Direct marketing is counterintuitive. For me even the basics don’t come easy, so I have to use all kinds of metaphors to trick myself and avoid making stupid mistakes.
Otherwise, I end writing copy that seems perfect to me — but that makes as much of a splash as a feather floating down a well.
So here’s one metaphor that helps me and might help you, too. Let me illustrate it with a scene from this morning:
The apartment I’ve been staying in for the past few days is cold. This morning, I got cold while working there for an hour. Then I went out for a walk.
My body was tense and alert and guarded. Cold.
Outside, the sun was shining. And whenever I walked into a patch of sunlight somewhere, my body relaxed and my scowl changed into something like a smile. Warm.
But then I’d step back into the cold shadow next to a building or a bunch of trees. Each time, my body tensed up again and the scowl came back.
And so on. Over and over. Warm sunlight leading to a moment of openness and hope. Cold shadow again, making me closed and guarded.
My point is:
This is the same thing that’s going on with your prospects right now.
And if your marketing or copy is not getting all the results it’s capable of, it’s because you’re taking the focus off your prospects and their problems.
It’s a mistake that’s easy to make.
You try to get people to believe your message. You try to show them how you’re better and how you’re an expert and how you deliver results. How your solution is superior and solves the problems they have.
But people can’t hear you.
Because they’re shivering in the shadow, looking for a bit of warmth. The problem is you’re shifting the focus off them too soon, and onto some external thing.
People say they want a solution to their problem, but they really don’t. Not for a long, long time.
What they want is to be understood, to be validated, and to get an understanding themselves of why they’re in this mess to begin with.
That’s the warm sunshine that gets people’s body temperature up.
So keep the focus on them.
And only when they get so sweaty and uncomfortable that they can’t take any more hot sunlight… do you provide the cool shadow of a leafy tree and say, “Here, here’s what you need. And can I interest you in an ice-cold lemonade as well?”
Well, can I?
Because if you want more ideas on how to improve your marketing results, I write a daily email newsletter on that topic. You can sign up for it here.