90% Of Direct Response Marketers Don’t Know About These Copywriting Tricks

What do you do when you have pain somewhere in your body?

If it’s bad enough, you’ll look for ways to get rid of it.  Your first reaction would be to go into your medicine cabinet or to your doctor to find the specific medication that would get rid of that pain.  If you don’t happen to currently have the pain medication you need when searching your medicine cabinet, your first reaction would be to rush down to the closest pharmacy in hope of finding the pill that’s going to give you the relief you so desperately need.

When you find yourself in such desperate need, do you worry about the price?  Does it even enter your mind to shop around and see if you can buy the same medicine cheaper at another pharmacy?  Probably not.

When you’re in pain and looking for immediate relief, even if the medication happens to be priced at double or triple the normal price, you would probably still buy it.  This is because when we’re in pain, we throw the usual ways of shopping out the window.

The same holds true with prospects and customers.  Instead of just speaking to them about “features and benefits”, speak to the pain that the customer already has.

Do pharmacists have to do much selling when it comes to selling pain relief medication to someone with a splitting headache?  I suspect very little.

One thing you’ll find that’s true in every market, no matter what you’re selling, there are prospects and customers that are looking to be relieved of their pain.  They’re looking for relief, not features and benefits.  And when you give them pain relief, price becomes less important than if you’re selling them a commodity with a list of features and benefits.

Even if you’re selling the exact same product or service of your competitor, if you package it up in a way that takes away their pain, you will win their business.  It’s also much more likely that you’ll win raving fans that refer others to you because you weren’t just a vendor of a commodity – you’re a problem solver (we’ll touch more on this in later chapters).

When your selling is based only on features and benefits, you increase the chances of turning your prospects into price shoppers that will buy your product based solely on price.  So your goal is to become a problem solver, pain reliever that will turn any comparison with your competition into an apples-to-oranges comparison.

As mentioned, people are much more willing to pay for a cure than for prevention.  Targeting existing pain rather than promising future pleasure will result in much higher conversion, much higher customer satisfaction and lower price resistance.  Look for pain points in your industry and become the source of relief.

Direct-Response Copywriting – Salesmanship in Print

What is copywriting?  Simply put, is anything that offers a product or service for sale.

This covers a very wide spectrum.  But for the purpose of the type of copywriting that gets results, the copywriting we use is known as direct-response copywriting.

“Direct-response” copywriting is the kind of advertising with a specific call to action (CTA) that makes prospects and customers open their wallets and checkbooks and buy.  Not next week.  Not tomorrow.  But right now.

Most of the ads you see in newspapers, magazines and most television commercials are written by “agency” copywriters working at Advertising Agencies.  The copy is sort, clever – even humorous (think of the Super bowl commercials).  But typically, those ads have no CTA.

Direct-response marketing with an effective CTA that moves your target market to take the necessary action to get relief from their pain, determines the sale.  In direct response marketing we use copy that is designed to push the emotional hot buttons of your target market.

So rather than using conventional, “professional” sounding copy, we use direct-response copy that’s like a car accident – no matter how much you don’t want to, you can’t help but look.

The goal in using direct-response copy is to get people to respond to the CTAs in your ads, direct-mail sales letters or online promotions.  Direct-response selling is done through radio, print, online and TV ads.  But by far the most effective method of direct-response selling is through the Internet and direct mail.

An effective direct-marketing promotion can be anything from a four-page letter… to a 100-page booklet… to a single online sales page…  or a multi-page Website.

As a matter of fact, the ability to write direct-response copy isn’t a God given gift.  It’s not a generic trait.  And it’s not something mysterious and magical that can be grasped only by a fortunate few.

The ability to write high-impact copy is a skill that CAN BE LEARNED.  And can be mastered by you.

Touching Emotional Buttons

Direct-response marketing appeals to people’s emotional hot buttons such as FEAR, PRIDE, LUST, ENVY and GREED (these elements tend to be big sellers).

The fear of loss can be a very powerful tool – money, independence, friends, happiness, etc.  Also powerful is greed – the desire to be richer, more successful, happier, more secure, more independent – you get the point.

When we put it all together, direct-response copywriting is demonstrating through a powerful emotional appeal, that your prospect’s life would be much more complete if only he or she owned what you’re selling. 

The success of your copy is based entirely on how many people respond to your copy by taking action.  Any actions called for in your copy: opting to your email subscriber list, opening their checkbooks or pulling out their credit cards.

Direct-response marketing is focused on driving purchases that can be attributed to a specific call to action. The emphasis is on tracked, measurable, positive responses from consumers regardless of the medium. 

When someone positively responds to your direct-response ad and follows the ad instructions (CTA), since the ad is tracked, it will tell you which promotion the response came from.  The measurable code attached to a specific ad will tell you exactly which promotion the opt-in or sale came from – this makes it possible for you to calculate to the penny the effectiveness of your direct-marketing effort.

There are three fundamental rules of selling:

1. People don’t like the idea of being sold.
2. People buy things for emotional, not rational reasons.
3. Once sold, people need to satisfy their emotional decisions with logic.

