This man has read too many tech websites. (Image courtesy of Shreyans Bhansali.)

Then you arrive and you’re stuck next to Brian, a management consultant and golf aficionado with a penchant for long, self-important stories. Nearly every sentence he utters starts with “I…”

Does it feel like Brian gives a fig about what you’re up to? Does he bore you to the point of drowning yourself in the soup?

What if he’d started by asking about you instead?

What if he’d simply used the word “you” more often and dropped the I-centricity?

The writer Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club and Choke, among others) has a term for this. He calls it “Submerging the I”.

Even when he’s telling a story in the first person, he uses “I” as little as possible. Palahniuk knows that self-absorbed people are only interesting to themselves.

Because what’s the subliminal message if you constantly use the word “I”?

You’re saying: “I’m not interested in you, I want to tell my story.”

Round here, they call it “The Big I Am.”

Extrapolate that to a business and website copy environment and what message have you got?

“We don’t care about helping you, we’re only interested in ourselves.”

A dangerous message to put out, wouldn’t you say?

So, try not to let your website sound like Boring Brian. Focus on the you, and submerge the I and We as much as possible.

(P.S. You can check how me-centric you are using Futurenow’s customer focus calculator.)

So, I was training a group of web copywriters the other day, and casually mentioned features versus benefits. Nothing earth-shattering there.

But, just as I was about to click to the next slide, I noticed that the expected nods and hums of recognition didn’t arrive. So I asked, “you do know the difference between features and benefits, right?”

Blank stares.

I realised that I often take it for granted that website writers know and understand what a benefit is. So here we go, features and benefits in a nutshell:

A feature is something the product does.
A benefit is how a feature improves the life of the customer.

So how about an example of features vs benefits?

Okay. I went to buy a saw at the weekend. Being something of a DIY illiterate, I was surprised to see a choice of about two-dozen saws.

I asked the bloke at the till what was my best option. His advice: “this one has tungsten tips, this one has a gel-embossed handle. This one here, the Sawmeister 3000, has a reinforced body.”

He may as well have been speaking in Esperanto.

What he could have said is:

• This one cuts fastest, because of its tungsten tips – so you’ll spend less time sawing.
• This one is the most comfortable to hold – so you won’t get blisters.
• This one won’t break, no matter how much you use it, so it’ll last longer and save you money.

After all, I wasn’t really buying a saw – I was buying quick, neat, cut wood. Just like people who buy 37Signals software are really buying an easier working life, people who buy a hedge-trimmer are really buying tidier hedges, or people who buy a Rolex are really purchasing perceived status.

The key, of course, is accurately pinpointing the true benefit to the customer. Even if this might not be clear at first, drill down until you find it. You can apply this to nearly anything (including aspects of your own life). For example:

Your social Life:

Feature: There’s a party this weekend
Benefit: You might meet that elusive dream girl who puts up with your accordion playing (not a true story)

Your education:

Feature: You get a load of letters to put on your CV
Benefit: You won’t have to work in the Burger King at Victoria Railway Station

Your web design business:

Feature: You design and build accessible websites
Benefit for clients: More customers will be able to use your site = more sales for you

Sometimes people mistakenly think that bringing out benefits means treating people like idiots. I disagree. It’s simply a way to spark in the customer’s mind how using a product/service will help them out.

Now, get sparking…

(Cufflink image courtesy of Oberazzi)

“You don’t ask, you don’t get,” said Mahatma Gandhi. I’m no historian, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t referring to cufflinks. Or, for that matter, copywriting.

Still, the bloke was on to something.

Yeah, yeah – the whole non-violence thing. Of course. But also the idea that asking the right questions is the only way to achieve your desired result. And, as one of the skills of the copywriter is contorting your brain into different mindsets, being relentlessly inquisitive is must.

So, where do you begin when quizzing a new client? You can start with obvious (what do you sell, what’s the price, when will I get paid…and so on).

But then it’s essential to burrow into the marrow of the matter. Here are some questions that you might find useful as a web copywriter:

(Heck, even if you’re not a web copywriter, just ask yourself these questions to improve your own website copy.)

• Can you explain your product/service in a sentence?




• Could you describe your business using any five words?




• What’s the most significant problem your product/service is designed to solve?




• What kind of person usually faces this problem? Do they face it in their daily life?




• How will your customer’s life be different after buying your product/service?




• When you’re describing what you do/sell to friends, what do you tell them? What do they ask you in return?




• Could you ask your sales team which questions they get asked most often? If they speak to customers face-to-face, what’s a common objection and what do they say to counter it?




• Could you ask your customer service team what your most common complaints/queries are?




• Can you tell me the story of how your business began? What did you want to change?




• If you could change one thing about your product/service, what would it be?




• If you could pick only one stand-out feature of your product, what would it be?




• Do you have any special offers/deals/discounts – or anything else that I should know about? Do you offer anything for free (support, shipping etc.)?




• Which website (in any market) do you most admire, and why?




• Who are your biggest competitors? What do you offer that they don’t? What do they offer that you don’t?




• What company’s language style and tone do you most admire and why?




• What do you want your language and tone to say about you?

You can use some of those as a starting point to understanding your client’s business and what they want to achieve. (Really, you should try to keep firing the questions until you’re politely asked to stop, or until just before security are called.)

What about you fellow writers (or clients)? Asked or received any unexpectedly revealing questions?