Before I Write Your Web Copy, Please Put Your Head in This Vice

"Dear Web Copywriting Client,

"If you hire me as your copywriter, we need to come to a special understanding before I write a single word. What I understand is that you want to tell your audience something important. You want to look good. You want to perpetuate a strong brand. You want people to sign up for your list or spend money on your stuff or call you up and beg for permission to bathe in your aura. That's cool. I get it.

Now you need to understand this: Digging deep is the only way to make this process work. You need to lay it all on the line for me. You must tell me what makes you so special. You must tell me what keeps your target market awake at night. You must make some tough decisions about who you do and do not want in your tribe. You must also tell me why your web traffic might want to call you a big fat liar.

And if you don't tell this copywriter everything, I'm going to put your head in a vice and bleed it out of you."

Okay, that's not exactly what I say to every client, but it's close.

As a web copywriter, getting clients to define their target market in meaningful terms can be an excruciating exercise in patience and endurance. Though to be fair, I suspect it's easier to be on my side of the fence than theirs. I know how difficult it can be to take off the cape and reveal your singular naked purpose as a business owner. It's also probably fair to say that few copywriting clients anticipate I'll go all life coach on them.

But, to borrow a page from my father's songbook, maybe I need to give my copywriting clients something to cry about. Like more mediocre web copy that speaks to the masses and says absolutely nothing interesting about their problems or how to make them go away.

I thought it would nice of me to then help non-marketing folk better prepare for the adventure that is web copywriting. Here is, in part, the line of questioning you can expect as one of my copywriting clients:

1. What is your unique value proposition (UVP)? Put another way, what specific qualities differentiate your products/services from your competitors? Why you and not them?
2. Who is your target market? This includes not only demographics (age, income, marital status, etc.) but psychographics as well (values, beliefs, routines, rituals, professional and personal ambitions, professional and personal pain/challenges, etc.). [Cautionary note: this is where copywriters tend to find client responses woefully void of anything useful. It's also the point at which we may introduce a medieval torture device or some other extraction tool.]
3. What is the single most important action you want your visitors to take when they are on your site? Answering this question by saying "buy something" doesn't cut it. Think in terms of your sales funnel. What would be the most logical first step for someone who has never been to your website before to engage with your brand? While the first step could be to buy something, often times it's not. If the logical first step, however, is to buy something, then what exactly do you want them to buy?
4. Who are your main competitors? If you have no direct competitors, then who is vying for your market's dollars indirectly? Every business, no matter how original or unique, is working in a competitive environment. So please get over yourself and hand over some URLs.
5. List at least 10 keywords and phrases your audience might type into a search engine (Google) when looking for what you offer. This is helpful whether or not your site is being search engine optimized, because as a copywriter, one of our goals is to speak in audience-sensitive language.

Now, if you are struggling to answer the above questions in a thorough and concise manner, all we copywriters ask is that you prepare for a second extraction attempt. Or, if you really don't understand your target market, we're going to have to do some market research. We can show you how to do it, or we can step in and do some of the legwork for you. Be prepared to pay for this additional service.

Ultimately, we are asking you to wholeheartedly commit to a well defined target market so we can wholeheartedly commit something special and compelling to the blank page before us. If you are not engaged in this process-if you do not claim your rightful position as captain of your own ship-we cannot do our job as web copywriters.

So next time your copywriter starts grilling you with questions about nit picky things like target markets and UVPs, be patient. They've got your best interests at heart. They also don't want to be forced to bring out the torture devices. They're messy.