There’s an important step to creating high conversion copy that many marketers miss. When this step is skipped, it doesn’t seem to matter how nicely written the sales copy or how many visitors to the site, the copy will under perform.

The first step in creating sales copy that hits the mark takes place before tapping the first key on your keyboard.

To create effective copy, it’s important to understand your market’s demographics – from values and interests to buying behavior.

Many small businesses and solo Internet marketers overlook this important step, as often do inexperienced copywriters.

If you hire a copywriter, expect to answer questions about your market (usually in the form of a questionnaire) or to pay the copywriter to research it.

A good starting point is to consider what things motivate most of your prospects? This could be recognition from others, money, security, time freedom, children, fun, health issues, etc. Also consider values (family, career, social responsibility, etc.) and interests (travel, entertainment, spiritual pursuits, etc.).

It’s also good to know how your prospects like to shop online. Do they prefer making fast decisions, reading as much as possible about a product or service, feeling a social connection with the business owner? Is a “special offer” or proven quality a deal closer with your market?

If your target market is made up mostly of a specific age group, check on trends for that group. Sales copy is targeted very differently to Generation Xers than to Baby Boomers.

As you may be gathering, the reason so many small business marketers skip the market research is it can take a lot of time.

Look at it this way – just as you wouldn’t expect to snag a bunch of great job interviews from sending the exact same cover letter and resume to potential employers, you can’t expect to pull great conversion rates with generic sales copy. (A good conversion rate is whatever you want it to be; on the average websites convert a 1 to 3 percent, but you can always increase that).

If you’ve done some market research, then you’ve no doubt run across reports that sell for hundreds, often thousands, of dollars. Here are a few ways to gather this information on a small budget:

- Read about trends on industry sites. For example, if you have a travel niche, you’ll find data on the tourism authority sites, such as tourist spending habits, age groups, if they are interested in luxury or eco travel, etc.

- Create a survey and offer a reward for completing it (such as a coupon for a discount on a product, good  for 30 days, or valuable eBook). Send the survey link to your email list and make the page readily available to website traffic. Make the survey quick and easy to complete by using formats such as statements followed by “Agree, Sometimes Agree, Disagree, Sometimes Disagree.”

- Look at magazines that serve your niche. Pay attention to the ads. They usually will be targeted well to the readership. Better yet, many magazines make data about their readership available for potential advertisers on their sites or via mail upon request. So if the magazine serves your niche, you can learn a lot about your market this way.

Perhaps you have a cross section of demographics in your market. Unlike large companies, we can’t always find the time or money to create a separate campaign for each demographic. So if this is the case, consider sales copy that primarily targets the largest segment of your market while including elements that will appeal to smaller segments without sending them running back to search. You can’t please everyone, but your goal is to please as many as possible.

Whether you are writing your own copy or outsourcing, be sure you follow the first command of sales copywriting: Know Thy Market!

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