A fundamental aspect and thing to have locked down before you can start writing and creating copy and content that it going to produce results is:

knowing who you are talking to and understanding the importance of knowing who your ideal client is.

For me, this is baseline. If you know who you are talking to, that’s when you will be able to apply the different copywriting techniques that you need in order to write compelling copy and content.

Writing really great copy and content is possible when you have a fully-stocked pantry of base ingredients.

Just like when you have all of the base ingredients and fundamental aspects (like flour and eggs and butter), you can bake anything you want – when you have those base ingredients for copywriting, and then you have recipes to follow, you can produce any type of copy you want.

If you can lock down the base, fundamental ingredients, and then if you specific techniques and ‘recipes’ to follow, you can produce any copy for any purpose for example your website, your about me page, sales page copy, email copy, advert copy, instagram caption copy, etc.

You are a business owner, so this person you are talking to is your ideal client.

Your ideal client basically represents the sort of person who you are trying to help with whatever service or product you are offering. This person is who your products or services are made for, they are your core demographic, but really zoomed in.

Now that we know why it is so important to know who this person is, we can start thinking of the base questions or aspects that need to be dug into in order to reveal the information we actually want and need in order to create copy and content that speaks to this person.

For your ideal client, it can be summed into:

• Who they are
• What they want
• What they need
• Where they are now
• Where they want to be
• How you can help them/what they need to see from you

Let’s look at this first point: who they are.

Who is this person you want to help? And why do you want to help them?

Once you have this base ideal client person in your head, give them a name (yes, really).

Why? Because we want to think of this character as a real person. In doing so, we will be able to dig in deeper to them, we’ll see them as being real with real emotions, real fears, real goals. And this will help us create copy and content directed towards them.

Now that you have your ideal client and their name, let’s start digging into who they are.

In thinking about this, we focus on two aspects.

The first is the demographic aspects. So these are things like age, gender, location, occupation, income level, marital status, family status. Think of any form you’ve ever had to fill in and those little questions: these are demographic factors.

The second aspect we need to think about are psychographics. These are more to do with habits and personality traits. These are things such as likes and dislikes, opinions about certain things, their dreams, their goals, their interests, their favourite hobbies and activities.

These things speak to that person’s character and personality. It gives a bit more body to your ideal client.

Digging into this first point of your ideal client – really thinking about who they are – is the first step. The next steps start to zoom in on their wants, their needs, their point A, their point B, and where you come in to it all.

Put all together, this ‘ideal client’ profile is the thing that will enable you to write copy and content that speaks directly to this person and that, therefore, cuts through the noise and enables you to be found, discovered and picked by this person.

Knowing your ideal client lets you apply the specific techniques and recipes that lead to copy and content that generates leads, conversions and CLIENTS – copy that turns this ideal client into an ACTUAL client.

Listen to Episode 10 of The Copy Coach podcast for more on this: