with the copy I was writing open on my other monitor. I used that document for everything.
A product positioning document will be your best friend as you write your own copy.
So, even if you think you know your product inside-out because, after all, you built or
helped build the damn thing, do yourself a big favor: document all your features in a simple,
clear product positioning doc. I provide one here and in an easy-to-print form on my site.
Here’s what you’ll need to do:
1. Create a table (or use the provided table) with 5 columns:

a. Features
b. Unique to Us
c. Customer Pain Solved
d. Benefits
e. Priority
2. In the Features column, list every single feature you have. Leave out nothing. You
think some feature is small? Well, if that one small feature makes it into a bullet list
on your site, you never know, someone else might think it’s major enough to put you
above your competition in their mind. NOTE: Do not start toying with the words at
this point. You are not writing copy.
3. In the Unique to Us column, give yourself a checkmark if the feature is something
only your solution offers. If the feature is offered by a competitor, list each
competitor that has it. And if the feature is similar to a competitor’s feature, briefly
describe that here.
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4. In the Customer Pain Solved column, refer to the customer research you did
earlier. Note the customer pain that each feature solves or at least addresses, and, if
you have multiple market segments, be sure to indicate which segment X feature
solves for.
(You’ll be working with the fourth and fifth columns in the next section of this chapter.)
GET THIS WORKSHEET ON COPYHACKERS.COM

You’ll find a layout for this table at the end of this chapter. But you can also check out
CopyHackers.com to download free worksheets and cheat sheets.
As you list out your features, you may start recognizing the value of each feature quickly;
feel free to jot that value in the Benefits column. You may also find yourself categorizing
features that are similar to each other. That’s good, too.
Do whatever helps you produce a nicely organized table that you will be able to use to write
copy later. If you offer more than one product, create a product positioning document for
each flavor.
Mix Product Knowledge with Customer Knowledge:

Turn Features into Benefits
A feature is a part of your product or service that does a unique thing.
A benefit is the outcome of what that feature does – it’s what the value your customer
derives from using the feature.
Every feature in your product has a benefit of some kind, as well. That’s true whether your
startup is offering software, a social service, custom t-shirts or diamond rings. Exceptional
features – the kinds that really differentiate one product from another – may have dozens
of little benefits or a handful of major ones.
Let’s say your startup is an online cake-ordering service.
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A feature of your cakes may be gluten-free flour; gluten-free flour prevents flair-ups for
people suffering from celiac and aligns with a whole-food or vegan diet. That entire
statement describes the feature – but it doesn’t get to the customer benefit.
You may think the customer benefit is that gluten-free flour prevents flair-ups for people
suffering from celiac and aligns with a whole-food or vegan diet. But that’s actually just part
of the feature.
(People commonly make the mistake of believing a description of the purpose of the
feature is, in fact, the benefit. But those people quickly lose friends.)
So, what’s the benefit?
The benefit is the value your customer derives from buying a cake made with gluten-free
flour. Benefits will vary based on who your market or market segment is, so keep your
primary buyers in mind (as always).
For a grandmother – a worrying type who feels deep satisfaction when she sees her loved
ones enjoying a meal – the benefit may be to watch her granddaughter with celiac enjoy
her birthday party like every other kid gets to. For a teacher who’s trying to bring a
celebratory cake to school – but knows the restrictions around gluten-based products at
events – the benefit may be rewarding her students while keeping the principal and PTA
happy. Those benefits tap into motivations, which we already know are powerful.
Benefits tell your customer what’s in it for them – not what the feature will do for them but
how they will feel after using it and what will improve in their lives thanks to it.
Features that do not have clear benefits are features you should not mention in your copy.
The Benefits of How You Do What You Do

The elements that go into your product or solution – that is, your features – each have
benefits. But let’s not forget about the benefit of how you build your solution. Startups and
experienced copywriters alike often overlook this key differentiator.
Not every benefit aligns with a feature. Some benefits sit outside features entirely and
speak instead to things like design and corporate values. These are the benefits of how you
do what you do, and they may include:
• Minimizing our carbon footprint by using only FSC paper products
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• Making it fun to do your bookkeeping with a cartoon-like look-and-feel
• Sharing the love by donating to 1% for the Planet
• Protecting animal rights by using only vegan-certified materials
Every benefit to using your solution is a benefit worth sharing! So document these, too.
Complete the Product Positioning Document:

