Recently I wrote an article explaining how to identify benefits you offer your customers (http://www.divinewrite.com/benefits.htm). That article challenged business owners and marketing managers to think in terms of benefits rather than features when writing their web copy.

What article didn’t discuss was how to actually write web copy once they had identified their benefits. That’s what this article is about. (It even gives you a couple of templates you can use to make your job a whole lot easier!)

As a website copywriter, many of projects I undertake are completely new websites. The client has some general ideas about what they’d like to convey, but they need someone who can fine-tune their message, and create web copy (and a web structure) which engages their readers. As a result, over years I’ve developed a process for doing this effectively. There are four main steps:

1) Identify benefits

2) Identify how you deliver these benefits

3) Prioritise your benefits

4) Write content

Although this article touches on step 1, it’s mostly about steps 2, 3, and 4.

STEP 1 – IDENTIFY YOUR BENEFITS

Branding aside, most websites are about selling. Customers don’t want to know what you can do; they want to know what you can do for THEM. That means first question you should ask is, “What benefits do I offer my customers?” This is usually first step toward identifying key message to be conveyed.

That’s not to say that your website shouldn’t describe your products and services. You just need to make sure it describes them in terms of benefits to your customer.

But benefits identification is outside scope of this article. If you’d like to find out more about how to engage your customer with benefits, go to http://www.divinewrite.com/benefits.htm.

STEP 2 – IDENTIFY HOW YOU DELIVER THESE BENEFITS

Of course, you can’t just claim to deliver benefits and stop at that. You need to support that claim. On your website, you’re going to need to convince your audience that you actually do deliver these benefits. Anyone can say they deliver benefits, but few can say it persuasively.

From step 1 you’ll have a list of benefits. Now you need to think about how you deliver each benefit in that list. This is where you start talking about features – price, product highlights, distribution channel, competitor weaknesses, external factors, USPs, etc. It’s helpful if you draw up a table with one column for benefits and one for features which deliver those benefits. (Click http://www.divinewrite.com/downloads/benefitsfeatures.doc to download an example Benefits-Features table – 20KB.)

You’ll probably find this process much easier than identifying benefits. In fact, you’ve probably got most of this information written down already… somewhere. If not, chances are you uncovered a good portion of it when you were brainstorming for benefits.

TIP: If you’re having trouble identifying supporting features, before filling out table, try listing everything you can think of which relates to what you do and how you do it. Don’t worry about order. Just braindump onto a piece of paper, a whiteboard, a Word document, anywhere… Don’t leave anything out, even if it seems unimportant. (You’d be surprised how important even most insignificant details can become once you start assigning them to benefits.) If you start getting lost, think back to question you’re trying to answer: How do you deliver your list of benefits to your customer? Once you’ve done your braindump, read through it and decide which specific benefit each feature delivers.

STEP 3 – PRIORITISE YOUR BENEFITS

Now that you’ve identified all things you COULD say, it’s time to figure out what you SHOULD say and where you should say it. This is where your benefits-features table comes into play. Read through your list of benefits and prioritise them according to how compelling they will be to your reader.

COMMERICALS: RADIO AND TV

Determine purpose of ad, e.g. drive traffic to a store, produce direct response inquiries, announce a grand opening, move end-of-season merchandise, etc.

Determine who your customer is and speak to that person one to one, and, ideally, present one main idea in copy.

Use A.I.D.A.: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Get listener’s attention to ad; get listener interested in what you’re offering; get listener to want to take some action on your offer; give listener a means to act and urge that action.

NARRATIONS (ALSO CALLED “INDUSTRIALS”)

For a video script, use storyboard, if you have one, to guide development of script. This will help you time voice over to video’s scenes.

For audio only, where no storyboard exists, do a rough outline. This will help you create a basic logical structure before you start writing. The result will be a script that flows much better for narrator and intended listener.

ALL SCRIPTS