9 Common Wellness Copywriting Mistakes and How to Fix them in a Flash

The health and wellness industry has grown by leaps and bounds in the past few years. People are becoming more proactive about their health so it’s no surprise how many new businesses are cropping up constantly. It seems like every day there’s a new healthy snack or product I absolutely must try (and sadly for my bank account, I usually do)! 

While it’s certainly an exciting time to be a healthy brand on the rise, you may also be wondering how you can stand-out in a crowded market with an increasing amount of noise along with a decreasing attention span? 

I won’t (coconut) sugar coat it, It’s not easy. I often see young brands spend a fortune on snazzy site and logo design but then launch their business only to hear the sound of crickets aka, the one thing I won’t eat.

The thing is, design is great, and a critical part of your brand, but it doesn’t tell your story. What does? Great copywriting.

The words on your site are critical because you have less than ten seconds to tell visitors exactly who you are and what you do or sell when they hit the page, and if it doesn’t resonate with them, or they don’t get it, guess what? They’ll be moving on to the next essential oil, protein powder, clean beauty line, reiki healer, coach, etc, etc that lands on their screen. 

These days, smart entrepreneurs know that investment in copywriting pays off and should be a key part of your marketing strategy, and it doesn’t have to feel icky or salesy!

Here are the top mistakes I see in health and wellness website copy and my tips to fix them:

1. Not clearly defining your Unique Value Proposition (UVP)-

This could be an entire blog post in itself (coming soon) but knowing what makes you and your product/ service unique, along with what you can offer that no one else does is very important.

Copy that clearly defines your UVP immediately tells the reader what you can do for them, why it’s unique, and why they need it right NOW!

For example, let’s look at my UVP for my wellness copywriting business… I speak the language of health and wellness fluently. I’ve drunk the matcha as they say (or should be saying). I’m unique to my niche because I’ve been working in the health and wellness industry for close to a decade in a variety of marketing and sales roles, and I know how to sell products and services in an authentic way to this particular audience.

Finally, my audience needs my copywriting services right now because without them you won’t be able to compete within a crowded marketplace.

Copy Fix:

Be sure that you spend time uncovering what makes you, your brand and offering unique and what you can do better than anyone else, that way you’ll be able to clearly put it into words that reach the right ears.

2. Being too feature focused

We all know that the products and services we sell can change lives, but for the most part, they are wants vs. needs. For example, we don’t actually need a jade roller to survive—debatable, I know.  

Therefore, getting customers motivated emotionally is the number one goal. Once you’ve tapped into customers emotions you can then call out the features and more importantly, benefits of your product or service. 

Features: Think of your own face. Your eyes, nose, mouth, etc. These are your features. 

Benefits: Answer the question that all customers have: “What’s in it for me?” Going back to the features above the benefit of having a mouth is the ability to taste amazing foods and the benefit of eyes is that you can see the world around you. 

Copy Fix:

• Start by writing out a list of features for your product or service.

• Next, put yourself in the mind of your customer and ask ‘what does X feature do for me’? The answer to that will become your benefit list. This means that your bullet lists may be longer than feature list, but that’s ok, because you’re providing much more clarity for your reader.

• Finally, take it one step further and try to really get to the emotional root of the benefit. What keeps your customer up at night. Is the mouth really beneficial just to taste amazing food, or is it more about living a full life and taking chances by trying new things? Ask yourself, what do my prospects wake up at night excited about or dreading? Those are the emotional triggers that help you create action.

3. Selling medicine instead of candy

For most of us in the health and wellness industry, our main goal is to create positive change, to make people’s lives better, healthier, more vibrant. The problem is that this can often lead to making assumptions about what our ideal customers need instead of addressing what they want.

Copy Fix:

One example I often see is my clients copy is the promotion of a specific diet or lifestyle because the client knows it will make a huge difference. Perhaps it will, but that won’t resonate if what your customer really wants is to lose weight to feel more confident.

Start by addressing your audiences #1 pain point (losing weight), this is the candy, and then once they’ve enrolled in your course, or bought your product you can help educate them on how x diet or lifestyle change or product will do wonders for their health overall. That, my friends, is the medicine! 

4. Not Knowing Your Audience/Talking to Everyone

Not understanding your audience, or even worse, making assumptions about who they are and what they want is a recipe for zero sales. 

Further, you can’t market to everyone! Or as Meredith Hill says, “ You market to everyone, you market to no one.” 

