11/26/2007: "The Secret To Great Copywriting"

Do you know who your prospect is? Do you write to a group or an audience? If so, let me tell you a secret. You can write the greatest sales copy in the world. But if it's aimed at the wrong target, it will fall flat --- every time.

The secret to great copywriting is to know your prospect. I'm not talking about a group of people. Not at all. Get that group out of your mind. You have one prospect.

After years of being a copywriter, I know who my main client is. I know who I work best with. I know who needs the type of writing I do and who appreciates it the most.

I know that one person who will buy my services.

One day I took out a yellow legal pad. These are what I call my "thinking pads." I made a list of what makes up my client. This is the person who most often uses my services and the person I most like to work with. Here's what I came up with.

My prospective client is:

1. A man
2. Age 30 to 55
3. Has a good education
4. An entrepreneur
5. Successful
6. an alpha personality
7. a person who can and does make fast decisions
8. Prefers to make initial contact by telephone
9. a workaholic
10. Equally divided between married and single with a bias to being single or divorced.
11. a person with money
12. a Starbucks customer
13. Willing to pay a high price if he believes he'll get a good return for his money.
14. a guy who thinks he is a good writer but he knows he can't sell in print. He also secretly knows he's not the writer he likes to think he is.
15. is smart enough to know he needs to hire a professional if he is going to be as successful as he wants to be.
16. an avid reader - spends lots of time on Amazon

Now I can see my prospective client. He becomes real. He takes a shape. I can begin jotting down hot buttons. I can come up with ideas just for him. I know the words and ideas that will make him respond to me.

I read what he reads. I take GQ and Esquire. (The letter carrier probably wonders about me.) I keep up with what interests this man. I know what he reads and wears, where he shops and what his hobbies are. I'm a Top 1000 book reviewer on Amazon. That's where he spends lots of time. I "care" about these things because he is the person who makes up the majority of my income.

With that in mind, I write my sales copy. I write it to one person --- the person above. I write to him as if I'm sitting across a table or desk from him. It's just him and me.

Remember when you were in college and you wrote a letter home? Well, now I guess you email home. I used a fountain pen and did it the old fashioned way.

I wrote to grandma often. As I wrote, I saw grandma in my mind. I could smell her scent and feel the room she was sitting in. I wrote to that person. I wrote to her feelings. Or, you might say, to her hot buttons.

If I needed money (which was often) I knew just exactly how to get granny to send me money. Oh, it wouldn't have worked with mother or dad. But I knew the hot buttons of each family member. I knew what I could say and couldn't say. I knew what would interest them and what would bore them.

When you write your copy --- whether it's for yourself or a client --- the first thing you should do is to picture the real prospect in your mind. Write down all you can think of about that person. Describe that person down to the clothes he or she wears and the car she drives.

This takes experience. It also takes a lot of research. But it's well worth it.

If you're writing copy for a client, you must get your client to dig deep and help you find this prospect. Because your copy should be written directly to this one person.

When you direct your sales copy to one person, it's much easier to write. But, more importantly, it's sales copy that's going to hit the mark. You'll get more calls. You'll get more sales.

Your prospect is not a group. It's one person. Write to that one person. Then you'll soon see his name on a check made out to you!

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