7 Mistakes Small Business Owners Make When Writing Their Own Copy

Learn how to avoid the pitfalls of bad writing and attract more customers with great copywriting.

As a small business owner, you have a lot going on. You wear many hats and time is at a premium. You do your own marketing and writing to save money because that’s what you’ve always done.

While writing may seem a small task, mistakes in it can turn away customers and cost you money.

Have you ever been in a restaurant or on a website and come across errors or something badly written? Most likely you didn’t hang around very long and went to a competitor instead.

As online commerce becomes more popular, customers expect well written copy that doesn’t have spelling or grammatical errors. And if your website has out of date or false information, readers are likely to turn elsewhere because they don’t see your company as reliable or trustworthy. First impressions count.

Most Common Mistakes Small Business Owners Make When Writing Their Own Copy

Your strengths as a business owner are probably your weakness when it comes to writing for your business. You are too close to it and your pride wants to toot your horn and tell everyone how wonderful your business is (and of course it is!) but you forget to focus on the customer and what’s in it for them.

1. Proofread Those Errors

Errors will happen but reducing them to a minimum will go a long way to creating a good first impression. According to RealBusiness 74% of online readers pay attention to the quality of the copy on a business website.

Look out for:

• Grammar
• Spelling
• Punctuation
• Sentence structure
• Incorrect use of capitalisation
• Flow

Tip: Read your writing out loud. You can check the flow and often hear your grammatical mistakes.

Proofreading your writing is important for avoiding errors. Ask a friend or colleague to check your writing before you click publish.

Having error free content will create a good first impression, as well as build trust. If you can’t provide error free information, customers are less likely to trust your business with their money.

2. Focus on Your Customers

A common mistake made by businesses is the make it all about you. Afterall, it’s your business so your customers expect to hear all about your news.

Except this isn’t true! Customers want to know what’s in it for them. 63% of consumers expect businesses to know their unique needs and expectations, increasing to 76% for B2B buyers.

You need to focus on how your products or services are going to improve the lives of your customers. How will it save them money or make them feel better? What are the benefits to them?

Tip: Show how you can solve your customer’s problems and improve their lives.

3. Benefits Over Features

Rather than talk about the features your product offers, you should discuss the benefits. This will address the ‘what’s in it for me’ question that your customer is asking.

To do this think about the features of your product or service and transform them into how the feature will provide a benefit to the client and solve their problem.

For example, you have daily appointments available. Instead, you can rephrase this to short wait times for all appointments. Your factory has state-of-the-art machinery. This can be rephrased to ‘we have invested $100 million in new state-of-the-art machinery’ to show that you’ve spent a lot of money on new equipment.

Tip: Tell your customers what the benefit to them is of your product or service. Describe the benefits rather than the features.

4. Forget a Call-to-Action

You’ve told your customers all about your product and the benefits to them. They are ready to buy, but you forgot to include a CTA.

A CTA (call-to-action) is a button with a link to help your customer take your desired action. For example, ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Download Now’.

A single CTA on an email has been shown to increase clicks by 371% and sales by 1617% according to Wordstream. You cannot afford to forget your CTA in any marketing, but especially an email marketing campaign.

Tip: Write a single CTA so your customer knows what to do and can take immediate action.

5. Perfectionism Kills your Copy

Having error free copy that is effective and informative is desirable, but you need to know when to let go and accept that it is good enough.

You cannot keep editing, going back and rewriting and editing again. At some point you need to hit publish and let go of being perfect.

Tip: Write your copy, wait a day or two and then go back to read it. Edit your copy and if possible, get a second pair of eyes to read it as well and check for errors. Then hit publish and move on!

6. Keep it Simple and Conversational

When you are writing for customers you need to avoid jargon and buzz words and keep your message simple. Many of your readers may not be familiar with the terminology of your industry. It’s best to write as though you are speaking to someone who knows very little and cut out the jargon.

You also don’t want your copy to sound too stiff and too polished. It’s best to have a conversational tone that is friendly and easy, like friends having a chat. You want to come across as appealing and welcoming.

Tip: Keep your text simple and tone like a chat between friends. Save your jargon for chats with colleagues and professional settings.

7. Forget or Don’t have a Big Plan

Writing awesome copy is great but your need to remember your plan. What do you want to achieve from your copy?

It is important to keep your goals at the centre of whatever copy you write.  This will help keep you on track and ensure you are closer to achieving your goal.

Tip: Check your business plan before you write. Be clear what you want to achieve from the copy you write.

Would you like some help with writing your copy? I can work with you to write the copy you need to grow your business.

For information about how a copywriter can help you check out this blog post.