Specificity
What Makes Readers Believe You
VijayWrites #396
Welcome to VijayWrites, where you’ll find inspiration, tips, and ideas to help you write better, master the art of copywriting, and make a career out of your words.
“High-quality results” convince no one.
“37% lower churn in 90 days” convinces everyone.
Most copy defaults to broad, positive language.
Powerful. Proven. Transformative.
Writers reach for these words because they feel strong. And they are, right up until the reader has seen them a hundred times on a hundred other pages. At that point, they don’t register as claims. They register as noise.
The reader’s brain has a simple filter:
Vague = anyone could say this = probably not true.
Specific = someone had to know this = probably real.
Specificity works because it signals that someone actually lived the result.
A number has a story behind it. A named detail implies a real situation. Precision is credible in a way that superlatives never can be, because superlatives are free, and specificity costs something. You have to have done the work to report it accurately.
This isn’t about cramming in data points. It’s about replacing every claim that could have been written by anyone with one that could only have been written by you, because it comes from something real.
One specific customer result outweighs three paragraphs of polished positioning.
One concrete mechanism beats five adjectives describing how good the outcome feels.
Vague copy asks the reader to trust you. Specific copy gives them a reason to.