Posted by: Clayton Makepeace
September 5, 2005

TURBOCHARGE Your Sales Copy

How Business Owners and Marketing Execs
Can Make Good Sales Copy Great …

… And How "B" Copywriters
Can Become "A" Writers
In Four, Easy Lessons

Dear Business Builder,

Just before I turned in for the evening, I got an e-mail from Adam, asking “What can a “B” writer do to become an “A” writer?

Immediately, my brain went into overdrive. I tossed, turned, counted sheep, tried to clear my mind – but the question kept pestering me. Finally, I surrendered, uttered an expletive, climbed out of bed and trudged down to my office.

The answer of course, is obvious: Produce bigger winners, more often.

But how, precisely do you do that?

Specifically, what do “A” writers do those “B” writers don’t?

And if you’re a business owner or marketing exec, how can you know great copy when you see it? How can you get “B” writers to give you “A” copy?

My answer to Adam – and to you: Just make sure each project accomplishes four, crucial things:

Connect with the reader's dominant resident emotion
regarding the subject at hand:

Think about it for a moment, and I’m sure you’ll agree: The vast majority of the money that flows through consumers’ hands each year is spent to meet their emotional needs – NOT merely to satisfy their intellectually justifiable needs for physical survival.

We can physically survive if we have air, water, a few calories of very basic raw food, and just enough shelter to keep us from freezing to death in winter. Air and water can be had for free. The food and shelter sufficient for survival can be had for pennies a day.

Pretty much every other dollar, pound or euro that flows through our hands is spent to address emotional needs in our lives: The craving for comfort and security … personal status and ego gratification … love and sex … recreation and adventure … and much more. The sales of products and services that address these cravings are what really drive our national economies.

So if 99% of our purchase decisions are REALLY made to address an emotional need – and not intellectually justifiable as essential for survival – doesn't it make sense to appeal directly to those emotions when attempting to sell a product?

"B" writers tend to focus on selling benefits and on logical, "reason-why" copy only. By doing so, they're attempting to justify the purchase and price of the product solely by appealing to the intellect. That's like coming to the gunfight but leaving 99% of your bullets in the glove compartment!

Instead of simply reciting benefits and reasons why the prospect should buy, "A" writers recognize, validate and directly address powerful emotions the prospect already has about those benefits (or the lack of them).

This "dominant emotion" approach works especially well in mature or skeptical markets – when the writer recognizes and validates negative feelings the prospect has about a particular type of product – and then demonstrates why this product is different, and therefore better.

The prospect’s dominant emotions should be addressed throughout the copy at every level – from selection of the overriding theme and the crafting of the headline to the selection of sidebar themes, subheads, and every word selection you make.

Don’t Sell; SEDUCE!

Two guys walk into a bar. The first is a bookish, meticulous, accountant type who just read a book on “How to Pick Up Women.” Spying a winsome lass, he approaches her and states his “Unique Selling Proposition: “I’m going to rock your world like nobody else ever has.”

That done, he begins ticking off all the benefits she’ll derive from having sex with him: She will be thrilled and satisfied. He shows her testimonials from 23 other women he’s been intimate with, each one saying that they were satisfied. And he tells the young lady that if she’ll go back to his apartment right away, he’ll do the same for her.

The second guy, spotting another lady, takes a radically different approach. He captures her attention with a friendly, admiring glance. He offers her a drink. He validates her with a compliment. He puts her at ease with an amusing, intriguing or self-effacing remark.

He gets her nodding her head, speaking to her of things she is passionate about and that he suspects she’ll agree with. He asks her to dance. He takes his time – and when the time is right, he drops a flirtatious comment or two.

Finally, he invites her to his apartment to see his art collection – or on some other pretense.

Which of our two heroes do YOU think has the best chance of closing the sale?

If you said, “The guy who had a USP and benefit-oriented sales copy,” you, my friend, have read too many books about copywriting.

Top-notch writers understand that salesmanship is the art of seduction – and that five careful steps must be taken before the affair with the prospect is consummated and marketing bliss is achieved:

1. You must convince your prospects to give you their attention – with a headline that speaks to their prospects’ desires, frustrations or fears.
2. You must convince them to read your message – by offering to bring value to their lives if they’ll just lend you an ear for a few minutes.
3. You must convince them that your product or service will meet their needs and therefore, fulfill their desires or assuage their frustrations or fears.
4. You must convince your prospects that your price is fair (or better yet, a bargain) – by making a comparison that demonstrates the value you’re offering in a compelling way.
5. You must convince your prospects to take action now to purchase the product – by showing them how easy it is to order.

Do these five things consistently – and compellingly – in each sales promotion and your response will soar.

Add Credibility

Today and every day, each prospect you’re writing to will be bombarded with some 650 advertising messages. That’s nearly 240,000 per year, every year of his or her life – and the volume is growing by the day.

Those messages have made your prospect a seasoned consumer who has bought thousands of products and services over a lifetime – many of which lived up to their advertising, and many of which did not.

As a result, your prospect is a skeptic. The quick way to lose him is to promise something you both know you can’t deliver. The slow way to lose him is to fail to document that your product really does deliver.

“B” writers assume that prospects will believe everything they read.

“A” writers infuse their copy with credibility devices like these:

1. The ersatz author’s qualifications as an expert on the subject at hand, including his education, books he’s authored, major media outlets that have featured him, his career experience, etc.
2. Details, facts, figures that prove every point in the copy beyond the shadow of a doubt.
3. Customer testimonials that prove your product has delivered for others.
4. Expert and/or celebrity testimonials that validate you, your product or your process.
5. Mentions in credible media that validate you, your product or your process.
6. A guarantee written in a way that demonstrates your absolute confidence that your product or service will deliver the specific benefits you’ve promised.

Sharpen Your Clarity of Vision

This is a big one for me. Too often, “B” writers fall in love with their subjects. Instead of staying focused – establishing a powerful overriding theme and then bringing each piece of copy back to it – they get sidetracked and wind up going off in all directions at once.

The result is a long-winded jumble of copy that feels diffuse and only confuses the reader.

Last week, a major publisher asked me to critique one of these hodgepodges for him.

My crit:

“The main theme is strong and should resonate well with your prospects. The prose itself is well-written. The writer does an excellent job of demonstrating the benefits the product will bring to the reader’s life. And he connects well with actionable emotions the prospect has about the subject at hand.

“But the writer has fallen in love with his subject – and the sound of his own voice. And so all the good stuff in here is hidden away under reams of extraneous, unnecessary material.

“Instead of bringing all the copy back to his major theme, the writer allowed himself to be drawn off into scores of unrelated things. As a result, you got 28 friggin’ tabloid-sized pages of – what is that – 11 point type?! I started reading this without my spectacles and got a headache for my trouble.

“In a word, this piece is overwritten. This is Michelangelo’s David traveling incognito – disguised as a block of granite. There’s a masterpiece in here somewhere, but it’s buried under tons of rubble.

“I’d cut six to eight pages of extraneous text that fails to connect with the main theme … bump the size of the running text up to 12 or 13 point Times Roman … and bring it in at 20 to 24 pages – MAX.”

Hope this helps. I’ll be writing a LOT on these subjects in coming issues of THE TOTAL PACKAGE – so stay tuned!

Yours for Bigger Winners, More Often,

Clayton Makepeace
Publisher & Editor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

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9 Comments »

1. Comment by Brian Clark — June 18, 2008 @ 10:00 am

   Excellent. The difference between selling and seduction is critical, and your example couldn’t be any clearer. Too many copywriters are proposing marriage before asking for a first date.

2. Comment by Ryan Liao — June 18, 2008 @ 10:35 am

   Oh, you have seduce me

   Man, I think I’m gotta rewrite my whole e-course. Not "sexy" enough.

3. Comment by Mike Hill — June 18, 2008 @ 11:24 am

   Great stuff Clayton…

   Like your critique on this one!

   Mike Hill

4. Comment by mark — June 18, 2008 @ 12:54 pm

   Clayton, your tips on copywriting are amazing! I was referred to you by Frank Kern’s buddy Jason Moffatt. I took down everything I could in your interview with Frank.

   I’m reading your material on copy writing from now on. My free article writing for musicians will continue to give great value, but
   I need to start asking for money–your copywriting education is doing that for me.

   What massive value you give Clayton.

   Thanks,

   Mark

5. Comment by Susan Connors — June 18, 2008 @ 5:15 pm

   First of all –thank you for being so real! Not some fictitious character pretending at success!

   I say that as I get swamped with crappola emails daily making crazy claims this product does this or this will make you thousands in minutes. Not saying money can’t be made on the internet, obviously people can.

   Yesterday, I had to finally reassess a situation on a professional basis. I have two clients ..as people fantastic, as clients turned unreliable.  Sick of wasting hours and getting no response to such a tiny problem.

   Decided enough is enough. I wish them well and am moving on. I mean yes, they are paying clients and so on, the other costs are way too high. Losing my passion for work and doubting myself, hey nothing is worth that!

   Success is everything! A different take to others.  I reckon a person is a success from the day they are born. You successfully grow, are born, go through school, puberty, relationships and so on. Whether you live in a box in a gutter or have a lovely mansion, you are a success as you are surviving! Our world can be a tough one ..success is surviving. Thriving is a huge bonus!

   The customer wants to know "Whats in it for me"?

   As you say Clayton, we need to get inside their head, see how they feel, find their responses ..get to know our audience. See the humaness of the prospect and aim at those qualities ..emotions.

   Somehow I need to reconnect with my audiences and now is a good a day as any to learn.

   "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but times of challenge and controversy" - Martin Luther King

6. Comment by Jerry Rouleau — June 19, 2008 @ 7:06 am

   Wow. Great article. Simple, and to the point. We tend to complicate things way to much. Selling is pretty simple if we focus on the customer.Jerry Rouleau, Producer, http://www.BuilderRadio.com

7. Comment by Malcolm Lambe — June 19, 2008 @ 7:50 am

   Well you haven’t sold me. Your tiresome, dated and sexist spiel bored the crap out of me. In your own words - "The result is a long-winded jumble of copy that feels diffuse and only confuses the reader."

8. Comment by Paul Davis — June 19, 2008 @ 10:30 am

   Clayton,
   I appreciate the five points regarding copywriting.  A book that you might be interested in is Dan Hill’s, Emotionomics .  It is a textbook on the power of emotions in the marketplace.  A very fascinating read and much in tune with what you are writing about.  Perhaps the most difficult part of the writing is to know when enough is enough.  Sometimes the sale can come to pass almost immediately.  One of my most satisfied customers purchased a $200,000 machine from me, sight unseen on the first visit.  In my area of capital investment equipment sales it usually takes 7 sales calls to close the deal.  This client was emotionally prepared to resolve an issue he had, and I was able to appeal to his understanding of simplicity why I had the better answer.  He needed to "feel" comfortable with what he knew was best for him and voila, I was able to satisfy that feeling and a sale was made.
   Keep up the good work.

9. Comment by Shel Horowitz — June 20, 2008 @ 5:51 am

   Clayton, I totally agree. In fact, I wrote a similar article four years ago, "How Marketing is Like Making Love": http://www.frugalmarketing.com/m8-2.shtml

   Shel Horowitz
   "I make the world insist on knowing why *you’re* special"
   Award-winning author of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and six other books