The preparatory stage of writing a selling text

Research of the target audience and properties of a product or service

Before starting work on your text, you need to decide who your target audience (TA) is. There is a lot of information about the concept itself in books, articles and simply in various discussions on the Internet, but, as practice shows, almost everyone puts their own meaning into it. In the context of writing a selling text, the closest is the marketing definition of the value of the target audience, that is, it is a set of certain personalized data of a person or groups of people. For example, gender, age, social and financial status, the presence of a beloved pet, etc.

The target audience for selling texts can be divided into:

The question may arise: why is such a gradation needed and is it possible to influence the target audience by changing its “mood” in a direction that is beneficial for sales? It is indeed possible, but such actions are not always expedient. For example, a frozen target audience is usually a small group of people in relation to the total number of potential customers or buyers. It is often unreasonable for a business owner to spend additional resources on people who know about the product, but are absolutely indifferent to it, do not feel the need to purchase a product or order a service. For example, it makes no sense to sell shampoo for thick hair to a bald person.

As for the cold target audience, that is, those who do not know anything about the product or service, in the selling text it is necessary to give potential buyers as much information as possible about the product and company. The main task is to answer a possible list of questions that potential consumers are interested in: What? Where? How? What is the price? What are the characteristics of the product or service? and so on.

Surely you have already or will soon have a question: “Is it worth working with a target audience that is negatively disposed towards a product or service?” or “Is it necessary to work with an audience that has a negative experience of interacting with a product, service or company?”, Or “What to do with the target audience of companies competing with you?” The unequivocal answer to all these questions is: “Yes, it is necessary to work.” All these are your potential customers, which can be attributed to the “cold” target audience. They need a certain approach, for example, working with negative emotions. An example of such a cold audience are obese women, concerned about the problem of excess weight, in relation to a new product: safe diet pills.

A warm target audience is distinguished by the fact that these people have a specific problem that your product or service helps to solve. For example, baldness. Not all those who suffer because of this are familiar with products that can help. In this case, it makes sense to provide less information about the product and the company, but at the same time exert targeted pressure on the “pain” points. For example, in this case, it is better to choose the message not “Are you bald?”, but “Are you suffering from the problem of hair loss?”.

Hot target audience – those consumers who are well aware of the product, may already be using it. Most likely, these are your existing customers or customers. They are the basis for additional sales. For them, it is worth coming up with new promotions or special offers to initiate new contacts and encourage repeat orders.

Most often, selling texts are written for a warm and cold target audience. It should be understood that each of the groups will require a different approach and different texts. Otherwise, the conversion will suffer. Understanding which audience the text is intended for helps to take into account all the subtleties and nuances: volume, calls to action, the amount of information about the product or service, etc.

Further work with the target audience

1. Collection of facts. After defining and working out the target audience, you will need to search for all the properties that a product or service has. This is necessary for a better understanding of the product itself, as well as for its presentation in the text. This is especially important when it needs to be presented to a cold target audience.

To search for properties, refer to the product specifications. They can be found on the packaging, as well as the official website of the manufacturer. In addition, some products have features that are sometimes not known to those who sell or manufacture products. You can find out about this by monitoring communication with the target audience directly or by viewing discussions on the Internet, that is, on forums and social networks.

When all the properties are written out by you, it is necessary to distribute them among the target audience groups. You may need to write some copy to make it more targeted to sell to certain groups of people. If this is not possible or not profitable, you should at least separate the important properties, turn them into benefits, and then make some eyeliner so that your potential buyer or customer pays attention to the part that is addressed specifically to him.

2. Turning properties into benefits. This is a separate topic and a special skill that must be learned in order to sell not only in writing, but also in live contact with customers. Agree, no one by itself needs a laptop with 10 gigs of RAM. People buy it because it’s faster and works better. It is this transformation of a property into a benefit for the client that is decisive at the stage of product selection.
3. Gain. The last stage of preparation for writing a selling text is to strengthen it with the help of numbers, facts, comparisons and emotions understandable to the target audience. In some areas, such as selling travel or cars, this is a must. They sell feelings. In other industries, the prevailing factor for buying may, on the contrary, be specific “naked” facts. At the same time, it is important to strike a balance so that emotions and numbers do not prevent a potential buyer from taking the last step towards a purchase. Therefore, there should not be too many of them. You are selling a product or service, rather than writing an encyclopedia of interesting facts or beautiful sensory comparisons.

Thus, work on a selling text at the research stage consists in:

We analyze the characteristics of the target audience using an example

Imagine that you need to sell seeds of tomatoes and cucumbers. First you need to determine what will be the target audience? Most likely, these are women and men who are engaged in farming or summer residents, housewives and pensioners.

After that, it is necessary to determine what are the features of the seeds sold for each individual group of target audience? Most likely, this will be information about whether plants are short or tall, early or late ripening, demanding or undemanding in relation to planting conditions, greenhouse or suitable for open ground, etc. You can collect properties for specific TA groups or collect them all, and then divided into groups. This will help you understand potential buyers even more deeply.

If this is a housewife, then usually she has free time, so she can grow vegetables during the entire planting season, from spring to autumn. Accordingly, the properties of the goods are viewed through this prism.

When it comes to wholesale buyers, that is, farmers aimed at the commercial cultivation of vegetables, then the properties of the seeds will be considered appropriate: the minimum number of packages for a single purchase, cost and discounts, the possibility of free delivery, storage conditions, etc.

Once you understand your target audience and their preferences, you will need to turn seed properties into customer benefits. For example, for summer residents, the benefit may be that the culture does not require careful maintenance, that is, there will be enough watering on the weekend. For wholesale buyers, convenient delivery and long-term storage are more likely to benefit.