Category: Market Psychology

Howdy,

Imagine that you’re buying a weight loss product. Which one of these two benefits make more sense to you?

“You’ll receive a holistic solution that will balance your body so your body will automatically burn more calories”.

OR …

“I’m going to teach you a five minute technique that allows you lose weight even when you sleep, by burning calories 24 hours a day, seven days a week”.

The first example is what most copywriters would use. It sounds fancy, it makes the product owner say “yes, yes, that’s true, I like how this makes my product appear” and … it is completely useless.

It is an internal concept that makes no sense or has little relevance to the end customer. This is because when an overweight mom with two kids who is afraid of losing her husband because she’s not attracted to her anymore … but he’s attracted to his sexy assistant … wants to lose weight, she doesn’t care about that.

That’s what you care about. That’s what makes you special.

She just wants to take a pill and lose weight fast. She wants a practical solution, an approach that she can use to obtain the outcome she truly desires in the fastest, easiest and most convenient manner.

When I used to do copywriting coaching, my number one frustration was “sell what the customer wants, not what you want”. This was especially true when the copywriter was also the product creator. Since that person invested tens of hours into making the product happen, he wanted it to be sophisticated and to look high value.

The disconnect though is that you’re not buying the product. The client is. So when you frame a feature or a benefit or an offer or anything, you do it in terms of her self-interest. It doesn’t matter how sophisticated it is, it matters only if it clearly communicates that this product will help her lose weight fast, easy and cheap.

I sometimes do copywriting hot seats with clients and acquaintances. I ask something like …

“What does your product do?”

He answers …

“It is a complete solution that allows the customer to build a marketing machine which will generate leads at a low cost from PPC”.

I ask again …

“So what does it do practically?”

He answers …

“It employs the best practices of PPC to optimize Facebook ad costs …” … and so on.

It takes several minutes to actually get to the core benefit, which in the above case is “it cuts your PPC costs in half”.

There’s a short story to illustrate this point.

Once upon a time, a hot shot salesman rang a door. A small, elderly lady answered. He made his pitch and she invited him in.

He talked at length about the heater he was selling. He presented a huge list of features, explained the technology behind it, he quantified the savings that the elderly lady would receive and even explained the years of research that went into it.

After he finished his pitch, both sat silent for a while. The elderly lady finally opened her mouth and said …

“But will it keep an old women like me warm during the winter?”

So it is with any other type of product. Sell what the prospect wants, not what you want. Good copy rarely has to do with how much copy you write or how many persuasive tools you employ. Instead, it comes to congruency, to how close it actually speaks to the true desires of the prospect.

People take actions for their reasons, not ours. No matter if it is a sale or a date or a wedding proposal or a fight in a bar, the reason to take A vs. B is something that appeals deeply to them. People fall in love with us when we love them for what they wish to be loved, not what we find valuable. People are persuaded when we talk to their self-interest, not ours.

It seems as such a basic lesson but I assure you that most marketers don’t get it. I’ve seen freelance copywriters who charge $1000 – $2000 per copy who still don’t get this basic thing.

Then there’s another point … rationality or better said, the complete lack of it.

I admit it. My mind appears rational and very logical but it is a storm of emotions. There are fears, there are desires, there is lust and indifference, there is hate, there is passion, there are prejudices that I’d not admit to myself in 1000 years and I will certainly not admit them to you. So is the mind of your prospect. The true reasons why he does something have nothing to do with what he tells you. After all, how often are we really honest with our motivations?

We aren’t, there’s too much of a social stigma and negative feedback attached to it. We say what others expect us to say, what is neutral or rewarded. But deep down inside, we’re not that moral or fair or pure. Housewives want to cheat on their husbands. Husbands fantasize at night about their young and sexy administrative assistant. Business partners think about cutting corners and stealing money from the company’s account if only they would not get caught. There are many ugly emotions lurking in all of us and usually these, jealousy or hate or envy tend to push us towards a sale.

Let’s take the example of fitness. Someone who doesn’t understand human nature would think that most people exercise because they want to be healthy. This is what I think of myself and what is an universal recognized answer. However, why do we really exercise? To have sex mostly. We do it to be attractive to the opposite sex and to get attention. We don’t do it to get “high fives” from our gym buddies, nor for our doctor to say that we’ve improved. We’re doing it, generally, because we want to attract the opposite sex easier and this is the fastest method.

Of course, there are people who exercise for other reasons like a desire to set a record or for health reasons. I’m not generalizing. But the vast majority do it in the hope that they’ll sleep with more or higher quality people.

So when you’re asking a prospect about this, would he admit this? Not in a thousand years. Nobody wants to be so vain and superficial. It’s something we don’t admit even to ourselves, we rationalize. Yet, if you are a man and you exercise, you can admit to yourself that you’ve at least thought about this.

This means that this denial will not appear in the market research. It won’t appear in the beliefs or motivations of the avatar we’re selling to. So the amateur copywriter just sells to what people say they want – like playing with their kids when they’re 80. And that may be, I do want this and so you to but we rarely ignore the needs of the moment for something that will happen in a few decades.

On the other hand, we gladly ignore the needs of the moment for sexual gratification.

This means in return that when that copywriter writes the copy, it will sound good and make a lot of sense. It will have all the right reasons why the prospect SHOULD buy. It’s what it is responsible to do – to improve our health, to get our 10.000 steps daily, to improve our cardiovascular health, etc.

And your prospect, if this were your product would nod yes.

He’d say “yes, he’s right, I must do this”.

But he won’t buy. He won’t buy because while it makes sense rationally, it is not pulling him emotionally. It is not that urgent or that appealing to sacrifice time and money in order to pay for your product and here’s where most sales letter fail. It’s when they make sense and they should make the sale but they don’t.

It’s the nice guy syndrome.

A nice guy buys the girl flowers, take her to an expensive dinner, tells her that she’s beautiful x 1000. Yet, when the night ends, there’s no kiss and he’s not invited in.

The girl is SUPPOSED to like him and she’s even going to say to herself that he’s a great guy.

But she’s not going to take action.

The bad boy treats her like crap, doesn’t care about her, even abuses her emotionally. Yet, she wants him with all her being.

She knows that she’s SUPPOSED to stay away from him but can’t do that. Her emotions tell her otherwise.

If you want to improve as a copywriter, don’t be a good guy, predictable and politically correct, talking to surface needs that just hide what’s lurking inside. No. Sell to the core.

Sell to his desire to be respected by others and for his neighbor to be so jealous of his new Porsche 911. Sell to his desire to attract beautiful woman and to have gratifying experiences. Sell to his vanity – being envied by others and even hated by this. Sell to his nature, don’t sell to his social persona.

Be the bad boy. Nice guys in dating finish last and nice guys in copywriting don’t make sales.

Thanks,
Razvan

Howdy,

Selling and life have a big thing in common.

When it comes to goals be it a slim and sexy body … or a bank account that makes them grim every time they look their statements … or a happy loved filled marriage combined with the sex life of “Fifty Shades of Grey … most people think that these goals will come easily to them, that the entire universe conspires to make them fit, rich and sexy.

After all, it is an easy enough belief to fall into – it appeals to our desire of instant gratification and after all, why work for something when at least theoretically, if we desire it long and hard enough, it will come to us?

So it is how beginner copywriters treat selling.

You see, your prospect doesn’t want to have anything to do with you. He’s not your friend. If anything, you are a problem. Before he knew about you, he was happy in his ignorance that there is no solution to his problem. Now, he knows about you and sees you as an obstacle to whatever he desires.

Before he thought that he can achieve his desired outcome just by wanting it long enough, that things are going to solve themselves out. Now he must pay $499 for your course to do so. By coming into his field of view, you’ve broke his fantasy that some miracle will happen and he hates your gut for this – as ignorance isn’t bliss anymore.

That being said, if you approach copywriting as you’re talking to someone who sees you as a troublemaker, not as a savior, everything changes. In his life, you are maybe like a dentist. He doesn’t want to see you nor go through the pain but he knows that if he doesn’t take some action, things are going to be worse in the long term. If there was any way of achieving the goal he desires without paying you, he’d gladly take it so. If there is any way of escaping responsibility of paying you, he’ll take it without thinking twice.

Think of a girl caught in a date with someone she doesn’t like. That’s your relationship with the prospect. He’s constantly looking for ways to “go to the bathroom” and never return. He’s willing to say “I’ll skip” for whatever rational or irrational reason he can come up with, price, terms, bonuses, format or any other objection. He’s going to bitch and complain about everything. No matter how much of a good deal your product is, he’s going to find it too expensive.

