By Kristin Zhivago

Marketing copy is dead. Dead, dead, dead.

That stiff, professional, sunshine-flowing, say-nothing copy used to be all customers had to choose from when they were trying to get answers about a service they were thinking of buying. Now, they can post a question in one of their discussion groups and get first-hand, unbiased information from people who have already had experience with the service provider. They no longer rely on marketing copy.

Marketers still need to write copy for customers, though. So, what's the answer? There are two ways to make sure your copy will be relevant and readable.

1. Talk As If You Are Sitting Next to Someone on the Beach

A friend of mine who does voiceovers recently interviewed at an audio book company. As she was auditioning, reading a fiction book, the guy interviewing her gave her a tip: "Talk as if you are sitting next to someone on the beach." Great advice.

That is the first secret to writing copy in this age of customer conversations. You're there together, you're friends, you're looking at the scene in front of you, and you're talking about things that matter.

It's personal. It's relevant. It's trustworthy. It's a conversation.

It can't be any of those things, though, if you don't know whom you are writing to. Guessing who that person is just doesn't work. They can see your big fat assumptions from a mile away. They know you are clueless about what really matters to them. So, they ignore you—and your copy.

The real question they want answered is, "What's going to happen to me after I say yes?" This includes concerns such as:

• Are they going to treat me differently after I sign up?
• Who is going to service my account? Have I met that person (or those people) yet?
• What can go wrong—and what will happen when something does go wrong?
• Will their services live up to the claims they have made?
• Will I regret this?
• How easy will it be to get out of it if I do want to bail out?

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There are more of these sorts of concerns, specific to your type of service. The only way to find out what these concerns are is to interview customers who have already bought from you. If you are the head of a company or involved in any way in the revenue-generation process, interviewing current customers—personally—is as essential to your job as any interactions you have with your staff. You can't be successful if you don't know these folks.

Once you have interviewed even as few as seven customers—the trends will start to emerge after you've talked to five—you will be able to understand what their concerns are, and, most important, what their tradeoffs were as they were buying. That brings us to secret #2.

2. Help Your Customer Weigh the Tradeoffs

Weighing tradeoffs dominates the buying process.

If I use this service, I get a lot of great strategy help, but I'm not so confident in their ability to execute.

They are pretty pricey. Do I really want to hire them, or could I do this myself or through someone else for less money?

I liked this one group; they have a lot of expertise where I need it. But they may not be aggressive enough. This other group is more aggressive, but they don't seem to have much depth beyond the founder.

Typical marketing copy doesn't support this thought process. It doesn't help the buyer weigh the tradeoffs.

Comments and reviews from customers—and especially friends—do help. When one customer posts a question on a discussion board, and other customers answer, the potential customer posting gets help weighing tradeoffs, just like two friends talking on the beach. "It's true. They don't have much depth among the staff, but they do have a great system. And the staff follows the process, which does deliver results."

How can service vendors get more involved in these tradeoff considerations? At the very least, they must know the tradeoffs the customer is weighing.

There are two reliable ways to find this out: read what people are saying in discussion groups and interview customers after they have made the purchase. However, you will get your most actionable information from interviews, since you will be interviewing the people who have already bought from you. You will be reverse-engineering your successful sales so you can recreate new sales in quantity.

As you interview, you will see that tradeoffs are always a combination of "desired attributes" and "critical concerns." The attributes keep people interested, while the concerns make them back away.

Once the copywriter knows what the tradeoffs are, he can and should address them as a friend would, not as a "formal" copywriter. Here's an example of "friend" copy:

"There are bigger real estate firms, but none of them has the local knowledge we have. Bob Smith has been selling homes in the TriCounty area for 20 years, and he knows every neighborhood as if he lived there himself. Trudy Williams has sold more homes in the TriCounty area than any other realtor. Our newer agents spend 30% of their time getting to know neighborhoods and talking to the people who live there. Our unique 'know your neighborhood' approach will help us find the right house for you to buy. And, if you're the seller, our neighborhood knowledge will help you sell your house faster. After all, buyers buy neighborhoods, not just the houses in them."

Compare this to what the copywriter would have written using the old, tired, formal method:

"Depend on TriCounty Realty for your next house purchase. We have the most experienced and knowledgeable staff in the area and can help you make the right decisions, whether you are buying or selling. Our agents are trained and professional. We are a full-service firm with access to all MLS properties available in the area. Our real estate professionals provide a wealth of knowledge and education in an ever-changing market."

Now think about what you just read. When you read the first one, mental images came to mind. You could picture real, experienced people who took a smart approach to their business. People who could help you buy or sell.

When you read the second one, it sounds like all the other firms, including the big ones that TriCounty Realty competes against. It's boilerplate. Any firm could have written and posted that copy. It also sounds like some puffed-up salesperson reciting sales clichés or some overworked marketing copywriter cranking out copy as fast as he can. The first version makes you like the people and makes you want to do business with them. The second doesn't endear you to anyone because it doesn’t sound like someone you'd trust.

The copy that will work now, with today's customers, has to be as personal and comfortable as two people talking on the beach, and it has to help the customer weigh the tradeoffs.

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Kristin Zhivago is a Revenue Coach who helps CEOs and entrepreneurs make more money by understanding exactly what their customers want to buy from them—and how they want to buy it. Her new revenue-growth how-to book, Roadmap to Revenue: How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy, launched in 2011, teaches business owners and managers a proven method for reverse-engineering successful sales to produce new sales in quantity.

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