Not going to be flashy or mess around today. Coming in with a specific strategy to help you write better copy for your website/sales pages/social media/emails.

You hear these two things a lot in marketing and copywriting.

1. Write how you talk.

2. Write how your customers talk.

Today I want to focus on the second. Because even though we hear it a lot, you still may wonder, “But how do I do it in my copy?”

Do I use their jargon or slang? What if they only use simple words and I want to sound more sophisticated?

Good questions. My answers are ‘yes’ and ‘use simple words then.’

I often say this to clients and to myself in the mirror when I wake up: Good copy starts from your customer’s mouth, not yours.

Here’s what I mean. I’m going to show you a strategy I use to avoid guessing and write clear copy.

We’ll start with customer reviews. To keep this newsletter tight today, I’m going to share one resource I use. It’s G2.com.

It’s great if you have a tech/software company. I also love that when you pick a product, they have '“what you like best” and “what you dislike,” in the reviews, so you get both sides of the story.

This strategy can also be used for reviews on places like amazon, etsy, google, reddit.

Here's a review of the project management software Wrike on G2.

Here are the items I look for in a review:

1. Do they use short or long sentences

2. Is there any slang or jargon

3. How do they refer to the product or service

4. Do they use specific punctuation like exclamation marks.

5. What words do they repeat

6. How do they talk about the problems they are solving

7. ‘Good copy’ phrases word-for-word

If I’m looking at the review above, I’d start by highlighting some ‘good copy’ phrases. I see one in the first sentence. “Track what needs to be done and when.” - This can be a good headline.

You can also see how the customer refers to your service or product and repetitive words. This customer refers to the product as a ‘program’ and ‘project management tool.’ This review also uses ‘tasks’ a lot.

I’ll keep this tip simple. Call the product a ‘project management tool’ and use the words ‘tasks.’

This may seem obvious, but many companies get it wrong and need to correct this on their website.

The customer uses longer sentences - so do a lot of other reviews. I would write complete, descriptive sentences about features and benefits.

I don't see much slang, but I see phrases like “made easier” and “stay on top of.” So instead of saying, “a simple way to organize your daily tasks” — I may write “task management made easy.”

Last thing I’ll point out is how they describe problems and solutions. One line is “tracking the progress of team members” and “assigning team-related chores” (chores is not a great word to use).

This tells me they have struggled with tracking who is doing what and when for the entire team — team visibility of tasks would be helpful for them.

I’d use a line like “the project management for productive teams” — I’d use the word ‘teams’ when speaking about the audience.

I’ll pause here. My goal today is to show you ways you can dissect customer reviews to help write effective copy.

Remember, there’s plenty of copy gems in customer reviews. So, the next time you want to write like your customers talk, you have a way to start doing it…and doing it well.

Need more hands-on help organizing customer reviews and using them to improve your website copy?

Click here to see about scheduling a copy coaching session with me. I can show you a system I use to take reviews and find copy to help improve conversions and likability. If you’re interested, click the link and fill out a quick application to see if it’s a good fit.

Where the cool things are

🤓 CREATIVE SWIPE OF THE WEEK: Speaking of how to write like your customers speak — I’m McLovin’ this “we speak last night” campaign from McDonald’s.

🤣 THIS IS FUNNY: Here is proof comma placement is everything.

😎 THIS IS GOOD COPY: I posted on LinkedIn about how lululemon doesn’t have a ‘sale’ page on their website. It has this.

Thanks for your eyes and time today. Tell all your friends about the newsletter if you find it helpful.

Keep creating cool stuff that helps people.

TS

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