We’ve all been there.
You’re telling a story to your friends and you lose the thread.
You veer off topic and find yourself talking about something that isn’t directly related to how the story ends.
Noticing a couple of lost looks, you rush the best part of the story. And it ends up sounding a lot less interesting than you’d hoped.
Don’t ramble to strangers
Drifting away from the key message among friends isn’t a big deal.
But it can be if you’re trying to establish a relationship in the first place.
After all, strangers can be less forgiving than your friends. You haven’t built up a bank of goodwill with them over the years. So, when you’re speaking to strangers, your delivery has to be better, your storytelling smoother.
The same is true of the content on your website.
Creating content for your website is a bit like telling a story to a room full of strangers. You have a limited amount of time to make a good impression.
You need to get to the point quickly and be clear about what’s in it for them.
What do they stand to gain from working with you or from buying your product?
This might sound like simple, obvious advice, but it’s actually harder than it seems. The temptation when you write about your own business is to share all. If it seems important to you, then your prospects will want to hear about it too, right?
Not exactly.
You are not your customer
You have to put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. Imagine that you are her and you land on your brand’s website. What would you want to know?
Sure, you’d probably like to know a little bit about the brand - who they are and where they’ve come from. But above all, you’d want to know what this brand can do for you.
What is it about them that means they’re in a unique position to improve your life?
Great content begins with empathising with your prospect’s situation.
It’s vital you recognise that you are not your customer. They want different things and aren’t as interested as you are in your business as a whole.
And it’s equally important to know what matters to your ideal customer. Once you do, it will be easier for you to sharpen your focus on the key benefits of your offer that will resonate most.
Keeping your message concise
Joseph Sugarman’s slippery slide concept might sound a little bit too Mad Men for your liking. But there’s a universal truth to it.
Sugarman suggested that good content sets the reader off on a slippery slide. One that they can’t get off until they arrive at the call to action at the bottom of the page.
As I said earlier, you only have a limited amount of time to make a good impression when strangers land on your website.
That’s why your headline is so important.
The headline is the first thing - and if it doesn’t land, the last thing - that somebody reads on your page. It’s your chance to speak directly and succinctly to your prospect and to share a key benefit with them.
In the headline you’re saying “this is what you stand to gain if you stick around and read on.” You’re rewarding the visitor for reading your content.
If the headline does its job and encourages your prospect to stay a while, Sugarman’s rule is that every other sentence that follows it should do the same until she arrives at the call to action.
Lost looks = lost revenue
We all lose our way sometimes when we’re telling a story. But the story you tell on your website is one of the most important you’re going to tell.
Lost looks from the strangers who land on your homepage means lost revenue.
That’s why it pays to focus on the benefits and keep your message concise.
I write web content for brands that tells their story in a focused, concise and compelling way.
Find out more about my services, here.