Persuasive Copywriting: Using Psychology to Engage, Influence and Sell

by Andy Maslen

A marketing manager arrives at her office at 8.30 am. By 10.00 am she has received 45 e-mails on her Blackberry, 11 pieces of direct mail, three PDFs on her PC, two packages containing sample promotional gifts and background material for an advertising campaign, 15 pieces of internal mail, four invoices and a draft contract from her newly hired direct marketing agency.

Each had the four vital ingredients of a good story: A protagonist AKA the hero. This is the person we want the reader to identify with. A predicament or problem. This is the problem my client could make go away. A narrative – simply, what happened. A resolution. How the story ended.

For one of the characters, it was getting home in time to kiss her children goodnight.

Good fiction usually involves the central character undergoing some sort of change. You could argue that the change here was ...

Every story needs a hero. Make your hero a real person and your story has infinitely more power to engage your reader.

Your new MazTech exhaust system is fitted. You’re ready to drive away. From the outside, your pride and joy looks the same. You thumb the starter button and blip the throttle. Hear that? Above the sound of your exhaust? You just set off all the car alarms in the car park! That’s the MazTech effect. And you control it.

This isn’t fine writing.

They laughed when I sat down at the piano. But when I started to play— What? What happened when you started to play?

How to plan your story Like any other style of copywriting, storytelling needs careful planning. Here are the things I think you need to include in your plan: The hero. Who are they? Are they a real person? If

It’s always hard to sell using the written word. Your reader is ever more mistrustful, stressed and busy. Storytelling allows you to bypass much of the cynicism that attaches itself to marketing messages and tap into that stone-age desire to be entertained.

Good: Dear Copywriter, Has this ever happened to you? You’re just about to print out the first draft of that website you’ve been slaving over for days when your printer bleats that it’s run out of toner?

Developing insight and empathy is a hugely important exercise for any self-respecting copywriter.

You can always hire a proofreader but it’s really difficult to hire an empathizer.

The trouble is, people don’t want better mousetraps. They want dead mice.

People buy stuff to solve problems.

Those problems could be basic: ‘I am hungry.’ Or they could be more, how shall I put it, middle-class: ‘I need a Pilates teacher within walking distance of my beach

Your first goal as a writer is to pinpoi...

Find your reader’s point of pain and you’ve found the way in to their emotions.

Your headline sells the copy; your copy sells the product.

So to infiltrate their mind and get their attention, you need to talk about something they find interesting. Most people love to talk about their problems. So should you.

Why did you want to see me? What do you want to talk about? How do I know I can trust you? How are you going to make my life better? Can you prove it will work? Who else has it worked for? How do I get hold of it? What if I don’t like it?

I came up with a headline that was almost a verbatim transcript of what I overheard one woman telling her friend in the street.

focus on what you want to say, not how you want to say it.

the content of your copy is more important than its form.

‘Don’t write your book, talk it.

At its heart, copywriting is about behaviour modification.

But maybe they know nothing at all about your product. Also great! Because you’re not going to write about it anyway. What problem does your product solve? THAT’s what you’re going to write about.

wet-behind-the-ears

What’s the reality for your product. What’s the real problem it solves?

concentrate on what they’re saying not how they’re saying it.

Personal, Pleasant, Professional, Plain, Persuasive

book Influence, Robert Cialdini (2000)

we are bound to feel well disposed towards people who pay us compliments, however trivial.

Together with greed, ego is a massively powerful motivator for most people. Even those who claim it isn’t.

Wealthy folk are clearly clever with money. Petrolheads know lots about cars. Sports fans are passionately loyal to their teams. Chief executives are professionally successful. Nurses are caring. Having identified the characteristics of your customer’s personality it isn’t hard to parlay that knowledge into a sincerely paid compliment.

I know you love cars, so I thought you might appreciate this picture of a Bugatti Veyron. You and I know there’s beauty in cars, entertainment in cars… FUN in cars. So what do you say? Tear off the coupon below and send it back to us and we’ll even let you choose the snacks at the next services.

The other objection to flattery as a sales tool is that people won’t fall for it, ‘because I never do’.

Once your basic survival needs – air, food, water, shelter, security – are taken care of, the territory gets a lot more emotional.

Bad: As a valued customer… Good: As someone who spends a lot of time in the air you are used to seeing further than most people…

Dear Judy, As someone with a long and successful career in HR, you probably get dozens of e-mails offering solutions to the talent brain drain. And I’m willing to bet you discard most of them.

But since I know strengths-based recruitment is on your radar, you’ll want to hear what I have to say next.

Exclusively for senior HR managers like you, MazPeople Inc. has produced a survey of HR directors’ attitudes to the war for talent. Our new white paper also gives you 10 recommendations for attracting and retaining the best of the best.

how to make spending money feel like a privilege

Expensive things are desirable often because they are expensive.

Luxury confers status.

Luxury confers self-esteem and the esteem of others. Luxury makes us feel good about ourselves.

Now, what do we know about human beings? That’s right. They are herd animals. So they like joining things.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.