There is no need to dig deep when looking for a reason why your copy doesn’t convert ‒ most of the time, the problem lies on the surface – right when you start reading the content itself. Weird, boring, hard to understand ‒ if this is how you can describe a piece of content you’re reading, then congratulations, you’ve found the reason why this site’s visitors don’t convert.
SaaS copywriting is all about communicating specific benefits that your product can bring to customers. That’s why you should talk to your audience using clear and distinctive language that is immediately understood. Otherwise, people won’t get your message.
But how do you write convincing copy that attracts customers? First off, you should avoid mistakes copywriters make when creating content. Below, we look at the most common SaaS messaging problems.
What can be wrong with your copy?
Let’s discuss issues that might potentially deter customers and cut down conversions.
Overused jargon
Have you ever come across words like “cutting-edge”, “brand new”, “revolutionary”, and something of the sort when scrolling down SaaS homepages? The use of such jargon might confuse readers and compromise the clarity we are trying to achieve.
Check out the following example. It’s a heading from the homepage of a company that develops cloud platforms to manage digital workflows. The word combination “enabling innovation” sounds obscure without communicating a clear benefit. And, you can meet “seamless experiences” almost in any SaaS copy!
Repeating competitors
One more reason why your copy doesn’t work might be because it looks very similar (or even identical) to that your competitors publish. Describing similar things in a repetitive manner won’t make your company stand out. Plus, there’s hardly any person that exclaimed “Now THAT’S what I’m looking for” after reading the very same text for the millionth time.
To prove this, here are three examples for you to look at. These are headings from the home pages of HR and recruitment software companies. Here’s exhibit A:
Not too shabby, let’s look at exhibit B:
Feels like we’ve seen this somewhere else before, but okay. And now, exhibit C:
Now THAT’S what we’re looking for. Just kidding, “third time’s a charm” rule doesn’t work in this case, the heading seems quite dull and boring at this point.
Me-focused messaging
This might sound strange, but messages focused on you and how awesome it is to partner with you don’t work. People don’t want to read why your organization is good. They want to know how your services can make their lives easier and their jobs simpler.
Let’s look at the example below. It’s a homepage of a farming platform. Apart from the heading targeted directly at a site visitor and the last but one sentence with three benefits, the whole narration is focused on what the company does: “WE work”, “WE made it our mission”, “WE value”, “WE support”, and more. Where is the pronoun YOU here? What do YOU get using the company's services?
Neglecting the visitor's awareness level
It is a mistake to think that all your readers are on the same awareness level. Some website visitors don’t know they have problems to be solved, some are already looking for possible solutions and others still have doubts about choosing your product. Each of these site visitors has their specific needs and desires, and so the way you approach your offer will change based on where they are on their buyer’s journey.
You’ve probably heard of the terms ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu, which refer to the three main stages of the sales funnel ‒ top, middle, and bottom. Many SaaS companies have learned that a blog post is top of the funnel content, a webinar belongs to the middle of the funnel, and a case study is a must-have bottom of the funnel type of content.
However, it's a simplistic approach to content marketing. You shouldn’t blindly focus on the content format only. You should take the reader’s intent into account, what channel they come from, what key phrases they’re searching for, and what they expect to see on the page. You need to align everything you say with those expectations.
How to find a way to talk to your audience
To create high-converting copy, you should adhere to three main principles ‒ clarity, originality, and a distinctive tone of voice. Let’s dive deeper into the process and define how you can implement these principles.
Research your audience
You should clearly understand who you are talking to. Research your audience to know who they are. When you know your prospects’ needs and pains, you can create messages targeted exactly at them.
As an example, our team helped Eleken, a SaaS design company, create service pages for their website. Before writing the content itself, we researched the audience and defined three target audience segments:
- Startups that need a product with just enough features to be considered ‘working’
- Mature SaaS companies that are looking to redesign their existing products to achieve better results
- Companies that lack UI/UX design talent to support their product development.
Based on our findings, we created specific offers for each of these target segments.
Do a thorough competitor analysis
Along with the audience research, you should carefully analyze your competitors’ content. Choose several companies similar to yours and look at their offers. Define their value proposition, key messages, and reasons why readers would want to buy from them. Your main task here is to discover gaps in your competitors' messaging and define how you can distinguish your tone of voice. Analyzing your competitors also helps you highlight the benefits that make your product stand out.
Provide clarity with your value proposition
Your value proposition should not only be compelling, but strikingly clear. Use straightforward language to describe the unique value of your offering.
Let’s look at the screenshot below. It’s the home page of our client, Bridge. We communicated their value proposition through their customer’s biggest problem ‒ hiring a skilled remote team with minimum effort.
There is a good copywriting framework you can try: Problem-Agitation-Solution. Copyblogger has a good explanation of how it works. Check it out here.
Use reader-centered messages
Note that your messages should be focused on readers, or rather on what benefits or outcomes they will get with your help. Your company shouldn’t be the main actor in the copy – it’s the prospect who achieves their goals using your products. So, instead of saying what you can do, say what your reader will get when using the products or services you provide.
Our team has successfully applied this technique when cooperating with MadAppGang. It’s a software development company that builds cloud-native solutions. The company uses the Go programming language and our task was to write a service page for it. We didn’t only communicate the benefits that Go offers to developers, but also explained what those benefits mean for the prospects reading the page. For instance, Go is designed for cloud-native development ‒ good to know, but that's a developer’s perspective. What about the client's benefits? Using Golang in cloud-native apps allows to make them scalable, reliable and high-performant. These software characteristics are very important for MadAppGang's clients.
Take the funnel stage into account
You should always consider at which stage of the marketing funnel your reader currently is and create content that treats each type of prospect differently.
At Kaiiax, we use a customized version of Schwartz's stages of awareness. Here is how it works:
- Unaware: If your readers are not aware of the issues they need to solve yet, inform them of possible problems.
- Problem-aware: When you appeal to readers who already know about their problem, clearly define the pain points that can be seamlessly solved with your solution.
- Solution-aware: People who already know that solutions to solve their problems exist on the market should be provided with proof that particularly your solution is what they’re looking for.
- Product-aware: If your reader is acquainted with your solution, you should unveil additional benefits that make your product outshine competitors.
- Most-aware: Finally, at the bottom of the marketing funnel, for the most aware stage, you can push your customer to buy your product using a special offer or a discount.
Create content that converts
Although we are not the first to describe copywriting blunders, SaaS entrepreneurs still make the same mistakes over and over again. Maybe it's because the hardest person to write copy for is yourself…
If your copy doesn't convert there might be two possible reasons: either your product isn't good enough or there is something wrong with your copy. We can’t develop an awesome product for you, but we can certainly help with copywriting.
