Copy is print salesmanship, but does it have to be a greasy used car salesman? The answer is no!” Follow these 5 tips and watch your prospects’ confidence level rise.
1. Make it believable. Face it: we are smarter today than we were several decades ago. In fact, we are fed up. We have seen it all. I bought the miracle pills (and felt stupid for believing the charlatans). We all know that it is impossible to lose 25 pounds overnight. So why even go there? Once you lose credibility, you also lose your potential customer’s attention. Respect your prospect honestly, and you’ll have a much better chance of doing business together. (Psst. A great way to build trust is to reveal a flaw in your product. We all know nothing is perfect, so show us where it’s not and we’ll believe you.)
two. Easy with adjectives. Great copy is “full of verbs”, not full of adjectives In fact, advertising great Leo Burnet (of Green Giant advertising fame, among others) wanted to find out why 62 of his ads failed. So he had his staff separate the parts of speech. Here’s what he found: Of the 12,758 words in the 62 failed ads, 24.1% were verbs. His conclusion: If the failed ads had more verbs, they probably would have done better. Take my advice. If you haven’t already, go to Amazon and buy Richard Bayan’s Writing Thesaurus, words that sell. And keep it by your desk when you write.
3. Write in your prospect’s language. Make sure you understand their particular jargon. For example, in general, chiropractors have a certain rivalry with doctors. But chiropractors are “real” doctors. If you slip up and say otherwise, you have alienated them. But you would only know by deeply studying your target market. An excellent resource for learning more about various internal languages is at http://www.thewordsthatsell.com. They have special reports on markets from realtors to radiologists to lawyers.
Four. Write to a person with the technique of “marketing”. To sound really sincere and empathic, do what I call “marketing”. That’s narrowing down the demographics of your target market so much that you’re actually referring to just one person. (See, a target market is a mob or plural, while a “target” is ONE PERSON or singular.) Corporations take this approach all the time. For example, Volvo’s target is a 35-year-old mother of two. (Does that mean men don’t buy Volvos? Of course not!) When you use the marketing technique, not only is your writing more concise, but your reader connects with you on a very deep level. After all, you are talking directly to him or her. (The most comprehensive guide to pre-writing research I’ve seen is my workbook, “Red hot copy to attract your target market”. www.red-hot-copy.com/copy3.html)
5. Think from the prospect’s point of view. You have to do your due diligence if you want to avoid hype. This is where mustering a little creativity goes a long way. Once you have your marketing technique in place, dig deep. Dig deep into your prospect’s head and ask yourself some of these questions:
· What magazines do you read?
· What restaurants does he or she go to?
· Does your prospect take vacations?
Who did your prospect vote for president?
How would your prospect describe their life if they ran into a childhood friend they haven’t seen in 10 years?
Are you starting to see how deep you can start to go? These questions are a notch on the surface. I continue for pages in my workbook, but you get the idea.
The best way to avoid hype is to genuinely connect with your prospect through pre-writing research AND respect. You will be rewarded with customer loyalty and many more sales.