If it is not too expensive, then it is too hard to use. If it is not this, then it doesn’t have a long enough warranty. If the warranty is long enough, then he likes it but doesn’t have the money to buy it now. Take my word, a prospect is first motivated to look for everyday to procrastinate or even downright refuse purchasing your product. Even if he knows that he must solve the problem now, he’ll look for ways, for excuses to spend more time researching, to analyze the competition better, to get to know more about you, anything so he just doesn’t pay.

Is it always so extreme? In most cases it is but even if it is not, treating it like this makes you a far better copywriter. I’m saying this because when your prospect is like a husky that wants to find a way to climb out the cage or dig under it or squeal until you let him out, then your copy will be far more disciplined and far more persuasive than if you treated your prospect looking to make a casual buy.

Most products sold through direct mail and sales letters in general are not products that are naturally wanted. They’re acquired taste. You don’t need a sales letter to sell chocolate cookies because we naturally want them. However, you need a strong logical and emotional argument to sell a weight loss product.

Therefore, you must make sure that you don’t let him out. He’s going to come with 100 objections. If he thinks the price is too high (and he will) then justify the price in terms of how much money he’ll save in the long term. If he thinks that it is too complicated, explain how this is broken down in step by step pieces and he just needs to take a simple decision, follow the next step. If he wants to take action later, tell him how this great bonus that is worth the price of the product alone is only available now. If he thinks that his friends will think of him that he’s a sucker for buying such a product, give examples of how people will appreciate him and his good decisions.

Find ways to make sure he doesn’t escape. Cover every hole and bar every window. Don’t let him leave the page without paying for your product because chances are that once he’s gone, he’s gone forever. People don’t really return when they say “I’ll think about it”. There’s something like a 10% chance of a prospect who says “I’ll think about it” to buy in six months following his decision.

Your prospect is going to be whiny. That’s a fact.

You can say that this product is 50% discounted and he’ll say “okay, that’s great BUT I don’t have a budget now”. You can say that if he doesn’t buy now, he’ll miss out on the bonuses and he’ll say “okay, I want the bonuses but I need to really think about it”.

I’m not saying to bully your prospect. I’m saying to make your argument tight so his only real decision is to buy. After all, a copywriter’s job is to sell the product. It doesn’t matter how good the copy is if it doesn’t convert. I’m saying that each time he wants to leave, to have a way to make him come back. I’m saying to get him to agree that he needs the said product and that not buying later would go in contradiction with his prior made decision.

This is not so much about techniques as it is about a mindset. If you approach copywriting with a mindset of “well, if he buys fine, if he doesn’t, it is his loss” then you’ll go bankrupt really fast. You must instead approach it with “while I can’t ultimately decide if he buys or not, I’m going to use every tool at my disposal that is legal and ethical to incline him towards a positive buying decision”.

You would not get into a boat with holes. No matter how fast you’re going, as long as there’s water coming in, eventually the boat will sink. So you shouldn’t write a letter with holes that the prospect can use to escape the responsibility of taking a decision. And this escape is not “no”, it is “I need to think about it” in about 90% of the cases. It is delaying something he knows he must do because spending money and starting something new is hard.

We all do this. I’ve delayed 20 weeks to wake up at 05:00 AM after deciding to do it. I’ve delayed for months to go for a dental check-up after I’ve noticed that there might be some issues. I’ve delayed buying new gym clothes for weeks even if I needed them. These are small decisions and I’ve delayed because of the effort involved.

What do you think goes into the mind of your prospect with a $99 … or a $499 … or a $997 purchase? If you’re giving him ways, he’s going to “think about it” until he’s old and can’t even remember about the problem anymore. Selling isn’t the game where you play it cool. It’s not like dating where backing off and making the other person miss you plays in your favor. Selling is like fishing. If you don’t reel the fish in when it bites the bait, you’ll have a satisfied fish and no catch.

Of course, there are ethical and moral implications to selling and this can be used both for actions and products that are a must (like getting an overweight person which is risking a heart attack to improve his fitness level) and products that are trivial (a piece of software that marginally improves things).

The general rule is that if you sell hard, then your product must be good enough. Over promising and under delivering leads to poor customer lifetime value and that’s where all the value lies in. Persuasion, copywriting and sales funnels are tools – just like fire, just like a scalpel, just like a crane. They can be used to heal and build or to hurt and destroy. I hope that when you’re employing these principles, you’re doing it for productive purposes.

