 My name is Laura Preil and I studied at the University of Newcastle between 2004 to 2007 in a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English. Since graduating, harnessing that education and the power of writing has taken me all over the world. I've held senior content and communication positions at some of Australia's top global companies and I've also been able to fly around the world to produce content in cities like LA and London. But my biggest achievement has been to start my own business, LEP Digital, right here on the Central Coast. Our business unsurprisingly specializes in copywriting and content production. So today I thought I'd share with you my top four copywriting tips to use in the online environment. So no matter where you work, what industry it's in, having these tips in mind and becoming a better writer is paramount to success. So as part of these four tips, I'm also going to tell you what not to do in copywriting. So the first one is lackluster headlines. So how do you write copy that converts? You need to answer people's objections. And headline is everything. It needs to address the specific buyer problem. It needs to be clear, concise, it needs to speak with a natural voice and it needs to avoid any sort of technical jargon or complicated language. David Ogilvy, famous admin, said that five times as many people read the headline than the body copy. So if your headline or your email subject is dull, the audience won't read on. So the trick is to spark curiosity without giving away the whole story. Make it emotive, make it relevant, timely and punchy. Humour never goes astray. Use play on words. Unexpected one-liners are always good ways to grab attention. Crime number two, self-centred copy. This is by far the biggest thing we see in our business in writing and no doubt you've done it before, purely accidentally of course. There's a really good quote that I like to reference which is, content marketing is really like a first date. If all you do is talk about yourself, there won't be a second date and I think all of us can remember a time where we had that experience where the person just banged on about themselves and didn't ask us a single question. So the biggest issue I see in web content is that it's all about me. It's company centric, it's weed driven and it's copywriting that turns the business owner on but turns potential clients off. Business owners think that marketing and sales copy should be all about their business but it's not. When a visitor gets to a website, they don't care about the company. They only want to know what the company can do for them. So it really needs to be clear and customer focus both in the copy and the menu items. There is a great female writer and entrepreneur in the US called Marie Folio, whom I look up to and she's a copywriter as well and she talks about it brilliantly in that it's called to her the spotlight theory meaning that in content either the spotlight is on the business owners or it's on the customers. So if the spotlight's on you, the focus of your words is likely on your passion, your cleverness, your goals. However, when you shift the spotlight over to your customer, the focus of your words is on the people that you serve or the people that you're communicating with, their problems, their aspirations, their goals. So I'm going to share a quick example here. So this is a real website and by Dr. Cheryl who's a relationship advisor and it says Dr. Cheryl is the go-to modern-day guru of mind for loving which probably doesn't mean a lot to us. We're probably thinking what is this? What is this website? It's all about the business owner and it doesn't contain a benefit or hook for the customer who's likely on the site because they need some serious relationship help. But the point is that if they're coming to this website because they're in trouble, they're saying I need help with my relationship. They're probably not saying I need a mindful loving guru. So you might be asking what's the fix? Well, using this spotlight method coined by Marie, we can write some new headlines that are more customer-focused. It could be as simple as need relationship help. Let me get your love back on track. It could be get the passionate, playful relationship that you want. I'll show you how. Or relationship in trouble. Let's get your love life back on track. So instantly we see how these headlines are more customer-focused than Dr. Cheryl focused and therefore become better at doing their job. So feature-driven web content has its place in a lot of the sales copy that we read today. So we see it a lot in electronics or software or in the final stages of when you're trying to buy something and you're trying to weigh up what certain features are in some products than others. But the issue with feature-driven copy is that it doesn't generally connect with people on an emotional level. People make decisions emotionally and only then do they rationalise them logically. So if your communication, web content, social media content, letter, whatever it is is filled with uninspiring lists of facts and figures, it won't result well. You probably won't have many people buying your product or taking action as a result. So a much better way to look at it is to be benefit-driven. So find out what the benefits of the product or service are for your intended audience and tell them. So for example, does your product or service make their lives easier? Does it make them healthier? Does it make them wealthier, sexier? And if so, how? Turn those features into benefits wherever possible. Really good writers find a way to empathise with their readers to build trust and rapport. And this involves looking a lot more deeply into the problem that your product or service solves and showing empathy. So the last crime to keep on top of is vague copywriting. So what do I mean by vague copywriting? Well, I'm going to show you an example here. It's pretty hard to tell when you look through here. A lot of this is very generic. Nothing really pinpoints what they do. So what this is, is a business that hasn't clearly defined. It's what we call in advertising a unique selling proposition. So what are you actually selling and why is it unique? Why should I care about it? Why should I read about this? And this sort of writing is done by people who may be uninformed or simply lazy. They just don't have the skills to communicate more clearly. It's often fluffy. They don't differentiate from one company to the next. It's often so indistinguishable. It can really be applied to any competitor with few or no changes. So you can simply lift this copywriting off this website and put it on another website and it'll work just fine because it doesn't say that much. So a good way to combat this, if you do come across it, might be at the company that you work at, is to explore and research how your company differs. So how you offer something that's unique from the competitors. For instance, if your company is small, maybe they're really quick to deliver. Maybe they care more. Maybe they provide unmatched personalised service. Whereas if a company is large, maybe the benefits of that is that they offer all services under one roof. Maybe they have a national support network, vast resources, personalised care providers. So what the point of all of this is, is that if you're not making an effort to tell people why you're the best choice, you'll really be deemed as a commodity, which results in low conversions and it attracts really cheap and non-loyal customers to your site. So you could also apply this if you're looking for a job as well. If you're too vague about what you do and you're too similar to what everyone else is saying, you may not get the job that you really want. So really this can be applied as I said to any riding exercise. So those are my top four tips. I hope that you found them valuable. Big thank you to the University of Newcastle alumni team for giving me this opportunity to talk with you today.