Why Your Website Copy Must Market Your Business

“We don’t like the first draft, it’s too marketing; it sells our services too much.”

That is a real life response from a copywriting client.

Yes, I was stunned too.

Apparently, the copy had to be more ‘jargonised’ and in the language of ‘high business’ and not focused on what they can do for their clients.

No. That’s not how it works.

Your website is your sales tool

Your website is available to people all over the world, 24/7/365.

It exists for one reason only – to tell readers what you can do for them and how their lives (or businesses) will be richer by using your products or services.

How do you do that?

Through high quality website copywriting that focuses on your reader and tells them the main benefits of what you do.

If your website focuses on you and is full of jargon, at best it tells the world your company exists, but that’s it.

Great, you exist. So what? I’m going to use these other guys who have taken the time to tell me about how their service is going to help me.

You are missing a trick – a potentially very lucrative trick – if you ignore this advice.

How to market through website copy

As mentioned earlier, you have to remember that:

• Your website is a sales tool
• It exists to tell people what you can do for them
• It is not a soap box from which you can rave about your company

The copy that you write has to be:

• Focused 100% on your reader
• In the second person so it ‘speaks’ to your reader
• Focused on the benefits you provide
• Engaging and interesting

And it should all be topped off with a strong call to action telling the reader to get in touch, buy now, sign up, or whatever action it is you want them to take.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking your website is there to tell the world about you. That type of thinking is lame, boring and a disaster waiting to happen.

Please, please use your website as it should be used. Make it all about your reader and not about you.

Thanks for allowing me to get that off my chest. I feel much better now.

Author: Sally Ormond, copywriter at Briar Copywriting Ltd

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Image courtesy of Clare Bloomfield/FreeDigitalPhoto