“Dearly beloved, when Rupert here was a student at Clifton High School, none of us, myself, his teachers, his classmates, dreamt that he would amount to a hill of beans. But we were wrong! And you Rupert, you were right. And that’s why tonight, before the entire nation, we’d like to apologize to you personally and to beg your forgiveness for all the things we did to you. And we’d like to thank you personally, all of us, for the meaning you’ve given to our lives.”
— The King of Comedy
Last week, I got a good question from Fahir, one of the people going through my Copy Riddles program right now. Fahir wrote (edited slightly):
“A lot of goo-roo’s talk about knowing your prospect’s deepest fears. How can we know that about our prospects? Of course, there’s research, but these are things people will not share with anyone and in most cases, they don’t know what is their fear.”
Fahir is right. It’s a genuine problem.
Much of the stuff that really motivates people — the image of the impregnable bunker, the bloody revenge, the panties getting thrown on the stage — is stuff your market will never admit. Even to themselves.
I told Fahir and the other folks going through Copy Riddles three different ways of getting around this problem.
Today I want to tell you one more way. It’s very powerful. It’s also very simple. Don’t let that fool you.
Because it’s just to look inwards.
We human beings are wonderfully unique in our fingerprints, the lines of our face, the letter-by-letter code of our DNA.
But we’re also wonderfully similar. As marketer Rich Schefren likes to say, what’s most personal is most general.
So if you find something funny, if you find something interesting, or if you find something frightening, ask yourself why. What’s the essence of it?
The people in your market might not have the exact sense of humor or interests or paranoia that you have.
But if you look a little deeper, you’ll find something like that King of Comedy quote above — something that most people can relate to on a primal level.
The bigger point being, you have many resources inside you already to help you succeed. Stories, emotions, natural human reactions.
You just have to spot them, strip them down to their underwear, and then put a slightly new outfit on them, one that’s appropriate the sales letter or sales email at hand.
Just do that, and people in your market will respond. What’s more, they will thank you, personally, all of them, for the help, compassion, and meaning you you’ve given to their lives.
If you want to know more about those resources you have hidden inside you:
I write a daily email newsletter all about that stuff. I also talk about how you can apply it to your own writing, money-making, and personal development. If you want to read that, sign up to my newsletter here.