Are You Speaking Your Customer’s Language? How to Use Messaging that Converts

What if your website isn't broken… your words are just falling flat? You can have the most beautiful design in the world, but if your message doesn’t connect, your dream customers will leave. Let’s fix that today.

In this episode, we’re diving into how to speak your customer’s language so your website and content actually convert. Whether you’re a course creator, coach, or online business owner, your messaging matters—and getting it right can be the difference between silence and sales. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Why Messaging Matters on Websites
• 3:06 Speaking Your Customer's Language
• 4:55 Common Messaging Mistakes to Avoid
• 6:50 Simple Steps to Improve Your Messaging
• 9:35 Testing and Refining Your Website Copy
• 11:55 Episode Closing and Call to Action

Transcript

Carrie Saunders: 0:34

What if your website isn't broken? It's just your words that are falling flat. You can have the most beautiful design in the world, but if your messaging doesn't connect, your dream customers will leave. Let's fix that today. In this episode, we're diving into how to speak to your customers' language so your website and content actually convert. Whether you're a course creator, coach, online business owner or you're an e-commerce provider, your messaging matters and getting it right can be the difference between silence and sales.

Carrie Saunders: 1:06

Welcome to the e-commerce made easy podcast. I'm your host, k Saunders. When we started this business, all I had was a couch, a laptop and a nine-month-old. My main goal To help others. Now, with over 20 years in the e-commerce building industry and even more than that in web development, I have seen a lot. I love breaking down the hard tech into easily understandable bits to help others be successful in their online business. Whether you're a seasoned e-commerce veteran or just starting out, you've come to the right place. So sit back, relax and let's dive into the world of e-commerce together. So sit back, relax and let's dive into the world of e-commerce together. Welcome back to the show.

Carrie Saunders: 1:40

Today we're diving into why messaging matters that much on our website and how can we fix it? So, first off, design gets our attention. It's what gets our attention, but it's the copy, the words on the page that drives the action. So, while we need to have a great looking website and a great design, we need to have the words behind it to create that action on the action. So, while we need to have a great looking website and a great design, we need to have the words behind it to create that action on the website. And people will buy when they feel understood, not when they're impressed. So we need to be talking to the customer, with the customer rather than at the customer. We need to be talking to their pain points. How you solve them, how you make their life more fun, how you make them make more money, how you make them save money. It depends upon whatever your product or service is. But we need to talk to that and we want to make sure we're super clear, not clever. It's a reoccurring theme on this podcast because confusion kills the conversions. It really really does. It really creates a confused mind, and a confused mind just says no and we'll move on. And we want to create that clarity so that we're creating confidence on the website. We can do that through consistent wording, through consistent branding. We can do that through really digging into who our ideal customer is and the words that they actually speak.

Carrie Saunders: 3:00

So let's go into that section then next, so, speaking the customer's language, what does that really actually mean? And it's not just about the tone, it's reflecting their words, their emotions and their desires. So how do they talk about their pain point or what you solve desires? So how do they talk about their pain point or what you solve? How to? How do they look to find solutions for it? We want to mirror their pain points and their goals in your copy. So if your services or your products solve a pain point, then we need to mirror that. If your product or services help them achieve a goal, then we need to mirror that as well. Sometimes it's not both, sometimes it's just one or the other.

Carrie Saunders: 3:41

So make sure that you are using whichever sort of angle on how you solve things appropriately, based upon what they are expecting, what they experience and how they generally talk about what is going on in their life, in their business or whatever your niche is there. We want to use real life phrases from them, from testimonials, from calls that you've had with clients, from direct messages you've had with clients, from surveys. You can also go on to websites like Reddit and other websites that those customers are in there talking about their pain points or their goals and they're using their own language. So use some research and find out what is their exact language that they're using. That's going to help you really make them feel like, wow, this person's in my head and is really speaking to me rather than add to me. So this is really key. It's many times it's just a subtle change in your language and sometimes it takes a few revisions to get it right.

Carrie Saunders: 4:41

So there's some common messaging mistakes that can really repel instead of convert our customers, too, if we are vague, if we use jargon, heavy language for example, holistic transformation, elevate your brand. What exactly does that mean? What is their tangible result? Those are very big and very high level. What are they actually going to get from your product or service?

Carrie Saunders: 5:06

We also want to talk more about the customer than ourselves. Now, yes, we need to talk about who we are as a business or as a brand, but we want to make sure we're talking about the customer more than we're talking about ourselves. So make sure that your copy focuses on them, focuses on the things that you solve, the things that you serve, how you help them. But have it, you know, talk more about them rather than about you from the perspective there. We also don't want to make sure that we're assuming that they're ready to buy when they might be just curious. So using language that helps foster that curiosity helps draw them in. It's going to make them more likely to buy. So just start talking to them about buying this product or buying the service and all the features of it doesn't really work very well when we're talking about the benefits of what you do and how it can solve potential problems. That's going to create more curiosity. That's going to create more trust and more ability to convert that person into an actual customer rather than just a visitor.

