Universally, you have three target audiences:

1. Customers from your database.
2. Prospects from your database.
3. Prospects

Customers have already purchased something from your before.
Prospects on your database usually originate from your lead generation efforts or word-of-mouth. They might know who you are and what you have to offer, but they may have forgotten, have a wrong impression, or only vaguely remember you.
And prospects don’t have an idea who you are.
What’s more, these potential clients are not waiting for your direct mail, email, or Facebook ads to arrive. They don’t care who you are.
Unless what you have to say speaks directly to their needs, their frustrations, or their fears, human beings won’t sit up and listen.
The first split-second thought every reader has is the same: “What’s in it for me?”
So, for each of our three segments, you must first uncover the uniqueness of your prospect.

Here’s how.
Before writing a single word of copy, ask yourself: “What is my prospect like?”
To answer this question, think about who your prospects are.

1. How old are they?
2. What’s their yearly income?
3. Where do they live and/or work?
4. What keeps them up at night?
5. What are their desires and dreams?
6. What do you need to do to convince them to buy … a product picture? A story of how your product was made? Your track record?
7. What are their hot issues and emotional triggers?

Basically, you want to know as much as you can about your prospects. Visualize them. Create a 1-to-3 paragraph profile of just one person who has the characteristics inherent to your target audience.
The most successful copywriters know that pinning a picture of their defined target prospect on the wall helps them write the kind of one-on-one copy that generates consistent “buy” response.
If you find answering these questions difficult, talk to your past customers.
Read what he reads … do whatever you can to gain good insight into what’s going on inside your prospect’s mind.
The idea is to write your copy to just one … making it sound person-to-person.
But this isn’t all you need to know. Tone and feel are important. Each audience segment has their own hot buttons.
When addressing a customer database, your copy needs to be pleasurable and amiable. It’s relational.
There’s a specific tactic I like to use when personalizing correspondence t hat’s worked very well. To solidify a personal relationship, I reference a customer’s past purchase.
This gives us commonality.
Prospects, on the other hand, need to overcome their reluctances. To do this, give them a lot of proof.
Building credibility with fact, figures, star-ratings, reviews, and testimonials is the goal with this group.
Prospects present the biggest copy challenge. Here you need the most powerful copywriting. Cover all the proven direct response rules. Often this challenge calls for the longest sales copy.
Bottom Line: Too many marketers use an anemic copy approach because they don’t understand direct response copy.
Repeatedly, I’ve found the error is in writing to the 3 target audience groups at once, which doesn’t work.
Target your audience, figure out who they are, and write specific copy: that’s how to do it.
Need help with identifying and connecting with different audiences in your next campaign? Call me at (310) 212-5727 or email me at [email protected] for more information.