Marketing Virgin

Search Driven Copywriting - Using Keyword Research to Write in the Voice of Your Audience

Written by Scott Daughtry, SEO specialist.

As marketers we constantly try to write compelling copy that motivates people to take some sort of action. The trick is to write in the voice of our target audience; speaking to them using language they respond to.  Sometimes we use focus groups or surveys to help with this; getting out in the field and talking to prospects/customers also helps. In the end though, the words we choose often amount to best guesses. Perhaps this is why marketers are sometimes looked negatively upon - especially those in the high tech industry. Maybe we are just not speaking our audience’s language. If only there was a thesaurus of words to use when writing for a specific audience. What if I told you there was?  

Keyword research tools like Wordtracker, Google Trends, and the Google Keyword Tool provide a wealth of insight into the voice of our audience. Using search data and trends can give excellent clues to the words people use to describe things. Talking to your audience, using the same words they search for themselves, puts you at a major advantage.  For example, the other day I was crafting an email to promote a new webcast. Problem was, some people were calling it a webcast and others were calling it a webinar - which was it? What would more people respond to; a webcast offer or a webinar offer? I decided to use Google Trends to compare the search volume of both words. I figured the term that is searched more often will also be the term used more commonly in conversation. This term should also spark a higher interest if used in my email. So I quickly pulled up Google Trends and here is what I found.

This obviously made my decision easy. Split testing my email offers confirmed that using “webcast” got the better response.

Now, this is just search-driven copywriting in its simplest form. If you want to take this further, you can use the Google Keyword Tool or Wordtracker almost like you would a Thesaurus. For example, maybe you are promoting a “golf strategies” guide. If you plopped this keyword into the Google Keyword Tool, it would offer you numerous suggestions for related terms people are searching for.  In this example (shown below) maybe you would be better off promoting it as a “golf tips” guide since that term is searched more frequently.

Hopefully by now, you are starting to get the idea. This stuff really works - I have personally seen higher conversion rates on landing pages and emails by using this strategy. If you are interested in reading more about similar ideas, Aaron Wall has a very interesting article on keyword research that is definitely worth a read. http://learn.wordtracker.com/articles/keyword-inspiration-aaron-wall-of-seobookcom-shares-his-secrets/

For more articles like this, please visit the links below:

http://marketingvirgin.com/search-engine-marketing-why-use-google-adwords/

http://marketingvirgin.com/search-engine-marketing-sem-made-simple/