Most of the time, no one reads your information flow copy because of this mistake!

This article is reproduced from the WeChat public account "Houchangcun Advertising Bureau" (id: hcc_guanggao), which steadily updates copywriting optimization tips and advertising writing cases.

When you are selling a summer camp course for an educational training organization, what would you write?

"Australian summer camp, visit world-renowned universities in Australia, and experience authentic university courses"

When you write a promotional copy for a B&B, how would you write it?

"When traveling, you should choose a conscientious accommodation, xx B&B, which will make you feel more at ease when traveling"

When you were writing a copy for a used car , what would you write?

"xx Used Cars is a reliable personal used car trading platform. You can buy a car in installments with low monthly payments. It's cost-effective!"

If you were tasked with any of these tasks, your intuition would likely guide you to write the copy above. Their characteristics are that they fully and vividly describe the promoted content and selling points.

But I can make a conclusion here right now: the above copywritings are all copywritings with poor creativity and effectiveness.

Because the above copywriting is all written from the perspective of selling products from the merchant's standpoint. In other words, I write about whatever the merchant sells.

During the promotion process, the first thing an excellent copywriter should do is to think from the user's perspective and write user-perspective copy that truly meets user needs.

So, what is the difference between the sales perspective and the user perspective? Let’s listen to this story first.

Shannon, a famous American mathematician and founder of information theory, has a beautiful, artistic girlfriend. But Shannon was dumped by his girlfriend because of this incident. The reason for their breakup was simple: on his girlfriend's birthday, Shannon did not give her flowers or a ring, but instead gave her a math book as a gift.

In this story, Shannon broke up because he made a typical sales perspective error: he chose to start from his own perspective, thinking that since he liked math very much, the other party would definitely like and care about such a gift.

In fact, I don't need to explain much, you all know that this kind of thinking is a very straight-minded idea that lacks the user's perspective.

If we switch to the user's perspective, Shannon should analyze his girlfriend's "literary young woman" attributes and start from the things that she cares about.

In the process of writing copy, this kind of copywriting that only cares about what you are selling is also very common.

For example, a medical article like this:

"Good Doctor Online Pharmacy, shockingly low prices, waiting for you to choose!"

Or a stock information copy like this:

"The stock market is full of ups and downs. Choose this brokerage to invest in stocks and get 500 yuan of stock investment strategies and information in advance."

The typical characteristic of this type of copywriter is that they are like narcissists and think that everyone will care about what they say.

Taking the above stock trading copy as an example, it can be imagined that after the author saw the selling point of the product giving away a 500 yuan monthly stock trading strategy, he felt that users must be eager to get this stock trading strategy.

His thinking path must be so simple and crude:

But in fact, a qualified copywriter must go through at least three steps to write a copy:

For example, for stock speculation, we conduct a demand analysis on stockholders:

People who have never traded stocks: You may need a favorable opportunity to enter the stock market

Copywriting: "The Shanghai Composite Index has risen by 7%. It will be too late if you don't enter the market now."

People who trade stocks but don’t understand strategies: They may need some stock trading strategies

Copywriting: "I have been trading stocks all my life, but I don't even have a stock market strategy sheet. Click to download it for free."

People who trade stocks but understand strategies: may need to learn new information about stock trading

Copywriting: "Notice: The original 500 yuan monthly stock trading strategy can now be obtained for free, only this week"

Then, when writing copy based on these user needs analyses, there is a clear shift in perspective. The biggest difference is that the copy has changed from "Who am I and what do I sell" to "Do you have such a need and what do you need".

For example, the following two texts have a data difference of more than ten times due to the difference in the text perspective:

Copywriting 1: "Beijing Internet high-paying famous companies are urgently recruiting"

Copywriting 2: "Famous companies in Beijing are hiring urgently. All the good companies close to home are here!"

The latter’s click-through rate is 12.8 times that of the former.

The first copy simply and crudely tells the selling points of "high salary, famous company", while the second copy chooses the demand of "close to home" which users are more concerned about as the entry point.

In short, to write a qualified information flow copy , you must first give up the urge to "sell goods" and think carefully about what needs your users may have.

Knowing that you need to have a "user perspective" when writing copy still does not guarantee that you can write a good copy. Because understanding user needs is not that simple. In particular, many people often rely on their unreliable intuition to understand users.

Take this real case as an example:

A while ago, when our team was guiding information flow optimizers to write copy, we met a decoration client.

After a period of "user perspective" training, many optimizers began to realize that the copy should reflect the needs of users and write about what users care about.

