It’s been a while since I did a technical or pure copywriting post, so why not today?
I’m going to talk about something that’s a lot of people overlook.
You’re not selling reality with copywriting or any marketing.
Working in many niches has taught me one thing: your target market isn’t what you think it is. Even more importantly, your target market isn’t what they think they are.
An Example Of This From My Freelance Work
When I’ve worked in the survival niche, I had a picture in my head. If you want to play along, play along too; what do you think the average person who buys survival products is like?
If you’re naïve like me, you might think:
- American hunters who sit out waiting to shoot deer all day
- Guys from Preppers and other shows who stockpile food
- Smart people who are doing damage limitation and other preparedness things
- Paranoid people who think that Bush Obama Hillary Trump is going to institute martial law
- Mountaineers with far too much money to spend on overpriced gear
Now, imagine the surprise when you realise that the survival market mostly consists of people who live in the suburbs who don’t go outdoors if they can’t help it. People for whom their local supermarket running out of bread is a massive problem. Most folks who buy into the survival market have the political paranoia, but the idea that they’re preparing for Doomsday or the next Civil War is pretty far off.
In reality, they don’t know much about politics and their disaster preparedness tends to come down to, “One day the end is coming and I’m going to escape to the countryside, hunt mushrooms and shoot all the damned looters and martial-law-government-folks that try to steal my mushrooms.”
The whole psychology of it is not without issue.
Anyway, you’re not here for psychoanalysis, you’re here for “How do we turn this weird fact into stacks of cash?”
Well, that’s where the story gets weirder.
Escapism In Copywriting
Copywriting is about selling your product… at the end of the sales letter.
Until then, what you’re doing is building rapport with the reader – or at least, that’s what you’re told to do.
In reality, you’re building rapport with your reader’s aspirations. Jim the hipster might live in a quiet suburb posting “Hillary for Prison” memes, but in his mind he’s a revolutionary that might have to go and hunt mushrooms in a couple of years – government on his tail.
Which version of Jim do you sell to?
The early stages of copywriting – building the interest and the desire – are all about escapism and an appeal to the aspirational self.
Most preppers would be snack food in the first few days of a zombie apocalypse, but not in their minds or wallets. The same thing is true of the middle-aged women all buying perfumes to get Johnny Depp or the guy who plays Thor from the adverts. It’s also true of the fitness bros who think they’re going to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger naturally in three years’ maximum if they just take 10g of creatine and count their calories.
You have to sell to that aspirational self – the person who believes all of those things.
If you don’t, you’re giving the message, “Hey girl… this perfume works best if you lose weight and lower your standards” or, “Yeah guy, you’re never going to look like a fitness model unless you take steroids but our protein powder at least tastes ok.”
You’re not going to sell anything like that, reality be damned.
Storytelling Is Your Major Tool
Copywriting is the art of connecting a bunch of disconnects.
The average gym-goer is never going to look like a chiselled Greek god who turns heads in the street. Yet that’s his goal, and selling him on less than the goal will mean you fail.
The average woman isn’t going to land a Christian Grey billionaire with impeccable taste in style despite a weak colour palette.
Your average survivalist probably can’t walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded so the idea that they’re going to haul around a 100 litre rucksack while evading the NWO is unlikely.
Yet it’s your job to bridge the gap on all of these things.
The best – and possibly only – way to do this is through storytelling. Deep down, all of your readers are aware of the gap between their actual self and aspirational self, and that’s why they’re seeking the product out.
You’ve got to use storytelling to bridge the gap, because if you try to tell them outright, “Hey you’re a loser but my product will make you a winner” then you’re not going to do so great.
Storytelling is your major tool for building intrigue and bridging the gap between now and hypothetical future in which your reader’s problem is solved.
This is why I’ve written before about fiction writing being useful for non-fiction writers. Who is better at setting a scene; a fiction writer or a guy who usually writes blog posts about protein powder?
Don’t take my word for it. Look at the best performing sales letter of all time:
Final Thoughts
For most of your sales letter, you’re not selling. That’s the weird thing. You’re setting a scene and building a bridge between your reader’s aspiration and their reality. Copywriting and sales in general work due to weird human psychology quirks, and this is one of them.
It’s weird that you can’t say directly that a dream isn’t reality. It’s weird that people’s trust/suspicion filters get bypassed by a good tale and it’s strange that a fake story can make someone buy a real product.
However, this is why you should take a results-oriented approach to sales: reality isn’t what you expect and what you think you know about a target market, audience or niche is a lot different to the reality of it.