From the desk of Razvan Rogoz,
The biggest danger with most copywriters is not their lack of skill. It is their lack of common sense. I have worked with copywriters who are technically savvy, who know 49 ways to write a bullet and who can tell you 15 formulas for writing headlines and yet, don’t understand basic facts about human nature.
Usually these people are very heavy on intellect (book smarts) but very light on life experience. They are the nerds of yesterday transformed into the professionals of today. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a geek too. The problem is that while you can be a great geek and succeed in engineering or IT or any other field (Elon Musk can be considered a geek after all), geeks don’t really succeed in sales.
Some of the best copywriters in the world are a bit strange. They play in a rock band or ride their motorcycles in the weekend or travel around the world. I’m not saying that they’re doing this to write better copy but rather, they’re the kind of people who like to experience life and because of this, they write better copy.
After all, let’s say that you’re selling a dating product. Who is more likely to understand the marketplace – the person who is still a virgin and never dated or the person who was once a virgin but now dated 30 – 40 girls? Or let’s say that you’re writing a promo in the fitness niche. Who will write with more passion and energy, the person who hits the gym four times a week or the 150 kilogram person that haven’t exercised since 2008?
When I was doing copy coaching, the most common critique I would provide is “this doesn’t make any sense”. I would rarely talk about the way the copy is expressed but rather the simple fact that humans don’t work that way. You can not write to how you wish humankind to be or how it would make sense for it to be. You can write based on how people are and this is where most copywriters stumble. They act like they’ve never met a human being before and they don’t know all the idiosyncrasies of human nature.
Look …
Your prospect hates you. Until you showed up, he could simply justify his lack of action with “there’s nothing I can do”. Now you came with a product that can solve his problem and he must do something. He must either accept that he doesn’t want to fix the problem or buy your product. There is tension.
Then you must realize that your prospect doesn’t care about you. He’s going to leave as soon as you can’t keep his attention anymore. It is like bribing children. If you take the candy or the money away, then you’ll lose their interest very fast. When you are writing a sales letter, you are practically looking to continuously bribe him in order to stay on the page. You do this through a good story, through interesting benefits, by talking about his problems and about himself.
Too many people act like the reader wants to be there and that they deserve the respect of being read. No. Your reader doesn’t owe you anything. You haven’t paid him in order to read your copy. He doesn’t care about how handsome and rich you are. He cares about how handsome you can help him become and how rich your strategies are going to make him.
I know that I sound like a broken record, but if you understand this one thing and you actually do it in all your business communications, you’ll make sales. Your about page, your sales page, your contact page, even your subscription confirmation page should be the answer to the question “what’s in it for me”, and the better your answer is, the easier a time you’ll have to persuade.
Last night, I saw a very interesting movie. It is called “Rebel in the rye” and it is about Salinger, the author of “Catcher in the rye”. At some point in the movie they were talking about the voice and the story. The idea was that good writers use the voice in order to support the story while bad writers make their voice the story. This is because they are driven not by the desire to evoke emotions in the reader but by the desire to feel special, they are ego based.
So it is with copywriting and most of human interactions. We operate a lot from the ego where we are thinking that the world owes us something, be it respect or love or even money. The problem is that every person on this planet does the same thing and everyone wants something but nobody wants to offer it. In a world driven by the ego, the person that is not dominated by it is king. In a marketplace where everyone is saying “I’m the best and you should buy my product because of the effort I’ve put in”, the person saying “you should buy it because it solves this problem that you’re having” is king.
It’s basic but it’s also one of the hardest abilities in the world to fully develop.
Are you interested in discovering how I can help your business or how we can apply these concepts to your own venture? Then let’s have a talk. For a limited time, I’m giving away complementary 30 minute calls. In these sessions, we’ll discuss ways in which we can maximize your customer value, boost your conversion, achieve more sales and increase any other relevant metrics in your business.
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Best regards,
Razvan Rogoz
The Business & Self-Improvement Copywriter