To Hype or not to Hype

People buy on emotion... and justify with logic.

If your copy isn't emotionally driven... hitting all your prospect's hidden desires like a laser-guided missile... it'll fail.

Basically make the biggest promise you can back up with proof. I forget who said it (and I'm paraphrasing) but it was something like "Hype is big promises with no proof."

When you write copy... you want to stop your readers dead in their tracks... and have them hanging on every word of your compelling, hard-hitting copy.

Maybe, though, you could define "hype" as you see it.

-Dan

IM is a broad field and there seems to be an evolution that an individual experiences as s/he evolves. It starts with the newbie. This is someone who is often easily convinced that everything can be put on 'auto pilot' and that the entire process is 'ass-kickin' easy. I've noticed that noobs respond to hype more than people who've been around a bit and have discovered that things aren't quite as easy as they once may have thought.

I looked at your WSOs and noticed one deals with keywords and the other article marketing. Generally speaking, people who have been around long enough to be interested in figuring out the value of carefully choosing keywords and getting into the nuances of SEO are more sophisticated than say, newbie article marketers looking to pay $3 to $5 per article or spinning tons of crappy articles in the hopes of getting a pile of backlinks. I'm not painting everyone this way but there definitely seems to be a trend away from hype the more experience a marketer picks up.

So if that's the case, it comes back to the age old issue of knowing your customer. You haven't mentioned what type of software you're selling but I'll stick to what I'm saying. If its appeal is more to the seasoned marketer you'll want to keep the tone of the copy more conservative or down to earth. If it's to people looking for sniper assassin, ninja, cash sucking dirty little secrets... Well, I guess I've answered the question with my example, you'll be looking to hype it up more...

Thank you both for taking the time to respond!

@Daniel
I'm glad you asked the question. My perception of hype in this reference, without referring to some kind of literal definition, is putting together words in a more captivating and motivating manner.

@travlinguy
I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head, I was looking at it from the perspective of... Many people here are experienced in IM and I forget the volume of newcomers to IM. However, my software targets the more experienced crowd. I know articles have been associated with garbage, and probably why some people fail to see the usefulness of article marketing today. However, even the article writing application I created was built for people who want to write quality articles (generally speaking, the experienced marketers), but need an extra kick to give them ideas and help them structure their article to make it useful for a reader.

In conclusion, I think my targeted market is people who are experienced in IM and that's how I need to write my sales copy. Make sure they know I'm not trying to sell them fad tools and short lived gimmicks. I would like to try and pull in 'newbies' as well, but I'll concentrate on the experienced users first.

Let's face it. "Hype" often means exaggerating the truth. The rub is that in order to convince your prospects to buy, they need to trust you. Do you see the problem, yet?

You're trying to get people to trust you while, at the same time, you're likely to be perceived as being less than truthful. Good luck with that.

When you sell, two forces are at play... greed and fear. If you're selling a good product, no one is going to refuse to buy because you were truthful. However, even if they want the benefits you're offering, you can lose the sale if they don't trust you.

The moral: If you're not careful, hype can kill trust and the resulting fear can kill your sale.

-Johnny

its really kind of a slippery slope leaning in both directions. We who have been online for awhile have seen many different angles. I would say to keep the hype to a minumum since its hard to tell if they are for real or not without joining the program.

if you for real then just tell it as it is and you will get good results

The effectiveness of hype also depends on the market.

Hype works well in a market like the "Internet Marketing" crowd.

But if you are selling to the B2B crowd, you may want to be careful
in not making it too unbelievable.

To be sure, look at the leader in your niche, and model after it's style.

Your probability of success will be much higher.

Having said that, regardless of the market, we do want to have at
least some "hype". Because hype adds color and stirs the emotions.

The only thing is to what extend do you want to hype until?

And as Daniel said, back up your hype with proof.

Adding value through education helps tremendously.

Jag

I would add that with the emotion, you need to also give them the logic too. That way, the prospect can convince themselves that they needed it after they already decided to buy it.

It's important to get them to buy, then give them the reasons they tell themselves why they bought (and reasons for their wives too!) once they've commited.

"Yea, this BMW gets great safety ratings...."

Thanks for the feedback guys. I appreciate it. There is a lot of valuable nuggets in the replies. When I create an actual sales copy, I look forward to hearing your feedback.