Do you know the parable of the sorceror’s apprentice?
The sorcerer leaves the tower for a bit, and his apprentice uses what magic he’s learned to get the broom to come alive and start fetching pails of water. Except the stupid broom, once it has gotten the command, won’t stop. The apprentice hasn’t learned this magic incantation yet.
So more and more water keeps being sloshed into the tower. The apprentice starts to panic and decides to chop the broom in half. Not smart. His problems are now doubled — two brooms are bringing twice the water.
This is akin to what happens when people start learning about marketing and copywriting. For example, the very first bit of marketing advice you’ll hear is to focus on how your offer benefits the prospect.
“Don’t make it about you, make it about them!”
It’s a solid piece of advice. And it should be used, when and where it’s needed. But is it the only incantation a marketer needs to know?
I thought of this a few months back when I got a promotional email from a health coach named Ari Whitten. Ari runs a very popular online course called the Energy Blueprint, and he was sending an email to his list to promote his new book. The subject line? “My New Book is HERE!”
Who cares, right? Where’s the benefit? What’s in it for me, Ari?
Well, apparently, much of Ari’s list cares. Through motivating his own loyal followers — and probably with a lot of affiliate help — Ari’s book shot up to the #2 spot in the health category on Amazon, and within the top 40 of all books on Amazon.
In a way, this is reminiscent of what Gene Schwartz calls the “most aware” state of customer awareness. From Gene’s Breakthrough Advertising:
The customer knows of your product — knows what it does — knows he wants it. At this point, he just hasn’t gotten around to buying it yet. Your headline — in fact, your entire ad — need state little more except the name of your product and a bargain price.
At the same time, this isn’t really about awareness of the product. Instead, the awareness is about Ari himself. People know him and want what he has to offer, without taking too much care of what his offer actually is.
But let’s tie this back to the sorcerer’s apprentice.
Wouldn’t Ari have been more successful if he had pitched the benefits of his new book right in the subject line? Maybe, at least for selling this one book. That’s like telling your broom to go fetch the water.
However, for the long term, always shouting benefits might not be the best strategy. If you keep writing to the same people, and all you do is talk benefits, without doing other things to build a bond with your readers (like entertaining them, teasing them with curiosity, or relating to them on a personal level), then you eventually lose their attention and you make your job harder — or impossible — for the long term.
That’s when you try chopping the axe in two. In the marketing world, that usually means making more and more extreme promises and claims. When that doesn’t seem to work, you chop again and again, making still more extreme claims.
That is, until the sorcerer comes back from his afternoon walk. He surveys the mess, throws the sleeves of his robe back, and finally casts the magic spell (called “relationship”) to drive all these marketing problems away.
“My new book is HERE!”