I've been busy lately, writing copy for a design studio, a car scrappage firm, and a plumbing company. I'll be honest, I've found the work unusually difficult. At first, I put it down to writer's block, but when the problems persisted, even that old chestnut wasn't going to justify my reduced output.
After a sleepless weekend, the cause of my problems suddenly dawned on me - I was trying to apply the same writing style and techniques to all three jobs. I had stopped writing for the target market.
Starting with the design studio copy, I reconsidered who the target market are. Who uses design studios and what are they looking for? Design studios have all sorts of clients, from small businesses to large corporations, but one thing they all expect is creativity. So it was vital that the copy illustrated their ability to think differently and present things in a different way. That's where I was going wrong - I was putting too much emphasis on benefits and clarity and not enough on creativity. Using my last few remaining 'Good Husband House Points', I talked to my wife about it, and within a few minutes, I was coming up with different approaches for each page. Sometimes all you need is a muse!
In a couple of days, I produced creative copy for all of the design studio's web pages. Each page was unique, engaging and used a different approach without being inconsistent. They were very happy with the result and now have me pencilled in to work on a wedding day site - making that one stand out from the crowd could be tough!
Flowing with creativity, I moved on to the plumbing project. Like a fool, I broke the rule again - I was still trying to write in the same creative way as on the design studio project. Again, I failed because I didn't think of the target market. Luckily, I realised the problem immediately and so didn't spend hours stressing this time - people who want plumbers want plain simple facts, afterall, some of them might be trying to stop leaks at the same time!
So when it came to the car scrappage copy, I knew exactly what to do from the get-go - write for the target market!
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