Columns 4 and 5
Let’s return to the worksheet you were working on, which I called the product positioning
document. You’ve completed the first three columns, which were focused on features and
pain points, and now it’s time to fill in the critical fourth column: Benefits.
5. Using what you’ve just learned, assign at least one express benefit to every
feature. Some features may have multiple benefits. If you find features that have no
express benefit – that is, where you have to stretch to make a benefit fit – then
scratch it off your list; your customer won’t need to learn about it on your website.
Merge cells as necessary.
If you have any benefits that are not directly applied to a feature, create a new row
for that benefit and make a note about the benefit so you’ll know that it’s related to
how you do what you do.
You have just one column remaining: Priority. This column is intended to help you rank the
features+benefits that rise to the top and will, thus, be most important for your visitors to
see at key points in the experience.
Not every feature is a gem, and not every benefit will be compelling to your segment.
Assigning a priority to each row will help you, as you’re writing, craft a messaging hierarchy
– to determine whether to emphasize or subordinate copy for each feature+benefit.
There are no rules around what you use to indicate priority. You can use color-coding if
you’d like or numbers (e.g., “1” = “high priority”). I like to use words: high, medium, low.
So let’s complete our product positioning doc by filling in the fifth column: Priority.
6. Assign a rank to each feature+benefit.
29
That’s it! You’ve completed the product positioning document.
You will be able to use this document for every page you write, for every email, and for
your in-product messaging.
You will also be able to use this document to help you craft messages throughout the rest
of this ebook and in the other ebooks in the Copy Hackers series, including:
• Messaging Hierarchy
• Value Proposition
• PODs: Product Points of Differentiation
Features and benefits will comprise the core of your copywriting efforts.
I encourage you to spend the time necessary to get this document – this lengthy, possibly
ugly document – as nailed-down as possible. But remember! You’re not ‘wordsmithing’
here. You’re just listing with as much detail as you need. The copywriting comes later.
Should You Summarize Benefits or Get Specific?

Please don’t fall into the trap of summarizing when you’re copywriting. Many marketers
focus so much on trying to cut down on word count that they cut out all the juiciness of a
statement just to make it fit a 6-word space.
The good copywriter who finds herself constrained by space will not dilute the message in
order to squeeze it in somewhere.
Instead, she’ll choose shorter, tighter words or fewer words that have greater impact.
Why?
Because a summary is not noticeable or memorable, and we want our copy to be both
noticeable and memorable.
Specifics stick.
When you’re listing out your benefits in your product positioning document, be specific.
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Should You Lead With Benefits or Features?
When you’re writing copy, you’ll need to determine what message to put above other
messages. (A messaging hierarchy.) We call your top-priority message your ‘lead’ message.
Although many marketers will say you should always lead with the benefit, there are no
hard and fast rules here. I’ve seen a headline focusing on a new product feature outperform
a headline showing an expected benefit. So it’s always a matter of providing your specific
customer base with the message they need to see when they need to see it. Which means
you really, really need to know your customer. In case I haven’t made that clear.
Some types of shoppers are suspicious of ‘soft’ marketing messages, which is what a lot of
benefits [unfortunately] morph into.
Other types jump straight to comparison charts and catalogues just to see what features
you have.
And other types might have heard of a cool feature in your product and are willing to sign
up based on that alone. None of these types would want you to lead with the benefit.
No matter what you choose to lead with – features or benefits – keep this in mind: you
should support every feature with a benefit and every benefit with a feature or related
support point (e.g., snapshot of interface design to support benefit of enjoyable software).
Example: AnyNewBooks?
AnyNewBooks.com is a book notification service anyone can use for free. The following is
from their home page (as of Sept 2011).
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AnyNewBooks leads with the core benefit of their service as their headline. The subhead
supports the benefit-headline by speaking to the service feature: weekly notifications.
A feature of AnyNewBooks is free weekly email notification. There are at least 3 explicit
benefits to this feature.
1. You don’t have to spend any money to access this service, so you keep more cash in
your pocket
2. Because the email notices are weekly, you don’t get spammed… which means you
don’t have to waste a single second deleting the emails
3. The emails come to you… so you don’t have to go on the hunt for new books and risk
missing something cool that you might love
A second feature of AnyNewBooks is that you can select your favorite genres to receive
new book notifications for. The most obvious benefit here is that you find out about what
matters to you… and you’re not bothered with weeding through massive lists you might get
from a book retailer.
Example: Mint
I’ve been following Mint since they started because I totally loved the way their design and
copy work together. (I had mixed emotions when Mint was acquired by Intuit, but who
didn’t?) A free personal finance tool, Mint uses a mix of features and benefits on their How
It Works page (as of April 2011).
32
The headline for the page speaks explicitly to features while at the same time addressing
the overarching value prop for Mint: power and simplicity combined.
Note the chunks of copy that follow. The headlines for those chunks vary between benefits
(i.e., “See all your accounts in one place”, “stay safe and secure”) and features (i.e., “auto-
categorization of transactions”). Benefits and features support each other in the copy; for
every feature listed, there is a benefit.
Note also that each chunk is supported by a clear visual that either gives proof to the claim
being made – as in the case of showing screenshots – or reinforces a message – as in the
case of the “it’s free” sign.
BONUS! “SHOW, DON’T TELL”