Great copywriters know the importance of research. It is 100% necessary to dig into your business and your customer to help inform the copy on the page. That way you’ll be able to address the most important thing, what your customer wants, vs. what you believe they need. 

Copy Fix

Talk to your customers in person or by phone if possible, survey them, get to know them deeply so that you can write to them in a way that makes them say, ‘wow, she really gets me! I have to have this (insert course, product, program)!” Having this data will help you write copy that hits all of your customer's pain points very clearly. 

One great trick is to use the actual words of your customers in your copy, this is called voice of customer. If you read a review or testimonial or survey answer and the same themes keep coming up over and over, use those words in your copy! Maybe not word- for-word, but chances are you’ll hit a nerve with new customers by calling out the pain points and solutions that current customers are already giving you props for. 

5. Having a Design First, Copy Someday Mindset

We’ve all been conditioned to spend the time and money creating a beautiful website and then add some words wherever they’ll fit and then BOOM watch the sales roll in. 

I work with a lot of emerging brands and solopreneurs that take the design first, copy second approach to their websites, and it’s very clear when the words on the page are an afterthought-- they’re disjointed and don’t take the customer on a journey or tell a compelling story. They’re boring and often full of clichés.

Copy Fix:

If at all possible, get your copywriter and designer communicating early on in the design process. If the designer knows what the words are that are going on the page they can create a design that works in tandem. If you’re writing the copy yourself (go you!), then submit your copy in a clean and clear doc to your designer before they begin the site design so that you can talk through how you envision the words working on the page.  

6. Making Your About Page All About You

This one may have you scratching your head, but hear me out. If you’re a small brand or one wo(man) show, you want to tell people who you are and why they should hire or buy from you. However, all of your copy should ultimately be about one person; your ideal customer. 

Copy Fix:

Go back to #3 + #4 and use the research and information that you gather to weave customer pain points into your story, tell them about the journey you’ve been on to overcome the challenge that they are facing. By doing so, you’ll prove that you overcame the obstacle that they face (builds trust and expertise) and are a great resource to help them do so as well. Check out Marie Forleo’s website for a stellar example of a customer-centric about page! 

7. Unclear Call To Action

Writer Beware: If you give people too many options they may not do anything. 

Your CTA is like a construction manual to visitors on your site. A CTA is “designed to provoke an immediate response, usually using an imperative verb such as "call now", "find out more," etc (1). I see many health + wellness websites and think, “buttons and promos and products, oh my! 

Copy Fix:

Think about your number one goal on each page of your site and use those goals to point readers in the right direction. For instance, on your home page do you want them to sign up for your newsletter? If so, make sure that opt-in box and messaging are front and center. Do you want them to check out your services page next? Great, add a big old button with clear copy like “View My Services.” Here are some great call-to-action examples from big name brands. 

8. Clever, Vague or Jargon-Heavy Copy

This one happens a lot in health and wellness copy! We want so badly to delight our audience that we end up making them completely perplexed. Or, we have all of this in-depth training that we want to show off but it sounds like a foreign language to our ideal customers.  

Clever can work in certain contexts, but the best bet on your homepage is clarity. Vague and jargon-heavy rarely works, so keep it plain and simple, save the industry lexicon for your next work conference. This is your storefront, if people are chuckling when they land there, but don’t know what’s inside they won’t come in, and even worse, they will go somewhere else where they can figure it out quickly.

Copy Fix:

Ask several people you don’t know well to read over your website copy and ask them specific questions about what you do based on the copy they read. If they can’t answer the questions quickly or hesitate to clearly define what you’re offering, it’s back to the drawing board. 

Don’t get overwhelmed with all of these changes at once. Take it step-by-step and spend time creating irresistible copy and you’ll make it impossible for your customers not to buy from you!

9. Too much copy! 

You’ve got a lot to say and you want to prove your expertise, but what often happens is you lose your audience. The average time users spend on a page is 15 seconds, that means you need to convey a lot in a short amount of time.

Copy Fix

Keep it brief and concise. Think about what customers really need to know on each page and what the goal in order to give you guardrails around what you need to say.

Start by writing strong headlines that draw your customers in. Then, speak to your customer, and their unique problems in a conversational way, in language they would use. Creating that bond with your customer will build their trust in you and make them want to buy. Break up longer paragraphs to make the page scannable.

Finally, ensure that your copy is readable, keep your font size large enough to read but small enough to avoid un-necessary scrolling.

Have questions, or want to talk about taking your copy to the next level of grass-fed goodness? Reach out here!