Hello, I think I need some unbiased advice on my web copy. My problem is, my typical customer is quite a 'suspicious' person and any attempt to hype (or even spice mildly) anything up gets a thumbs down. Here's why: My business sells machines for refilling inkjet printer cartridges, and I sell mostly to Cartridge World shops and independent refillers. The product is technical. And the reader falls into one of 2 categories: - they refill by hand - they use a machine already Any advice on how to write copy for my website would be appreciated. Have a look at what I've started with: www.sagerecycling.com KEY QUESTIONS I AM WONDERING: 1. How personal should my copy be? 2. Should I write "Refillers increase their success overnight..." instead of "you can increase your success overnight" (when they are used to reading copy that uses YOU YOU YOU all the time) 3. What kind of tone of writing is best for technical people. Customers who have not yet bought our machine are usually very defensive. Thanks.
1. A bit less personal tends to go over better with highly technical audiences. 2. There's nothing wrong with second person copy. 3. Forget about tone and look at format first. For example, the most successful type of marketing copy for technical selling is probably a white paper. It's not always about what you say, but how they come across your copy.
Just follow the example copy from SiteSell.com to which you have a link and you should be alright. The 'suspicious' description is quite accurate, for that technical people are one of the hardest to sell to but also potentially the most lucrative. Over the years from observing and interacting with friends and professionals that work in technical fields or have technical minds by nature, i have learned that technical people are the world's best faultfinders, nitpickers, etc... they are good at reacting to things ....., when you think about it, it's not surprising why, after all they have been educated\trained in college at finding faults \problems and solving them, another term for it is 'Debugging' a large portion of their full time jobs, is spent doing debugging. It would be helpful also to define what is meant by technical, and who falls under this category, since it is a broad term. so when you refer to technical people, that covers, groups such as people working in software development, programming, coders, who's primary education is in the fields of computer science, math, accounting,engineering, science etc... most fields that are non-art technical people will object to most traditional web copy, SO why not use their natural scepticism and suspicion to your advantage. One trick is to start your web copy NOT with why they SHOULD buy your product but why they shouldn't (reverse psychology). List at least 10 reason's why it wouldn't be a good idea to buy your product(s) by exposing as many of their personal flaws as you can. If your product covers up a personal flaw they posses, they will be primed for purchase because they will naturally want to conceal it. I guess this would be a good time to list some examples of what i mean, if it is not obvious enough.
I started out as a techie (anyone still using mainframes? lol), migrated to technical writing and now primarily write SEO content and website sales copy. Most techies, including myself, wanted to know two things up front...what's it do and how much does it cost. Anything that doesn't answer those two questions quickly was likely to get put on the "read it when I have time pile" which often became the leaning mountain of junk that eventually gets recycled without being read. If you were my writing client, I would start off by asking some of the following... Do the people who buy your product only offer ink refilling or do they sell other products and services? What manufacturer's cartridges does your machine work on? Are there any it doesn't? Does your machine reset the chips on so many of the cartridges that tell the printer/computer that the cartridge is empty? Is your ink the same quality as the OEM? Can't you get a picture of a pretty girl with a printer, cartridges or your product? Tech folks did often respond to pretty girls but they are becoming a little suspicious of that as it has been over-used. Lower returns? It's one of those dangerous phrases that can mean different things at different times. Lower returns are good when one is talking about a customer returning a defective product. Lower returns are really, really bad when talking about profits. Are you selling ink refill machines or Site Build It websites? That alone would have me turning away. I doubt any series techie would take you seriously once they saw that part of your site. Think about what makes your product worthy of buying. Think about what you say to customers you meet in person. That should guide how personal you make the content. As a general rule, the more expensive the product and larger the target customer, the less personal I make things.
I think you need to get in their mindset. To do this, find a technical type forum and read what these guys post. Make sure to look at the chit chat section. Once you are in their heads a bit, it will simply come to you. You'll feel it. It may sound odd but I have found this to be very worthwhile.