November 9, 2016

Weird tricks: Proverbs In Copywriting

Daily Writing Blog, How to's and Tutorials for Writers

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Weird Tricks: Proverbs In Copywriting

Every so often I like to give little bits of technical copywriting information out to the good readers of this blog. Just last week I wrote about how if you can give names to little parts of a product section or a sales letter, then those parts will be more effective than they would if you just wrote them down and moved on.

Today’s topic is a combination of that and one of the weirder topics I’ve written about on this blog before; how to start a cult.

Today’s topic is how to use proverbs, gnomes, non-sequiturs and other philosophy-type articles in your sales letters.

Let’s start with an example…

“If you want to succeed in business, then you need to be like fire and ice.”

The above sentence is a hackneyed example of a first-draft sentence, but it’s already got some intrigue. It’s already better than “there are two aspects to succeeding in business.” You could use that as a headline in a long-form sales letter, or you could use that sentence to build interest in the early stages and come back to it. (Or not; you could leave it open if you wanted to leave an open loop.)

There are a lot of better examples you can use, and when it comes to this sort of thing, the hard work is done for you.

Copywriting is a set of tools which basically amount to a written version of charisma. When it comes to charisma, the best people to learn from are the cult leaders, motivational speakers and fundamental preachers.

Cult Leaders, Free-Thinkers and The Art Of Saying Nothing

When I was about twelve, I read the blurb for a Deepak Chopra book. I decided to buy it.

Aside from that one occasion, I’ve never read a book that said absolutely nothing. It was full of endless thought experiments that didn’t go anywhere. It had many instances of the phrases like I’ve used above; “the endless wonder of the Universe”-type phrases which sound poetic but say very little.

Interestingly, (and probably a topic for another day,) it also contained another technique which was pretty powerful: he constantly redefined common concepts into something new. He’d pose questions like, “Is Evolution real if we’re all part of an eternal whole?”

…Well, I mean maybe if you accept the premise and redefine evolution.

Back To Copywriting

To re-iterate the point from above, copywriting is charisma in written form.

Essentially, when you’re selling a product, you’re selling yourself – or your narrative – and that’s what sells the product recommendation.

If you can take parts of charismatic personalities, then you will achieve exactly the above effect.

Luckily, there are countless hours of footage of charismatic speakers that you can dissect and use for your own evil salesman ends.

A Warning Though

I’m far from the first person to suggest this as a technique. After all, it’s pretty obvious that if you steal what works for other people, it’ll probably work for you too.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to do it though.

For instance, recently I’ve been seeing a lot of articles that stylistically copy Donald Trump. Bloggers and journalists who’ve got their own styles have been replacing those stylistic quirks with Trumpisms. Things like:

“I just read a book. Trust me, it’s the best book ever. I’ve been speaking to people, and they all tell me it’s a great book. Great book, trust me.”

This is how not to use someone else’s charismatic quirks. All a sentence like that does is make everyone think about Trump and it takes them out of your copy and out of the moment.

It’s the same with a lot of other niches and phrases.

At one point, I was writing about MMA for a client. I analysed the copy and general jargon of the market, and it struck me that everyone said exactly the same phrases, over and over.

Copywriting in the field was basically always the same; internet tough guy, vague reference to brutality, completely out-of-place Bruce Lee quote and then some guff about the secret fighting technique of [Spetsnaz, Navy Seals, Batman, Kung-Fu guys From The Orient, Spartan Warriors.]

People can easily detect those ruses. You have to look into the specific linguistic choice and see why it works.

Why Do Religious, Philosophical, And Theological Phrases Work?

Most charismatic or profound phrases work because they have two things in common:

  • At a surface level, they’re very simple. “We’re all one.” “Don’t you want your life to be better?” or “To succeed, you need to walk through fire.
  • At a deep level, they’re completely ambiguous. Whilst being simple in their construction, none of the sentences above mean anything. Neither do political slogans, religious texts or books of common wisdom.

Final Thoughts

That’s not to say there isn’t value in any of the above. In fact, these texts are incredibly important. However, the value of said texts is mostly user-generated. This serves two purposes:

  • Your reader is less likely to disagree with you.

Your reader won’t disagree with the phrase, “You want to be better.” Of course they don’t. It’s a rhetorical question, but more importantly, they’ve generated their own implications which they can’t disagree with.

“You need to be like water.”

How can you disagree with that statement? Before you can disagree, you have to generate a position for yourself from the abstract words.

  • The text is interactive.

Any written material is more effective if it can force interaction. A lot of marketers talk about making their reader’s heads nod involuntarily. This is a form of getting them to agree in terms of body language.

I’m not sure I buy that, but interaction is good. For one thing, it keeps your reader reading. It gets them into the copy, and it can start a “Yes-Ladder.” If I were to say, “Imagine the sun on your face. You can feel the heat in your temples, and it feels nice,” then I’ve switched from “imagine” to “do” pretty quickly.

If you can make your reader think, conceptualise and fill in the blanks, then you’ve gotten them to interact, gotten their immersion without their awareness and you’re onto a winner.

Using philosophical phrases is a direct and easy way to achieve this effect.

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