Their copywriting has changed like this:

Copy 1: "When decorating in Guangzhou, choose the Hebao wood decoration"

Copywriter 2: "I just owed a mortgage for buying a house in Guangzhou. Fortunately, I only spent 99,000 to complete the decoration."

The latter obviously has a stronger user perspective than the former, rather than the previous salesman-like feeling.

But what I want to say is that copywriting with a user perspective is still not necessarily good copywriting. Why is this?

When it comes to decoration, users must be most concerned about price, environmentally friendly materials, construction period, etc. These are the judgments that optimizers make in practice.

So, most people write copy like this:

"I just realized now that my neighbor's renovation here was 100,000 yuan cheaper than mine" (Price)

"I don't need to buy green plants anymore after the renovation, just because I used this material!" (Mainly featuring environmentally friendly materials)

“Few people know that a newly renovated house can be occupied immediately” (mainly short construction period)

Finally, after data verification, it was found that all such user-perspective insights were not ideal. The insight that ultimately performed well was something the optimizers had not expected:

"My neighbor's house is only 80 square meters, but it is decorated like a 130 square meter mansion" (mainly decoration effect)

"After seeing the American style of my neighbor's house, I really want to redecorate it" (Main decoration style)

The reason for this undesirable result is simple: these user perspective insights are based on the optimizer’s own intuition. But many times our intuition is unreliable.

You may want to ask after reading this: how can I know what the home improvement users are most concerned about?

Today, the second part of how to achieve user perspective is to share with you some user information search channels that we can use when writing copy.

1. Baidu Index

When most people think that the most important thing about decoration is price, we were surprised to find from the demand map of Baidu Index that it turns out that when it comes to decoration, users care most about information such as effect, style, and house type. This means that the entry point of the copywriting can choose this angle.

Secondly, we once asked optimizers to guess whether the majority of people searching for home improvement are men or women. Almost everyone (including you) believed that women are more interested in home improvement.

But we were also surprised to find in the “crowd portrait” that 64% of users searching for decoration information are male, and 36% are female.

This means that whether it is orientation or copywriting perspective, you can choose to start from the male perspective, such as this copy:

"My wife saw the renovation of her best friend's house and insisted on redecorating it" (obviously written for men)

2. Zhihu Q&A

Another way to find out what users care about is to go directly to Zhihu and see what questions users ask under relevant topics.

Suppose you are writing information flow copy for a client who wants "custom suits". In order to understand the user's focus on suits, you can search and follow the topic of "suits" on Zhihu.

You will find that users pay more attention to aspects such as "whether the suit looks good", "how well the suit fits", and "the details of wearing a suit".

After gaining this user insight , one of the optimizers we trained also made the following changes to his copywriting:

Original copy: "High-end business, casual and wedding suits near Guanghua Road. Choose materials in the store and get them made to measure."

After modification: "Don't say you don't look good in a suit, that's because you haven't been to this store!"

The click-through rate data has also improved significantly (the red line is the intervention date):

3. Pretend to be the target user and make sales calls

If you want to know what users care about, you might as well pretend to be a newbie, make a phone call on the landing page , and ask some very basic questions:

1. Why do people choose your home? What do they care about? 2. What are the advantages of your family? 3. What results did you get after choosing your home?

Through interactions with sales staff, you will naturally learn what users care about.

For example, when I was communicating with a sales person from a postgraduate entrance examination training institution, I gained some very good insights that were later verified by data: people taking the postgraduate entrance examinations are afraid of not knowing the information about their target schools, afraid that their review materials are not comprehensive, worried about falling behind others, etc.

Based on this information, I wrote the following:

"How is the 2017 postgraduate entrance examination? Don't study for 5 months and find out there are no vacancies for your major."

"The 2017 MPAcc re-examination has added new difficulties. Are you still relying on free online materials to review?"

"People who are better than you at Peking University and Tsinghua University are enrolling in this class, and you are still sitting at home studying for the postgraduate entrance exam?"

In short, to get a user perspective, relying on personal intuition is sometimes insufficient or unreliable, and my advice is to try to understand users better through various channels.

When writing copy for a product or promotion, many people's first instinct is to describe the product's features and selling points from a "sales perspective," but what they should really do is take the counterintuitive user perspective. Remember, you have to assume that users don't care about you, they only care about their own needs.

Secondly, understanding user needs relies more on market data feedback rather than just personal intuitive insights. Therefore, it is necessary to rely on various channels to understand the users before making a judgment.

Now, do you know why no one reads the information flow copy you wrote?

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

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