What’s extra-interesting about Mint is that they adopt a “show don’t tell” philosophy with
their sales approach. By that, I mean they show, in their web design, a key benefit of easy,
clean visual design rather than telling visitors that they’re design-focused.
You don’t have to write copy to express everything.
Some of the strongest messages do not even appear as text on the page.
NEXT STEPS
Complete the product positioning document. I refer to this in almost every Copy Hackers
ebook I write. It’s critical that you complete this document to write compelling copy.
33
PRODUCT POSITIONING DOCUMENT – TEMPLATE
Print this page from the PDF version of your ebook copy.
Be sure to visit CopyHackers.com for a range of templates like these.
Feature Unique Customer Pain Benefit Priority

to Us? Solved
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5.
Should You Write Copy in the Positive or the Negative?
Although most marketing messages are based on the idea of solving customer pain, which
feels inherently negative, marketing managers want you to write messages in positive ways.
That means they want you to eliminate negative words from copy, such as:
• Don’t
• Never
• Avoid
• Banish
• Refuse
• Get Rid of
• But
What’s weird about that approach – the always-be-positive approach – is that we’re raised
to pay most attention to negative phrases. And we buy things when we have a need to
solve or an itch to scratch.
When your nephew is about to touch a hot element, what do you say? “Don’t touch that!”
A marketer would have you say, “Only touch this.”
Which is more effective? Which is specific enough for your brain to comprehend without
overthinking? Which one will be least likely to result in your nephew burning his little hand?
35
The negative, you see, can be very powerful in a world ruled by clear, concise messages that
simplify decision-making.
But that doesn’t mean negative is always better.
Some of the Most Popular Positive & Negative Messages of All Time
The classic Apple “1984” commercial – the one that showed a futuristic drone-filled world
and the uber-athletic tough chick rushing through to end it all – was not exactly the most
positive ad campaign ever produced. But it continues to resonate with advertisers and
consumers as an important, powerful and unforgettable message that shaped the brand.
On the other hand, Ad Age called Volkswagen’s “Think Small” campaign of 1959 – with its
decidedly positive campaign message – the top advertising campaign of all time.
In the advertising world and in our startup world, no one has definitely been able to make a
case for going either negative or positive in your messaging. In some cases, you may just
want to do a hybrid of both, like Miller Lite’s classic “Tastes great, less filling”.
Positive Negative
DeBeers 7-Up
A diamond is forever The Uncola
Maxwell House Crest
Good to the last drop Look, Ma! No cavities!
Nike M&Ms
Just Do It Melts in your mouth, not in your hands.
McDonald’s US School of Music
I’m Lovin’ It They laughed when I sat down at the piano,
but when I started to play!
US Army Charmin
Be all that you can be Please don’t squeeze the Charmin
Comparing Positive and Negative Messages – You Decide

Every copy hacker has to make choices about the sort of messages she or he wants to put
out there as representative of the brand. Which of the following headlines stick with you?
Which approach might you prefer to use for your own startup? (Test to be sure!)
Positive: Now You Can Use Your Smart Phone to Reduce Your Bank Fees
36
Negative: Bankers Don’t Want You to Use This Free Banking App
Positive: Receive Only the Emails You Want to Receive
Negative: DreamBox Gets Rid of SPAM Before You Even Know It’s There
Positive: Save Money by Using Our Templated Apps
Negative: When Businesses Build Custom Apps, They Lose Money
Positive: Q-Pon Is Your Very Own Coupon-Clipping App
Negative: Because You Haven’t Got Time to Clip Coupons
Avoid Negative Associations with Your Solution