Carrie Saunders: 6:11

So we want to make sure that we are not assuming that they're ready to buy and we want to genuinely create that curiosity that want to know more about your business and how you can help them than just trying to sell, sell, sell. Nobody loves to just be walked up to and be sold to. I'm sure you can agree and remember some situations where you just felt like, geez, could they just back off a bit. I'm just curious. I just want some information. I'm just in the information gathering stage at this point, so we need to be aware that we're not being too sealsy and too pushy in our messaging as well. So there's a few simple steps that we can do to improve our messaging today.

Carrie Saunders: 6:50

So first, we want to identify our ideal customer's actual words, and we alluded to this some earlier. We want to do this through interviews, reviews they have written on websites, competitors' comments, too, you could be looking at. Let's say, you go to Amazon and you search for a type of book that is a pain point that you solve. Why don't you look at the customer reviews that can really tell you exactly what customers who are searching to solve that pain point are talking about their language, what worked with the book, what didn't work with the book. Use some of those words to help you rewrite some of your language so you can talk more to the person rather than at the person. And then you want to rewrite your headlines and your intro text using this language that you've just found, that you or rediscovered on these review websites, on Reddit, things like that and then we want to add a clear and emotionally relevant call to action, For example. Yes, I'm ready to stop wasting time on tech, for example, we could put in one of our pages.

Carrie Saunders: 7:58

So what are they really emotionally like, frustrated about if you're solving a problem, or what is a goal that they really want to achieve? Maybe you're wanting to teach them how to paint or how to crochet. Maybe yours isn't about necessarily a business to business. What do you want them to feel whenever you have solved their problem? Talk to that. And so messaging matters the most on our website, on the homepage, for sure, it's, most of the time, the first page that people will go. We want to make sure the homepage headline and the sub headline are very dialed in and on point and they are the first thing that they see. They're above the fold, they do not have to scroll to see those words.

Carrie Saunders: 8:43

And then you also want to make sure you have this on an about page too. So when you have an about page, we want to make sure we are really talking to the customer rather than at them. And then, whenever you have products or service descriptions, we want to make sure we're again talking in their language, talking to them, talking about the benefits, emotionally, how you solve these problems for them or create a goal that they're trying to achieve, like learning how to play the piano, for example. And then we want to make sure that our call to action buttons are very clear. So let's work together, for example, or book your free call. So we want to make sure that those are really clear and tell the person exactly what they're going to get, rather than click here or find out more information. That's a bit too vague. We want to be very specific. Let's work together or versus book your free call. You know how is that? Which one is going to apply better for you?

Carrie Saunders: 9:44

So a bonus tip too if you want to test your messaging, I encourage you to read your homepage aloud to a friend or use a tool like Hotjar to see where people drop off. Dita can really tell the truth and when you pick that friend, or whether it's a product to help you out, really look at it from a perspective of is this person potentially aligned with my ideal customer? Because we might want to test it with somebody who is aligned with their ideal customer as well as somebody completely out in a different area, because you're going to get a bit different perspective and then I want you to take that in mind whenever you're analyzing that Sometimes it's good to get a perspective from somebody completely not aligned with what you're helping with, because they might come up with some questions that a person who's a bit more familiar with what you solve or who you serve might come up with, and they might bring up some good points of some things that people aren't talking about that are in the niche that you are targeting. So you might want to potentially use that and there's some cases where you might not want to but do consider that because it may be a great view into the world of your potential customers. So your words have power and when they're dialed in, your website becomes a magnet for the right clients.

Carrie Saunders: 11:00

And I want to make sure that we're pretty clear here, as we want to make sure that wording is really nailed down. It really can make a difference. So take a moment to revisit your messaging and ask yourself am I speaking clearly to the person I want to help the most? Are you speaking to the ideal person you want to help, not just anybody off the street? You know really the truly ideal goal person. Start small and just update your headline. Maybe you adjust a call to action. Maybe you swap in some customer's words for what was your own and see what the difference makes.

Carrie Saunders: 11:39

Measure this out. You know, give this a few weeks to thoroughly test, because we don't want to be changing too many things on our website at once. And so that are some great steps to really going down that path of starting to make sure our messaging is correct on our website. That's all we have for this week's episode of the e-commerce made easy podcast. I sure hope it was helpful to you and gave you some great small, actionable steps to make those little tweaks to your website that can really really make a big difference. And if you love our podcast, make sure you rate or review it on Apple podcasts or your favorite podcast player. That helps spread the word to other just like you that need help with their online business and their online business tech. And we will see you next week.