When you’re writing, it is important to consider who your target audience is. What do they know already? What do they want to know? What do they not know, and not even know that they need to know it? If you’re writing sales and marketing copy, you need to consider who you are writing for.
The other day I read a piece on LinkedIn that was aimed at a very specific group of people. Most of it did not apply to me, but then I was not the target audience. It was like eavesdropping on a conversation that was not meant for me.
1. Identify your target audience
Presumably you started your business either because you had an existing skillset and are confident that people need your skills and experience and will buy them from you, or because you identified a gap in the market and developed the skills or the product to fill it. So you probably already know who your target audience is: it’s the people who are going to buy your product or service. For example, our page about Who We Help outlines our target market.
2. Build on what people already know
If people start reading your article, marketing copy, or blogpost and they have no idea what you are talking about, they will give up and go elsewhere. This applies equally to sales and marketing, web development, accounting, ecology, or any other domain of knowledge. Most people have a grasp of the basics in these fields, but they can quickly get arcane and impenetrable without explanations. So it is important to figure out who your target audience is, and what they already know about the topic before you start writing.
3. Give them information they want to know
Most people want to know about something if it is likely to affect their life. Before I moved to Canada, I never needed to know how to file a tax return, because only self-employed people need to file a tax return in the UK. Now that I live in Canada (or if I had started a business in the UK), I definitely need to know how to file a tax return. I also happen to know how UK tax codes work (something that is completely useless in Canada).
If your target audience needs to know about the topic you’re writing about, it is a good idea to tell them why they need to know in the first paragraph, or in your marketing copy.
The Rumsfeld Matrix
I find this model really useful when thinking about how we know things. It was named after Donald Rumsfeld, who talked about it in 2002. It’s strange because I thought I remembered it from before that time.
| Known Knowns: Things we know, and know that we know them. | Unknown Knowns: Things we know, but are not aware that we know them. |
| Known Unknowns: Gaps in our knowledge that we are aware need to be filled. | Unknown Unknowns: Things we do not know, and don’t know that we don’t know. |
It is similar to the Johari window, a tool used in therapy settings to help people understand their relationship with themselves and others.
When knowledge of how to do something becomes completely habitual (like riding a bike or driving a car), we cease to be aware that we know it, because it becomes an unconscious habit. This is sometimes called implicit knowledge. Things that are instinctive (like walking and talking) almost never become conscious, unless someone has an injury that prevents them from walking or talking and has to relearn it.
4. Include relatable examples
If you’re writing about some abstruse technical thing, include examples from the physical world. Even if you’re writing for people who already know a lot about the topic, these can be helpful. For example, when I wrote about the difference between domains and web hosting, I used the example of houses and their postal addresses. Similarly, I once read an article about promise functions for fetching asynchronous data that had a delightful story about a young boy with a telescope and a weather prediction, which helped a lot of people to understand promise functions, and reminded me of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (my favourite geeky meet-cute story).
5. Expand their knowledge
When writing an article or marketing copy, you’re mostly aiming to fill in people’s known unknowns. They know that they don’t know the information you’re sharing, and they want to know.
If people don’t know that they need the information you’re sharing, they won’t know that they need to search for it online, so it is a good idea to make sure that you’re writing about known unknowns as well as unknown unknowns.
For example, a lot of people don’t know about enhancing your website to make it visible to AI search tools, so it is a good idea to mention search engine optimization when writing about it, which most people do know about.
People in business share knowledge about their domain because they want you to understand why you need the service they’re offering, and so you have enough knowledge to choose among the various services they provide (for instance, do you need Professional Indemnity Insurance or Commercial General Liability Insurance?) It also helps to build confidence in your services.
Let us take the strain
I have 25 years’ experience in web development. If you don’t want to spend hours developing your website and marketing copy, then buying one of our web development packages is an excellent investment.
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