subject: It's Not Me...It's You! [print this page] It's Not Me...It's You! It's Not Me...It's You!
Copywriting is salesmanship in print. Yes, you heard it, COPYWRITING IS SALESMANSHIP IN PRINT!
Essentially, that's what we do in this game, we write to sell but instead of selling to just one person, we're selling to hopefully thousands or maybe millions!!!....well one can only dream right?
This is extremely important to understand as one can often forget this very important point and more or less write to please which might be good if we were writing for say a novel, or a website blog, or even perhaps a letter to a potential love interest where every little word is crucial to winning their true love and affection.
In copywriting, we're writing to the potential owner of our product or user of our service, so it's imperative that we talk directly to our prospect. Create almost a dialogue with them; relating every little feature, benefit, and advantage to how the product we're writing about is going to impact their lives in a hopefully positive way.
What Does This Mean To You The Writer?
As above, below are examples of ways we relate the benefits of our product/service to our customer:
- this means to YOU
- which will give YOU
- YOU will get...
- YOU are going to be amazed by
- YOU will instantly receive...
- what all this means to YOU
- This is how YOU will benefit...
You're probably getting the picture right now! A lot of us can get caught up in just listing the many features or using big fancy words and eloquent descriptions to describe their service but the true nature of selling and keeping your prospect's attention is by listing the benefits and relating them back to the prospect.
Put yourself in your customer's shoes, all these fantastic benefits sound great and fancy but really...why should I care about them?...what's in it for me?how do I benefit?...how will it impact my life?
As brilliant, knowledgeable, marketing savvy copywriters, it's our job to identify these benefits, clearly articulate them to our prospects and when we do so effectively, our copy can be an extremely powerful tool in generating sales which ultimately is what it all comes down to at the end of the day.
Make sure you remember to make your copy customer-focused and watch the difference it will make to your sales.