Even if you don’t though, the free market will eventually work against you, as you will be unable to sell a second time and it’s hard to make money on the front end.

Thanks,

Razvan

Howdy,

I feel the need to confess (to) something.

I’ve read many copywriting books. I estimate about 60 – 70 so far. I do this because I love to learn. I know that some of the best copywriters in the world don’t read that much but this is my fix. Some people take drugs, others sleep with random strangers in Vegas while I read self-improvement and business books.

Yet, while I’ve educated myself considerably on the topic, I’ve failed many times. When I’ve failed, I’ve blamed the marketplace, I’ve blamed the product or I’ve blamed the other person. And if you were in my place and if you had dealt with some of the products that I’ve tried to sell, you’d agree with this.

But the truth is that I failed for a very different reason. It wasn’t lack of information nor negative circumstances.

I’ve failed because I’ve denied human nature, to its core. I’ve rejected how people are and I’ve tried to replace this with how I think people should be.

Okay, let me take a step back and explain what I mean by all of this.

Do you remember when you had a crush on that girl / guy (for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to use girl)? You tried everything to get her attention. You were nice. You were sweet. You bought flowers and chocolate and tickets at the cinema. You’ve fantasized about how you can impress her into mind movies that would put even Walter Mitty to shame.

And yet … she wasn’t interested. She was more interested in that jerk who didn’t gave a crap about her than who did not deserve her than she was in you.

It made no sense.

You did all the right things. You were everything that a girl wanted. It was like going against the law of nature … like gravity. So you’ve tried harder. You’ve bought more flowers. You’ve gave more compliments. You’ve acted more and more like a gentleman.

This more likely just pushed her in the arms of someone else.

Well, what the heck happened there?

You were replacing patterns and rituals of human behaviors that work with what you consider should work. In other words, you had your own standard about how people should be and act and you were ignoring what was really happening.

Or in a fancy way to put it – you were imposing subjective beliefs in a objective circumstance. The question wasn’t if she was doing the right things or not. The question was if your behavior was effective with what she desired – in which case, it was not.

It is like gravity. You can’t argue with it. You can’t negotiate with it. You can only comply. Human behavior is what it is. It may be right or wrong … it may offend your sensibilities … it may go against everything you believe to be right and your most deep and cherished inner beliefs, but it is what it is.

And when it comes to human behavior, you can either play ball and do what works … or you can try to cheat gravity and do something that should work but won’t.

So to get back to copy, when I was writing, I was writing to people that acted in a way that I wished them to act. I saw them as characters of an Ayn Rand novel, rational, mighty, logical, with a cost benefit oriented thinking.

They were not. People aren’t what we want them to be, they’re what they are. This means full of prejudice … horny … looking for a steal … looking for a lose – win situation (win for them) … unfair … biased … unreasonable … and more.

I’m not trying to bash people here. Don’t get me wrong. I’m just saying that too many times in marketing we’re relying on patterns of behavior and thinking that are simply not there. We expect people to follow our path assuming that they’re like we want them to be.

This is the capital sin in copywriting and in sales. When in Rome … act like the romans. When selling to human beings, sell to their humanity, not to what you wish that humanity to be.

The only basic question most human beings ask is “what’s in it for me?”. Everything must be framed this way. Don’t ask if it is fair. Don’t ask if they are selfish. We’re people too and we’re not that different.

Let’s take a weight loss product. An overweight person wants to lose weight without doing anything. He wants to take a pill and to be loved by supermodels. He wants to look like a greek sculpture without putting in the work. Yes, he’s lazy. And yes, that’s quite stupid if you think about it.

But you explaining that it doesn’t work this way doesn’t help. If one believes in his irrational fantasy of taking a pill and looking like Brad Pitt, then you can’t change his mind through logic. A mind defeated by logic will just attach itself stronger to its older convictions. You can only play into the patterns of behavior that that person exhibits or don’t sell that product. It’s as simple as that.

Just like with the dating game from earlier.

Maybe you want to give her flowers and hold her hand while she’s looking at the stars. She wants to wear a dress that shows way too much, hit the club, get drunk and pass out in the bathroom.

