Photo by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash
A Guest Post by Miguel Bratos
Writing persuasive texts is one of the most essential skills that an entrepreneur has to learn. As someone that is starting a business project, you will need to create texts to introduce your business to customers and maybe even to investors. Moreover, once the business is running, you will also need to write about your products or services.
As a freelance copywriter at Spanishwriterpro, I have proofread several texts from Spanish entrepreneurs, and one of the most common mistakes they mmakeis writing too much about them and their companies, instead of writing about their customers and investors.
Why You Should Stop Writing About Yourself
Human beings are quite selfish. They are interested in their own business and only care about some close people like family and a few friends. Think about yourself. You only are willing to listen to other people’s story when there are hard emotions involved. Actually, if you think about it, when you meet an acquaintance in the street and you ask “how are you”, you do not expect this person to explain how he really is. If the answer is too long, you will get bored, and you will listen just to be polite.
Advertisements and businesses cannot rely on the politeness of others. You need to really interest them.
The way to do this is to talk to them about themselves. When you see your email inbox and you have a mail from your mom, which subject seems more interesting?
- “Look the photos of my holidays in Paris”
- “Look what I have bought you in Paris”
Both emails are about your mom’s holiday, but they are not at the same level when it comes to being persuasive, right?
How Can You Talk to Someone about Themselves if You Do not Even Know Them?
Good news, you can do it through your product or service. For that, you just need to follow one of the oldest copywriting tactics: Show a benefit.
Instead of going into your company introduction talking about what will you do, how many hours of research you needed to get such a fantastic idea and how many years of experience you have to work in similar projects for others, you can instead explain the value of your product for them.
Let’s take a detergent advertisement (is there anything that better epitomizes advertisement than a detergent?). Instead of saying: “My detergent cleans clothes better than the others in the market”, say “You will clean your clothes 50 % better/faster/more efficient than now”.
You are not only explaining the benefits for the consumer here, but you also have added a real stat that makes the statement stronger. In other words, you are using copywriting.
After that, you can explain why you are able to provide that benefit. This is the right moment to talk about your experience or the years of hard work and research. However, only use them in the minimal amount necessary to show that your promises will be true. If you need to boost your ego, don’t do it now, and meet your grandmother and mother later for a coffee. They are always willing to listen to their little boy/girl’s success.
What works for customers is not so different for investors. If you need to get money from them, you need to show them why they should invest, which means profitability and security. The rest is just a compliment.
People do not want to invest in the latest technology or in the best design; they want to invest in a product that can be sold to a big market.
Summarising
Show the audience the profits they can get, but do not exaggerate. Too much profit always makes you look like a fraud if you cannot show why you really can achieve these things.
Show them a big market without competitors: Again, do not focus on the product, but on the solution to a big problem that the product offers.
Show them why investing is not too risky if you can.
When you talk to people that do not have much time for you, talk them about themselves. Promise them a benefit they are looking for, and then they will listen when you show them how you can offer that benefit.
