Marketing Writing - What Benefits Is Your Target Market Searching For?

As you work on your marketing writing, it's important to let potential clients know what benefits they will get from working with you. More importantly, you must write about the benefits that your target market is searching for. Some of these benefits will be obvious, but others are much more subtle. The subtle ones are possibly most powerful in attracting a prospect to choose to become your client. Let's look at ways you can do your marketing writing with an emphasis on the benefits that your target market is searching for.
1. What are the benefits that prospects and clients have most frequently expressed their desire for?
What have they told you that they are looking for? What words have they used? These will be the most obvious desired results - things like "no longer suffering in ________ (fill in the blank) this way" or "freedom from ____ (the problem you can solve)". You are probably already using this information in your marketing writing, but try a new twist on it. When prospects or clients talk about these issues with you, delve a little deeper with them. Ask a few gently probing questions. See what else you can learn about the obvious impacts their problem has had on their life. Find out if you can uncover new ways of describing these problems and their effects.
2. What results do they want that they have not spoken out loud?
These are the "un-saids" - those secret desires and wishes that they hope for, but are not sure they could actually have. To discover these, you will need to be able to "read between the lines", and draw this information out by discreet questioning and listening. This sounds a bit nebulous, but chances are that you have sub-consciously been making these types of observations all along with your clients. With a bit of subtle and deft work, you can reveal some of their most powerfully hoped-for benefits.
These types of benefits are especially effective in your marketing writing, because they show a depth of knowledge that creates credibility and trust for you in the prospective client. They also set off a deep resonance when the prospect realizes they have these deeper desires that they had not even considered previously.
3. What search terms is your target market using to find you?
If you've done some keyword work in the past, you know what the search terms are for the problems that you solve. This is where your prospective clients let you know what their "pain points" are, and you use those words to help them find you in search engine results. The whole topic of keywords requires in-depth expertise, but it is necessary to understand this aspect of what your potential clients are looking for.
4. What benefits have you learned about from clients long after you stopped working together?
Think about any casual encounters you've had with past clients and anything they or their family members have said to you about the positive effects they got from working with you. Perhaps they say things like, "The spouse is so much happier now that I'm not dealing with that problem any longer." or "My kids say I have so much more time for them now." This positive "fallout" can include some surprising benefits that you were unaware of, so they are especially valuable. Be sure that you take note and remember them. When you use this information in your marketing writing, they can be quite motivating in helping a prospect decide to become a client.