I Want You To Want Me - Why Trying To Create Awareness Of A Problem Costs You Money

You don't educate your prospect. You agitate his pain.

Big difference.

Remember... people buy on emotion. So if your prospect isn't experiencing emotion, he won't buy.

The Problem-Agitate-Solve style of copywriting is very effective.

Alex

Depending on what you're selling, you should either agitate pain or agitate a problem/fear/frustration. Strong copy should always appeal to the emotions of a prospect.

I just recently finished a letter and spent several pages throughout the copy identifying the problem, agitating pain and frustration, reminding the prospect of it and then reminding them how they can avoid it in my concluding pages. Sometimes, depending on the product, it can take that long, or even longer.

One thing I will say though is that your copy needs to be balanced and shouldn't be all doom and gloom, or it can make the prospect feel hopeless, worthless etc. Use forwarding statements to propel the copy along and remind the prospect that you have a solution, even if that solution isn't presented until several pages later.

Thanks for all the great insight and taking time to post informative responses. As to what I am selling, I am looking at this from a general perspective, as my goal is to write sales copy for other people.

One of the interesting and often the most frustrating things about copywriting is...there is almost an infinite number of ways of doing it.

For every "proven" technique - there's often an opposite "proven" technique. And to add to the confusion stacks of others.

(Everyone will tell you always do a P.S. - I've never written a sales letter without one - but Halberts "Coat of Arms" letter - one of the most successful ever mailed didn't have one - it was designed to be "personal" and usually if you write a "personal" letter you don't write a P.S.).


Depending on the market (and lots of other variations) - One "technique" is bang on right and the others are not nearly as good - it's not always easy working out which one to use.

This is why so many copywriters become fanatical "testers" - (testing almost everything - again and again and again...).

So writing a piece of copy becomes a never - ending nightmare.

My view for what it's worth is - split test - one at a time - the main "techniques" (Headlines, Deck, Openers, Subheads, Offers, Close and the P.S.).

Or go with your instinct - you just "feel" what the best "techniques" are (this can be helped with lots of research on the product or service).

This way - writing becomes faster and easier.

And if it turns out to be wrong - then change the copy.

Hope this helps a bit.

Steve

My own experience. Just from the pont of view of isolating out the headline: A problem, articulated in the right way, pulled several hundred percent better. Not two or three hundred percent -- start at double that and up.

Putting their problem in some new light -- like explaining the hidden costs of continuing to have the problem, can work wonders.

In other cases, explaining the problem you've been living with Is Not Your Fault will motivate buyers who hesitated before.

My take on this is it's somewhat naive to simply present "the solution." The tech industry has done this, almost exclusively. So much so, it has the reputation of coming up with solutions to problems nobody has. Solutions scouring the landscape in search of a problem.

It's naive to think you're the first one to come along with "the solution." It's more reasonable to assume most of the potential buyers have been bombarded with people stating that they have the solution.

You're not reminding them of their problem as such, you are convincing them you understand their problem well enough to come up with a credible solution. A really big reason why -- after all the solution mongering -- nobody believes YOU understand the problem. Not them.

Failure to connect the solution to the problem also results in bullets that are features, not benefits.

The mirror criticism of solutions without problems is some people can't take their attention off what they are trying to sell long enough to learn about the customer's problems. And the intoxicating notion that, by simply concenrating on the solution to no particular problem you're selling to everybody and anybody.

Agitation works not just because the emotions are aroused, but also because the reader believes you've been there And Share Those Emotions. You won't be believed otherwise.

Just on the face of it, doesn't saying "here's the solution" sound more than a bit egomaniacal?

Ever see those job applicants who say "Okay, I'm here now. You can send everyone else home." It comes off like that.

Try not to look at this as their problem. But the proof that you understand their problem because you've done your homework. Scratch the "wasting your time stating the problem" argument, and I'll bet you'll find an unsettling percentage who can't be bothered to test with users or learn about their customers.

Be an expert in their problem first. Then they'll accept your expertise as being part of the solution.

Selling really should not involve forcing anyone to do anything. This old kind of selling with objections and reversals and closes puts prospect and seller into an uncomfortable and stressful situation. It's called the "transactional model" of selling.

You can uncover awareness of problems in the prospect's mind by using "pain points": brief, emotional descriptions of typical reasons why similar people & organizations have hired or bought from you in the past. For example, "IT Value-Added Reseller clients have brought me on board because they've typically been:

* frustrated that price keeps coming up as the number one objection in conversations with prospective customers

* concerned about revenues that are up one month and down the next

* upset with sales staff who were either unwilling or unable to prospect comfortably and effectively."

They may not have been aware of these specific issues before I mentioned them, but once they hear them one or more may resonate. They realize I understand them and the real problems they're facing, and that gives me huge credibility. I'm not fighting to persuade anyone.

In contrast, lots of salespeople that I help have these lists of bad prospects that they've continuously tried to talk to (the notes in the CRM say "Called", "No response", "Left voicemail", "Wasn't interested", "Called again", etc.) and it's clear that this prospect has no urgent problem. The prospect must acknowledge that they have pain, or you will indeed be wasting your time and money trying to "create awareness".

Ineffective at adding value.

FTFY.

I honestly believe the developers of this stuff do not know the initials C.R.M. stand for whole words, or what those words could possibly mean.

