Ask any car salesman what it means when somebody takes a test drive.

You’ll be told that once behind the wheel, the prospect will probably buy the car.

This is why a copywriter should try to get the prospect inside the copy and into the product.  Sometimes this is as easy as offering a demonstration, or sending a sample.  Basic stuff.

But sometimes it’s not so easy.

And when a copywriter can’t get the prospect physically involved with the product, the basis of involvement needs to shift.  We need to move the prospect into an imagined relationship with the product.

We need to write the copy so the prospect sees herself using it.  She imagines the positive outcome and she internalizes the benefits, so that her belief builds to the point she has another reason to support her decision to take action and make the purchase.

When I am faced with this challenge, I often think about Bill Johnson.

Today, Bill Johnson is a virtual vegetable, the saddest kind of story, brain damaged from a skiing accident.

But in 1984, Bill Johnson was a hero.  The first American to win gold in the  Olympics Men’s Downhill.  He was an unlikely hero, a troubled kid who channeled his energy into skiing.

What intrigued me about Bill Johnson went beyond his ability to put his hell raising behind him. It was his ability to follow his coaches’ visualization training.

He was highly adept at creating precise mental images of the run at Sarajevo, after his practices, seeing himself making every necessary move and every adjustment, and then replaying these images over and over.

When Bill Johnson skied down Bjelasnica Mountain in February of 1984, he had already done it in his mind hundreds of times.  No indecisiveness shaving fractions of seconds off his time.  His visualization, harnessed to his skill and his determination, made him a champion.

When a piece of copy is written so that the prospect can visualize a beneficial outcome from using the product, the same sort of thing happens.

But rarely is copy written this way.

Rarely is the prospect invited to imagine, and then, given all the tools necessary to stretch the imagination from vague thoughts to specific engagement.

Technology doesn’t do this.  Words do.

Words carefully chosen and structured to do what Bill Johnson did on Bjelasnica Mountain in 1984.

Why Should a Copywriter Ask So Many Questions?

February 16, 2012

Great salespeople are always asking questions.  Not just any question but purposeful questions, which help them better understand the prospect.  Great salespeople are gathering the information they need that lets them tie together their prospect’s desires and their product’s capabilities. When Robert Miller and Stephen Heiman wrote “Conceptual Selling” in 1987, they reminded us that [...]

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The Perfect VC Pitch

January 4, 2012

I just watched David S. Rose roll through his road-tested suggestions on how an entrepreneur should pitch to a VC. Rose has been on both sides of the fence, asking for and being asked for funding.  He runs Rose Tech Ventures, an early stage investment fund, and is chairman of Egret Capital Partners, a middle [...]

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A Travel Copywriter Wonders About the Traveler

December 7, 2011

One of my copywriting clients is in the travel vertical.  Just about every day, I am working on a hotel marketing project, either social media or website copy. So I was particularly interested to read the recent IBM Institute for Business Value report,  “Travel 2020: The Distribution Dilemma. The theme of the report is “enhancing [...]

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Email Sequence Writing

November 28, 2011

An email sequence I am writing is up on the screen this morning. It’ s an email sequence that I am working on for a client with just eight messages set up to be delivered over the course of 35 days. It starts off in a fairly typical fashion… the immediate confirmation of a prospect’s [...]

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Gary Halbert Headlines

November 4, 2011

One of the fattest (and most fun) files in my swipe file drawer is stuffed with the work of copywriter Gary Halbert, the self-professed “Prince of Print.” This morning I spent some time revisiting, reverse engineering and savoring a few of Gary’s headlines. And then, for good measure, I read a few pieces from Gary [...]

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Email Marketing Content

October 4, 2011

It shouldn’t have been a surprise when Roper Research was released earlier this year which shows that CMOs are increasingly smitten with marketing content. We each have our own definitions of exactly what marketing content is.  But it’s probably safe to say we’re dealing with content that focuses more on informing than selling. But what’s [...]

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If We Learn Differently, Don’t We Buy Differently?

September 13, 2011

Here’s the common wisdom. There are different learning styles.  Some of us are better at absorbing information when we hear it, some of us when we see it. Auditory vs. visual. That’s the common wisdom for learning styles, and naturally, marketers figure that works for learning more or less works for processing information that will [...]

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The Four Terrifying Words a Copywriter Never Wants to Hear

September 7, 2011

“This is great copy.” What the freelance copywriter wants to hear is… “What a great product.” I’m not the first copywriter to bring this up.  Eugene Schwartz and David Ogilvy have each drawn this distinction. But doesn’t it take great copy to sell?  If you need response, don’t you want a freelance copywriter to give [...]

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Why Offers Matter

August 21, 2011

When Mark Joyner wrote “The Irresistible Offer” he didn’t just uncork a wealth of great information on building offers.  He tapped into a rich vein of marketing that copywriters have been mining for a century. Mark Joyner shines a profitable light on creating offers.  And he’s the first to admit that he follows in the [...]

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