Paul Revere purportedly rode through the streets ringing a bell and yelling “The British are coming!” and everybody lit their candles or lamps and paid attention. He’d have little effect today. That was then; this is now. We are immune to noise. It’s ever harder to get and hold attention just by making a lot of noise. If that worked, the marketers with the biggest bullhorns would always win and would stay on top forever, yet with increasing frequency little upstarts unseat longevity brands and category giants. There is also the matter of message, once attention is attracted. Certainly if you bang on my door loudly enough, persistently enough, I’ll come to the door—but now, you’d damn well better have something fascinating and compelling to say.
Confronted with clutter, confusion, competition, and commoditization in the marketplace, many business owners respond by trying to shout louder. They may do this by spending more money, buying bigger ad space, advertising in certain media more frequently, or hiring celebrity spokespersons or curbside clowns to wave placards. But yelling isn’t selling.
I began business life as a salesman. Many business owners do not have such beginnings, and they are often handicapped by lack of experience with and poor attitudes about strong salesmanship. I morphed into a very successful career as a direct-response copywriter, and for the past decade or so, I’ve been paid no less than $1 million a year to craft and write copy that sells. I know that sales and subtlety rarely go hand in hand. I often find myself helping clients get over emotional hang-ups about this, the most common having to do with either an erroneous, often ego-driven belief that their clientele is more sophisticated than most and will not respond to “pushy” and sensational copy or a fear of what people will think of them—those people who are not customers but peers, employees, friends, family, or the public at large.
The fact is, there is enormous, ever-growing, almost overwhelming competition for attention and interest. A daily tsunami of clutter that must be cut through or circumvented. Even a dull-wittedness and numbness toward advertising, marketing, and sales messages that block reception in the same way driving into a dark underground tunnel blocks cell phone reception. In this environment, the ordinary and normal are ignored, the cautious and calm messages unnoticed.
You can’t send a shy, timid Casper Milktoast to knock on the door of a home or walk into a business and beg in nearly a whisper for a few minutes of the prospect’s time. So you can’t do that with a postcard, letter, flier, newsletter, email, web video, etc. either. Send The Incredible Hulk instead—huge, glowing neon green, stomping, yelling. He can’t be ignored. He shows up, guy drops what he’s doing and pays attention. But there’s a caveat . . .
Copy: the words in printed or online media can’t just shout. Loud but irrelevant isn’t much better than quiet and relevant. Loud, you can grab attention, but you can’t convert it to interest. The Incredible Hulk stomping into your office would get your attention, but he’d still have trouble bridging to interest and having you engage in a conversation with him about just any new product. He’d be good for, say, cybersecurity software or services, but not appropriate for many other things. We have to be sensational and attention-commanding, but we have to do it in a way that establishes relevance and credible authority and creates proactive interest in our information, goods, and services.
A new problem discouraging business owners from advancing their sales messages assertively and boldly and completely is what I’ll call online and social media culture. In some social media places, overtly and assertively selling is viewed and criticized as if you showed up at church on Easter in an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, yellow polka-dot bikini. My advice is, first, not to be intimidated or overly concerned with how many people look at you disapprovingly, as long as you are getting positive results in attracting your most desired customers and as long as you do not cross actual prohibitions of the media, getting you unplugged and banished. Second, be very, very skeptical and suspicious about investing money or time in media where you are prohibited from doing what works—including delivering straightforward, powerful lead generation or sales messages.
The Four Chief Sales Copy Mistakes
(That Smart DIRECT Marketers Do Not Make)
Most great sales copy is written backwards, from the customer’s interests, desires, frustrations, fears, thoughts, feeling and experiences, journeying to a revealing of a solution or fulfillment tied to your business. Most ineffective copy starts, instead, with the company, product, or service, and its features, benefits, comparative superiority, and price. These are common default positions that the overwhelming majority of advertisers, copywriters, and salespeople fall back to, rather than developing a more creative, customer-focused positioning.
As example, consider these two appeals to golfers:
Now—You’ll Hit The Ball Off The Tee
Farther And Straighter
Than You Ever Have In Your Life—
Each And Every Time
With “Perfect Swing”
Or:
Now—You’ll Amaze Your Golf Buddies
When You Hit The Ball
Off The Tee
Farther and Straighter
Than You Ever Have In Your Life—
Each And Every Time
With “Perfect Swing”
Look closely. I only added four words expressing one key customer-focused benefit.
The first headline is about two benefits. The second is about an ego-rewarding experience you’ll have because of the benefits. We could make it even more overt and stronger:
Now—You’ll Be
The Envy Of
Your Amazed Golf Buddies
When You Hit The Ball
Off The Tee
Farther and Straighter
Than You Ever Have In Your Life—
Each And Every Time
With “Perfect Swing”
The first mistake is to rely on any or all of the six default positions instead of writing to and for and about the psyche of the customer.
The Six Defaults of Dumb Copywriters, Marketers, and Salespeople
1. About the Company
2. Products and Services
3. Features and Benefits
4. Comparative and Incremental Claim of Superiority
5. Price/Discounts
6. Guarantee/Warranty
As an aside, a quick “bonus” graphics lesson: line breaks in ad copy matter. I’ve carefully picked the end words and start words of each line in the above headlines so each line is a complete idea. If I leave it up to my computer to break the lines, they end in midthought.
The second, closely related mistake is writing factually and “professionally” rather than emotionally, with enthusiasm, and conversationally, as you would tell somebody about your discovery. I don’t care if you are selling to Fortune 1000 CEOs in sky-high boardrooms or to Papa Bear in his mobile home in the trailer park, your best approach is to write like you talk, and like you and he would talk—and to infuse your writing with enthusiasm and with deeply emotional appeals.
In the above examples, the first version had no emotional appeal. The second, the emotional appeal of greater confidence, capability, and fun; a better experience to be imagined, and the mental picture produced is of you swinging the club perfectly and watching the ball soar long and straight and true. But in the third example, that emotional appeal is secondary to the much stronger emotional appeal of doing that while observed by amazed and envious friends.
The third mistake is being timid or bland in your claims and promises. I did not, in the above examples, stop at far and straight or farther and straighter. I made it: farther and straighter than you ever have in your life. Many believe that their customers, clients, or patients are smarter and more sophisticated than others, at least immune to such sensationalism and hyperbole, possibly offended by it, and that they might be discredited if engaging in it. Such business owners are wrong. Their beliefs are in contradiction with facts. In every category of product or service, in media directed at presumably educated and sophisticated people, I can find for you a highly sensational ad making grandiose and extraordinary claims that is a huge success. Zig Ziglar was right: “Timid salesman have skinny kids”—no matter who they’re selling to.
The fourth mistake is violating Rules #1 and #2. Too much copy wimps out at the point of directing the reader, listener, or viewer in exactly what they are supposed to do.
If you insist on shouting a weak message louder, you only ruin your vocal cords and dissipate energy. More aggressively advertising a weak message wastes money. You can even do lasting damage, by marking yourself in minds as timid and ordinary and uninteresting.
Now I have some news for you that you may well consider “bad news.” Many people sabotage themselves a lot by categorizing facts as either bad news or good news, rather than just as facts to be appropriately acted on. A negative attitude toward a fact makes it worse news. The fact about strong sales copy is that you need it, and you may need to learn to write it for yourself. The very small fraternity of top-level direct-response copywriters like me are in high demand and are routinely paid upwards of $15,000.00 to $25,000.00 to write copy for one ad, letter, or website, and upwards of $100,000.00 to write copy for a complete multimedia project, often with royalties linked to results on top of fees. We are a bargain for clients with sufficient size and scope of opportunity but unaffordable to most. There is, frankly, a precipitous drop from us to a large legion of journeyman freelance writers who present themselves as copywriters but often have little or no direct marketing experience or acumen.
Most small-businesspeople who have strong copy in their marketing learn to write that copy for themselves. If this happens to be brand-new to you, start with my book The Ultimate Sales Letter (4th Edition), my Magnetic Marketing System® (GKIC.com/Store), and a few books on copywriting by the following people: Joe Sugarman, Michael Masterson, and classics by Robert Collier and Victor Schwab. The good news is you can see where and how your copy is weak by reviewing the examples in this chapter and in the resources mentioned in the book. In many cases, you can strengthen your copy with minor changes, just as I did here with the golf example.
If, however, you prefer seeking help from outside, professional copywriters, you should check out the directories and job boards where you can post assignments and needs provided by American Writers & Artists, at www.awai.com. If you are in information marketing, publishing, seminars and conferences, or coaching and consulting, there are AWAIMember freelance writers who have completed a Certification Program with me, specifically preparing them to serve such clients. You can access their directories via info-marketing.org or www.awai.com. Of course, if you think you might be an appropriate client for me, you’re welcome to query my office via fax: (602) 269-3113.