You can judge her for wanting that, if you have a different moral system. There’s nothing stopping you from putting a stamp of good or bad. But you really have only two choices – find a girl that wants to hold hands and watch the stars or go to that bar and get drunk with her. What you wish her was doesn’t change what she is.

This is a good life lesson and a critical marketing one. I’ve heard so many customers saying “my market is so ungrateful, they only care about the price”. I sympathize with this because a lot of the people I meet care only about the price too. But being upset about the price or that they’re ungrateful won’t make them grateful overnight. You can simply play to their greed and give them a great value proposition (or price) or you can find another marketplace that is not as greedy.

It’s useless to want others to be different than they are now. You have control only over yourself. You can shape your own mind and psyche but not that of others. To others – you either submit and offer them value, the value they want, not the value you want or you change your market.

The rules of the game are set.

You can not build desire in copywriting. You can only channel it. This was first stated a long time ago by Eugene M. Schwartz but most people don’t get it. When you make someone buy a product or take an action, you’re not pushing that person from “I don’t care” to “I’m in love with the idea”. You are leveraging emotions and needs and cravings and you are positioning your own product as a solution.

So is with all human behavior and interactions.

You don’t change people. You take what is already there and you use it to push them towards a direction or another. Copywriting, selling, marketing and persuasion in general is not kung-fu. It’s not about throwing persuasive punches that will make someone say “yes, yes, please take my money”. Even if you can succeed in that, people snap out of it fast.

No, copywriting is like judo. You use what’s already there to your advantage. If they have a craving for honey, then your product is ideally suited to fulfill that craving, in a way that is far superior than the competition. If they want to feel respected by others, then your product earns them the respect of others. It’s not your job to say if it is right that they wish to be respected by others or not. You can only fulfill it or get out of the way.

Many … all times I’ve failed with people, professionally or personally was because I was operating from a perspective of how I want them to be, not how they really are. I was saying “you should think and act and believe like this because this is right” when they were saying “no, no, you don’t get it, this is me and I’m not going to change”.

So now, I’m carrying a daily battle to drop this form of idealism and to understand that when you deal with another person, you do it in their playing field, playing by their rules, not yours. Understand this and you’ll become a vastly superior copywriter.

Best regards,

Razvan

From the desk of Razvan Rogoz,

Most people do not take decisions that make sense.

It is said that 95% of any group will take decisions because it sounds nice, it feels right or the outcome that may come out of that decision looks good. All are emotional estimations.

On a more technical level, it is about the tone of voice your self-talk (inner voice) is using when thinking about this / the feelings it triggers in your body based on your map of beliefs or the pictures you imagine in your mind.

The other 5% are said to be overly analytical type that take data driven decisions, similar to how an accountant would balance a budget.

So while this is not the entire story, 95% of all people don’t take decisions because they make any rational sense but because it makes subjective, emotional sense. Yet, nine out of ten copywriters will write a piece that makes perfect rational sense on why one should buy the product and doesn’t take into account the subjective inner world of the prospect.

A good example of this is sex.

Sex doesn’t lead to a lot of rational decisions. It doesn’t make sense to have sex without a condom with a partner you don’t know as you risk a lot – pregnancy and STDs. Yet, surveys show that over 50% of sexually active people do have sex with a new partner without a condom is he asks this. From a rational point of view, sex is a lot of work for very little reward. This can range from persuading to buying gifts to paying $150 for a hotel room so your wife home doesn’t find out. The real cost of sex is high for most people.

There are some people who will even go to jail in order to have sex (rape) or who ruin their future (cheating while married). There’s no possible way to say that you gain a net profit in most of these situations. Yet, we do it. I’ll be the first to admit it. Put a naked, beautiful interesting girl in front of me and I’ll forget about my plans and priorities quite fast.

As an example of how human I am, with all the idiosyncrasies that come with this – I’ve went to meet a girl at her home, in the worst part of the city, without anyone knowing where I am. I knew that her boyfriend can come home and I’ll be in a world of hurt, I knew that I have to take a 30 minute cab ride, that dogs may bite me and to be honest, I had zero chemistry with her. Yet, the promise of good sex got me there.

That’s being said, if we are so human that we take decisions that make no rational sense, why do you insist on selling on a rational level to your prospect?

Why do you expect him to buy just because your copy makes sense?

When was the last time you’ve done something because it just makes sense?

