The other day I was asked to put a landing page (also known as a squeeze page) together for a cosmetics company. The owners of the web page gave me only minimal information about what it is that they wanted in the way of a viable landing page. It turns out that the intention for this landing page was not entirely clear.
Nevertheless, I took that information and arranged it by category and subject matter. They also provided a link to the site so that I could see exactly waht it was that they were providing through their web pages.
My next step was to engage in the investigation process. I spent some time at their site familiarizing myself with their content, features and benefits and any special selling points that I could find. I did some other investigation about their ideal customer and what it is that that person might be looking for from this web site. It’s improtant to know your customers so that you can address your copy to a specific audience.
Then I spent some time perusing other relevant web sites with similar information to really get a better understanding of the industry as well as to get a better handle on unique selling points (USP) for my customer. And again, customer interest and demographics play an important role.
Then I had some questions and so I contacted the customer to go over my progress. As we spoke it became clear that she was thinking more along the lines of just one single page of the website. So the copy needed to address just a single service provided by a site that provides a myriad of services.
Given this much better understanding of the job intention and specific intention I was better able to pinpoint the focus of my efforts and provide the copy the customer was seeking.
When you are embarking on your copywriting endeavors it’s always a good idea to do all of your homework which should ultimately include a question and answer session with your customer, ideally before you spend a great deal of time putting anything together. You really want to make sure that you thoroughly understand what the assignment’s focus might be.
My initial information was vague. But in all fairness the customer always knows what she wants. It’s our job to help her articulate the specifics of that assignment so that we too have substantial knowledge of the assignment.