An argument against negativity that I fully agree with (and hope you will heed) is to avoid
creating a negative image and then tacking your brand on as the solution.
A negative image can be so powerful that, even if your solution is designed to make that
bad thing go away, your brand will be associated with it.
Think of negativity as a big, heavy weight you’ve dropped on your customer. The only way
to get them to think positively of you after burdening them is if your solution is so powerful,
it thrusts that weight right off their shoulders and throws it a hundred miles away.
Can your solution do that?
If it can’t, then it may be better to hint at the negative side as opposed to bringing it to the
surface – and, with it, the complex emotions it inspires.
NEXT STEPS
Scan your key pages for negative messages. If you’re being intentionally negative, great –
but if you’re being unnecessarily negative and you could be positive with better results,
revise that copy if and only if the conversion rate on your page is low or the bounce or exit
37
rate is high. But remember! If negative messages are working for you, then you don’t need
to mess with them.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. (…Possibly the most negative statement ever made, but a
memorable and meaningful one!)
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6.
Stop Writing! Let Customers & Competitors Craft Your
Messages
Okay, so you’ve got a really good start. If you’ve been reading from page 1 on, you already
know that your messages come from your visitors as well as your product benefits and
features. That’s a better start than most startups have when writing their web copy. Hell, a
better start than most agencies or Big Time companies have! Nice work.
That said, it’s just a start.
I mean, if you wanna write pretty good web copy, you could skip to the formatting ebook
right now and be done with it.
But you didn’t sit down and read this far just to back away, did you? What startups succeed
by going half the distance? Come on!
Let’s get into what really great web copywriters do once they’ve got the basics of their
messages.
This chapter will show you how to use keyword research and competitor content audits to
find the right messages for your visitors.
Use Keywords Your Visitors Want to See

For startups, it’s essential to find the right keywords around which to shape your messages
(and, when possible, to guide your product improvements or free tools).
39
Here’s what you do to start this step: Go to Google AdWords, and enter at least one
primary keyword or keyword phrase that you think best fits your product.
Patrick McKenzie runs the very popular Bingo Card Creator, and so he might begin by
researching “bingo card creator” and then reviewing the top global and local monthly
searches to find additional keywords to optimize his copy for. He might find that “printable
cards” has 100x the traffic of “bingo card creator” and write a landing page that matches
that keyword phrase, if he felt it was a fit. (He’s an SEO genius, so he’d know best!)
And you should do the same.
Find the keywords to use in crafting various pages, and write them down.
These keywords tell you in no uncertain terms exactly what your customers are looking for.
These keywords are the words of your customers – words they’re using, and words that will
resonate them when they land on your website.
Adword keywords are often the exact phrases your customers want to see on your site.
I bet you thought keyword research would only help your search engine rankings, didn’t
you? (If not, keep it to yourself. No one likes a know-it-all.)
I didn’t discover this little keyword trick until I worked with a really stellar search manager,
who provided me with keywords that flowed surprisingly well. Keywords that sounded like
normal language.
Use keywords to shape your copy throughout your site. For example, you might use
keywords to inform the copy you write:
• In your headlines (H1s) and subheads (H2s)

