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BREAKTHROUGH ADVERTISING:
HOW READY ARE YOUR
PROSPECTS TO BELIEVE?

 

SUMMARY: Schwartz's book, Breakthrough Advertising, helps us understand what a copywriter has to do to make a sales message believable.  This article discusses that idea...

One of the books that’s been most helpful to my education as a Copy Writer is “Breakthrough Advertising” by Eugene M. Schwartz.

I still go back and reread topics regularly to remind and reinforce and relearn what Schwartz teaches so well.

An early chapter in the book talks about your prospect’s “State of Awareness.” Later in the book, Schwartz comes back to this topic and relates it to the whole concept of believability.

The key idea I get out of it is that a copy writer has to start the sales message with something the prospect will accept as possible – something they already believe.

That’s why just throwing wild promises at a prospect doesn’t work. Unless the prospect is prepared to believe the promise, they’ll reject it – right along with the product you’d like to sell them.

For example, you can probably present a headline like the one below to someone who’s looking for an income opportunity. A lot of these folks tend to be dreamers. Although they might deny it publicly, experience tells us they’re looking for an easy way to get rich quick. When they see a headline like this, they’ll at least pause to read a bit more.

BREAKTHROUGH MARKETING SECRETS PAY
YOU SIX-FIGURES IN LESS THAN SIX MONTHS!!!

But that same level of claim would probably turn off a lot of audiences. For example, a single mother who works two jobs at minimum wage and is just looking for a way to get enough money to pay the light bill would be likely to ignore it.

She might, though, respond to something she finds more possible like…

EARN $50, $100, EVEN $200 EXTRA PER WEEK
WORKING JUST ONE EVENING IN YOUR HOME

What’s the difference? It’s nothing more than the prospect’s readiness to believe your claim.

The real challenge for us as copy writers is the same as it’s always been. We have to understand our prospects – often better than they understand themselves. We have to know what they will and won’t believe.

And if we study the audience and we’re still unsure, well, that’s what testing is for. The test is not whether one piece of copy is better than another, it’s a probe to discover your market’s state of readiness. How ready are they to fulfill their desire or solve their problem with your offer?

Understand that it is possible to guide your prospect. You can take them from what they already believe to the new level of belief they have to have in order to buy your product. You do it by building credibility, step by step by step. You do it by asking them to make tiny “leaps of faith” one at a time. And always you reinforce their sense that they can easily jump back to their secure starting point any time they get nervous.

This is the truest test of a copy writer’s talent – the ability to lead a prospect to buy.

But you’ll never have the chance to work your magic if you don’t start at the right point. We have to begin where the prospect wants to begin. If you try to start halfway down the track, you’ll just leave your prospect stuck at the gate - and your sale with it.