By
Robert W. Bly
How
well do you really know your customers?
Reading the list data cards
is a good way to find out something about the folks you are mailing to, but
it’s not enough. Knowing that you are writing to farmers, Information
Technology (IT) professionals, or plumbers is just the start. You have to dig
deeper. But how?
To write powerful copy, you
have to go beyond the demographics to understand what really motivates these people
-- who they are, what they want, how they feel, and what their biggest problems
and concerns are that your product can help solve.
One
direct marketer told me, “We want to reach prospects on three levels --
intellectual, emotional, and personal.”
Intellectual is the first level and,
while effective, not as strong as the other two. An intellectual appeal is
based on logic -- e.g., “Buy the stocks we recommend in our investment
newsletter and you will beat the market by 50 to 100 percent.”
More
powerful is to reach the prospect on an emotional
level. Emotions that can be tapped include fear, greed, love, vanity, and,
for fundraising, benevolence. Going back to our example of a stock market
newsletter, the emotional appeal might be, “Our advice can help you cut your
losses and make much more money, so you become much wealthier than your friends
and neighbors. You’ll be able to pay cash for your next car -- a Lexus, BMW, or
any luxury automobile you care to own -- and you’ll sleep better at night.”
The
most powerfully you can reach people is on a personal level. Again, from our example of a stock market
newsletter: “Did you lose a small fortune in the April 2000 tech stock
meltdown? So much that it put your dreams of retirement or financial
independence on hold? Now you can gain back everything you lost, rebuild your
net worth, and make your dream of early retirement of financial independence
come true. A lot sooner than you think.”
To
reach your prospects on all three levels -- intellectual, emotional, and
personal -- you must understand what copywriter Michael Masterson calls the
buyer’s “Core Complex.” These are the emotions, attitudes, and aspirations that
drive them, as represented by the formula BFD -- beliefs, feelings, and
desires:
·
Beliefs. What does your audience
believe? What is their attitude toward your product and the problems or issues
it addresses?
·
Feelings. How do they feel? Are they
confident and brash? Nervous and fearful? What do they feel about the major
issues in their lives, businesses, or industries?
·
Desires. What do they want? What are
their goals? What change do they want in their lives that your product can help
them achieve?
For
instance, we did this exercise with IT people, for a company that gives
seminars in communication and interpersonal skills for IT professionals. Here’s
what we came up with in a group meeting:
·
Beliefs. IT people think they are
smarter than other people, technology is the most important thing in the world,
users are stupid, and management doesn’t appreciate them enough.
·
Feelings. IT people often have an
adversarial relationship with management and users, both of whom they service.
They feel others dislike them, look down upon them, and do not understand what
they do.
·
Desires. IT people want to be
appreciated and recognized. They also prefer to deal with computers and avoid
people whenever possible. And they want bigger budgets.
Based
on this analysis, particularly the feelings, the company created a direct mail
letter that was its most successful ever to promote a seminar “Interpersonal
Skills for IT Professionals.” The rather unusual headline: “Important news for any IT professional who has ever felt like telling
an end user, ‘Go to hell.’”
Before
writing copy, write out in narrative form the BFD of your target market. Share
these with your team and come to an agreement on them. Then write copy based on
the agreed BFD.
Occasionally
insights into the prospect’s desires and concerns can be gleaned through formal
market research. For instance, a copywriter working on a cooking oil account
was reading a focus group transcript and came across this comment from a user:
“I fried chicken in the oil and then poured the oil back into a measuring cup.
All the oil was there except one teaspoon.”
This comment, buried in the
appendix of a focus group report, became the basis of a successful TV campaign
dramatizing the selling point that food did not absorb the oil and therefore
was not greasy when cooked in it.
Veteran
ad man Joe Sacco once had an assignment to write a campaign for a new needle
used by diabetics to inject insulin. What was the key selling point?
The
diabetics Sacco talked to all praised the needle because it was sharp. A
non-user would probably view being sharp as a negative. But if you have ever given
yourself or anyone else an injection, you know that sharper needles go in
smoother, with no pain. And Sacco wrote a successful ad campaign based on the
claim that these needles were sharp, therefore enabling easier, pain-free
insulin injection.
Copywriter
Don Hauptman advises, “Start with the prospect, not the product.” With BFD, you
can quickly gain a deeper understanding of your prospects before you attempt to
sell them something. Stronger marketing campaigns usually follow.
About the author:
Robert
W. Bly is a freelance copywriter and the author of more than 50 books including
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Direct
Marketing (Alpha). His e-mail address is
rwbly@bly.com and his Web site address is www.bly.com.