( I just want to say that these ideas were taken from the book breakthrough advertising by Eugene M. Schwarts)
Let’s assume you have now built your headline or subject line.
You now have a means of stopping your prospect—of bringing to a momentary halt all the diverse activities of his mind—of focussing his attention, at least for a moment.
This is what most ads fail to do.
But keep in mind that our headline did not contribute to any selling. All we did was catch the guy’s attention.
From that moment your body copy does the selling.
BUTT….
Before you write the body copy, you first need to understand what is in your prospect’s mind. Why are they looking for the solution to a problem that you are solving?
The answer to this question will determine the theme of your Ad.
So here are the three dimensions of thought and feeling.
1. Desires
These are the wants, needs, cravings, thirsts, hunger, lusts, etc. that drive your prospect through life.
- They could be physical- such as the desire to be thin, or strong, or healthy or free from acne, corns, or bad breath.
- They could be material- such as the desire to possess money, or a big car, or a beautiful dress.
- They are sensual—such as the thirst for a cold glass of beer, or the need for a tired body to stretch out on a soft bed.
They have tremendous driving power.
And they already exist. You cannot create them, diminish them, or battle them.
But you can expand them, sharpen them, channel them, and give them a goal.
The only job of a copywriter is to make people want.
To sharpen his desire. To picture every moment of its fulfillment. To let him see it, feel it, touch it, sit in it, listen to his friends rave about it. To make him visualize the wonderful new world your product offers him so strongly that he practically lives in it—and then to offer him that product.
2. Identifications
These are the roles your prospect wants to play in life, and the personality traits he wants your product to help him build, or project.
These longings for identification—longings for a sharply defined personality—longings for social status—are not material or physical or sensual at all.
They complement and intensify physical desires.
For example, not only does a woman buy low-calorie food to become thin,
but in so doing she also builds again a radiant, attractive, youthful personality.
And not only does a man buy a car for the power, speed, and transportation it will give him, but equally as much for the projection of prestige, success, and ready-cash-to-burn that this purchase communicates to his neighbors.
Call them what you will—goals, hopes, dreams, ambitions, envies, admirations, phantasies, or objectives—this subtle, never-openly-spoken projections of our own self-images are immensely powerful sales forces. These people want to belong somewhere. Nobody wants to be themselves.
Simple logic just helps them make excuses to make the purchase.
Why would a person want to buy a 200-foot yacht?
Is it water transportation?
So, your task is to put them directly behind your product. To make him feel prestigious and select the group he joins when he becomes a user of that product. To picture for him the people who live in your product’s world today.
3. Beliefs
These are the opinions, attitudes, prejudices, fragments of knowledge, and conceptions of reality that your prospect lives by.
This is the world of the emotionalized reason that he inhabits—the
The way he accepts or rejects facts and builds up his universe, the
types of thinking he uses to arrive at decisions, the ideas and values which give him comfort and which he believes are permanent and true.
These ideas may be shallow or profound, valid or false, perfectly logical or mere wishful thinking.
But it is not advertising’s mission to argue with them. And no one advertiser can change them.
Advertising is not education; it does not have society as its
sponsor.
We are salesmen, not educators.
So, accept reality as it is.
People believe in certain ways. These beliefs form a filter through which
your product-information must be accepted or be rejected.
You should start with these beliefs as a base. You build up from them
by using his kind of logic, not your own, to prove that your product satisfies his desires—to prove that your product works—to prove that his kind of people rely on your product—to prove that no other product satisfies his needs as well.
There you have them. Desires. . . . Identifications. . . . Beliefs.
Each of them composed of equal parts of emotion and thought.
The three dimensions of your prospect’s mind—the raw materials with which you will work.
To study them, we shall deal with each of them separately.
But, in actually writing your ad, of course, you will weave them
into each other—to create a simple, fluid path of thought from
the beginning to the end of your ad.
This is not as complicated as it looks, It probably looks complicated because of my writing style.
So here is an email I got from Dan Lok a few years ago. He almost sold me his course but I didn’t have money to buy it. That’s why I used the word almost. Read it carefully and You will understand what I was talking about. Click here;)