When Sarah joined the marketing team for MindEase, a mental health app, she knew customer research was vital to help them define their brand story.
In the development phase, marketers sent surveys to the waitlist and conducted extensive research on the target market.
But as they approached the launch, Sarah felt something was missing—their marketing messages felt too “salesy,” distant and like every other app on the market.
Determined to bridge this gap, Sarah decided to conduct live customer interviews.
She spoke with Emma, a young woman who had struggled with anxiety for years.
As Emma shared her story, tears welled up in her eyes. “MindEase became my lifeline,” she said. “When I felt like the world was closing in on me, this app gave me a safe space to breathe and find calm.”
Emma’s words struck a chord.
Sarah used this heartfelt testimonial in their marketing copy: “Feeling overwhelmed? Let MindEase be your lifeline. Find your calm in the storm.”
By listening to their customers, MindEase didn’t just sell an app—they offered a lifeline.
Stories Cut Through The Noise
Now, more than ever before, your the sales messaging and copy is the way you communicate with your audience and sell your offers.
And there’s no better way to collect it than from your customers themselves.
As part of the CopyFuel HQ process, we assess our client’s customer data to see if we have what we need to write effective copy using the specific words and phrases their customers are using. This is called Voice of Customer in the copy world.
While VoC should be used at every stage of the customer journey, in the following sections, you’ll learn where you’ll get the most impact for conversion.
What is Voice of Customer?
To recap, Voice of Customer (VoC) is defined as the words and phrases your customer uses to express their needs, expectations, challenges, desires, and feelings.
As copywriters, we often field questions like, “how do we increase our conversion rates on a landing page?” or “why do we see such a drop off when customers get to the consideration phase of our funnel?”
These questions tell us a lot about what clients need when learning more about sales copy. Their words also reveal where their frustrations lie and what they want to achieve with their copy.
When you’re mining for Voice of Customer, you can find it in many places, like:
- Emails correspondence with clients or potential clients
- Reviews on your site or Amazon
- Comments sections on your social media platforms
- Competitor channels
- Industry trends
- Customer Interviews
When you have this information, analyze it for trends, similar words, familiar sentiments, context and emotion.
Then, apply it to these areas of your sales messaging.
Headlines on Landing Pages
You’ve heard it before: you have about 8 seconds to capture the reader’s attention once they land on your sales page or sign up page, especially in this distracted online ecosystem.
The best way to hold their attention is to use words they can see themselves reflected in right away.
Depending on the headline style you choose, you can appeal to their challenges, frustrations, or desires, although the majority appeal to solving a problem or providing a solution.
Below you’ll see an example from HubSpot that focuses on the problem and solution:
Website Performance Lesson: Improving The Page Speed of Your Website
In this example, I suspect that HubSpot’s community feedback indicated a desire to learn more about optimizing website performance and improving page speed.
Another example from HubSpot takes a benefits-first approach:
How to Craft a Winning Facebook Ads Strategy
Here, we can assume that their voice of customer analysis reveals people to run ads that work (and stop losing money on ads that don’t.)
Key takeaway: use voice of customer in your headlines on landing pages to capture the reader immediately by crafting a headline that solves a problem or offers a benefit.
Next up: email marketing.
2. Subject Lines and Hooks
Email continues to be a significant driver of sales for every company, with a stat hovering anywhere between $42 – $53 for every dollar spent on email marketing, depending on the industry and source (Source: campaignmonitor.com ).
It also happens to be one of the most critical places to reflect the reader’s needs.
The subject line is your first point of contact for the email, so it needs to be compelling.
What better way to speak to someone than to use their words conversationally? Add in an element of curiosity or a promise of more information, and you’re well on your way to a converting email.
But you’re not done with the subject line. The hook – the first line of the email – is what will inspire your reader to keep reading.
This is something many marketers and business owners discount.
If you’re wondering how to craft a compelling hook, here are some helpful and inspiring ideas from Masterclass.
3. Ads
Voice of Customer makes ads relevant, authentic and effective.
Key places to use VoC include the first line of the ad, the body copy, and the description.
As Facebook
Customer research provides invaluable insights into your audience’s needs, preferences, and pain points. Conducting surveys, interviews, and analyzing feedback allows you to gather detailed information about what your customers are looking for. This data enables you to create ads that address specific issues your audience faces, making your messaging more impactful. For instance, if your research reveals that customers are frustrated with slow website load times, your ads can highlight how your product or service improves website performance and speed.
Incorporating the voice of the customer means using the exact words and phrases your customers use when discussing their challenges and solutions. This approach ensures that your ads speak directly to your audience in a language they understand and relate to. If customer feedback often mentions the frustration of “waiting for pages to load,” use this phrase in your ad copy to create a direct connection with your audience’s experience: “Tired of waiting for pages to load? Discover our solution for lightning-fast website performance.”
Ads that reflect genuine customer experiences and testimonials build trust and credibility. Featuring real quotes and stories from satisfied customers provides social proof and reassures potential customers of your product’s value. Including a customer testimonial in your ad, such as “Thanks to [Your Product], our website’s load time improved by 50%! – Jane D.,” can significantly boost trust.
Customer research also helps you identify different audience segments, each with unique needs. Tailor your ad content to address the specific concerns of each segment, ensuring that your messaging is relevant. For a tech-savvy audience, focus on the technical benefits of improved page speed, while for small business owners, emphasize how faster website performance can lead to increased sales.
By integrating customer research and the voice of the customer into your digital ads, you create more targeted, relevant, and effective campaigns. This approach not only enhances ad performance but also fosters a deeper connection with your audience, driving higher engagement and conversion rates.
In Closing: Key Takeaways
Voice of Customer is simply the words and phrases your customer uses to talk about their challenges, desires, feelings, needs, and goals.
Make voice of customer research a part of your daily marketing tasks. You’ll find it everywhere your clients spend time and in all of your communication channels – you just need to train your mind to look for them.
When you have this gold mine of data, use it in your headlines, subject lines, hooks, and to name your offers.
