Copywriting Lessons From Prison
One of the imperfect sciences of writing sales copy is creating a voice that speaks directly to your prospect.
That means knowing exactly where to enter the conversation taking place in your prospect's head...
And research will only get you so far.
You may know who you're writing to, what's causing them pain, and what they need to hear from you to believe you have the salve (what John Carlton calls "creating your avatar")...
...but the exact formula for mixing empathy + promise + offer in a conversational tone that at once...
lowers resistance...
creates excitement... and
compels your prospects to read on...
...is a new challenge every time you flip to a clean sheet of paper.
When I was barely 20 and just starting to tour comedy clubs, a shady promoter booked me to do a free show in an Alabama state prison.
I wasn't crazy about the gig--or the pay... but I prided myself on an "any stage, any time" philosophy. If nothing else, the prison gig was bound to make for a good story.
Of course, being the least experienced, I got to go first on the show.
Sacrificial meat.
The "stage" was a riser pushed in front of steel benches in the mess hall. Think Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. Only I didn't have the luxury of:
a) a guitar in my hand
b) a band behind me, or
c) talent.
But seriously folks...
The other key advantages Cash had over me was insight and empathy.
Although he'd never done hard time, he knew the story well enough to capture the vibe in song and he used his writer's mind to bring it to life.
Which brings us back to copywriting... and resonating with your prospect.
You don't have to live on a farm to sell tractors, but you do have to know what farmers worry about and wish for ...
You have to imagine what it feels like to work from sun up to sun down only to have your fate decided by the weather ...
You have to know what a new tractor represents to someone living that reality.
Johnny Cash had been locked up just enough to know how a train whistle sounds to a man who's lost his freedom.
I wasn't so lucky.
It took 6 minutes of sheer comedy death in front of those prisoners before I finally got hip and pulled out the dirty jokes. What an idiot I was--approaching prisoners with a routine developed for couples in a comedy club.
After I wised-up and cut all the mundane "real world" material -- I killed. The crowd cheered every obscenity like I was a judge granting "time served".
Prison life and road life, while polar opposites on the surface, offer surprising similarities; deep loneliness, tedious boredom, and chronic masturbation.
I should've opened with the smut, of course. But I was new. I hadn't yet learned to think like the audience.
Once you find the core emotions that drive your prospect use your imagination to relate to them on an intimate level.
That's how you sell tractors from a high rise in the city...
And that's how you kill the prisoners.
That means knowing exactly where to enter the conversation taking place in your prospect's head...
And research will only get you so far.
You may know who you're writing to, what's causing them pain, and what they need to hear from you to believe you have the salve (what John Carlton calls "creating your avatar")...
...but the exact formula for mixing empathy + promise + offer in a conversational tone that at once...
lowers resistance...
creates excitement... and
compels your prospects to read on...
...is a new challenge every time you flip to a clean sheet of paper.
When I was barely 20 and just starting to tour comedy clubs, a shady promoter booked me to do a free show in an Alabama state prison.
I wasn't crazy about the gig--or the pay... but I prided myself on an "any stage, any time" philosophy. If nothing else, the prison gig was bound to make for a good story.
Of course, being the least experienced, I got to go first on the show.
Sacrificial meat.
The "stage" was a riser pushed in front of steel benches in the mess hall. Think Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. Only I didn't have the luxury of:
a) a guitar in my hand
b) a band behind me, or
c) talent.
But seriously folks...
The other key advantages Cash had over me was insight and empathy.
Although he'd never done hard time, he knew the story well enough to capture the vibe in song and he used his writer's mind to bring it to life.
Which brings us back to copywriting... and resonating with your prospect.
You don't have to live on a farm to sell tractors, but you do have to know what farmers worry about and wish for ...
You have to imagine what it feels like to work from sun up to sun down only to have your fate decided by the weather ...
You have to know what a new tractor represents to someone living that reality.
Johnny Cash had been locked up just enough to know how a train whistle sounds to a man who's lost his freedom.
I wasn't so lucky.
It took 6 minutes of sheer comedy death in front of those prisoners before I finally got hip and pulled out the dirty jokes. What an idiot I was--approaching prisoners with a routine developed for couples in a comedy club.
After I wised-up and cut all the mundane "real world" material -- I killed. The crowd cheered every obscenity like I was a judge granting "time served".
Prison life and road life, while polar opposites on the surface, offer surprising similarities; deep loneliness, tedious boredom, and chronic masturbation.
I should've opened with the smut, of course. But I was new. I hadn't yet learned to think like the audience.
Once you find the core emotions that drive your prospect use your imagination to relate to them on an intimate level.
That's how you sell tractors from a high rise in the city...
And that's how you kill the prisoners.
Direct Response Copywriting
"Excellence is not an event it's a habit" - Aristotle 384 BC