Maybe as an entrepreneur or manager or self-employed, you are used to take data driven decisions because you are responsible for the outcomes. You’ve learned that numbers tell a better story than emotions. But most people are not in that position. As I said, most will take decisions because it sounds good, feels good or looks good. Few if any sit down with a piece of paper to write the cons and pros of doing something. I definitely don’t even if I know I should.

If there’s something life taught me, long before copywriting manuals is that you can spend hours trying to convince someone of why something makes sense. They may even agree. But they’ll still act driven by their emotions.

Maybe this is for the best. I’m not here to discuss the philosophical implications of emotions. It’s what makes us human. If we would be as rational as an AI, maybe nothing that brings us joy would exist. Happiness exists because we know pain and love is so valuable because we know how painful is feeling lonely. Emotions lead to value judgements through contrasts and that’s great.

But if you want to sell, tap into those emotions.

Pour emotions into his soul, not facts. Give beautiful pictures of triumph and joy, not charts. Tell stories of pain and sorrow, not baselines for life. Make them feel hope. Make their heart race. Talk to the heart, to the solar plexus, to their ears and eyes but don’t talk to their mind. In most cases, you can’t convince someone to rationally do something.

Do this and you’ll have the entire world supporting you. Yes, it’s true that civilization advances through logic but that’s on a large, organizational level. On an individual one, you, me, your best friend, the hot dog seller from the corner are driven by emotions. And even if you’re amongst the 5% that’s considered purely rational, you should learn the language of emotion in order to influence others.

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.

Please use the link below to get started:

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

Best regards,
Razvan Rogoz
The Business & Self-Improvement Copywriter

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

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.

Please use the link below to get started:

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

Best regards,
Razvan Rogoz
The Business & Self-Improvement Copywriter

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

From the desk of Razvan Rogoz,

In the last months, almost every single person I’ve meet interested in my services asked me the same thing “how long does it take you to write 1000 words?”. He may also ask me “what is your rate for 1000 words”.

Then I go into a long explanation – it takes me 30 minutes to write those 1000 words and about 10 hours to do the research to know how to make those 1000 words effective. At this moment, the other person usually loses interest and has no interest in hearing me that a sales letter is made to fit a specific challenge and not a one size fits all solution.

This or I hear “If you know what you’re doing, you should be done in 30 minutes”, usually as a tactic to write a sales letter that costs four figure for $50.

But, contrary to popular belief, this is true. It’s not a tactic to justify me charging more. A good sales letter is not a sales letter that sounds good. It is one that takes into account your prospect, your market, your competition and the unique nature of your product to deliver an emotional and rational argument that finally leads to a sale.

This is of extreme importance. A sales letter is not a piece of literature. A sales letter is not meant to be creative. That field is called “creative copywriting” or “Madison Avenue copywriting”. What you see in TV ads or in brand awareness campaigns is not what works for you as an online marketer.

A sales letter is salesmanship in print. It is like taking a salesman, a real person and putting his pitch on paper. The pitch may be boring or interesting. That’s not relevant. What’s relevant is that it connects with the prospect just in the right way, leading to the sale. The best sales people are rarely the most exciting or interesting people. Instead, they are more low key, focusing more on the prospects than themselves. A good salesman knows how to seduce and seducing is about enticing someone else with something SHE WANTS, not that you want.

This is one of the most counterintuitive things about human nature. If we want others to do what we want, we must lead and deliver what they want, not what we want. It’s so hard. You have no idea how often I focus only on my needs and I express in terms of my self interest, not in the terms of what the other party wants.

To give you a brief example, I’m doing a lot of networking and in the last two or so days, I talked about my preferences, my wants, my options. Not surprisingly, I’ve broke rapport fast and the others were not interested in meeting me anymore or lost their enthusiasm fast. I am a copywriter, I am a life long student of behavior and I still make the first mistake in the book, not answering “WIIFM” – What’s In It For Me, from their perspective, not mine.

So if I do this mistake and this is one of my main skills, what do you think about the engineer or the designer or the product developer that hasn’t built a career by persuading others? How hard do you think it is for them? And this is the reason why good coywriting is so rare. Most sales letters don’t sell. Most campaign fail. The reason it’s not because they are badly written. The reason is that they talk to the marketer, not to the market, like the entrepreneur is selling himself on the idea.

