The Copywriting S.A.U.C.E - #3A
Going to your customers, Camel ciggarettes and the P.A.S Formula
Welcome to the Issue #3 of The Copywriting Sauce!
A newsletter for anyone who wants to learn how to start writing killer sales copy.
Every issue will consist of 5 segments presented in this format S.A.U.C.E :
Saying - A saying or quote
Aged - An old ad
Useful - A useful piece of content or advice
Copy - Review a piece of copy that I found recently
Edit - Edit the copy above into a higher-performing piece.
(Saying, Aged, Useful, Copy, Edit)
You’re guaranteed to learn tons of copywriting and marketing tips in this email.
Let’s begin.
Saying
Don't push people to where you want to be; meet them where they are.
- Meghan Keaney Anderson, CMO @ Hubspot
Finding new customers online is one of the main challenges every company face everyday.
So why do some companies seem to find new customers every other day and week?
And some other struggle to do this?
It’s simply because they are meeting where their customers are.
So here’s what Meghan is trying to tell us in her quote above :
If you want your customers to find out about you, make it easy for them to reach you
Make that effort to be very accessible to them
But before all these, you have to figure out who your customers are, then figure out how to reach them.
The best way to do this is to create a user persona. Every small business needs to do this because niching and narrowing down to the specific buyer profile will help you focus on what kind of marketing content you’re creating.
I understand that at first, it feels counter productive because “I want to target everybody”.
The truth is that if you’re targeting everybody, you’re targeting nobody.
Once you’re done with a user persona, what you need to do next is to be where they are looking.
If your customer’s age is targeted at the younger crowd, maybe the best place to run ads are places like Instagram and Facebook.
If you’re targeting an older crowd, you may look towards Radio ads or television ads.
The worst thing you can do here is to place an ad targeted towards teenagers on radio, when everyone in that demographic is on their mobile phones.
In conclusion, don’t expect your customers to go where you are but meet them where they’re at.
Aged
Camel’s Tobacco Cigarette Ads (1930-40s)
Cool Fact : Before studies showed that cigarettes caused cancer, tabacco companies actually recruited the MEDICAL community for their ads
Let’s take a look at why this ad did insanely well :
More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarette
- This is copywriters call Authority Positioning. In this case, it’s a doctor telling you that he smokes Camels over any other cigarette
- This provides tons of creditability because a doctor knows everything about keeping a healthy body, isn’t it?
- “Everyone listens to him, so it must be okay if I listen to him too” - thus, creating a bandwagon effect
If you see Michael Jordan endorsing some basketball shoes that’s made out of paper, I’m sure there would be at least 1 person in the world convinced that it’s legit.
Giant picture of a doctor
- Further added creditability and authority positioning
- Instantly, the picture helps you visualize a doctor smoking a Camel, which directs you to think that it’s perfectly fine if you smoke a camel as well
- Imagine using an image of a surfer instead! No one would trust a casual surfer’s opinion regarding the harmfulness of cigarettes right?
Useful
Today, a useful thing that I would like to share with you is one of my go-to copywriting formulas :
P.A.S - Pain, Agitate, Solution
It’s a favorite because it works across all kinds of marketing content, from landing pages to blog posts.
Let’s begin!
Problem - understanding the problems that your audience face is the most important thing you can do before you start writing copy.
The core of copywriting is to evoke the reader’s emotions. The better you are able to pull their pains and pleasures out of them, the better the chances the reader will take action.
"Do you feel lethargic and tired throughout the day even when you got a full night of rest?”
Chances are is that you probably feel a little like what I just said - so this grabs your attention very quickly.
Agitate - once you know the problem that their facing. It’s time to stir things up.
Basically, you can be a troublemaker right now and the more salt you pour onto the wound, the better your copy will be. 😂
But, don’t do it too much and make your reader cry. The point of the copy that you’re writing is to sell them a solution. Show them the way out of all the pain that they’re feeling.
Solution - this is where you go from troublemaker to a doctor.
This is where you reveal the solution and how your product/service is going to make them feel like they have TONS of energy every single minute of the day.
And furthermore feel like a kid even when you’re in your 50s.
Add some proof and testimonials and you’ll be on your way to a successful sale.
It’s the end of the email!
If you’re wondering where the other portion of this email is, I would like to apologize for missing this part out.
Here’s why.
After hearing from a few of my readers that the email is a little too long, I have decided to chop the SAUCE email into 2 parts.
The first part being Saying, Aged and Useful.
And the second part being Copy and Edit.
I’m trying it for the first time this week and see if there are changes in the statistics.
But if you’re reading this right now, could you let me know your preference? I need some help trying to decide and see if this is the right choice.
After all, you are the priority.
It would great if you could :
- Reply with a “Merged” if you prefer it to be merged
- Reply with a “Split” if you prefer this to be 2 separate emails
Whatever it is, let me know what you think.
Thank you very much and I’ll see you in the next one.
Ezekiel ✍️
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