Why copywriting is important for SaaS & startups

Roughly 20 years ago I joined a computer club at a leisure centre…

Reading that back, it’s a weird sentence isn’t it? On reflection, it was quite a weird situation. Once a week, on a Tuesday, I would travel by bus to a nearby village to attend a club which consisted of a bunch of strangers using computers in the same room.

We weren’t doing the same thing on the computers, and we didn’t really interact with each other about computers. It was just a place to go to use a computer, and other people also happened to be there.

Actually, thinking about it, I had access to computers at school, and we had a PC at home too, so all I was doing was wasting bus fare once a week.

Anyway, my point was that while I was at the computer club, I was running through the book ‘The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Creating an HTML Web Page Paperback’. It taught me how to create a HTML page that had text, links, images and most importantly, animated gifs.

It took absolute ages to create anything that looked even half-decent. And by half-decent, I mean absolutely terrible, but good enough for a 13-year-old me to feel like he’d done alright.

Things have changed

Two decades later, and it’s much easier to create a website that looks great. Services like Wordpress, Squarespace, Wix, etc make building websites more accessible than it’s ever been.

There are also services like Carrd which are more limited in functionality, but for less than $20 a year you can get an SEO-friendly landing page up and running in a matter of minutes.

Absolutely anyone can create professional-quality sites.

What you say matters

Because of this, the text on your website is more important than ever. If every website looks professional, you need to find other ways to stand out to potential customers.

The way to do this is with the content on your site:

• Landing pages
• Sales pages
• Explainer videos
• Blog posts
• Email newsletters
• Ebooks

This list could have kept going, but I think I made my point. By having professional and engaging content, you are able to stand out in the crowd. You’re able to tell your visitors that you mean business, that you’re better than the other guys.

The competition is fierce for SaaS and B2B companies

Everything I’ve said so far absolutely applies to every company. But for SaaS and B2B companies, this applies ten-fold. The industry is growing every single day, and it’s so easy to get lost in the mix.

You have hundreds of companies all trying to sell their solution to businesses, and those hundreds probably share 90% of the functionality with each other. Even if you’ve come up with something new and original, someone else will have nicked it and implemented it by the time you get to tell anyone.

It’s easy to list your features, but it takes a skilled copywriter to get in the minds of the customers and highlight the benefits, and pull out the emotion in the website visitors to make them want to use your software.

The way to win is to create a connection

A copywriter will use these emotions and benefits and using the mediums mentioned earlier (and more), they can build a connection with your customers. A slogan on the landing page to draw them in, an explainer video to demonstrate the problem you’re solving, sections highlighting the benefits to the customers etc.

These connections are the difference between someone creating an account, or going somewhere else.

They’re the difference between a growing list of customers, and another software company full of potential falling to the wayside.