This problem is compounded when we are an authority in a field. If you take a “I’m better than you and you need to respect me for this” approach in your sales letter, you’ll alienate your prospect completely. Your prospect doesn’t care if you’re a world class executive, a Nobel prize winner or a 180 IQ genius. The prospect cares only WHAT YOU DO FOR HER. They give you their time in exchange of a promise of a benefit.

To put you in a good frame of mind about selling, think about your prospect like this …

Your prospect is like a very beautiful and skeptical girl which accepted to date you after months of you insisting. She tried to get rid away of you again and again but finally agreed to go out with you. You have her attention but she’s going to leave the restaurant the first moment she feels bored. Yes, she’s not a very kind lady but your prospect doesn’t owe you anything.

One mistake and she’s gone. If you don’t entertain her and make her feel special and promise her the benefit of an amazing evening, she’s gone. You must be her fantasy.

So it is with selling. The prospect doesn’t know you. He doesn’t care about you. He is not interested in your story. He’s interested only in what you can do for him and how your presence will make his life so much better. Your prospect is NOT your friend. Your prospect IS NOT patient with you. Your prospect is in front of you only because you’ve promised to make him thinner or richer or more attractive to the opposite sex.

This is what makes copywriting hard. This is why it is an insult to ask a copywriter how long does it take him to write 1000 words. A sales letter is like a perfect romantic date, it must be planned, everything must go right, it must be paced. It’s not a set of random points thrown in the face of the prospect hoping that he’ll buy (although this is how most try) but rather a well orchestrated meeting where you leave no detail to chance.

To be honest, it takes me about two hours to write a 3000 words promotion. Yet, it takes me ten or twenty hours to brainstorm, structure, refine the argument in order to know how to write this. And maybe, so should you.

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.

Please use the link below to get started:

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

Best regards,
Razvan Rogoz
The Business & Self-Improvement Copywriter

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

From the desk of Razvan Rogoz,

The information publishing field is not made equal. Right now, there are books in the self-improvement field for people who never read something like that before or are very skeptical. At the same time, there are books that contain complex frameworks which are hard to understand if you haven’t invested a lot of time and money in the past.

In the investment field, there are people who are just discovering how to read a chart. On the other hand, there are folks who are looking for complex strategies designed to give them an edge in the marketplace.

The complex content is not consumed by beginners and sophisticated prospects are not interested in reading basic content. Yet, while this is common sense, most marketers fail to understand this completely and write content that is designed to appeal to everyone and end up appealing to no one.

But before moving forward with this topic, let me give you another example. In the gaming industry there are hardcore gamers and casual gamers. Casual gamers play games on their phones and tablets and these games tend to be very simple. Hardcore gamers invest thousands of dollars into their computers and play games that look photorealistic and tend to be very complex.

It’s impossible to create something to appeal to both groups at the same time. One market is drawn by the desire to waste some time while waiting for the bus, the other market is drawn by system optimization and art in the form of gaming. A person that is playing a “tapping game” (it is a game where you tap the screen to get money, which you use to upgrade so you can get more money – sounds stupid but it earns hundreds of millions of dollars) is not interested in playing a complex strategy game like Civilization.

Even in the hardcore gamer field there are some who are more “hardcore” than others. Let’s take strategy games. A casual hardcore gamer would play something like Command And Conquer 3. A really hardcore gamer would play Europa Universalis, a grand strategy game that honestly feels more complicated than doing a full time job. So game companies cater to these specific audiences.

The buyer persona for a casual first person shooter may be age 16, living with parents, male. The buyer persona for a game like Stelaris, a 4X, grand strategy game about space civilizations may be 35 year old, with family, looks for stimulation above fun. So all the marketing materials, all the content and of course, the products are designed to fulfill that niche.

Now let’s get back to the topic of online marketing. If your product is a $9.97 eBook on how to get started, then write in simple terms, simple language about simple concepts. Don’t start writing about systems and processes when they don’t know what an URL is. Write to someone who never heard about online marketing before.

On the other hand, if you have a $997 course on advanced PPC technique, don’t write basic things. Don’t remind him of the basic concepts in your field because he knows this. Give something at his level, something advanced, something he can apply and he haven’t heard 100 times before.

It’s basic.

It’s no rocket science yet few are doing it.

Write for the market that you would like to actually attract. If I would write basic concepts about IM here, then I would attract beginners. Beginners generally can’t or aren’t willing to invest money in quality services. So I write to people who have heard enough basic advice before and instead are looking for a fresh perspective, something that can trigger an “a-ha moment”.

