Whatever your promotion is selling – regardless of which niche you might be working in – the most immediate objection that readers of ANY long copy promtion will raise is exactly the same…
“Why the hell should I give you my money?”
That’s it.
Really. That is it.
More advanced copy theory will tell you to think up all sorts of potential objections and come up with innovative ways to overcome them in your promotion…
And don’t get me wrong…
That is all well and good. Further down the line that advanced thought will come in handy. But the fact of the matter is, so few copywriters deal with the most immediate objection adequately.
The irony is, if you deal with that it in the right way, all of those other objections will start to fall away without you even having to worry about them.
Now, most people think that the sales promotion is in itself the tool for overcoming that most immideate objection of ‘why the hell should I give you my money?’
Even if you have lined up a series of powerful promises and EVEN if you’ve poured on the proof with testimonials, bank statements and track records… you have not actually tackled that most immediate objection.
You might think you have – most copywriters do – but you haven’t.
What you’ve ACTUALLY done is say what the product or service could do for the customer (the promises) and prove the product or service is worth your money (the proof).
Fair enough, I know what you thinking: surely, the promise and the proof is the reason why the prodcut is worth the reader’s money.
But proving the product or service is worth paying for is a different thing to overcoming the reader’s most immediate objection of why they should give you their money.
We’ve all seen the Loreal adverts where some pretty woman says ambiguously: “Because you’re worth it” as a supposed justification for purchasing the product they’re touting. But worth is not enough to overcome why. Those adverts, my friend, are nonsense.
To tackle the objection you need to directly address the reader on a personal and pyschological level. You need to forget about the product or service you’re selling altogether and tackle the objection itself.
You see, the objection doesn’t really have anything to do with the product or service – the objection is really about the reader giving you money and nothing more.
The important thing to do is show that you understand the reader’s concern, that you understand that they are unsure about parting with their money.
It’s not possible to do this in one line.
No matter how well you litter your promotion with attempts at doing this, to effectively overcome the reader’s most immediate objection, you must include an entirely new section in your promotion; half a page at least.
And what should that section inlcude?
Well, as I say, you should forget about the product or service. What you must do in this extra section is provide what I call a ‘Sympathetic Acknowledgement’.
What I mean by that is that you should explain to the reader that you understand their position…
You understand why they might have some hesitation when it comes to paying for the product or service. But you also understand – and this is key – that deep down, by reading your promotion to this point, they want to be convinced.
An example of how you could handle this – and perhaps the most often used version – is to explain that you (as the author of the product or service) were once in the same shoes as the reader. Like them you read lots of different long copy promotions that promised various things but never delivered. You can explain how you knew what it was like to be hesitant in sending off your money, but then you can start to turn the argument around and by suggesting that you know how they feel, you can link the section to your guarantee and explain to the reader that you’ve specifically created your guarantee to tackle that exact feeling.
This is just one of the most simple approaches. You could add much more detail to your personal story and enhance your sympathetic acknowledgement by doing so.
If you’re writing your a promotion for your own product or service, be as open and honest as possible at this point.
And if you’re writing the promotion for someone else, interview them more specifically to get further details about them and their own experiences with receiving long copy promotions that will enable you to make your sympathetic acknowledgement section more genuine.
If you do it right and make the reader feel like you’re on their side, you’ll find that most immediate objection is much more easily overcome and your promotion will work much, much better.
You know it,
Glenn