Marketing is about knowing what you want to tell and who you want to tell it to–and doing it only in the most captivating and honest way possible.
That’s from an interview with Ryan Holiday, Director of Marketing at American Apparel. He’s one of the smartest, most hard-working guys around, and when he talks, we should all listen.
Read the whole interview here.
Here is part 2 of a series of posts detailing what I learnt from Write To Sell: The Ultimate Guide to Great Copywriting. If you’re interested, grab a copy on Amazon.
Part 2: It’s not about you
Without taking our reader into consideration, we’re heading for trouble. All we can do is talk about ourselves – and we know what happens to people like that at parties. – Andy Maslen
The hardest thing about copywriting (particularly online) is that your reader literally has millions of other options. Every website in the world is a click away. So why are they going to stop and read what you have to say to them?
You get and keep the reader’s attention by giving them a message aimed squarely at them – their interests, their concerns, their lives. A message delivered in such effortlessly good English that they don’t notice the writing, just the content. – Andy Maslen
When you’re writing copy, remember, your readers will always be thinking “What’s in it for me?” So if you’re trying to sell your new fitness program, you don’t spend ages telling everyone how you came up with the idea, how you researched the market first, where your suppliers are based, etc – you focus on telling them how your product or service will make them lose weight, gain muscle, look more attractive, become healthier, and so on. Your readers are always asking, “What’s in it for me?”, and you need to constantly be answering this question.
How to sell to Jared
A good place to start is by putting together a basic profile of your reader. This is the same sort of process that Proctor and Gamble go through when they’re producing and marketing new products. How old is your customer? Are they male or female? What job are they in? What do they want from their life right now? What are they struggling with, what do they need help with? What are their values? How do they see themselves?
Example: you’re writing copy for a new fitness product aimed at reducing body fat and giving people six-pack abs. What does your customer profile look like? He’s probably someone like me, actually. Let’s call him Jared.
Jared is a single 25-year-old male, a college graduate who went to work in financial services. He lives in a large city with his room-mate, and likes going to bars after work. He used to work out a bit in college, but he’s working a lot now, and it’s hard for him to find the time. He’s not hugely overweight, and goes to the gym once or twice a week, but he would love to get back to the body he had when he played football in high school. He would feel much more confident if he had lean, six-pack abs. He’d feel more attractive to the opposite sex, and he would probably get laid more (or at least he thinks he would). He has a good amount of disposable income, but can’t quite afford a personal trainer. He’s worried that if he doesn’t do something about his physique now, then the problem will get worse over the next few years, and he’ll suddenly wake up, middle-aged and overweight. He wants a solution that won’t take over his life, but will give him the results he needs, and he’s happy to spend money to do it.
Write about your product or service from your reader’s perspective. Don’t tell them what it is: tell them what it does for them. Tell them how your product will make their life easier, better or more rewarding. - Andy Maslen
Now that we have a good idea of who our customer is, we can think about what effective copy would look like. But it is IMPOSSIBLE to write good copy without this first step. We need to know about the customer so we can write copy that appeals directly to them and will capture their attention. If Jared hears me talking about removing fat in order to tone up his bum and fit into that old pair of jeans, then he’s going to get bored. That’s not what he wants to hear. But if you start talking to him about how good he’ll look on the beach, how good he’ll feel, and how much attention he’ll get with his new body, then Jared starts to get interested real quick.
Knowing your customer will make you rich
Of course, the best way to get to know your reader or customer is simple: talk to them. Do some research and find out what your customers really want, or what they’re worried about. What keeps them awake at 3am?
Ramit Sethi is a perfect example of this. On the subject, he says:
When you can truly deeply understand people, in fact better than they understand themselves, then your sales skyrocket – Ramit Sethi
Ramit spoke to hundreds of his readers on his book tour, and found that they really wanted to learn more about freelancing as a way to earn more money and give them an escape route from their day jobs. So Ramit went away, created a fantastic course to help them do just that, and then wrote amazing copy to convince people to buy it. Then he released that product, called Earn 1k, and promptly took over $100k in the first hour.
That’s the power of getting inside people’s heads.
(Quick note: on Ramit’s email signup page for Earn 1k, he has a quote from the Wall Street Journal. That’s another important marketing concept called social proof – I’ll be posting about that soon as well.)
Benefits vs. Features
ALWAYS talk benefits. Your customer wants to know what’s in it for them, so you should spell it out for them. Here’s the difference. Say you’re writing copy for a new sports car.
| Features | Benefits |
| Big engine | You get that awesome feeling of driving fast |
| Good brakes | It’s safe |
| Leather seats | It’s comfortable |
| Big, expensive tyres | Car handles better so it’s more fun to drive |
Benefits are what make the sale. You’re not buying a car, you’re buying the feeling you get when you’re cruising at 75 with the top down on a gorgeous summer’s day. You’re buying the feeling you get when you drive through town and a hot blonde girl checks out your sweet ride.
Summary
That’s it for part 2 of my intro to copywriting series – look out for part 3 soon.
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I’ve just finished Write To Sell: The Ultimate Guide to Great Copywriting. Here is part 1 of a series of posts detailing what I learnt from the book. If you’re interested, grab a copy on Amazon.
4 things you should always remember about copywriting:
1. Copywriting is about selling
It’s a world apart from academic writing, business memos, or fiction. Copywriting simply means writing in a persuasive way to convince someone to do something that they wouldn’t have done otherwise. That’s it.
2. Focus on the reader
Don’t get carried away with telling everyone when your company was founded, your career background, what you think about the economy at the moment – it’s not about you. You have to focus on the reader – what do they want to hear? What are their fears or needs, their hopes and dreams? What will motivate them to pay attention to your sales message and then act upon it?
3. Beautiful things come in small packages
Focus on using simple, easy-to-understand language. You don’t win points for using multi-clausal sentences and trying to sound like James Joyce. Keep it simple. Bigger is not always better.
4. Most people suck at copywriting
Most writers don’t have any sales experience; and most salesmen aren’t good writers. To write really good copy, you have to combine these two skillsets effectively. You need to look at your writing as a sales process. The good news is that if you can do this, you will be better than 95% of people out there.
If you can remember these 4 simple rules, you’re on your way to writing good copy.
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Tagged copywriting, marketing, sales, write to sell, writing
If you’re an individual or a small business, you don’t need to worry about the Eurozone crisis. You don’t need to think about the ongoing recession. It should be the last thing on your mind.
Why? Is this not the worst recession since the Great Depression? Could this not be The End of the Eurozone?
Yeah, maybe. But ask yourself this:
Can you do anything to change it?
You can’t set fiscal and monetary policy. You can’t force Greece or Portugal (or the US) to cut spending. You can’t force companies to invest more.
So stop worrying about it. It’s out of your control.
What should you worry about? I’m glad you asked.
People: get your finances in order. Stop overspending. Look at earning more money through a second job or freelancing if you need to. Start eating healthily and exercising regularly. Take time every day to be grateful for the good things in your life. Think how you can do your job better: make a list of ideas and pick the best two, and start doing that.
Businesses: stay focused on your customer. Always think what they would want you to do. Even in this economy there are opportunities – Groupon is the fastest-growing company in history by revenues, and was formed in November 2008. There is money to be made, and people will fall over themselves to give you their money, if you can give them what they want or need.
In other words, focus on things you can control. Forget about things you can’t.
Time is like a river that will take you forward into encounters with reality that will require you to make decisions. You can’t stop the movement down this river, and you can’t avoid the encounters. You can only approach these encounters in the best way possible.
- Ray Dalio, Principles (pdf)
I wrote about this a little recently, but the fact that I’ve finally finished university and will soon be starting a job has really impacted me mentally. I’m suddenly viscerally aware of the fact that, one day, I will die. My time on earth is limited, and no-one can stop that. There is nothing I can do to prevent it – I can only try to make the most of my time here.
I’ve always been a fan of video games. I’m a bit of a perfectionist. When I was about 9 years old, I wanted to catch 150 pokémon on my Gameboy, which I did. When I was 14 or 15, I wanted to complete GTA 3 100%, doing all the side missions and all the hidden packages. I did it. When I was 17 I played The Godfather on PS2, and I played it probably 3 or 4 times through to make sure I did all the missions in the “right” order, the way they were intended to be done so I could get the most XP and money and make the game as easy as possible. I did it. Each time, I was left thinking, OK, now what? Then I’d play the game through again, doing things differently, each time trying something slightly different.
Unfortunately, life isn’t like that. Time is like a river. My four years at university were the best of my life (so far), but now they’re done. There’s no second playthrough. No saving at a certain point and resetting if things don’t go your way.
But the problem isn’t necessarily the fact that I will die one day. The worry is that I’ll die, and my children and grandchildren will die, and a hundred years later, no-one will give a shit. Neil Strauss touched on this in his new book. He was interviewing Chris Rock, who said this:
The weirdest thing about being successful is that you are kind of ready to die. Especially now that I’ve got kids. I mean, I want to live. Don’t get me wrong. But I’m not in fear of dying. I’ve made my mark. Death is the enemy of my family – of my wife and my daughters.
Maybe that’s the aim. To make your mark. Or at least to strive for it, lest you be one of those timid souls who knows neither victory nor defeat.
In two weeks I will be starting my first full-time office job – the start of my career. When’s the next time in my life that I’ll be able to go to Pizza Hut at 3pm on a Wednesday? The prospect of being chained to a desk for the next 40 years is, frankly, one that I find terrifying. I’m 22 now. My working life will likely be twice as long as that again. I can’t even fathom a time period that long.
On top of the whole “what the fuck am I doing in life”, there are a million other different worries. What if I suck at my job? What if there’s an asshole in my office who, for whatever reason, just doesn’t like me? What if I get ousted in some sort of office coup, despite my love of Robert Greene? I can easily rationalise these as the standard going-into-a-new-place worries, the same worries that every fresher or new kid at school has, that almost always prove to be either unfounded or irrelevant.
But that large, looming worry, the fact that I am slowly transitioning from being a child to an adult, is unavoidable. All my life I’ve thought of myself as a smart kid, someone with “potential”. Now comes the time when I have to actually do something. And I’m scared.
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One of the books on my reading list in The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. It’s a fantastic book, and I’ve read it probably 7-8 times since I got it a few years ago.
One of the simplest lessons you can take from it is this: complaining about anything is ultimately pointless. Any problem will fall into one of two categories. There’s either something you can do about it, or nothing you can do about it.
If there’s something you can do about it, stop complaining and go and do it.
If there’s nothing you can do about it, then complaining about it is a waste of energy. In typical stoic fashion, use this to your advantage. Use this problem as an opportunity to practice humility or patience.
Once you start framing problems in this way, they become much simpler to deal with. Note: simple does not always mean easy.
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