How to pinpoint your audience and find out the 'why' behind their actions

When writing a copy for your website, LI profile, or landing page there are a few essential aspects to take in mind: Whom are you writing for? What is the goal of your copy? How will your reader (customer/client) benefit from reading it? And how do you plan to measure the outcome?

In this post, I talk about audience.

Start with asking whom you write it for. In other words, who is your prospect?

If you do have a good knowledge of your audience, skip to the second part of the post – understanding the ‘why’ behind your audience’s actions. Otherwise, stick with me and:

• Check out the HubSpot buyers’ personas guide. They walk you through the process of understanding and creation your buyer persona. It’s easy, relatively quick and super effective for your business.
• Ask your existing customers to fill in a questionnaire. You don’t need to look far for answers. Your existing audience can tell you everything you want to know. Poll them about services/products they love most or don’t need at all. What can be improved? What do they need? What are their main concerns? Etc, etc. Make your questionnaire brief. Reward your customers for filling it in. And leave some space for comments.
• Hang where your customers hang. Go to Facebook groups, LI discussions, Twitter, blogs comment fields, competitors reviews and listen. It’s an eternal source of information (Note: information, not plagiarism!)

Ok. As great as it is to know your audience demographics and marital status, these factors are not the prime force behind your audience’s decision to buy your product/service. To create an offer for your potential customer that’ll hit the mark, you need to understand what’s going on in her/his mind (or subconsciousness) when she or he decides to purchase.

To understand ‘why’ behind your audience’s actions, you need to dig deep. Most powerful motives hide in de deepest corners of our being. So, ‘why’ do people buy?

“People buy a product/service, when they think that this product/service will be beneficial or will solve their problem.” Maxim Ilyahov, Russian journalist, editor gives this definition in his book “Write and boil.”

An example, an obese young man buys a gym membership. He thinks that he will work out at the gym and, therefore, will lose some weight. The young man believes that buying a gym membership will solve his obesity problem. In other words, losing weight is this young man’s ‘why’ for buying the membership. If we dig deeper, we may find out why he wants to lose weight. Maybe, because he’s in love and wants to be attractive (emotion – love). Maybe, because he has health issues and is afraid to become a diabetic patient (emotion – fear). Maybe he was bullied (emotion – shame).

Bob Bly, American writer and copywriter, gives his list of purchase motivators:
To be liked                              To be appreciated                   To be right
To feel important                    To make money                      To save money
To save time                           To make work easier              To be secure
To be attractive                       To be sexy                               To be comfortable
To be distinctive                     To be happy                            To have fun
To gain knowledge                 To be healthy                          To gratify curiosity
Out of fear                              Out of guilt                             Out of greed
For convenience

Check Belinda Weaver’s CopywriteMatters for more angles on finding ‘why’ behind your customer actions.

When you manage to pinpoint why your audience acts or does not act in a particular way, you’ll be able to convince them or eliminate their doubts. You’ll be able to sell your product/ service and make them come back wanting more.  

Need help with finding the ‘why’ and more copywriting advice? Book my 1: 1 copywriting training session to get highly effective tools and techniques to improve your copywriting. Bonus, you’ll pick my copywriter brain whenever you need😊

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