Your unconscious mind is a powerful thing…
Sometimes you learn things, and then you forget you learned them. And then, just in the right moment, you remember them.
That’s what happened with a really powerful Dan Kennedy copywriting technique I’ll share with you today.
First…
I’m beginning to really understand that saying, “He’s so good at this, he’s forgotten more than most of us will ever learn…”
(I was surprised when someone said this about ME recently! And then this happened…)
I guess this what you call “unconscious competence.” The 4th stage of skill development. Where you know how to do something so well, you don’t even have to think about what you’re doing. (When is the last time you thought about how to walk? For most of us, it’s been a very long time!)
Let me set the stage, with a story…
I was talking with a marketer recently, in the “family legacy” business…
I don’t want to give away his business or his product exactly. But I can give you enough of an idea to get us to today’s lesson.
In short, he helps families tell and save their stories in a way that can be passed on. Not just immediately, to all living family members. But rather, to preserve the story for generations. I heard it, and I thought, “that’s really cool!”
So he asks me about this. Specifically how you might use my PAISA formula to sell something like this.
That is: Problem, Agitate, Invalidate, Solve, Ask.
He wants to know how you respectfully agitate someone’s emotions about telling their story before they die. Or getting their loved one to tell their story before they die.
After all, it’s a bit insensitive to say, “Your dad’s about to die, what kind of son would you be if you let that happen without saving his story?”
Like, “Hello super-toxic shame, how are you?”
No doubt if you push too hard on this, you’ll get some sales, but you’ll also get a ton of prospects who now hate you for using toxic shame to try to guilt them into buying. (Not too mention, most of us with a conscience feel terrible if we try to sell this way.)
I thought about it. And I came at it from a different angle.
Although the problem of getting their story down is part of it — and will emotionally contribute to the sale, no matter what you do — I thought that there’s something else there.
This marketer actually solves a slightly different problem.
He solves the family’s problem of DOING THE WORK of getting the story down and preserved.
So the agitation he uses isn’t about the loved one passing on without preserving the story. The agitation is about not feeling like you having the time or skill to help your aging, perhaps ailing loved one tell their story. And even if you have time to visit them and the skill to capture the story, you would probably rather spend that time truly being with them, not neck-deep in a project.
And when he hands them the finished product, they appreciate the legacy they’ve preserved, yes. But the big relief and gratitude is that it all happened with almost no work on their part. (Just a big check!)
This struck a chord, but prompted a question…
He wanted to know more about connecting with the various families, through the many reasons they might want to do something like this.
I won’t go too far into his list, but you can imagine it spanned everything from sharing the stories with far-flung family who don’t get to spend as much time with them, to things like guilt and passing on family values.
He wanted to know which to feature when promoting this service. He said he’d been basically rotating them, but thought maybe there was a better way.
And here’s where we’re get to Mr. Dan Kennedy, and a technique I first heard him discuss at my very first AWAI Bootcamp, in 2009.
… And that he has since written about in his book, No B.S. Trust-Based Marketing.
This was one of those things that my unconscious just fed back to me, as the perfect solution to his problem…
Create a part of his marketing dedicated to helping the prospect “Find Yourself Here…”
I wrote one line of copy for him that could function as a headline for this section of his marketing…
“Our clients have many reasons for investing in [his product] for their family…”
This would be followed by a series of headlines representing the list of motivators he sent me. And under each headline, a brief story or vignette about a client that bought for that reason. (With a bonus if you can include a representative picture for each!)
In Dan’s book, he shows an example from a hearing aid company he wrote copy for. And his 5 main categories of prospects interested in hearing aids were:
— Active Seniors
— People Still Working
— Seniors Determined to Remain Independent
— Especially Active and Involved Grandparents
— People Who Take Their Health Seriously
(Notice how if you are anywhere close enough to the prospect group to be reading this copy, it’s almost impossible to NOT want to claim one of these categories for yourself? Brilliant!)
The idea is that your prospect is looking to identify with other people who’ve had success with your offer. They want to know that someone like them can get the benefit, and will have a happy customer experience.
You use the headlines to help them recognize where you’re talking about them. And then give them a story that really connects with THEIR NEEDS.
It’s all happening in their unconscious mind. Trying to find this association. And if you don’t do it, they may not even know why they didn’t respond. But if you do it, it tells their unconscious mind that your offer is for them.
This is deceptively simple…
Don’t think it’s not powerful because it’s not some super-sneaky tactic.
One of the most basic questions your prospect asks is, “Is this a fit for SOMEONE LIKE ME?”
You can sell them on the benefits and problem-solving nature of your product until you’re blue in the face.
But if you don’t turn that around and make sure it’s PERSONALLY beneficial, that it will solve their PERSONAL problem, that it is PERSONALLY relevant…
You could have them convinced that it’s a GREAT OFFER… for SOMEONE ELSE!
And they’ll never buy.
When all it might take is a simple list of reasons people buy, or types of people who buy, or different scenarios that people might be in that would lead them to buy…
Where they can scan the list and find themselves…
And then read about what makes your offer so personally relevant to them.
This is one of those, “If you do it right, this one thing triggers a FLOOD of orders,” things.
Tuck it away in your unconscious…
You don’t have to use it today, on this project. But you are likely to find a point in time, soon, where you remember, “Roy taught me about Dan Kennedy’s ‘Find Yourself Here’ technique and it would be really powerful here.”
And you can thank me then for the breakthrough it creates.
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
PS: My High-Velocity Copywriting program has a whole 28-minute lesson on copy elements, including “Find Yourself Here” that are tremendously valuable. It’s a minor part of the value of that program, so I don’t talk about it much. But it’s also hugely valuable to add all these little things to your unconscious repertoire of copywriting tools, to remember in just the right moment to help you write better copy!
