Internal vs. External Language

We've previously written about the importance of addressing your customers' needs before talking about your product or service. It's extremely important to make sure that your website connects with your audience and meets them where they are. To determine if your copy makes that connection, answer this one simple question: does your website use internal or external language?

What is Internal Language?

"Internal language" is anything that makes perfect sense to you but may not make sense to people who land on your website. Examples include:

• Using part numbers in H1s instead of product names that people easily recognize.
• Relying on jargon.
• Focusing on the detail of the product or service but forgetting to show how it can help solve the users' problems.
• Optimizing for keywords that don't match how people are searching.

Converting to External Language

Turning your website's focus outward is easy to do. 

1. Replace part numbers in H1s to more descriptive terms. For example, if you provide Industrial Brooms, your H1 should include 'Industrial Brooms' which accurately describes what's on the page and is a term that people search for. The product numbers for each model broom would be better to have within the copy or part of an ecommerce platform. If 'BA72' was the H1 instead of 'Brooms' no one would know what the page is for -- in fact, no one would find it in the first place. 
2. Reduce jargon as much as possible.Use terms that your customers understand. However, if it is widely used in your potential client’s industry and would search for it, use it.
3. Ask yourself: what are your customers most concerned about? If you're an Ecreative customer and have been interviewed by our copywriters, you've probably heard this question. We ask because knowing what your customers' biggest problems are -- and what your product can do to solve them -- helps write copy that is both informative and engaging. 
4. Think about how people are searching. For example, a home goods store may have dozens of "window treatments" in stock, but if potential customers are plugging "curtains" into Google, the webpage needs to say "curtains" too.

Creating Buyer Personas

In marketing, buyer personas are often crafted to make writing to a specific audience much easier. How do you create a persona? Imagine that your writing for one person. Think about who that person is -- what do they want? What problems do they have? What will make their life easier? Thinking about how your product addresses these, answer the questions.

As an industrial B2B company, you serve a very specific niche and understand your customers' concerns, needs, and wants better than anyone else. If you are struggling to refine your personas, you can conduct surveys or interviews with your current customer-base. Meeting with your sales team to pick their brain about their perceptions of your customers can offer valuable insight, too!

Focus on Them, Not on You

Your product is great, but so is your competitors’. Customers won’t choose your great product over all the other great products out there by talking about how great yours is. You want to tailor your message to how your product will solve a problem they have and how it’ll make their job easier.

If you went to a restaurant, would you want the first thing your waiter to discuss be "organically raised this" and "brick oven fired that"? No. You want them to hand you the menu. You want them to be able to answer your questions confidently, and be able to make recommendations based on your preferences and needs. That is precisely what your website should do: hand users a menu that helps them find a solution for their issue, answer their questions, and lead them to a smart decision.

Does this mean you can't write about how great your product is? Not at all! Your site needs to have well-written product descriptions complete with specs that show just how good the product is. However, this should be part of the conversation -- not the whole conversation.

Need Help Connecting to Your Audience?

With spending your time innovating and honing your product to make it the best it can be, you may have difficulty seeing things from the audience's perspective. If you're stuck, turn to a professional copywriter who can change your site's internal focus to an external one. Contact Ecreative to get started today!