I listened to a webinar a few days ago put on by two big name marketers.
The webinar was all about how to squeak more out of your marketing on Facebook, now that Facebook is cracking down on direct response ads.
The answer that these two big marketing guns had was to water down your copy. To change the main triggering words. To replace disgusting images with generic ones.
To me, this was code for more of the same, disguised in a way to make it palatable to Facebook.
And, again to my mind, underlying this new marketing approach was a continued emphasis on the emotions of fear and greed — and a bit of contempt for the customer.
Don’t get me wrong.
This marketing approach obviously works, and it’s definitely one way to get rich as a marketer. It’s also something I’ve been guilty of myself as a copywriter.
And yet, this is not the only way to succeed.
You can appeal to other emotions than fear and greed.
You can choose to make a good product rather than hyperactive marketing the core of your business.
You can look out for your customers rather than treat them with contempt.
And none of this has to be driven by altruism. As Mark Ford has written:
“Proponents of the fear-and-greed approach often argue that the smart thing to do is to follow a fear-based lead with an appeal to the prospect’s greed.
“But I have found that if you do that, you wind up attracting the kind of customer you don’t want: someone who is gullible and greedy.
“You can’t build a business by selling to the gullible and greedy. You can make scores, sometimes big scores. But you will never have a sustainably profitable business.”
This quote of Mark’s is something I keep coming back to often recently, and a kind of sign post I keep working my way towards.
And if you are a business owner or a copywriter, I think it’s a worthwhile idea to consider.
Anyways, if you have a business selling a good product and you want some help in marketing it — using copy that works in the interest of your customers — then you might like the following: