What do Tim Ferris, Hugh Heffner, Jay Ogilvy and Russell Brunson all have in common? They are all brilliant copywriters.
Copy writing teaches you how to think about marketing, sales and human psychology. Copy writing is a high income skill that can be leveraged for your own business or other people’s.
So what is copy writing? Copy writing is not about writing. Copy writing is closing in print. Copy writing is closing for introverts too :).
Many people think that they can write copy but they can’t. Copy writing is not about funny, fluffy, flowery or cool words. Copy writing is an art and it has tested and proven techniques that work over and over again.
Here are 13 copy writing secrets which if implemented effectively, will supercharge your ability to generate customers on every medium that contains words.
1) Call out your audience
If you were calling out a friend you saw in the street. You wouldn’t just say ‘man!’ or ‘hey!’. You would call out their name wouldn’t you? In copy writing, emulating is very powerful.
The most obvious way to do this is through the personalised email or personalised direct mail. However what about when you are speaking to a group of people? Would you say ‘ladies and gentlemen’? Not if you wan’t them to listen. If you are selling to everybody, you are selling to nobody.
So how do you call out your audience effectively? Know who they are first. Know your ideal client. This requires A LOT OF research and thinking time. You can’t call out your ideal client if you don’t know who they are. Be effective. More importantly, be as specific as possible.
One of Apple’s most successful adverts calls out their ideal audience.
Check it out below:
https://youtu.be/cFEarBzelBs
Remember. People buy, not because you sell. They buy because they feel understood! Because they feel like you know them.
2) Grab the attention with your headline
What are you trying to achieve with a headline? To grab attention? Yes. But more importantly the purpose of a headline is to get the client to read the first paragraph.
Clients read because of the what we call the WIIFM rule – What’s in it for me?
Ever seen those headlines that say ‘We have been in business since blah, blah, blah’ – who cares.
Get out of your ego and into your prospects ego. Talk about the consumer. Enter the conversation that is going on in their head. Enter their world. What is your target audience going through? Can you describe the targets problems better than they can?
Let’s say that just out of the blue one day, you started to have elbow pain. Everything was fine and then it just came on and was constantly nagging you.
Now let’s say you were talking about that to your friend and describing the problem. They could give you myriad answers but let’s look at these two:
‘I think you should go to a physiotherapist.’
‘You know what? That exact same thing happened to me a year ago. It just came out of the blue. I wasn’t doing anything overtly physical. I didn’t injure or hit my elbow. Man, it just started hurting out of the blue. I ended up going to see this physiotherapist and after 3 visits the pain was gone.’
Which answer do you think is more compelling? I offer it would be the second one. Your friend is understanding what you are going through, has experienced what you are experiencing exactly and found a solution. Pay attention to the fact that they didn’t say anything about the technical (boring) skills and services of the physiotherapist.
What is the big promise that you can use in the big headline?
Let’s take a look at some effective examples:
So how many headlines would you write before you make a decision? Dozens and dozens. You don’t write one and go – ‘this is the one.’
By the time you write 30 or so headlines, you’ll always find one that is much better and it makes you better at writing them.
3) Call out your enemies (subtly)
Calling out your enemies is saying who you are not. It’s not putting their name on your advert and bagging them out.
Let’s look at the Dollar Shave Club
Do you need in a shaver a back scratcher, fancy and expensive blade, ridiculous shave tech, a ten different blade option? Maybe – but not the Dollar Shave Club ideal client.
The Dollar Shave Club are creating a contrast so that they can compare themselves in comparison to over expensive shaving products that don’t make a whole hell of a lot of difference.
How about AVIS? These guys are great at this technique. Check out this advert that explains calling out your enemies perfectly.
Explain to the market place what you are against. What is it customers don’t like about your industry? What are they against? What are they sick of? What don’t they want to tolerate? Be clever in communicating that with your headline.
4) Stories move the world
Stories sell like crazy. Does anyone know the brand the brand La Mer?
La Mer is a super high end facial blend moisturising cream.
They sell through a story. The story is about the Dr Huber who severely burned his face in a lab accident. After trying myriad options through products and medical science, he decided to find a cure himself.
If you think about it. Some of the most top grossing movies are about stories.
What do you get from the Rocky Movie besides some strong emotion? That’s pretty much it. But the story of how Sly Stallone got rejected by copious producers before producing the first Rocky himself is what people are really connected to.
What story can you tell to sell your product?
Here are some different approaches:
The back story
How did you get started? If you show people where you came from, what you have been through, you get connection, understanding and respect. If you only show people where you are, you get jealousy, judgement, disbelief.
Client Story
What other people say about you is infinitely better than what people can say about yourself.
People see the results and they say – I want that too!
So how many of these do you need? As many as possible!
Comparing people in stories
Who’s seen the self managed super adverts. Two exact same guys, same background, same school, same demographic, same neighbourhood, same job, yet one is more successful – Because the fund they used made all the difference.
When we hear stories – we want to put ourselves in it. Two people. The same. One made this decision. One didn’t. The one who did won!
Remember. We buy because of emotion and we justify with logic.
Stay tuned for the next post this week sharing 4 more secrets!