Breaking a well-known copywriting rule ...

On a recent Facebook update I posted the following questions: Why
do people want to live? Why are people afraid of dying? What is
it about life that makes it want to continue?

Some FB friends indicated that they were more concerned about
what happens to those left behind after their death, than what
happened to them personally. Well, if death is the end, then
there is not much concern you may have for yourself?

This raises the question on how those marketers who deal with
after-life issues sell their products? The funeral and life
insurance business come to mind. I mean, how do you sell a casket
to a living person? Yet we know that tens of thousands of seniors
make final arrangements before their demise so the sale is being
made.

When I study the marketing and advertising of such companies
there is a common thread: they always sell on the premise of what
happens to the family members who are left behind. And this is
not by accident as I would explain in just a moment.

You see, a general rule of thumb in marketing is that a
‘prevention product’ is harder to sell than a ‘cure product’. For
example, it would be easier to sell dental filling than cavity
prevention toothpaste. The reason is not hard to see. When the
prospect has a problem which affects him personally, then it’s
easier to get his attention. When the prospect doesn’t presently
have the problem, but is asked to prevent the problem using your
product, then it is harder to imagine.

But marketers have found that there is one exception to this
“rule” and that is when the problem can affect his loved ones.
Those who sell funeral products found that it is easier to make
the sale when the marketing is based on the dismay brought about
by the prospect’s death on his wife and children if money is not
provided to meet these expenses. As a Florida resident for the
past ten years, I’ve spoken to many seniors who have spent
upwards of $25,000 on their final arrangements soon after their
retirement. Most of these retirees were sold on the same premise
of not leaving these expenses for their loved ones to carry.

Prevention products are some of the toughest to sell and if your
product or service falls in this category you must have already
experienced this. For example, if you sell a software that
prevents websites from being hacked, then most webmasters are not
too concerned about website security until after they are
hacked—then your product becomes a cure.

One way to get around this hurdle would be to sell your
“prevention” product as a cure. The trick here is to agitate the
potential problems to the point that the prospect can already see
himself having the problem and see your product as a cure. So
picture the inconveniences and money lost to a website that has
been hacked and all the damage to his business and time lost in
recovering data. If you can get him to imagine this with enough
intensity, then it would be ten times easier to make the sale.

Traditionally it has been difficult to get men to see their
doctors just for a physical checkup. Every concerned wife knows
that it is not easy to get us men to see a doctor, unless we are
gripping our chest and collapsing to the floor. But just one
heart attack and the attitude changes dramatically!

So if you study the successful marketing strategies of those who
sell health product such as vitamins and other diet supplements,
you’ll notice that they picture as graphically as possible the
diseases their products are assumed to prevent—clogged arteries,
lost memory, lost virility and lost hair. They pile on all the
latest statistics on lower nutritional value of modern food and
use of the dangers of using genetically modified food, all in an
effort to get the prospect to see their product as a cure.

Now if you add in a dose of human nature it is not hard to
appreciate that it is a lot easier to take medication for, say,
diabetes than it is to eat a low sugar diet. It is lot more “fun”
to eat the heartburn inducing meal and then take the Pepsid than
it is to avoid those food.

Whatever you are marketing, evaluate whether it falls in the
general category of a cure or a prevention, and keep in mind that
preventions are hard to sell with the EXCEPTION of when you can
visualize the problem as happening to the others around the
prospect rather than himself.

So that water filter for the home would sell better if the
marketing to the parents focuses on the children’s health, rather
than the parents'. The roadside vehicle assistance would sell
better to a husband if marketed as help for his stranded wife and
children, than for himself having broken down on the highway.

The bottom line is that prevention can sell effectively if you
focus your marketing on others having the problem, rather than
your prospect.

-Ray Edwards