In the first part of our four part SEO Copywriting and Personas post we looked at the necessity of having a careful and clear understanding of the target audience. That in order to be able to communicate effectively, we need a crystal clear picture of who we are attempting to communicate with. We need to define personas.
What is a persona?
According to Wikipedia - 'Personas are fictional characters created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic, attitude and/or behaviour set that might use a site, brand or product in a similar way.'
Karen Goldfarb says: "Basically, a buyer persona is to your marketing, sales and communications strategy what a mannequin is to clothing."
It's the job of the SEO copywriter to apply what ever techniques they have at their disposal to get inside the heads of prospective customers and really find out what makes them tick. To make the clothing (copy content) not only fit perfectly, but look great as well. Online marketers often go to great lengths to profile prospective clients so that copy can be tailored to suit.
Ideally you will use demographics such as geography, gender, income, ethnicity, education and family. You'll use psychographics to look at likes, dislikes, type of personality and ambitions. You'll speak with your sales people, customer support, and conduct customer surveys as well as lots of competitor research and keyword analysis.
This is personal - Fantasises, obsessions, first kiss, last FM playlist, next move. Detail matters. The more insight you can develop, the more charismatic, the more vivid you can make your reader, the more material you will have to craft persuasive copy.
Motivations - Only once you can answer the question of who your reader is can you begin to ask yourself how you can go about addressing that golden 'What's in it for me' (WIIFM) question that lies at the heart of your relationship marketing. Whilst many things may motivate readers it's important that you peel back the layers to reveal their one clear passion. Their ultimate motivation.
Relate - Now you have a clear understanding of who your reader is, what pains them or pleases them, of what truly inspires them or grieves them, it's time for a UK copywriter to put that empathy to work. The more empathy a writer has the more interesting the writing can be. The more interesting, the longer and the deeper the engagement and the greater the chance of conversion. That's the reason that long form copy is so much more powerful than short copy. Readers become so involved with the copy they are naturally drawn to the close without ever even realising it. Great SEO copy is deeply empathetic. So deep that the writing itself becomes almost invisible.
In part three of the series we will concentrate on the four basic personality types mentioned in part one and see how these can be applied to web copywriting.