Persuasive Copywriting: Using Psychology to Engage, Influence and Sell

In his book Influence, Robert Cialdini (2000) observes that people are motivated to comply with people whom they like. He goes on to itemize qualities that we might possess, or actions we might take, that would cause someone else to like us. One of these is paying compliments.

What’s the reality for your product. What’s the real problem it solves? You could do a lot worse than focus your copy on that.

The old ‘better mousetrap’ fallacy. The trouble is, people don’t want better mousetraps. They want dead mice. Mice that were alive in their houses and are now dead, I mean, not, like, packages of dead mice in the post.

Find your reader’s point of pain and you’ve found the way in to their emotions.

When contented people buy things, the part of them doing the buying is not the contented part. People buy stuff to solve problems.

Start with a basic story. The story of one of your customers. Find a really great customer, one who’s been with you for years and is really more of a super-fan. Call them or write to them and ask them if they’d be willing to help you write a story about your organization. I’m fairly certain they’ll say yes, because it’s flattering (a technique we w

stop them in their tracks and make them want to read the next sentence. Which Joseph Sugarman, another garlanded US copywriter, claims is the single job of the headline.

Understanding how your customer feels is crucial to establishing rapport, trust and, ultimately, the sale.

When he was selling a treatment for hernias, US copywriter John Caples used the one-word headline… you guessed it… HERNIA.