Imagine that you are standing on a stage in a packed theatre with a microphone in your hand. The crowd is silent, except for the occasional muffled cough. They are waiting for you to sing…but your throat constricts and you have no voice. You search the crowd for a familiar face, but see only strangers. You drop the microphone and hurry from the stage, mortified. 

Now imagine that you are driving down a scenic highway, windows down, stereo blasting, singing along with your favorite artist, belting it out in perfect harmony. You hit all the high notes, the low notes are easy, and your voice never wavers- you’re a-may-zing!

I use these two examples to demonstrate the drastic differences between writing for an anonymous website visitor, and writing for your ideal client. Getting this dialed in is crucial to writing good copy for your website, emails, or newsletters. Why? For one, it helps with the jitters (and writer’s block) of trying to perform in front of a crowd of strangers, but more importantly, it helps you to narrow your focus down to the things that are the most important to YOUR IDEAL CLIENT so that you can craft copy and content that has relevance to them. 

WHAT IS YOUR IDEAL CLIENT “AVATAR”?

Your ideal client avatar is like a made-up social profile detailing all the many pieces of data which make up your “perfect” client’s life. Depending on the kind of business you run, different aspects of the profile will be more important than others. Most include basic information such as gender and income, and more complex details such as what keeps your clients up at night. The more you know about your ideal client, and the more detail you go into when developing their profile, the better able you will be to engage with them, and ultimately help them in some way. 

Knowing who your ideal client is, knowing their likes and dislikes, their hopes and dreams and what they are looking for, helps you craft your website copy (and your business plan) to suit their needs. The sweet spot for developing your services is the gap between what they are currently experiencing, and what they want to be experiencing. 

Writing your web and business copy with your ideal client in mind does a few things:

• It helps you develop an authentic voice, because you are focused on writing for a very specific audience, one you know very well, and one you know how to help. You can be genuinely empathetic. 
• It builds trust with your clients, because you are speaking the same “language” as your ideal client; you might have similar hopes and dreams, similar experiences, or similar goals, or be in a position where you can help them in some way. Knowing them well will make landing on your website seem familiar and safe. 
•  It keeps you attracting clients with whom you resonate, and will enjoy working with. 

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Getting to know the details of your ideal client avatar helps focus your website writing because you know exactly who you are trying to reach- what they want and need, what they hope for, and what they are looking for from YOU. From here on in, write with this ideal person in mind: What would they find value in? What would they find interesting? How can you best serve their needs and help them live their best lives? 

Simply put, your ideal client is who you run your business for: the person who wants your product, your content, or your service. And, icing on the cake, your ideal client is ideal because they are exactly the person YOU want to work with, too! It’s like singing in the car, instead of being paralyzed with stage fright- win-win!