• In your page-specific SEO stuff – URLs, metatitles, metadescriptions, etc.
• In your demos
• In the captions under your screenshots
• In the second line of any multiline buttons you may have
So, in a nutshell, create smarter messages by researching keywords – the actual language
that your potential customers are keying in – and letting those inform your copy.
40
Do a Simple Competitor Content Audit (Home Page Only)
You already know what the top keyword phrases are that you’ll be trying to optimize for,
right? So take those phrases, search them, and note the top 3 results on the SERP (organic
and PPC) for each keyword phrase.
Why?
Because you want to find out who your competitors are.
The good thing about a lot of startups is that you’ve got your pulse on what’s going on.
That’s what most behemoth companies fail to do. The big guys think they know their
competitors – and then in comes a little startup that takes market share away from them.
Like Netflix took from Blockbuster, and like some small startup on the horizon could in turn
take from Netflix.
You need to know who your competitors are. And in the online space, the companies
showing up at the top of the SERPs for your keywords ARE your competitors.
You’re in acquisition mode as a startup, so you’ve got to own as much of the SERPs as you
can; and, where you can’t, you have to at least know what your competitors are saying so
you can try to compete. Any copywriter will tell you that.
Now that you know your competition, what are you going to do with them?
Audit them.
Yup. Audit them.
Meet the Content Audit. Pretty simple competitive research stuff. Like the market research
you did earlier, this competitor research will help you get a grip on exactly what messages
your competition is putting out there. That is, what messages many of your prospects have
probably already seen.
Knowing those messages can help you understand:
 What visitors to your site expect to see (because you want to match their
expectations)
 What messages might soon be white noise (i.e., repeated too frequently), which
you’ll want to use sparingly or not at all
 Any glaring gaps in messaging
 What sort of tone or style others are – or aren’t – using in their copy
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Auditing your competitors’ content will help you write kick-ass copy on your site.
Which is why professional copywriters do content audits and charge you $20K for them.
Which is why you need to learn to do a simple content audit yourself – so you can get the
goods for whatever I end up charging for this masterpiece.
THE GOAL OF THE CONTENT AUDIT

is to understand existing messages about solutions similar to your own.
I recommend you focus your content auditing efforts on the home page of a maximum of
10 competitors. And I recommend that you focus on analyzing these 5 things:
1. The value proposition/headline

2. The top messages (i.e., the major messages you know they’re trying to communicate
to visitors)
3. The primary call(s) to action – language, visual design, and position on the page
4. The special reasons to buy (i.e., guarantees and assurances that might compel a
visitor to take our their credit card)
5. Other seriously cool stuff that wows you
I do my content audits in a PPT deck. Each site I audit gets two pages: one for a screen
capture of the home page I’m auditing; the other for the audit itself.
The following page shows an example of the screens I did when I audited Intuit Merchant
Account Services’s home page:
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Screen One: Capture the screen for your records
Screen Two: Fill in the top messages you see on that captured screen
43
After auditing the home pages, you need to synthesize what you’ve learned in order to
understand more about the messages… and shape your own messaging strategy.
How? Stay in PPT, and create simple tables that help you break apart the messages.
VISIT COPYHACKERS.COM
for easy-print worksheets like the ones you see completed here.
VALUE PROPOSITION TABLES

3 columns. One column is for the name of the competitor. The second is where you’ll list
the actual value props. (Note that some sites may not have a value prop.) And the third is
where you’ll pull out the benefits highlighted in each value prop, keeping it short and
sweet. (For example, “security”, “ease” or “affordability”.)
44
TOP MESSAGES TABLES
Columns for each competitor, plus 2. The leftmost column is where you’ll write, in rows,
short versions of the top messages. The rightmost column is where you’ll tally the number
of sites on which each message is used. And in the middle? Columns for each site you
audited, with tickmarks down the column to indicate if X message was used on that
website.
The following page shows an example:
45
As you can see, by looking at this table, a copy hacker can get a quick overview of the top
messages his competitors are trying to communicate. The totals help you see the most
common messages… which could be white noise, due to overuse, or which could be a
baseline that your visitors expect to see reflected in your copy.
This audit can also provide some insights. For example, in the above example, it’s clear
that the messages “Accept credit cards”, “Low/Competitive rates & fees” and “Support” are
important ones. Do you know if your visitors expect to read about support on your home
page? Had you considered that?
That said, are these EFFECTIVE messages? I don’t know that yet. I can’t know that. But I’m
not trying to know that, either.
Not yet.
This is just an audit.
Later, you can assess and test the messages.
46
PRIMARY CALLS-TO-ACTION TABLES
Columns for each competitor, plus 2. The leftmost column is where you’ll write, in rows,
the calls to action (C2A). The rightmost column is where you’ll tally the number of sites on
which each C2A is used. Columns for each site you audited go in the middle, with tickmarks
– just as in the previous table.
Although this table may prove to list things that you feel are no-brainers, it can also help
you to consider the importance of putting certain C2As above the fold on your home page.
For example, you may find that all of your competitors have a great, big demo link on their
home pages.
With that information, you can at least make a more informed decision about whether or
not you, too, will offer a demo front-and-center on your home page.
Now you understand existing messages about solutions similar to your own. So you can use
that understanding to inform your own messaging strategy and hierarchy.
TIP: Get USERS to Audit Home Pages for You