You must do a market match on every level you interact with your customer. Your emails must be at his level. Your content must be at his level. Your product, as you may have guessed, must be at his level.

This is a mistake I’ve done quite a lot. Many times I have wrote about things that interest me, but not my marketplace. A lot of posts on this site are more like reminders to myself as opposed to value filled marketing articles. There are articles here about fitness and about time management. Yet, I’m not a personal trainer and I don’t do time management coaching. So the only logical sense is to write about what I can monetize – copywriting and marketing and to write to people that I can work with – professionals who already achieved a decent level of success in their fields.

Like it or not, the key to successful marketing in 2018 is targeting.

Creating something good is not enough.

You must create something good, make it very appealing to a specific niche (while ignoring everyone else). Once you’ve done this, you must find a way to get your content seen by those people. Views, unique visitors, time spent on site do not matter. Nor does it matter if you get many likes and shares on Facebook. What matters are sales and 100 views from people who can pay for you are more valuable than 10.000 in front of those that will or can not.

The world is getting more and more segmented and fortunately for you and me, there are good ways to reach those segments.

Twenty years ago, it would have been impossible to target someone to the degree that we can do today. In theory, Facebook filters are so effective that you can target a single person out of 5.000.000 living in a big city. You can reach your ideal customer, whoever she may be, as long as you know how and you can pay for the traffic.

So your job as a marketer is simple – adopt the power of appealing to a specific niche, in everything you do, or become a jack of all trades that appeals to no one. The good choice is obvious.

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.

Please use the link below to get started:

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

Best regards,
Razvan Rogoz
The Business & Self-Improvement Copywriter

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

From the desk of Razvan Rogoz
Dear friend,

When it comes to launching your products or services, there are two schools of thoughts. The first one is follow your passion, doing exactly what you feel like doing. The second one is to come with a highly specialized positioning, something that nobody in the market is offering. Neither are true or very valuable, as I’m going to explain below.

Let’s start with the most common advice – follow your passion. This is a good advice. The reason I’m in this niche now, helping self-improvement entrepreneurs is my decision to follow my passion first even if I’m in a less profitable market compared to before. However, your passion must provide commercial value to your marketplace. If your passion is something that nobody is willing to buy, then you have an hobby but not a business. You know what is another passion of mine? Video game development. I am not very keen on playing video games but I enjoy coding and building interactive stories through video games. However, as my skills are not at the level where I can do this competitively, it is just a hobby and not a business.

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Dear reader,

I’ve got a problem with most self-improvement marketers and digital marketers in general. They’re playing it safe. They don’t want to offend their marketplace. They feel like if they’d promote more aggressive, people would be mad.

I think, in all honesty, that this is stupid. The people who need your stuff and who want to buy are happy to hear from you. You can mail them ten times a day. Believe me, when I’m on a mailing list that is of actual interest to me, I’m reading all the emails that are being sent. I’m looking forward to them. I’m saying to myself “I wonder what this guy sent me this time”. I don’t care I’m being mailed twice or three times a day. I’m his ideal prospect and that’s what you should target.

Look, let’s get something clear. When you’re launching something, be it a service or a product, you’ll get four categories of people. The first category are your ideal prospects. They want to buy. They know that they need your stuff. They’re very close to pressing the “Buy Now” button and they’re going to press it, either on your site or your competitor.

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From the desk of Razvan Rogoz
Dear friend,

I’ve met my fair share of authors and trainers in the self-development niche. Most were copywriting customers. In one case, I’ve dated a young lady owning such a company. These people come from all walks of life. Some are established entrepreneurs who want to make a difference. Others have no track-record whatsoever but decided to make a career as a personal coach.

In the photo above, I was just returning from a free seminar where the content was amazing but the speaker had zero skills in actually selling. You’ll see in a second why this is the most important message you’ll have to read.

I’m okay with both options. While my coaches and trainers have always been people who have walked the talked and their own life was a perfect example of what they were preaching, anyone has a chance to make it big into the self-improvement field.

Background doesn’t make a big difference or a difference at all. What does make a huge difference is how they see themselves. All successful ones sold with confidence and conviction. All unsuccessful ones sold from their heels. This means that they were scared in pushing for the sale and rather sell from a place of uncertainty and insecurity.

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