In this episode, we feature none other than the brilliant copy mentor and communication strategist, Nadine Nethery. She is the founder of the content and copywriting business for female founders, Can Do! Content.

What is strategic messaging?

My take on copywriting is always strategic because you can have many words that don’t mean anything, and waste your time and money and not really get you anywhere. So it all comes down to creating copy and messaging that really resonates with your audience. And that serves a purpose.

A purpose where it takes your audience from their state of mind in this particular moment, to actually being ready to purchase from you. And to commit to doing business with you for the first time. Or, again, if you set it up cleverly.

How do you build trust with your audience?

What it comes down to, ultimately right from the start, is conducting customer research. I’m a big believer in actually serving your audience regularly and asking them straight up, why they’re choosing you, what makes you stand out, what problems they’re facing in their lives, and how your problems uniquely solve those problems.

Then there’s customer research, which honestly is going to do 80% of the heavy lifting for you. The insights give you everything you need to build emotional connections that support them on that journey. That builds trust in your brand, and it ultimately is going to help you create authentic relationships with your customers, priming them to be ready to purchase.

How can we create those types of brand touchpoints that lead to more sales?

I would start with working out how your offers and products fit together. So again, connecting the dots. So where are they now? Where are they when they first potentially find out about you? Then what is the first experience they’re going to have with you, and what comes after that? Essentially, coming up with potential purchase pathways, to make sure it all fits. And you can gradually guide them.

Ask yourself how can your customer work with you more than once, because again, it comes down to customer retention. Attracting new customers is so much more expensive than keeping existing ones. It saves you time, energy, sanity, it makes everything so much easier.

Another good question to ask yourself is how can you convince them to stick around by offering genuine value and aligned value with their past purchase? And generally, what’s the natural progression through your services or products? So what is the natural flow? And then once you’ve identified that pathway, whether that is a certain product, investing more and more in your brand or complimentary offers, where you just give them something that can assist them even further than with their original purchase?

Then ask yourself, does that customer or the audience member need to see the benefits, connect the dots, and then ultimately understand the synergies between those two products?

So in your experience, how can you tactfully and respectfully hold their hand through that process?

It needs to be that fine balancing act between selling (obviously, you want them to buy from you) but the majority of your content needs to serve that storytelling purpose. So again, building connections, and relationships with your brand, and then also adding value along the way. So every interaction with you needs to have a benefit for your audience. Otherwise, they’re going to be tired.

So if you’re trying to sell a product, come up with value-adding content in the lead up that again, positions you as an expert in your field, and delivers them value. Valuable nuggets they can pick up along the way, and build up a relationship with you so they’re more and more familiar with you. And then when it comes to that point of purchase, it’s less of a mental hurdle for them to commit to what you’re selling.

They like you as a person, they think you know your stuff, you’ve given them free value in the lead-up. So for them, it’s almost like returning the favour when it comes to purchasing. It’s far less of a mental hurdle than continuously selling and then asking for them to invest in you.

And these little opportunities for little nuggets of delight or little surprise elements? What are some ways we can do this?

I am a big believer in using automation and segmentation in your marketing. It all comes back to intimately knowing your audience. So strategically along the way, asking either specific questions or getting them to interact with content in a certain way that helps you segment your audience in finding out what they’re interested in.

You can also use their purchase behaviour to segment them. So every piece of content is specifically targeted to that audience member. And you’re not blasting someone who is not at all interested in this new launch program you’re offering, because they’ve already launched five courses before.

Using segmentation and email automation to your advantage is very important here. And then if you strategically deliver that content that’s relevant and timely to your audience, they will pay you back for it because they feel respected, and they feel like you know them inside-out, and that you’re personally speaking to them.

Are there any other digital means of getting to know your audience and the difference and to begin to segment them better?

Yes! As soon as someone enters your list, I would segment them based on the freebie that they come in with. So consider creating strategic freebies that lead to different products on the track. Again, the lead magnet should be strategic from the get-go. So let’s say you’re trying to sell, you know, website copy, like in my instance, find a freebie that links strategically into those customer interests.

So what are their pain points, what quick win can you deliver? So then segmenting that audience base, the audience members that downloaded the freebie, into a certain segment that can help you target them with specific offers and content and value around websites in my example.

You can also use quizzes, which is a clever way to find out more about your audience. So using a quiz as a freebie helps you segment your audience, find out so many things about them, and then target them based on that. So it creates customer profiles, and then also delivers very specific content as a result.

Be upfront and blunt and ask people in your emails to click on certain links to self-identify. So I do that in my welcome sequence, and it works quite well. For example, you can ask: Why have you come here? Are you looking for support to do your own website or your own copy? Or are you looking to outsource? The answers help me decide what type of content this particular person is interested in.

What are some of your top tips for mapping out your brand touchpoints geared towards delighting customers?

Start with research and use this to come up with a customer avatar that maps out where your audience is. And I’m not talking about “35-year-olds living in Melbourne” – I’m talking about pain points, life questions that are going on in their head, and things that are keeping them up at night. Then you know how you can fix those.

Once you’ve got those insights, look at how you can map your customer journey strategically, so it delivers genuine outcomes for your customers.

You can listen to the full episode in the player below: