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For example, if I was selling products at a discount, I would use big type for my prices and lots of busy graphic elements. In short, I would make the ad look like a typical discount ad. And conversely, if I was selling something expensive, I would present myself in an environment that showed class and refinement—that exuded confidence and trust.
Your ad layout and the first few paragraphs of your ad must create the buying environment most conducive to the sale of your product or service.
Creating the ideal buying environment comes from experience and the specific knowledge you get from studying your product and potential customer. It comes from understanding the nature of your product or service. Greater understanding will come as you read this book. But for now, realize how important creating the buying environment is to eventually selling your product.
The first thing you do in selling is to set up the selling environment. Whether it be a private room in a gallery or a car dealer’s showroom, you configure the physical environment to be your selling environment.
There must be a harmony struck between the buyer and seller, or the persuasive sales message won’t come through. There are many methods for creating this harmony and two of the most important apply very directly to space advertising. First, you’ve got to get the prospective reader to start saying yes. Second, you’ve got to make statements that are both honest and believable.
The moment you get the reader to say “No” or even “I really don’t believe what he is saying” or “I don’t think that relates to me,” you’ve lost the reader. But as long as the reader keeps saying yes or believes what you are saying is correct and continues to stay interested, you are going to be harmonizing with the reader and you and the reader will be walking down that path toward that beautiful room in the art gallery. To show you a specific approach to this method, let’s take an example from an ad I wrote for one of my seminar participants. Entitled “Food Crunch,” it offered dehydrated
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So now we have three things we are trying to do at the beginning of an ad. First we want the reader to read the copy. Remember, that’s the objective of all copy. Without the prospect reading the ad, you have nothing.
Then we create the type of environment through copy that causes the prospect to feel comfortable in exchanging his or her hard-earned money for your product or service. And finally, we want the prospect
to harmonize with us—to agree with us—by feeling that indeed we are saying something that is truthful, interesting and informative and that the prospect can agree with. In short, we want agreement. We want that head to nod in the affirmative. We want harmony.
Get the reader to say yes and harmonize with your accurate and truthful statements while reading your copy.
Every element must be so compelling that you find yourself falling down a slippery slide unable to stop until you reach the end.
Your readers should be so compelled to read your copy that they cannot stop reading until they read all of it as if sliding down a slippery slide.
The news item could have nothing to do with your product or it could tie in perfectly. For example, I was reading Forbes magazine, and in the “Informer” section there was an article entitled “Growth Market.” The copy read as follows:
The use of an interesting article or bit of information, when tied into your product or service, often makes for a good start to the slippery slide.
And when blended nicely with your product, it can work to cause a reader to read every bit of your copy. So save those offbeat articles you come across that tweak your interest and might interest your readers—regardless of how ridiculous or offbeat they may be.
When trying to solve problems, don’t assume constraints that aren’t really there.
you increase traffic by increasing readership.
One way to increase readership is by applying a theory I call “seeds of curiosity.” It goes like this. At the end of a paragraph, I will often put a very short sentence that offers some reason for the reader to read the next paragraph.
Keep the copy interesting and the reader interested through the power of curiosity.
Emotion Principle 1: Every word has an emotion associated with it and tells a story. Emotion Principle 2: Every good ad is an emotional outpouring of words, feelings and impressions. Emotion Principle 3: You sell on emotion, but you justify a purchase with logic.
We buy on emotion and justify with logic. I know that when I first bought a Mercedes and my friends saw it, I told them that the reason I bought it was because of a series of technical features that I found very impressive. The real reason I bought the car was not for the technical features at all. I wanted to own a prestigious car and belong to the crowd that drove a Mercedes. But when I had to explain the reason for my purchase, I ended up using logic—something that I really believed was correct when I used it.
“If you aren’t absolutely satisfied, return your product within 30 days for a prompt and courteous refund.”
Often, a phrase or sentence or even a premise does not have to be correct logically. As long as it conveys the message emotionally, it not only does the job, but does it more effectively than the logical message.
But the reason, I explained, for my ad appearing so poorly written in my first draft is because it is simply an emotional outpouring of my thoughts on the product and how I feel it should be sold. It is a free release of my emotions.
If you realize that each word has an emotion attached to it—almost like a short story unto itself—then you will also have a very good understanding of what emotion means in the copywriting process.
Never sell a product or service. Always sell a concept.
Another example is the Pocket CB. It had its concept right there in the headline. There were walkie-talkies and there were mobile CB units, but we had the first Pocket CB. And it was the name itself that expressed the concept.
Or take the example of the Pocket Yellow Pages I referred to in the previous chapter.
Of course the copy continued to talk about the challenge we were making against Karpov. That was the concept. We weren’t selling chess computers. We were selling the challenge against the Russian champion and as a consequence selling chess computers. It was taking a very staid product and giving the entire promotion a more emotional appeal.
If your advertising just sells the product, be careful. You need a concept.
Assume you are now an expert on a particular product and you are ready to start writing. The first thing I would do is go over all the material you have on your subject and give a great deal of thought to what you have just read and studied. Do plenty of thinking about what you want to write. You may jot down some headlines and some of the copy points you would like to bring out.
That’s right, stop. Do something else. Forget about the project. Do something pleasurable—a stroll in the park, a walk down the street or lunch with a good friend. Whatever you do, let it be a total diversion from what you are currently working on, and please don’t even think of the copy project.
The incubation process actually works best with pressure of some kind. If you have no pressure, your brain will not work as fast or as efficiently. So it is a balance of various pressures that produces the optimum results.
The key is simply this: Copy is never too long if the reader takes the action you request. Therefore, it can’t be dull, it must be compelling, it must relate to the reader and, finally, it’s got to be about something the reader is interested in.
I learned a lesson from those visits to car showrooms. You can’t tell the prospect enough about a subject he or she is truly interested in.
So let’s take a moment and look at two factors that increase the need for a lot of copy.
Price Point:
In short, by educating the consumer you can demand more money for your product.
Unusual Item: The more unusual the product,
that product to the user and the more you’ve got to focus on creating the buying environment and explaining the product’s new features.
But his catalog really appeared to follow my rules. First, he created his environment through photography. The products were placed in elegant settings using fine photography. Second, his prices were very low compared to those of other companies or retailers. Since
he was offering his products at such low prices and
since his environment was so effective in placing the customer in a buying mood, a lot of what normally would have been done in copy was being done visually and through the price points of his products. Then too, his medium was a catalog, and in catalogs long copy is often not required. The catal...
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Copy should be long enough to cause the reader to take the action you request.
One of the things that ads should do is harmonize with the reader or viewer. Advertising is the ultimate form of communication in that its purpose is to cause an action to be taken by consumers—usually to exchange their hard-earned money for a product or service. But for some reason, many advertisers are missing an important key in this form of communication—namely, it should be personal.
Every advertisement should be a personal message from the advertiser to the prospect.
But in creating the letter that goes with a mailing, too many copywriters write their letters as if they were hiding behind a podium, speaking through a microphone and addressing a large audience. For example:
As long as you use words like I, you and me, you create the feel of a personal form of communication.
So in one month, members might get an envelope from Ski Lift International, a defunct company, and the next month they might get a letter from CMT Machine Tool Company, another defunct company, but the contents of the envelope were always from Consumers Hero.
In print ads, the need to be personal becomes less apparent. After all, you are talking to the masses, aren’t you? But the fact remains that you are indeed talking to a single individual—that person reading your ad. And he or she is listening to a single individual—the person who wrote the ad. So it is essential that you write your copy as if you are writing to that single individual. Your copy should be very personal. From me to you. Period.
