4 Reasons Why Your SaaS Site Needs a Copywriter

Your SaaS site needs a copywriter or it’s doomed.

There’s no wonder why successful companies pay big bucks to get the right words on their landing pages; it is because they’re CRITICAL.

via GIPHY

Before you write me off as a nutcase, let’s take a look at a few facts:

• Your headline only has 8 seconds to convert. A good copywriter will do the work necessary to make sure this happens.

• 90% of the visitors who read your headline will also read your Call to Action (CTA).

• 88% of consumers trust testimonials and reviews. Of course, a good copywriter will make sure these are written and formatted in a way that will increase conversion rates.

• Using videos on landing pages can increase conversions by 86%. Of course your video has got to convince your audience to take some sort of action. This will require the talents of a copywriter.

In this post, I’m going to give you some tips on how to get the kind of copy you’ll need to get prospects to click on your offer and increase your sales.

Reason #1 Why Your SaaS Site Needs a Copywriter – To Avoid Common Mistakes

If you work with a good copywriter at the onset you can save a lot of money.    If you haven’t taken the time to learn copywriting you’ll make common mistakes, so getting a decent copywriter to help you avoid them can get you started on the right foot.

If you want to see examples of critical mistakes in copy, then take a look at accounting websites.

I’m not saying accountants suck – I’m saying their website copy usually sucks.

Why?

Usually we’re greeted with the obligatory “Welcome”, as if the reason why we’re there is to have tea and crumpets. You don’t need to say “Welcome to our site” because nobody cares.

After being welcomed, the bragging begins…

“Since 1901, Joe & Blow, Inc. has been providing accounting, tax and business advisory services through innovative thought leaders who deliver their expertise to meet the individual needs of each client.  We’re proud that we’ve built a client list of powerful Fortune 500 companies, well-established regional businesses, not-for-profits and exciting start-ups.  But we are even prouder that we…Blah blah blah… brag brag brag… yaadda yadda yadda…”

(I realize that SaaS companies are different than accounting firms, but this is a common error businesses make when writing copy for their home or landing pages.)

You’ll notice in the example above that I’ve altered the copy so as not to embarrass the business that owns it.  You’ll also notice that I’ve highlighted every time they mention themselves.

The first thing I learned about writing copy was that you need to focus on the prospect and what they want.

They want to hear about how you can help them.

• If they have a problem, they want it solved.
• If they want to get ahead in life, they want you to show them the way.
• If they have an itch, they want you or your product to scratch it.

So, a good copywriter can help you avoid this common mistake at the onset which will save you valuable revenue when you launch.

Email Address Submit

Reason #2 – To Help You Zoom in on Your Target Market Before You Launch

Every marketer and copywriter will tell you that you must know as much as you can about your target customers.

Preferably, you did all of this research on the front end BEFORE you even created your product.

I first got this idea from the marketing genius Dan Kennedy.  Dan is not only one of the best copywriters ever, but he’s also a master at creating and selling information products.

Dan usually tests an idea for an info product before he creates it.

In the days before the Internet, he would get a good mailing list from a list broker and send out a series of sales letters to the people on it.

The sales letter would have an offer for a product he was thinking about producing and he had a response card with it.

Based on the response he would receive, he would decide whether or not to create the product.

The successful entrepreneur, Tim Ferris, author or the “4 Hour Work Week”, set up several ads using Google AdWords to see which title was the most popular.  In this case, the title he picked was not the winner.

Similar to this, many entrepreneurs who roll out new software or products will create sites that collect email addresses as a response.  They will advertise the product on the Internet to see how many people are interested.

No matter how you decide to test the viability of your SaaS product, you MUST know your customer.

Here’s a list of articles on how to find out what your target market wants:

How to Get in the Mind of B2B SaaS Customers – Neil Patel

Build a Marketing Strategy Before You Start Building Your Product – SaaS Club

SaaS Product Launch Strategy: How We Got Our First 100 Customers – Field Bloom

3 Questions You Need To Answer About Your Target Audience – The Daily Egg

Working with a copywriter at the get-go will help you find your target market because she will have a firm understanding of what you are going to need to know.  Many times, copywriters are also marketing strategists that know this stuff.

If they don’t know it, they’ll hook you up with someone that does.

Your life will be so much easier if you know your prospects well. 

[ctt template=”1″ link=”MBf4c” via=”yes” ]If you hire a copywriter – you’ll make your task of setting up an SaaS site 80% easier.[/ctt]

If you hire a decent pro copywriter, the first thing she’ll want to know is what kind of customers you have and everything you can tell her about them.

She’ll be super happy if you can hand her a database or avatar of your perfect customer, because that’ll make her life so much easier.

(It’s very difficult to write copy that will get a prospect to take action if you don’t have a clue who they are or what they want.)

