By: Robert F. Abbott

The other day, I received last issue of a business magazine before my subscription runs out. Now, I like this magazine, but I'm swamped with reading matter so I won't renew.

Of course, I've received many reminders and offers about renewing; magazines try very hard to keep subscribers they've got. So when last issue came with a special promotional wrapper on cover, I wasn't surprised.

But, what made this one interesting was a clever piece of copy that hit an emotional chord: inside back cover of special wrapper were words, "You're about to be dropped from our list of active subscribers. Unless you act now."

Personally, I thought it was an effective piece of copy (even though I still won't renew). It made an emotional case for what is essentially a business-to-business offer.

Many people who write persuasive copy, whether in sales letters or internal memos, say rest of us underestimate power of emotion in getting response we want from our messages.

There's a sort of rule of thumb that goes like this: Consumers buy on emotion and justify on reason. In other words, we, as buyers, think we're being rational in making a decision to purchase, or in choosing among different offers, but in reality we make decision with our hearts and then justify that decision with our reasoning powers.

We all know how important headline is. We also know it’s hardest part of ad to write. So we’re going to leave that until last. Know why? Because you can spend so much time creating perfect headline that you never get to ad itself. Besides that, if we leave it until last we’ll be writing a headline that goes with ad, not an ad that goes with a headline.

Okay, so what’s our first step going to be then? We're going to define our ideal customer, get inside her skin and find out who she is, what she's looking for, what she wants. This is very important because if we don't have this information, who are we going to write our ad to? Are we just going to send it out into cyberspace with no destination in mind? Not if we want response we aren't.

Now that we know who we're directing our ad to, second step is to list all ways our ideal customer will benefit from program, product or service that we’re promoting. Notice I referred to benefits, not features.

The Focus is on Benefits . . .

There is a big and important difference here. Benefits tell people “what’s in it for them”. Benefits tell them what they will gain from your product. Features, on other hand, are things that describe your product.

For example, let’s pretend that you’re promoting cell phones. A feature of cell phone is that it has an extra long-lasting battery. A benefit of phone is that purchaser can talk longer with her pals without having to worry about phone dying.

Another feature might be unique design. The corresponding benefit would then be that, not only can you talk longer, you’re more comfortable while you’re talking. Benefits are things that appeal to emotions and that’s usually what makes a person buy.

Okay, now we know we have our list of benefits. Next, we're going to choose which benefits to focus on. If we're writing a small classified or ezine ad we'll choose only one benefit and concentrate on that. With longer solo ads we could choose several benefits. We're going to write an ezine ad today but same guidelines apply to any ad you need to write.

Write like you talk . . .

If we want our ad to be interesting we need to write in terms that everyone can understand. Leave all $50 words in dictionary and just use a conversational tone. We aren't writing ad to impress people with our vocabulary; we're writing it to appeal to their emotions. A stiff, formal tone isn't going to do that.

So . . . we're going to write like we were talking to a friend. We're going to use short, punchy sentences and omit any words that we don't positively need. Remember, we only have a few lines to convince our ideal customer that she wants to click on our link and learn more. We have to choose our words carefully and make each one of them count!

Don't use an ad to sell your product . . .

The purpose of ad is just to get our ideal customer to our site. We aren't trying to sell her on our product ~ that's job of sales page. We're simply putting her in a "buying" frame of mind. We're creating interest and leaving her wanting to find out more about our product. That is sole purpose of our ad.

Just start writing . . .

Now we're ready to start writing. The best way to do that is just to start writing without thought of how it's going to sound, spelling, puctuation or any of that stuff. We're just going to write down what comes into our minds. Okay, ready?

We might end up with something like this: