Copywriting for Authors 03 - Solving Impossible Mysteries
WHY COPYWRITING WORKS IS DUE TO YOUR HOMEWORK. You have to know your product and know the mass desire your product fills. Your copy simply matches your product to an existing demand for solutions.
Anyone can use cheap knock-off, copy-cat headline. The top pro's use only one universal solvent for each and every copywriting puzzle.
Eugene Schwartz laid out that solution, starting in his “Breakthrough Advertising” Introduction with the following points:
Every new market – every new product – every new advertisement is a fresh new problem that never existed before on the face of this earth.
The correct solution, the right headline, the perfect ad – all lie buried in the problem itself.
But that solution can be sprung to the surface by asking the right questions.
That solution comprises the first part of your ad – its headline.
The remainder of that ad is presented in the body copy, and is built out of your research notes from finding that solution.
One cannot do its work without the other. Both are vital.
Schwartz' book lays out his general prescription for asking and resolving these copywriting problems.
And despite how great that book is, it's just the tip of the iceberg.
So this field guide.
The mastery of Schwartz' materials lies in understanding them thoroughly.
Because no one else in all of advertising has covered even half of his materials.
The underlying trick is in knowing what the “right questions” are.
Schwartz' material is dense. And the “great” copywriters have spent a lifetime of trial-and-error to discover a personal version of them on their own.
That trick is stated within the goal of the the copywriter, where they only work to “take the hopes, dreams, fears and desires that already exist in the hearts of millions of people, and focus those already existing desires onto a particular product.”
First Action – Selecting A Mass Desire
What is a Mass Desire? It is the public spread of a private want.
The effectiveness of any ad copy doesn't come from the words used – it comes from the single mass desire that is attached and honed to a thirsty demand through the headline and copy of that ad.
Where this becomes interesting and profitable to marketers and copywriters is the point where a significant number of people share a private desire – significant enough numbers to pay for development, promotion, and distribution of a product which fulfills that desire. That is when a market is born.
Again, separate the market from the marketplace – like the ancient bazaars and their modern equivalent. Every individual has private wants. When these coalesce into a common, public spread – only then we have a mass desire.
Since mass desires are shared by thousands to millions to tens of millions of people, they can take years to develop. Those desires are created by social, economic, and technological forces. Promoting and marketing can then tap and amplify every dollar spent into fifty or even five thousand.
Of course, that Amplification Effect can only take place when advertising exploits an already-existing mass desire.
What Creates Any Mass Desire?
Schwartz narrowed their creation to two forces: Permanent forces and forces of Change.
Permanent Forces are derived from
a) Mass Instinct – like health, attractiveness, virility. These desires are timeless, built-in to the human experience. The only changes you notice are in the various products made available and how they are tuned-in to those desires.
b) a Mass Technological Problem, which is resolution to the new problems that our evolving technologies work to resolve. People can have various gizmo's and machines and foods and medicines in their lives, each by their own choice, in order to make their lives longer or easier.
These two forces are ever-present, and as old as the history of our species.
Forces of Change – essentially “Styles”.
a) These are Trends that start up, increase, stabilize, and gradually decline or restart. These are mercurial and have to be tracked with regular attention and study.
b) They are reinforced by Mass Education – schools, movies, radio, TV, and also the mass volumes and quality of advertising itself. Education is composed of forces that are beyond any available advertising budget to create on its own. Again, advertising can only effectively tap into already existing specific desires.
Those two forces are named or implied in the headline. Then the body copy narrows and tunes the approach.
To tap into mass desires, to make the most effective headlines and body copy, you have to analyze the specific product you are offering and discover its claims.
Three Dimensions of Any Mass Desire's Power
Every mass desire has three dimensions:
Urgency, intensity, demand for satisfaction.
Staying power, degree of repetition, inability to be satiated.
Scope – the number of people who share this desire.
While any product will have several desires that it can be attached to, only the dominant one will produce the largest possible return for the advertising dollar.
And while you might at first only want to target a small subset of the possible prospects for this product – a “splinter market” – the steps of researching your product to extract the claims and then selecting your mass desire are needed in every case.
Second Action - Analyzing Your Product
The secrets to Schwartz' analysis process is found in his two (included) talk transcripts.
1. Keep a regular monitor on all the popular media to be aware of mass desires. Tabloid magazines, movies, bestselling books. Media that people have to pay to acquire or view. What passes for “social media” may be too mercurial to analyze for profitable trends. Any of several online trend analysis tools may or may not be of long term use in helping you determine these – and are hard-pressed to determine profitability. The key here is to develop a greater personal understanding and an innate sense of what is driving our culture in that snapshot of time.
2. Analyze the product itself and find its claims. If a book, you'll note the written claims made by the author. If it's a physical product, you have to find the claims by interviewing and studying everything about it, from its manufacturing process, packaging, and delivery methods. Note all of these down.
3. Study and research the claims to find the mechanisms. During your study of the product, you'll also find explanations of how things work. The product itself has two sets of attributes
a) the physical: what it actually looks like, how well it works and
b) the functional: how it does what it does best to help the prospect attain that desire.
Both of these product attributes must be studied to find what can be used in your copy to heighten that desire for attainment to the prospect.
Again, you select one mass desire, one key claim, one underlying mechanism and align these through your headline and copy. Once you have these aligned, you have your theme. And then can massage your headline and copy to align to that “sales pitch in print” that will attract and engage the prospect forward to purchase your product.
Keep track of all your research, since this will be needed as both your prospect and market each mature in awareness and sophistication.
And once more – this short mention is only an aid to studying Schwartz' book. This is a field guide, not a replacement for his text.
Then you'll be able to take a beer like Schlitz from fifth-selling to a first-place tie by describing its specific quality manufacturing process. Or like Rolls-Royce, where “the only sound you hear at 60 mph is the electric clock ticking”. Or a grammar course which pointedly asks “Do You Make These Mistakes in English?”
The trick is to align the claim and its mechanism with the most appropriate and most powerful mass desires. Several of these might apply. Your job is to align your ad with the most powerful desire to get the best amplification results. Your work is to select the best claim and mechanism and amplify these through your copy's theme – to match the Desires, Identifications, and existing Beliefs of the Prospect.
Those three dimensions of thought and feeling are the next study...
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Copywriting for Authors - Mini-Course TOC
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