market-language fit

Market-Language Fit: 9 Ways to Make Customers Feel Like You’ve Read their Mind

Here’s an under-appreciated concept for early-stage startups: Market-language fit.

Market-language fit involves showing your customers exactly what they’re looking for.

When you really hit on your market-language fit, you can get multiples more conversions than you did previously.

Especially if you’re a new brand, you won’t gain much attention from your audience.

But if you nail the market-language fit and make them feel like you know them, you cut through a lot of the noise.

And as a result, you get more conversions.

Here’s a four-step process to find your market-language fit:

1) Uncover their goals, struggles, and language

To do this, consider going through these steps:

a) Find somebody that bought your product or a competitor’s.

b) Ask them to walk you through the purchase process from the very beginning.

c) Ask them questions to understand what they were struggling to do, where they looked for help, and which alternatives they’ve tried.

2) Draft some headlines

You should have a list of desires and struggles from the previous step.

Pick the ones that you think will resonate the most with your avatar and write them in the form of headlines.

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3) Validate comprehension

Get somebody (in your industry or not) on a Zoom call and show them your headlines for 5 seconds.

Then, ask them these questions:

  • Do you recall what I said?
  • What do you think that is?
  • Ask them to explain in their own words what they think it means.

Repeat this process four times for each headline.

Take the feedback, iterate, and test.

4) Test your headlines in a campaign to get more data

And even if you don’t, the first three steps will still give you more success.

The goal is to find a language that resonates with your audience to get your message through.

5) Bid on your own branded terms

It often feels strange that Google allows bidding on competitors’ terms, but that’s also why you should consider bidding on your own terms.

6) Differentiate your business or service quite explicitly

Chances are you are not the only one targeting the same audience.

Just as you have your comparison tables on your website, it’s worth testing a direct comparison as an ad (whether in text or visual).

7) Speak your audience’s language

Talk like your audience rather than like a corporate robot.

Yes, even in ads this can be helpful.

8) Social proof

You have customers, testimonials, positive reviews, and more.

Show it off in your ads.

Whether people like to admit it or not, when in doubt, humans follow the herd.

So, if you have the most social proof in your industry, you are likely to be one of the top options whether your product is the best or not.

9) Emotions

There’s a whole article we could write on this…

You can appeal to pain, fear, urgency, or you can go with joy, fulfillment, comfort, and social approval.

Whatever it is, just think about what emotions your ads could evoke.

How to Make Your Customers Feel Special

It’s basic human psychology: Make someone feel important and they’re going to like you.

And, if you’re marketing to that person, they may just buy from you.

We spent the last month breaking down the best marketing emails we could find.

One common trait we found was that many great emails make the reader feel important.

There are many different ways you can do that.

Here are some of the best:

  • Show the reader that they’re part of an exclusive group. One email told customers that they were one of the 8% of people who’d keep their New Years’ resolution. That’s a feel-good stat. Discover some of your own and use them.
  • Show the reader that their partner or loved ones appreciate them. More than being appreciated by a brand, people want to be loved by their friends and family. If you can find a way to do this, you’ll earn customers’ respect.
  • Celebrate the reader on birthdays and personal events. It’s a common tactic, but for good reason: sending people personalized emails on their birthdays works. Try throwing in a discount, for good measure.

One tactic to avoid

Don’t ask for a sale immediately after making your reader feel important. For example…

One email from Chili’s read, “You’re the best. And so is this deal.”

Nobody wants to be put on the same level as a run-of-the-mill marketing deal. It feels disingenuous.

Instead, show people that you genuinely care about them before asking them to buy something.

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