UserTesting.com is a great resource when you’re on a budget but trying to figure out what’s
good, bad or ugly about your competitors’ copy. For about $29 per user (2010), you can
recruit users of X, Y or Z demographic to review any page on any website. Results are
detailed and include videos of each user interacting with the website of your choosing.
NEXT STEPS
Complete the content audit and value proposition tables on the next page, as described in
this chapter. Visit CopyHackers.com for a printable page audit template.
47
VALUE PROPOSITION TABLE – TEMPLATE
Company or Value Proposition Benefits Highlighted

Site (on Home Page)
TOP MESSAGE AND/OR CALL TO ACTION TABLE – TEMPLATE

Message or Company Company Company Company Total

Call to Action A: B: C: D:
48
7.
Always Have a [Simple] Messaging Hierarchy in Mind
My [very ugly] presentation on messaging hierarchy has been ranking #1 on the Google
SERP for the phrase “messaging hierarchy” since, like, the beginning of time. It’s not exactly
the world’s best presentation, but it’s a good starting point that teaches this above all else:
Messaging hierarchy is not about ordering messages from top to bottom.

It’s about knowing where users look and putting the messages they need to see there.
By definition, a messaging hierarchy ranks your messages from most important to least
important, from top priority to supporting. In the product positioning document you
drafted earlier, you ranked your features and benefits; that ranking is the basis of your
hierarchy.
But that doesn’t mean you’ll just dump your messages on the page in order of priority.
Let’s briefly discuss scannable copy. That will help us make sense of on-page hierarchy.
Writing scannable copy means writing in a way that draws people into the message.
Everything you’ve read that’s not total crap draws people in step by step, in an intentional
manner. Take children’s books for example. They start by introducing the characters,
setting up the dilemma, making you care about the dilemma, and then solving it in a way
that makes you feel good. You’re drawn in.
Consider Dr. Suess’s classic, Oh, the Places You’ll Go! The book starts off with an overview of
where “you” are and what you’ve got going on – including brains in your noggin’ and shoes
49
on your feet. Then it shows where you can go, the roads you might turn down – and the
ones you’ll steer clear of (thanks to all those brains). Then it reminds you that, with a whole
world out there, you’re the one who gets to make the decision.
It starts with an introduction. Then builds on that introduction. Then ties it up nicely.
Obviously, writing for the web is not the same as writing a children’s book. (Although I’d bet
your site would have happier users if you made it a quarter as interesting as a Dr. Seuss
book.) But that’s not why I’m breaking down Oh, the Places You’ll Go! for you. I’m actually
trying to illustrate that even the simplest ‘copy’ we read – online or off – has a hierarchical
organization of its messages.
First comes X, then comes Y, then comes Z.
People like to differentiate writing for the web as either writing with an ‘inverted pyramid’
(where the biggest message comes first, and the less important ones are dropped down the
page) or as ‘storytelling’. I don’t see these two as distinct enough to separate.
Writing for the web will always be about leading with what your visitor needs to see – the
biggest point for them – and then positioning the supporting messages as they’re needed.
First comes landing on your site for X reason. Then comes telling them Y. Then comes
closing Z deal.
Your copy will be most readable – and make most sense to your site visitors – when these 2
things are true:
1. Your messages are clearly organized.

Your copy should draw your visitors in and move them through each page by
compelling them to click one of the calls to action – ideally the primary call to action:
the ‘Learn More’, ‘Buy Now’, ‘Sign Up’ or ‘Get Started’ button.
2. Your messages are positioned logically on each page.
Although your visitors will likely make a decision based on something more
emotional than logical, the only way to help them get emotional is to feed them
information in a logical way that prevents them from thinking.
Clearly organized, logically positioned messages don’t happen by accident. High-converting

messages don’t happen by accident. You need to know what you want to say – and what
people want to hear – as well as the order in which those messages need to be placed.
50
That’s all a message hierarchy is: an ordering of your messages from most important to the
visitors you want to target to least important to those visitors. Yep. That’s it.
RESEARCH: Have the Person in Your Photo Look at Key Copy or Buttons
Recognizing that people look at other people’s faces – and, in particular, their eyes – in
advertisements, usability specialist James Breeze (UsableWorld) used eye tracking
technology to find that people are more likely to follow the gaze of a person in a photo
and, as a result, end up looking where the person seems to be looking.
That means that the people images you use on your site can help guide visitors to your
button if the person in that image is casting their eyes in the direction of the button.
Making Sense of Your Own Messaging Hierarchy

