Writing copy that resonates with your prospects can be hard, but it really doesn’t have to be. So in this article, I’m going to be digging into how I pull in keywords or phrases from my customer reviews to create copy that really resonates. I’ll go over the exact method that I’ve used to identify whether or not I’m communicating well with my prospects. And I’ve used this method most recently in a G2 review push in which I got over 50 new customer reviews and then use those customer reviews in order to book 10 plus meetings every single week with prospects.
Step 1: Run a review or testimonial campaign
The first thing you need to do is run a review or testimonial campaign. You’re going to need at least 30 customer reviews to pull data from in order to figure out the words that really resonate with your customers.
If you need help on getting started with this, check out my recent article in which I went over the exact strategy and steps I took in order to get over 50 G2 reviews in a month. In that article, I detailed the exact words that I used throughout the entire process to get our customers to want to leave reviews for us.
However you end up running this sort of campaign, you want to make sure you have at least 30. And the reason why is because when N equals 30 for your sample size, it is statistically significant. So by getting 30 reviews, you will have enough customers to survey from in terms of pulling the key things that they are saying in their reviews.
In the case where you need to get these customer statements faster, you can also send a one-off outbound campaign to your customers in which you ask them questions like, what are three to five words or phrases that you think of when you think of our business or what is your happiest moment with our business.
By figuring out what your exact value proposition is to your customers, you can communicate that to your prospects on your landing pages or wherever it is that you are using this copy. Another question you might ask your customers in this outreach campaign is, if you were to describe our company to a friend or colleague, how would you describe it? This will help you better understand how you are perceived by your customers as you start to think about the copy that you’re going to use.
Step 2: Identify the frequently cited words
The second step you’re going to take is you’re going to identify the frequently cited words in the reviews that you’ve collected. If you’re using an aggregator website like G2 or Capterra, this might actually be done for you in the section that they call popular mentions. As I scroll through Intercom’s popular mentioned section, I noticed how common it was for people to mention how Intercom help them with their response times as well as how easy it was to set up different facets of the product to help them with their customer communications.
If you’re using one of these aggregator websites, I recommend you use this sort feature for most helpful reviews and then pull three to five of those reviews into a word cloud generator. This is a strategy that I’ve shared in my other articles around content marketing and figuring out specifically what people think are most important related to a particular topic. And you can apply it here as well.
By doing this process, you’ll begin to understand some of the commonly used words or phrases associated with your product or service. Once you’ve taken a look in reading through all of your customer reviews or responses, you should start to identify a few common patterns or themes that come up in your review. These are the sorts of things that you want to stay alert on as you are working through the idea of building copy from your customer reviews.
Another tip that I throw your way is to make sure that you are checking the titles that people use when it comes to leaving their reviews. Oftentimes, these titles are the most important takeaways that your customers will leave for you. And they’ll have a lot of great sound bites for you to use in your copy as well.
Step 3: Laundry list interesting phrases
The third step to getting some awesome copy from your customer reviews is to laundry lists some interesting phrases that you see in your customer reviews. Naturally, aside from just having words or patterns and themes that come up, there are going to be particular phrasings that truly resonate or stand out in all of your customer reviews.
In the example of Intercom, I noticed a few patterns as I went through their G2 profile. I noticed words that mentioned how Intercom was a robust tool or an all in one kit for a product marketer, how it scaled for both big and small businesses, how it helps them with driving empathy driven support. It was a one-stop shop for support and it allowed for personal support at scale.
So, something to notice here is there’s a common pattern here that clearly exists around the idea of Intercom being an all-in-one solution when it comes to customer communication. There is another pattern that emerged in terms of Intercom allowing for a higher degree of personalization when it came to customer conversations. These are the sorts of things that you would want to include in your marketing copy.
The words that your customers are saying are the same ones that are going to resonate with your prospects that you are going to sell to in the future. Or in the case where you’re upselling your current customers to see greater value from your product, these are the same words that you’re going to want to use in those conversations.
Step 4: Draft your copy
The fourth step you’re going to take is you’re going to draft your copy. If you notice that there’s a big disconnect in how you’re currently languaging your product and how your customers are describing your product, then it means that your copy as is needs to be changed.