If you do killer research on the front end, both you and the writer (if you decide to hire one) will know what the main benefits are for your software or application.

You won’t have to scratch your head trying to figure out what to focus on when you write your copy.

Reason #3 – To Help You Write a Killer Headline

Let’s say you’ve done your due diligence and you now want to start putting your landing pages together.

You are either going to attempt to write your own copy or you’re going to hire someone. If you’re doing it yourself the first thing you may want to do is to start writing your headline.

If you go back and look at advertising copy from the pre-Internet days, you’ll notice that the words at the very top of the copy stick out like a sore thumb.

In the example above, the copywriter skillfully used the magazine title and led the reader into a pre-headline which leads to the main headline.

Right after the main headline you also have words that follow it in smaller text.  You even have copy that’s emphasized by putting it into a box.

In this case, you have:

• The Pre-head – This appears right before the headline and they are using “Research” to validate their claim
• The Headline – Which is making a bold claim
• The Subhead – Restating their claim another 2 times

When you combine all this together you have an entity known as the “Deck Copy”.

Warning: SaaS companies like to have simple pages and there are good reasons for this.  However having just a headline without a subhead is risky.  Here’s what I mean:

(Image Courtesy of Unbounce)

This is just one of the landing pages Unbounce uses.  I’d be willing to bet that they did a lot of testing on their headlines; for some reason this one stands alone without a subhead to back it up.

That’s great for companies that have the money to invest in lots of landing pages and split tests.  But for most businesses, it’s not a good idea.

Usually, in order to get someone to click on something to convert, you’ve got to give them more reasons to do so.

I can’t emphasize enough just how important your headline and subhead are because they will be the first thing your prospect sees.

Copywriters will sometimes pine for weeks and months trying to write the ultimate headline for their clients.  When you consider the amount of money that you can make from the first few words a visitor sees – you want to be spot-on.

If you’re going to write it yourself, you better practice writing headlines a lot because it is an acquired skill.  It will take you some serious practice to learn how to write them.

So, here’s my advice for you:

If you want a killer headlines and copy for your site, hire a decent copywriter that you can work with long-term.

Why?  Three main reasons:

1. A decent copywriter will take the load off of you and speed up the time it takes to write your copy. You have other parts of your business to run and adding the chore of writing copy for it will consume a ton of your time.
2. A copywriter will already have experience writing converting copy so it’ll get done faster.
3. Also, a good copywriter will maintain or compile a swipe file of copy of successful sites that have proven copy and ideas to draw from.

The reason you need to work with a copywriter long term is because you’ll want to test the crap out of your copy.  You don’t want to pick the first title that you throw onto the page and think that it’s all good.  So having a good copywriter on some sort of retainer is a good idea.

Reason #4 – Your SaaS Site Will Need Its Own Blog and Someone to Write the Posts

Another big reason why you’ll need a good copywriter for your site is because you’ll need a blog and someone to write for it.

(Once again, you could try to write all those posts yourself, but that would be a massive time-suck.)

In a recent post, I detailed all the reasons why a business would need a blog on their site.

Here are two of the main stats I listed:

1. In a recent survey of small businesses by Hubspot, a whopping 81% of them think that having a blog on their site was useful, important, or critical.
2. If you write 21+ well written blog posts, your traffic will increase by 30%.

An easy way to figure out whether or not your SaaS site should have a blog is to follow the big dogs in the industry.   I would say if they have them, then it’s probably a good reason to have one.

Another good reason why a SaaS company needs to have an active blog is because consumers usually read 3 pieces of content before making a decision.

If you think about it, how often do you go to a site and make a decision to buy something without reading more than just the headline?

So having blog with fresh, relevant content will increase your traffic.  Each post on that blog can act as a page that leads your reader to the decision to go to your landing page and convert.

And if those facts don’t push you over the edge, you can put this in your pipe and smoke it:

Business that use blogs get 55% more traffic than businesses without a blog.  They also got 97% more inbound links and 434%  indexed pages.

A good copywriter that understands content marketing can:

• Do the keyword research necessary to make sure your posts get more traffic
• Optimize the pictures for your blog posts for SEO
• Format and write your content so that readers will want to read more
• Help you figure out a content strategy so your posts flow in a logical progression
• Initiate actions that will promote your posts – like reaching out to leaders in your industry

Conclusion

Getting the words on your site is critical and it takes a lot of work.  That’s why successful companies will spend the money to hire a copywriter.

However, hiring a copywriter won’t be enough, because you’ll have to inform them about every aspect of your software or app so they can write killer copy.

If you’re considering hiring one for your SaaS site, having a packet of information on your product or a copy of your marketing plan will help tremendously.

Have you ever built an SaaS site and hired a copywriter before?  Do you have any questions about this process?  Please leave comments in the area below.