If you're in the IT business, that's an important question.

Most marketers are keen to profile their prospects. For some products and services, these may be 'people with a large lawn', 'married couples over retirement age' or 'students living away from home'.

What about your targets? Perhaps 'businesses running Microsoft Exchange', 'people running an e-commerce Web site that require more advanced visitor analysis' or 'telcos offering an increasing diversity of services'. In each case, you almost certainly have more than one type of person to talk to within your target groups - the techies and the business people. Those who bite first, and those who control the budget!

*Be careful to say the right things to the right people*

Whoever you're talking to, they need to be excited by your copy - as someone in the advertising business once said, said 'no-one was ever bored into buying anything'. And different people are respond to different things. Broadly, you should talk technology and technology benefits to technical people, and business benefits to the budget holders.

*Look at it this way*

You need to really put yourself in their shoes and understand what matters to them. As a contact of mine would say - where's the pain? What are the pressures on the enterprise, department or even the marketplace as a whole?

Can you present a persuasive Return On Investment? Can you show how your product or service removes the pain?

It's all about identifying with your audience.

About David Rosam - http://ITcopy.com

Kidnapped some time in the 80s by a Paris-based advertising agency, David Rosam cut his teeth on writing for IBM's EMEA division. Since then, David has written copy for small and medium enterprises through to global brands such as Microsoft, Oracle and Hewlett Packard.

His direct mail experience rolled itself on to the Web a decade ago, and now he writes online copy, Search Engine Optimized copy, direct mail, brochures and newsletters as well as consulting to a number of individuals and companies.