Leave it to the tech industry to take perfectly good words, and make their combination meaningless. Having just had a brush with SOA as a communications firewall -- and I mean not being able to get a call through without disconnection -- I just find the whole, end-to-end, scalable, enterprise solutions industry a contradiction in terms.

I say this having asked the CEO and VP of a leading developer of CRM software how the software calculates the value of the customer or manages that value. They didn't know what I was talking about. Nor did they think that's the way the software should work.

You can't value add that.

Absolute bizarro world of calling things the mirror opposite of what they are.

John, in that example I am simulating *only* talking to IT VARs. They understand the terminology and the fact that I have worked with many others (or accountants, or production managers or whatever specific industry I'm calling into) gives credibility. The pain points identify problems they may have that I can help solve for them. "Adding value" requires persuasion and overcoming objections, which are stressful things and I don't do that. I solve urgent, painful problems for my clients.

The OP's point was that trying to create awareness (or "add value") costs money, and I agree. It also wears you out as the salesperson. I'd much rather find prospects who are experiencing urgent, painful problems and acknowledge their situation. Then I don't have to persuade anybody or sell value or create awareness.

Yes, the IT world is full of jargon, but if you look closely at other fields EVERY field is filled with technical terms. Doctors talk in "nonsense" all the time to differentiate one body part from another (and remember these things are organic and contiguous--where does one begin and another end, exactly?). Accountants have their terms, engineers their own. Production managers talk about JIT and Six Sigma. Although I've never dealt with it, I'm sure grocery stores have their own terms for processes, places and things. There's no escape from jargon.

I say do what works.

Copy that gets me to take my wallet out and buy is one that resonates with me on an emotional level.

I'm reading the copy and in my head I'm saying "yeah! that's so true!", or, "damn, he's right, I better get moving now if I'm going to solve this problem".

There's no two ways around it.

I wouldn't spend a dollar on copy that doesn't show me, that the writer understands my situation and wants to help.

So...

I do the same thing for all my clients, from the very first one, a dentist who helps old people get better dentures to the most recent copy I wrote for a client in the dating niche.

A good point. And that is fine. But at some point your sales letter devolves into the "order taker" sales guy. No actual selling, just "if I've stumbled across you writing out a check, you might as well give it to me."

Awareness, as you say, is much touted. But you can be aware and not buy. Also a good point.

There are a whole lot of people who equate simple awareness with the whole of the selling job. Brand awareness comes to mind.

Essentially the first sales letter that gets there works. Not exactly the starving crowd, but a couple of starving individuals out of the crowd. The customer is buying and the sales guy (or letter) just needs to get out of their way. Vending machines work that way.

No copywriter needed.

That's not what I am talking about here.

Hi John, thanks for the response. I want to clarify something: in this process, I only use sales letters to start qualifying prospects. If the pain points resonate, they'll call. I use questioning skills when they do to find out more about their situation and see if they'll acknowledge experiencing it (if they don't they won't buy). So I don't sell anything but the "appointment" in the letter. Generally I concentrate on complex IT, operations management or sales training sales. So I'm sure it's different than selling something more solid, where your expertise might be.

Everyone is speaking apples and oranges.

Your approach to your sales letter depends on your market, product and your research.

Selling B2B to generate appointments is a lot different than selling a product in weight loss, health or biz opp markets in which the problem-agitate-problem-solution approach is a great copy approach.

Am I the only one who thinks that John S and Jason Kanigan are saying the same thing a different way?

Anyway...

I'm not sure what you've sold, John. But maybe you could expand on this:

I thought the whole point of copy was to get the order. Or get you one step closer. In fact, the CTA is one of the 2, 3, or 4 critical missing things Steve is talking about here:

http://www.warriorforum.com/copywrit...ml#post4859726

Let me restate that another way. I'll tell you a story...

When I first got into the window replacement business here in SWFL, I was a couple years "late" from an "order taking" perspective.

After someone's had their windows blown in, lost their roof, etc. it's a whole lot easier to persuade them that they need a preventative solution like hurricane windows. Otherwise the "solution" is lost on them. Sure, they think they "get it" but they don't.

(My parents during Hurricane Andrew, for example. Lost everything. And have had hurricane resistant windows ever since.)

So, the sales guys years before me hardly needed to do a presentation. It was effortless. They were sought out.

But without that constant reminder, without a storm in years, getting a sale down here is now a process of wrestling the prospect down on the ground and forcing them to sign on the dotted line.

If you can skip all that, and they lay down on the floor saying "pin me"... who wouldn't take that instead?

That's why we go through all the presentation legwork to show them what's up: "Here's how you could lose everything you own in a flash... oh, and, you save money!"

A sale is a sale, right? Master sales guy or not... I'll take hurricane prospects all day long. I guess it's a matter of how hard do you want to work for it?

I mean, these are good bullets calling attention to pain points.

And almost every business owner has them.

In Eugene Schwartz's book, Breakthrough Advertising, he goes into why you want to channel your prospects needs, desires, and emotions that are already there.

He likened the process to unleashing an atomic bomb. The potential of the atom bomb is already there and just needs to be detonated.

-Rick Duris

PS: I think Alex offered a great distinction between education and agitation.

This from a copywriter's website whom I know very, very well (click here to read more of what he says)

"...Your sales copy must also “continue the conversation” your reader is already having with the person in the mirror.

"In other words, the job of marketing and sale copy is not to create desire where there is none – but to increase the desire for the solution your product or service provides, and for which your target market has already been searching..."