However, if you notice that some things are common with what your customers are saying, then it might just mean that you want something else for your business in terms of how it’s perceived and you need to educate or bring your customers up to date with how you envision your product evolving over time.
Whatever the case though is, as you draft your copy, you’re going to want to turn to those words and interesting phrases that we’ve pulled out from the customer reviews. Making sure that you are clearly communicating your value proposition is one of the hardest things to do in any business. And you can even see it when you look back at Intercom and how they’ve positioned themselves over the years.
In fact, let’s take a trip in the web archive to see how Intercom has changed their positioning over the years as a business. For example in 2017, you’ll notice that Intercom is newer to the world in terms of being a business in their space. And so they focus on their value prop being all around how communicating shouldn’t be as hard as it is.
They emphasize how with Intercom it’s simple, personal, and fun for everyone. You’ll notice how even in 2017, they’re talking about how they connect everything into one platform. You’ll notice as we move forward, though, that Intercom starts to move upstream. They’re talking about acquiring, engaging, and retaining customers.
In other words, they’re not just talking about the conversational parts of customer conversations, but actually the life cycle process of turning a prospect into a customer. You’ll notice at this point that they really start to refine their messaging, where they highlight three key things that their products solve. Acquiring customers, engaging customers, and supporting customers.
Fast forward a year later and then in 2019, they’re positioning themselves as somebody that you come for the chat and you stay for everything else. So at this point, Intercom is more mature as a product so they know that they are known for their chat. However, they are also positioning themselves as wanting to sell you on the other suite of products that their solution can do. This is where they start using languaging like having a customizable messaging suite for every step of the life cycle.
So you’ll notice that over the years, Intercom has continued to swim upstream to sell to those larger clients. And they’re changing the way they’re positioning themselves as well. And the last thing that we’ll review, we’ll notice how in 2020, during the year of the pandemic, Intercom really centered itself around the idea of great customer relationship experience. In other words, they knew that businesses were probably facing some difficulties at that time, and they wanted to position themselves as the place that you go for the number one on business messenger. In other words, they were a catalyst for you in helping you retain your customers.
I also thought it was helpful in digging through this section when they talked about the different features that they had, and they started to use phrases that you probably find in their customer reviews as well.
As you work your way through their homepage, you’ll notice common phrases that came up in their G2 reviews as well in terms of being an all-in-one tool. So what can you take away from just looking at these last few years of Intercom and how they position themselves? What you’ll notice is that as they entered the market, they had to educate their customers first on the core things that they were doing. And then over time, they positioned themselves as more than just chat. Chat was their foot in the door. And then all the other expansions that they’ve added to their product are what allows them to sell upstream to bigger clients. What you should take away from this is that the drafting process is iterative. You have to launch some landing pages and see how people respond to it. Check your conversion rates, see how many trials are getting requested from a particular version of your landing page, or check out how long people are staying on the page and whether or not this sort of copy is resonating with them to stick longer on your page.
Step 5: Keep iterating until you find your golden tickets
This leads me to the fifth step which is to always keep iterating on your copy with your customers. The best way to really create copy that resonates with using your customer reviews is to continue testing messaging over time. Keep an ear out for when your customers talk about things they hate or dislike, and then weigh whether or not that is a feature that you want to incorporate into your product or service.
If you do this sort of iterative process, you will notice that your customers will change the way they talk about you as well. In fact, if you pull up Intercom’s G2 profile and go back to 2017 and go all the way through 2020 or 2021, you will notice how people have started to change the way that they talk about Intercom as a product.
The best way to incorporate this step is beyond just your landing pages. You’ll want to test out messaging whenever you are talking to a prospect or an existing customer. If you’re in a live demo, you might want to use an example from a customer statement of yours, and then see how your prospect responds to you when you mentioned that exact phrasing. If it’s something in which they really perk up at the sound of that phrase, then it’s something that you would want to incorporate into your copy.
Big takeaways
There are two things that I want you to remember when it comes to looking for signs that it’s time to hire a virtual assistant.
- The first one is to use the words your customers are actually saying when you are writing copy for them.
- The second one is to always keep iterating on your copy. Listen in for what your customers are saying about you and then from there, use that as the baseline for your copy.
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