People don’t like the idea of being sold.  At face value, this doesn’t make sense.  Especially when every year trillions of dollars worth of goods and services are bought and sold.  Billions of those dollars through online or through the mail.  Maybe you or someone you know loves to shop.

Does that mean that you or others like to be sold?  Absolutely NOT.  People want to buy, but they don’t want to be sold.  In people minds buying implies being in control.  Being sold implies being controlled.

Imagine you need a suit to wear to a formal function and as you’re walking down the street you come across a clothing store with beautifully displayed manikins wearing well tailored suits.  So you walk into the store and you’re greeted by a pizza-chomping slob asking what kind of clothes are you looking to buy.  If you’re like most people, you’ll probably be turned off and exiting right back out of the store.

Now imagine a different scenario: You come into the same clothing store and the same man approaches you, but this time he’s neatly dressed, smiles, and kindly offers you a cup of coffee.  Isn’t that better?  While you browse, he pours you a cup, adds sugar and cream and refills your cup, without saying a word.

Before you know it, you’re feeling comfortable with him, so you ask him some questions about one of the suits that was displayed in the front window that you’re interested in.  He answers you politely and explains the features and benefits of that suit.  Then he shows you another suit that’s similar – but it’s more fashionable and trendy with better-pronounced features.

Before long, you’ve bought a new suit and you’re happy to have done so.

What happened here?  Simply, in the second scenario the salesperson understood the first rule of selling: It’s not a good idea to make someone feel like they’re being sold.

As a business owner, your job is to help your prospect solve a problem (pain point) or achieve a goal.

In your emails, sales letters, and other marketing mediums, don’t apply pressure.  Offer to give something.  Don’t force.  Tempt.

So how do you tempt someone?

Let’s say you’re selling chocolate cake and you want prospects to buy your cake over your competition.  You wouldn’t start off by listing 10 reasons why cake is good for them.  Instead, if you really want to get your cakes sold, you’d start off by describing how great your cakes smell, how moist they are, how thick the icing is, and how it will melt in their mouth…

In other words, you would create a verbal picture that teases the desires of prospects – their hunger, their craving for chocolate.  You’d temp them by appealing to their emotions.  You wouldn’t bore them with reasons or bully them with force.

Understand this first principle and you’ll have people eating that cake out of your hands!

People buy things for emotional, not rational reasons.  If people acted rationally, you wouldn’t be able to sell chocolate cake.  There’s no logic in buying it.  It’s not nutritious.  It makes you fat.  It messes with your metabolism.  And it provides no value.

So why is selling chocolate cake a multi-million dollar industry?  Because it makes people feel good for the moment!

To succeed in business, you have to appeal to your prospect’s feelings and desires.

Here are seven very important ones:

• Fear
• Greed
• Vanity
• Lust
• Pride
• Envy
• Laziness

These are labeled the Seven Deadly Sins.  They’re age-old emotional triggers, which have proven to work in direct-response marketing, time after time.

If your sales copy isn’t pushing at least one of these emotional triggers, then it will likely be too timid or ineffective.

Many will worry that using trigger words in your copy is manipulative.  Like any powerful tool it can be used for either good or evil purposes.

If you put a sharp knife in the hands of a surgeon, he or she will use it to save lives.  The same knife in the hands of a criminal, he or she might use it to take lives.  Either way, we need to understand how this powerful tool works and likely we can’t go through life avoiding its use.

Direct-response copywriting is a powerful selling tool and you should NEVER USE IT UNETHICALLY.

If you’re selling something that’s in the best interest of your prospect or customer then you will be doing them a great service by using this powerful selling tool.  This will prevent them from buying someone else’s inferior product or service.

Sell to the heart first… not the head.

Once sold, people need to satisfy their emotional decisions with logic.  Think about car ads; when you first see a stirring image of the car itself – it looks beautiful, stylish, new.  The background also speaks volume: A mountainous landscape for a prospect that wants to see himself as rugged.  A five-star hotel for the prospect who wants the car to enhance his or her status.  A beautiful woman posing by the car for – well you get the idea.

You also get to see the interior shots to show you how luxurious your life will be when you own this car.  Put it all together and you have an effective ad designed entirely to appeal to emotion.

But car ads don’t stop there.  They usually give you many bits and pieces of information – the size of the engine, statistics on fuel economy, speed, weight, interior space, and so on.

The purpose of all this data isn’t meant to sell the car.  This additional data has little to do with the prospect’s decision to buy.  The data is there to make the prospect feel good about the decision he has already made to buy the car.  All these bits and pieces of data are almost as important as the emotional appeal.

Though the information doesn’t sell the car, it does justify the sale in the mind of the prospect.  Now the prospect can tell himself (and others):

“I’ve made the right decision.  The ABS braking system will keep my family safe.  The hybrid engine is environmentally responsible.  The all-wheel drive ensures I won’t get stuck in the snow, I made a great decision.” Such rules are used to sell a vast array of products and services – from jewelry to cars to weight-loss systems – to just about anything.