The inner organs of a white-hot sales message
Your business is probably covered in writing.
There’s a welcome message at the top of your home page, features and benefits on your product page, and direct communication in your emails.
Obviously, all of that is writing.
We know that it can come in the form of a fictional story, or an educational article. It can be a boring disclaimer, or an intimate email.
Every form that writing comes in has unique qualities. But most of it is borderline useless for your business. Except for one, particularly unique and complex form of writing.
If you’re thinking it’s ‘copywriting,’ then you’re not being specific enough.
Copy can refer to any piece of written material that a business needs. From brand building tonal copy, to educational material, to web copy, to blog post updates, to simple product listings.
But there is one form of copywriting that requires more knowledge, skill, and work ethic than all the others.
It’s called direct response copywriting and, to put it simply, it means to talk directly to your reader with the intention of getting a particular response.
All the other forms of copywriting will benefit if the writer is good at direct response. Because at the end of the day, every bit of writing your business needs should be intelligently designed to achieve its goal.
I like to boil direct response down a bit more. The real ‘meat and potatoes’ of direct response copywriting is the sales message.
What does a sales message look like?
The lead
It always has to start by getting the attention of the reader.
This is because, unlike face-to-face sales, direct marketing is something that they can ignore at any time. Your prospect can choose not to read what you’ve written.
(At least… at the beginning. If you’re really good, they won’t be turning away.)
Depending on where the prospect is coming from, your lead might pick up where you left off or it might start from scratch.
Maybe they just read an email from you and they know they’re about to read about a product. Or maybe they clicked a compelling ad that drove them nuts, they couldn’t resist, and they have zero clue what on earth is next.
This stuff is super important to your lead, and understanding it is the first step to crafting one that will get you the WIN. But once you do figure out the underlying details, and you start writing, you have to be creative-as-hell.
What gets people’s attention and captures their ‘will to read’ is based on emotions, and the way that emotions connect to logical information.
Emotional stories, shocking information, compelling secrets, and controversial news are all ways to seize the hell out of someone’s attention.
So now you have their attention. What’s next?
The turn
You have to keep their attention while building context around your offer.
At this point, they’re reading but they might not be locked in completely. That means you have to keep the copy sharp and interesting. At the same time, you now want to start bringing your offer into the mix.
A person’s desire to read your message is one thing, and it may not link to your offer easily. Especially if your offer is new and unique.
That means you might bust your buns coming up with an amazing lead that gets people glued to your writing, but then you try and mention your product and, they’re like “Augh! I was enjoying that story! I don’t care about some damn product!!”
This can happen easily if you don’t have a well-written turn.
What you’re going to have to do is answer the questions… WHAT is this actually all about? And WHY should I believe any of this?
You have to come up with good answers that revolve around the reader themselves. And even more importantly, you’re going to have to deliver those answers smoothly following your exciting lead.
That’s the turn.
Think of it as a set of dials. You have to dial-in the lead, so that it CAN match the turn. And you dial-in your answers to the WHAT and WHY to match the turn as well.
Then that’s it. You have gradual shift from “Oh hell yeah I want to read this!” to “I’m learning so much about how to fix my pain.”
And once the shift is complete, it’s time for…
The pitch
Now that they understand what the sales message is all about, they’re going to be interested in finding out if the solution is for real.
That’s where the sales arguments come in.
This is where you’ll sell them on the solution. You remind them of the pain that they’re suffering. You get them to imagine vividly the benefits your offer will bring them. You address all of the concerns, objections, and questions that can possibly pop up.
Use metaphors, stories, examples, jokes, details, comparisons… every sales argument you can come up with.
This is where you help them make sense of the offer. You’re helping them to understand specifically why the offer will bring them benefit, and why it’s better than the alternatives out there.
The strongest way to deliver sales arguments to your prospect, though, is something simple yet very difficult:
You develop ONE, centralised selling point that’s compelling and unique, and use that as a foundation for your entire sales message.
This concept shows up over and over again in marketing and, it’s often referred to as the “Big Idea”… that term was made popular by the advertising legend David Ogilvy.
There’s a fantastic story in Michael Masterson’s book Great Leads about this. Two of the most successful writers from Agora gave speeches at an annual meeting of high-level marketers.
One of them gave a great speech about 12 rules to follow when writing copy. The other writer gave a speech about the importance of clarity in writing.
Both of these speeches, without a shred of a doubt, gave enormously valuable information. They were probably both well written and expertly delivered. But only one of them created a buzz following the meeting.
Can you guess which one that was??
If you said it was the latter speech about ONE THING, then it’s safe to say… you are picking up what I’m putting down!
Why exactly is a singular idea so powerful?
My suspicion is that it has something to do with the limits of human attention. A person’s brain can only pay attention to so much stuff at one time. If you’re consuming 12 different ideas in one sitting, you can’t give any one of them a full soaking.
That means you can’t think deeply enough about it to have any profound feelings.
After all, we are a ‘rat’s nest’ of nerves. The capacity for activity in those nerves is limited — there’s only so much heat to go around. If you use that heat to warm up 12 neurons, you end up with a pile of 12 piss-warm thoughts.
But if you take that same heat and aim every drop towards one sweet little neuron… you’re going to heat that sucker up, get it white hot, and…
…remember it long enough to apply it!
Sorry to get a little rugged and ‘unscientific’ with that metaphor, but hopefully you get the picture.
One “Big Idea” that underpins all your sales arguments will get your prospect ‘white hot!’
Now that they’re feeling keen to take your offer on board, what happens?
The ask
At this point, if your prospect is the right buyer for your offer and they’ve read everything so far, there’s only one thing left to do:
Make the offer.
But wait… don’t just BARREL towards the prospect with a big, silly grin, and say “Buy it! Buy it! Buy it!”
Maybe they’re warm enough for that, and they don’t need any more foreplay. But you have to tailor your message to suit every potential buyer.
Let’s say you wanted to give a pat to a cute little bunny rabbit at the petting zoo.
When you lay eyes on her, she looks so fluffy and sweet, you just want to give her a big hug. Unable to contain your excitement, you start bounding towards her with a fistful of weird petting-zoo granola in one hand and an open palm in the other… and…
She rolls the F out!!!
There’s no time to find out if you’re a friend or foe! You’re coming in so damn hot, there MUST be something you want from her and she isn’t going to risk finding out what it is!!
The segment of your market that simply doesn’t feel comfortable with other people wanting their hard earned money will RUN if they think you’re just after a sale.
You need to give them what they want, HOW they want it. And that’s what we call the close… it’s a bit more than just asking for the sale.
Remind them in vivid detail the rich laundry list of benefits they’re going to get with your offer. Also remind them how much their problem sucks so they’re thinking about that sweet relief.
Surprise them with a bunch of valuable bonus offers that usually cost a bunch of money, but are going to be thrown in for free.
Slip them the price carefully, after drilling it into their heads that everything has tons of value and it should cost *this* huge looking figure, but it actually costs *that* little guy.
Let them know they can’t sit on the fence for long… put an expiry somewhere in your deal. Because many of them will sit on the fence for e-friggin-ternity.
All in all, make sure you slowly pass the granola and go for the pat. Give them what they want, how they want it.
Summary
Hopefully this info gets things sparking up for you.
Perhaps you’re asking… is there more to this story? Are there more tricks?
Absolutely. But I’m not going to share any more right now. This piece covers some strong fundamentals and more information will just clutter it up.
Just remember: the words in your business need to have an intelligent design behind them… especially if they’re going directly towards your prospect and you want them to do something specific.
Don’t take them for granted.
Thanks for reading!
