You Can Improve Your Marketing Copy With One Secret Word.

I’m going to share one of the quickest, easiest ways you can improve marketing copy. By using one secret word, you can write content that engages and empowers your audience. You can position your brand as a way for customers to achieve their desires and objectives.

What’s the secret word? I’ve used it several times here: Can.

Can is powerful word, if you use it correctly.

First, keep in mind that when people read marketing copy, they don’t want to feel like they’re being sold. They want to feel like they’re being helped.

Second, marketing communication is not about what your brand can do for the customer. It’s about what the customer can do with your brand’s help. The brand is not supposed to be the hero of the story; the customer is the hero. It is their quest.

Unfortunately, many brands take a self-serving approach to developing content, positioning their product or service as the customer’s savior:

No other widget can do what our widget does. It can solve your problems and make you happy. Don’t you want our widget? Trust us, it’s the widget you need.

Good marketing is an empowerment story.

Marketing content should position the customer as the problem solver. The brand’s role is to make it easier for the customer to solve a problem or achieve an objective.

How to empower.

There are many ways to empower the customer with copy, but here’s one simple tactic that you can put into practice immediately — the “can statement.” Here’s the basic structure:

With the help of our brand/product/service, you can achieve your objective.

Instead of writing: Our laundry detergent makes whites whiter, flip the wording to read more like: You can make your whites whiter by simply switching laundry detergents.

Small word change, big psychological difference. The detergent is positioned as a method to achieve the customer’s objective. The customer is the problem solver.

Of course, you can and should still explain how your detergent makes whites whiter in order to add credibility:

We’ve combined detergent and bleach with a degreaser that removes 50% more soil from every thread of a garment. So if you want your two-year-old sweat socks to be as white as your new white sneakers, you can get there in less than three wash cycles.

This copywriting advice may sound basic, but I’ve encountered a lot of marketing campaigns that focus too much on products and not enough on customers.

Resist the urge to talk to yourself.

Here’s another example. I’ve worked with several companies that provide software as a service (SaaS) to businesses. They get excited about their latest innovations and tend to want to talk mostly about product features.

I always advise that while we must provide access to the technical specifications, we should first speak in language that explains what customers can do with our new software. Copy should also be easily understood by the CEO of a customer business, not just the IT department:

You can enhance the speed and clarity of workflows by installing our software platform. Collect, aggregate and organize data automatically, according to your preset parameters. Then produce analytics reports with intricate detail as well as actionable summaries that your clients can absorb at-a-glance. With our latest version, you can also integrate workflows with existing network security software, saving time and eliminating the need for additional upgrades.

This copy speaks in terms of what the customer can do, rather than what the software can do. At the same time, it clearly states the software’s benefits.

Unfortunately, the kind of copy I usually see reads more like this:

Our new software platform is revolutionizing workflow efficiency. It collects, aggregates and organizes data according to preset parameters. Our trained staff can even integrate your existing network security.

That doesn’t actually sound bad, does it? Which is why it gets approved and produced. But it’s much too salesy, which can ring subconscious warning bells in the customer’s mind. It doesn’t make the customer the hero of the story, so while the software may sound good, the message isn’t empowering. Remember, nobody wants to read marketing copy. If it doesn’t pull the reader into the story, it has less of chance of resonating.

Here are a few more brief examples (that I made up for this article):

At our all-inclusive Jamaican resort, you can vacation like a rock star on the budget of a fan…who buys lawn tickets.

Thanks to our mountain bike’s new jackhammer suspension, you can go from the road less traveled to the road never traveled.

Parenting is a relentless challenge that you can conquer. It’s also one you can avoid. Bulletproof condoms.

Conclusion

Using “can statements” with the customer as the problem solver is a simple tactic copywriters can use for any brand and any category. It works in advertising, social media, email marketing, video scripts and website copy. Here are the key takeaways from this article:

People don’t want to feel like they are being sold. They want to feel like they are being helped.

The customer is the problem solver. The brand is a means for the customer to solve a problem or achieve an objective.

You can instantly improve your copywriting by using one secret word.

Using “can statements” is one of the easiest ways to write helpful, empowering copy.

Even though you make the customer the problem solver in the story, you can still present plenty of features/benefits.

Finally, you can use this simple tactic for any brand, product or service.