How do I tweak my copy so I stop attracting the wrong people?

Writing about your business is like fishing. If you use the wrong bait, you’ll catch the wrong fish. In this goofy metaphor, words are your bait and your ideal clients are fish. But contrary to traditional marketing advice, catching the right (client) fish is actually LESS about using The Perfect Marketing Words… and more about finding the words that resonate well with the people you most enjoy working with. So how do you start doing that?

Great question.

The first thing to keep in mind is that this is more about being in conversation with the people you serve (aka your clients and content subscribers) than it is about you sitting behind your computer magically inventing The Perfect Marketing Words. Isolation, says master coach Barbara Sher, is the dream killer.

Too many self-employed professionals work alone, mistakenly believing that they must come up with The Perfect Marketing Words.

In their heads.

By themselves.

Alone in a room.

Without checking with Real Life People and saying, simply yet bravely, ‘hey, does this make sense to you?’

Pro Tip #1 – Ask your clients, ‘hey, what’s the #1 reason you work with me?’

Pro Tip #2 – Listen to what they say. Write it down and use it in your copy.

I realize this sounds simple, but you would be surprised by how many people with the dream of having their own business, who’d rather do ANYTHING BUT ask other people to talk with them. Don’t let this be you! Humble yourself enough to listen, and offer your corner of the world that. It’s not easy, because being in relationship with other humans isn’t always easy.

(And if you are new, simply ask people who would make good clients, “hey, when it comes to [your topic], what’s your #1 challenge?” and “When it comes to [your topic], what’s the #1 thing you’d love to learn how to do?”)

But I digress…

Now, I recently talked with a member of our Shut Up And Write Club community who was wrestling with this issue. A coach who helps women who default to eating to cope with their full lives, she was experimenting with the language she uses in her marketing and promotions.

She’d come up with the phrase “stress-eating” to describe the women she works with most.

“But,” she recently reported, “This tends to attract women who are obsessed with losing weight or women with eating disorders.”

Neither one of those groups of women are her ideal clients.

“So, what do I do?”

This is a classic example of noticing that the ‘word bait’ you are using in your copy isn’t catching the right client fish.

Here’s how our conversation went:

Stella: Can you describe who makes a great client for you?

R: She’s a successful, motivated professional woman who always has a hand in a bag of something. She’s got kids. She’s got a desk drawer and a purse with a stash of treats. She wastes so much time with stress eating.

The deal is that she’s eating but she’s not paying attention… it’s about eating fast, eating on the go, eating to calm down.

But it’s really about never stopping to take care of herself. She feeds everyone else – metaphorically and literally – and then she feeds herself last, and from whatever’s in the nearest bag.”

Stella: Hmm. I have two ideas for you to try.

Remember, there are no such things as The Perfect Marketing Words. Everyone who’s successfully writing their own copy and their own marketing right in this moment is listening to what their audience, clients, and trusted colleagues have to say, then testing it to see if it works. If it does, they keep it. If it doesn’t, they tweak it (or throw it out entirely).

I call this step “testing and tweaking” and it’s step #6 in the business writing process I teach self-employed professionals.

So here are the two ideas I gave this woman to try.

Idea #1 – Test out a different description of the problem.

R had tried “women who stress-eat” and “women who are eating mindlessly” in her print ads and marketing copy. Both worked okay, but as mentioned above, she was finding that something about these words still catches fish that aren’t quite a fit for her business.

When I was listening to her, the phrases “distracted while eating” and “distracted eating” sprang to mind.

Side bar: Friends don’t let friends write copy alone. It’s much easier to HAVE A CONVERSATION and talk this out with a colleague or teacher than it is to do by yourself, in your head.

Honestly, I don’t know if that will be the word bait that works for her. But I have the strong hunch that if she can paint a clear picture of “the woman with her hand always in a bag of something,” in all her marketing, the words may change, but her message will resonate, loud and clear.

So she might write to “those of you who always have your hand in a bag of something, as you drive the kids around or hustle from one meeting to the next.”

Or she might write to “women who are distracted eaters.”

And then, she waits and watches to see if her word bait is catching the right client fish.

The other thing she mentioned was that these are successful, motivated women who are successful in nearly every other area of their lives… except this distracted food thing. She could even test out putting this language into her marketing copy, to see if it attracts a stream of people who are closer to her ideal client.

Idea #2 – Deploy ‘disqualifying copy.’

When you find yourself in a situation where your words are catching client fish who aren’t quite the right fit for you, other strategy you can use is being clear and direct about who you do – and don’t – work with.

In R’s case, even though her current ‘word bait’ wasn’t catching the right client fish yet, she DID gain valuable clarity into who she didn’t want to attract – namely women who are obsessed with losing weight and women with eating disorders.

When you find yourself in this boat, you can just add a few lines of copy to your marketing, typically towards the end. For example, on a sales page where R is describing her program, she could add a bullet list “This is for you if…” and then describe who gets the best results working with her. And just as importantly, she could add a second bullet list “This is not for you if…” and write bullets like:

• If you are looking for a magic diet to shed 20 pounds in 30 days
• If you have an eating disorder (or think you might)

Another place disqualifying copy shows up is on a Services page on a website. Some of my favorite language for established business owners is swiped from James Fell over at BodyForWife.com: ‘I am selective about my clientele.’ (If you need to write a Services page for your website, I am a fan of his no-B.S., understated approach. Check it out.)

I took that and tweaked it for one of my offers: ‘Stella is selective about her clientele and is not interested in taking the money of people who can’t make back a return on this investment.’

I love this because it puts people at ease, and establishes a clear, unemotional boundary about what that service is all about.

Again, this is really about that ‘test & tweak’ step in the copywriting process. Rarely is it a homerun right on the first swing. But if you listen to your audience, develop your marketing using the buddy system, experiment with your description of the problem and use disqualifying copy, you’ll be using the right word bait that catches more of your ideal clients before you know it.