You’re stuck in a bubble where you are your own target audience. How do you get out?
You know you. You can list your value propositions by heart. Your favorite slogan is writ large across the banner of your site. You can preach the virtues of your product offerings day and night. Problem is, you’re preaching to the choir, and you know it.
How do you break out of the rut and get back to speaking a language your visitors will connect with? Here three signs that you are your own target audience, and tricks for kicking the habit.
You talk too much about yourself.
It’s your website and your product: why wouldn’t you talk about it? It’s easy to fall into this trap, but when it happens you need to step back and put yourself back in your client’s shoes. What have they come to you for? What are their needs?
Start speaking toward your client’s need. Instead of leading your copy with content about who you are, what you do, and how neat all your features and services are, change the narrative. Begin with your client: who are they? What do they want? How does your product or service fit in to their lifestyle and address their need? Make your product relevant to them by putting them first in your copy.
Your copy is full of loaded, technical jargon.
Chances are, you don’t sell to industry peers. So why do you include a lot of industry-specific terminology in your copy? Will your audience know what you’re talking about? Or are you making assumptions about their knowledge level that exclude and alienate your audience?
That’s not to say your visitors are dumb. But the things they know are different from the things you know. So take a step back from your copy and try to unpack some of that loaded language. Think about how you would explain your services to someone who doesn’t know much about what you do. Use that as your entry-level copy. Once your visitors get deeper into your site, you can begin explaining things in depth at a more expert level.
You forgot to answer the question “Why?”
Sometimes, companies get so caught up in talking about the “what” and “how” of their business that they forgot to answer “why.”
What drives your business? Take a step back from talking about the specifics and features of your product, and share the heart of your company. This may seem like it’s more you talking about yourself, but it serves a deeper purpose. You want to share the core of what drives your business forward. Share it in a meaningful way that your visitors can connect with, and you’ll find you’re actually speaking to them.
You are your own target audience when you forget to connect with the outside world. When you start sharing what makes your company tick, you stop preaching to the choir and you become a brand evangelist.