Let me ask you a personal question or three:
Are you very politically conservative?
Do you care passionately about the fate of the planet and about climate change?
Were you out in the streets last night, partying after the Toronto Raptors won the NBA championship?
If you said “yes” to any of the above questions, then I believe you’ve got a leg up in the copywriting, marketing, and persuasion game.
Here’s why.
Dan Kennedy, possibly the most influential educator when it comes to direct marketing, once shared his four guiding principles for writing direct response copy. The one that’s relevant for us right now is:
“Great direct response copy makes people identify themselves as one or the other.”
In this way of looking at the world, there are two ways to persuade. One is based on self-interest — that’s 95% of “How to write copy” guides will tell you. But there’s another way. And it’s to appeal to somebody’s identity.
As Dan puts it, “they tell you the identification, and you tell them the behavior.”
This can be overt, such as, “If you’re politically conservative, then you should be outraged at the state of illegal immigration in this country.”
It can also be more subtle. Such as, “Choosy moms choose JIF.”
Now, I hope if you dig around in your brain right now, you will find at least one or two strong “self-identifications.”
Maybe that’s an alignment with an outside group, like a party or a cause or a team.
But it might also be the kind of person you strongly feel that you are (for example, a good mom).
Once you find this self-identification in yourself, start observing your own feelings, your own behaviors and attitudes when it comes to protecting and cherishing that identity.
Bottle all that up.
And use that insight and experience to become a superhuman marketer, persuader, or copywriter, by talking to other people’s self-identifications.
You will have a new and powerful arrow in your quiver — which the majority of your competition won’t even know about.
And you don’t even have to do much to attain it besides what you already love to do.
As for me, I’ve been working lately with some choosy owners of online businesses. They’re trying to build up a stockpile of copy assets that get their prospects to buy, and their customers to buy more.
I’ve also heard from other business owners who are in the same position, but who aren’t working with me yet. And you know what they did? They wrote me an email to talk to me and see if I could also help them grow their business.