If you haven’t already, you want to document your messages, rank them, and then follow
that hierarchy on a page-by-page basis. (You should have done this earlier in this book.)
You will use your messaging hierarchy to stay on track when you’re writing copy for each
and every page of your site. And you’ll need it.
Trust me.
Writing one page can be pretty easy. Writing two, three, or even four – pretty
straightforward. But then you step away from your site, work on optimizing your solution,
and return to write more web copy for a few new PPC landing pages weeks later.
And that’s when it gets hard.
When you step away from writing copy, it gets very easy to forget everything you knew
when you were first writing your site. The longer the gap between one writing session and
another, the more you’ll need your messaging hierarchy to keep you on track.
That said, a message hierarchy can exist in your head – especially for startups, where
there’s usually only a handful of things you absolutely need to communicate to your visitors
and only a half-dozen people involved in reviewing the site before you launch. You and your
small team might just ‘know’ what the most important message is, what its supporting
message is, and so on.
51
If so, kudos!
But some less confident copy hackers need to write this stuff down. I definitely need to
write the messages down in an organized manner… before I even start writing a word.
NEXT STEPS
Test the positioning of your key messages. Refer to a high-traffic page on your site, and
assess the layout: are the messages you want people to see – like great social proof or a
stellar benefit – near eye-catching elements like buttons, icons or images? If not, why not?
Reorganize the page and test it.
If you have any pages that have a stock photo of a person near a button on the page, I
highly recommend you test out the “woman looking at button” idea I referenced earlier.
Imagine if the difference between getting an extra 5% of visitors signing up was in the gaze
of a stock photo woman!
52
8.
8 Messaging Tips Too Small for Whole Chapters
1. Start with 10x more info than you need, write… and then cut.
“Overwriting is the key. If you need a thousand words, write two thousand. Trim vigorously.
Fact-packed messages carry a wallop. Don’t be afraid of long copy. If your ad is interesting,
people will be hungry for all the copy you can give them. If the ad is dull, short copy won’t
save it.” – John Caples, Legendary NY Copywriter
The goal is to write, write, write – and then edit yourself. The second half of that statement
is just as important as the first.
Write throughout the night. Write until sun comes up. But then spend the day editing.
2. Don’t give your audience too much credit. We’re not all geniuses.
We tend to run around believing that everyone’s smart and critical and analytical. But the
fact is that we all make 100s of 1000s of decisions every day without thinking, and we all
blindly accept things as they are simply because it’s too much effort to question it.
So don’t assume your reader will question everything you say. (Questioning everything is
exhausting.) You don’t need to explain every statement you write.
3. Keep your offers simple.

Fidelity used to offer reduced banking fees for those customers who kept a certain amount
53
of money in their checking or savings account. It was a good offer, but it was filled with
ambiguity:
• What sort of reduced fees?

• What is a “certain amount”?
• Is it checking, savings, or both?
When they simplified that message to No Fees If You Keep $400 In Your Savings Account,
their customers in this program quadrupled within just 4 months.
Getting succinct and sharp sells.
4. Copy works best when readers believe it.

It can work to your benefit to write a line of copy that’s almost impossible to believe. Long-
form sales copywriters do this all the time.
But it’s critical to note that a nearly-unbelievable line of copy should never be impossible to
believe.
And you should always support an almost-unbelievable message on the page by giving clear
examples that build credibility.
5. Customers want a magic button to press.

Although seemingly contrary to the previous tip, it’s true that customers want to continue
to believe what they already believe that:
• There are miracle cures out there

• They’re worthy of those miracles cures
• Those miracle cures will require little effort while saving them loads of time
People have always bought and will continue to want to buy – at least until an apocalypse –
anything that will make them younger, sexier, more powerful, richer.
People are willing to believe that you have it.
Don’t take advantage of this. But don’t hold back if you have a product that will rock their
socks off. Roll with the inertia of their desire to believe in the Harry Potter of all products.
54
6. If it’s in the news and related to you and you can use it in a non-nasty way,
use it.
One of my clients had the good fortune of their competitor making a major blunder and a
national newspaper picking up on it. We decided to leverage that press to our benefit.
Citing the article, I wrote a long-form page (using the “open letter” concept) to lure people
away from that competitor, and we finished the campaign by selling nearly double what
we’d forecast. The long-form helped, but the motivation created by the news item was
critical to the campaign’s success.
7. The most important decision you will make is how you position your product
or service.
Agency Ogilvy & Mather famously positioned Merrill Lynch not just as a stockbroker but as
a total financial services centre and American Express Travelers Cheques not just for foreign
travel but for domestic as well.
To determine how to position your product, first recognize that you must position your
product… and secondly, do research!
Talk to customers, business contacts, anyone who’ll answer your questions.
Be sure you decide on your positioning before you write a word. It’s true that you can
always change down the road, but why take that route when you can start on the right foot
right now?
8. When writing starts to feel difficult, you’re doing it right.

Thomas Mann once wrote, “A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is
for other people.” Keep that in mind while you’re writing your copy. If it starts to feel too
easy, you may not be pushing yourself hard enough to select the right word or cut
unnecessary copy or position a product for a niche.
Fluff is easy. High-converting copy is time-consuming and hard – but worth it!
VISIT COPYHACKERS.COM
to read the next ebook in the series, Book 2: Formatting & the Essentials of Web Writing.
55
All brand features referenced within are protected by applicable trademark, copyright and other
intellectual property laws.
AnyNewBooks.com
Club Penguin™ Disney Online Studios Canada Inc. http://www.clubpenguin.com/
Intuit, Inc. https://www.mint.com/
PointAboutTM, a Division of Three Pillar Global. http://www.pointabout.com/discover-more-about-

pointabout/three-pillar-global/
Wildfire Interactive, Inc. http://www.wildfireapp.com/
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IN THIS EBOOK

1. A Messaging Strategy Will Keep You on Track .......................................................................................... 3

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Twitter: @copyhackers Hacker News: bloggergirl Website: copyhackers.com

But where do your messages come from?

That’s what this book will help you understand.

What’s a Messaging Strategy?

For example, this is a 1-paragraph messaging strategy for Page99Test.com:

What to Consider When You Write Your Own Messaging Strategy

• Let copy guide design; good writing is good design

Your Messaging Strategy Is a Living Document

• What you say – Your message

You’re high-fiving about how Big Time you sound.

You’re screaming, “That’s it! That’s exactly what we want to say!”

You want copy that sells.

Your messages come from your customers.

Only Research Can Help You Know Your Visitor

Research, research, research.

But how long will that market use your site?

How can you do this research, you ask?

Next, Narrow Your Market into Manageable Segments

Example: Messaging for Moms

Example: Messages for Career-Oriented Women

• Ask yourself, what keeps my customers up at night?

Research: Interview to Find Pain Points

• Reclaiming their childhood innocence

Why Are People Coming to Your Site?

At its core, “motivation” is created by marketing and PR.

Money problems are the #1 reason for divorce in North America.

• Confirm that your solution is what they thought it was

What Motivation Is Not

Examples of Sites That Cater Well to One Market or Market Segment

REMEMBER: Your Message Isn’t YOUR Message at All

If you want to have a real business.

I assume that’s not what you want, though.

So there you have it – the tough love you need.

None of the words on your page will be your words.

They will be words your customers need to hear.

Which means you need to get to know them ASAP.

Learn Low-Budget Market Research from Tim Ferriss

 Visit your site frequently

Your copy will suck.

A Simple Trick for Converting More Visitors into Customers

Let’s refer back to the home-selling example.

Same goes for your product.

Be the company that ‘gets’ that segment.

Consider the highest-converting advertisements of the last decade.

How to Legally Rob Slot Machines in ANY Casino!

Examples of Startups That Get This Rule Right

Think This Stuff Is a No-Brainer?

Remember the center piece of what makes effective copy:

Feature: A light switch on a lamp.

Know Your Product: Document All Your Features

Here’s what you’ll need to do:

1. Create a table (or use the provided table) with 5 columns:

GET THIS WORKSHEET ON COPYHACKERS.COM

Mix Product Knowledge with Customer Knowledge:

Let’s say your startup is an online cake-ordering service.

So, what’s the benefit?

The Benefits of How You Do What You Do

• Minimizing our carbon footprint by using only FSC paper products

Complete the Product Positioning Document:

Merge cells as necessary.