In 1933, Don Dwyer published an interesting self-promotional book. The title of the book was, “Target Success: How You Can Become a Successful Entrepreneur, Regardless of Your Background.”
There are two curious things about this book:
1) It was ghost-written by Dan Kennedy.
2) It was really a sales tool for Dwyer.
A bit of background:
Don Dwyer owned Rainbow International Carpet Dyeing & Cleaning Company. This was a franchise carpet cleaning opportunity. For something on the order of $10k, you could buy into the franchise and get set up with your own carpet cleaning biz in your own town.
So Dwyer’s Target Success book was there to give him credibility and positioning… and to pitch the business opportunity of buying into Rainbow Carpet Cleaning.
And here’s the clever bit:
Dwyer could have published a self-promotional book like, How To Be Successful In Carpet Cleaning. But as Dan Kennedy said, Dwyer was too smart for that.
Because such a book would not elevate Dwyer’s status. Quite the opposite. It might diminish his status.
So instead, Dwyer had Dan write a generic success book. Lessons from a self-made millionaire… how to set goals… what really makes successful people tick. And once you’re well into that story, well, then you find out about this carpet cleaning opportunity. It might not have sounded great right in the headline… but it sounds pretty good 150 pages into the book.
That opportunity might have sounded almost as good as the following simple rule:
When writing copy, it’s always better to get more specific. Always.
Except when it’s not. Sometimes, when you get specific, you turn off potential customers and clients… you narrow your market too much… you can’t get attention because you’re talking about something too fringe, cringe, or grunge.
In that case, it makes sense to go up a level or two or three, and make your appeal more ethereal. This is true whether you’re positioning an offer… or writing a sales letter… or just a sales bullet.
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