Why You Need An Imaginary Friend

[Music] Unvailing the secrets, a list copywriters use to make themselves and their clients millions. This is the Copywriters Podcast. With your host, the world's greatest copywriting coach, David Garfinkle. So, we start with a question, do you have an imaginary friend? Whether you do or not, today we're going to talk about why a particular imaginary friend can solve one of the biggest problems copywriters are having today. And that problem is your copy is not connecting with the right target prospects. So, conversions are way lower than you'd like them to be. Now, the perfect solution to that would be to have a real live focus group of honest, unflinching prospects available to you 24/7. People could ask about their problems, their fears, their hopes, you could ask them about the same thing, but sorry, you can't do that. However, what we're going to talk about today is the next best thing. And the good news is you can build this imaginary friend pretty easily in your mind from real world data. So, you get the equivalent of a 24/7 focus group, but it's not high maintenance. In fact, it doesn't require any care and feeding at all. Just like no care and feeding is required for the following statement, copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear in this podcast, and most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims, and if, or you're writing cop, be for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, business opportunity, you may want to get a legal review before you write and after you write. And before you start using your copy, my larger clients do this all the time. Okay, so the problem is a familiar one. The market you're writing for is not just like you. And the market you're writing for is not just like you think they are. Yet without knowing who they are and what's on their mind, in pretty specific terms, it's going to be hard to be profitable. So, let's go deep into this problem and look at a unique brand new solution. What your copy is not about, a lot of copy writers get in trouble right away. And that's why their copy doesn't connect. The reason they get in trouble is pretty simple. They operate as though the copy is about the product they are promoting, literally. And if that was the way it worked, copywriting would be so much easier. But reality is a little different. Even though the purpose of your copy is to sell your product, the copy itself, when it's working best, is not directly about your product, not usually. And to get our definitions clear about your product would be just a list of its features, plain and simple. So, copy writers get a little more advanced and they say, "Oh, I get it. It's not about the features. It's about the benefits." Well, that's a little better, but it's still a dangerously generalized way to look at it. After all, the benefits of time management software might be very different for someone who, say, has to get everything in their plate done by 5 o'clock, compared to say, somebody who has to produce the most revenue or strategy or productivity for a business in a given amount of time. Both people are concerned with maximizing their time, but the definition of maximizing is very different depending on who your prospect is. And if you don't choose, in this case, one over the other, and your offer sort of meets in the middle, it'll seem too fuzzy, too deluded, too out of focus to people for either group, for them to get really interested in your product. The 9 to 5' won't like it because it smells too much like the boss. The C-suite executive won't like it because it sounds too much like a piece of hourly employees software, and it's not entrepreneurial and proactive enough. That's the problem with throwing a lot of benefits into your copy and hoping for the best. It's not aimed at a specific customer group, their pains, and their own desires. Well, at this point, you might say, "Okay, I know what I'll do. I'll include a transformation." I've heard that the vast majority of successful offers promise a transformation. You're still skipping over one of the most important things it's going to get you out of a jam and into a profit. It's not endlessly hard work, and it's not really that hard, once you get over the resistance of not being willing to do it. Today, we're going to look at how to get very specific with your niche that you're selling to so that your offer seems like it was created just for them so that you don't have to write a generic transformation or just guess. That turns the dynamic around a lot. While before your project seemed almost generic to everyone, it wasn't connecting. Now, your product seems custom tailored to your specific prospect, even if it wasn't originally conceived of or designed that way. But hey, it will do the job perfectly that your prospect needs it to do. If that's the case, then it might as well be presented as the custom tailored solution for your prospect, right? Yeah, I think of this as if I'm in a crowded room, and there's somebody standing maybe up on stage and talking to the whole crowd. Probably not going to pay too much attention to their message, but if they're talking directly to me, I'm going to pay attention. That's the difference I think that you're talking about here. Yeah, it absolutely is. You want your prospect to feel that when they're reading your copy or watching your video. I'm talking right to you. Exactly. Let's get into how to do that. Yeah, so first I want to talk about what your copy is about, because it's not about features, it's not about general benefits, it's not even about the most amazing generic transformations. If those transformations are something your best prospects don't want, or aren't going to get terribly excited about. So what is your copy about? Well, let's zero in on a particular initial customers. Let's say it's SaaS owners, people who are building and scaling software companies that generate monthly recurring revenue. On the one hand, copy the connects with this kind of person will speak to a specific kind of pain, complaints, disappointments, frustrations, annoyances. These pains could take the form of past problems, current challenges, future fiascoes they want to avoid. Pain can also have to do with the pressure of interference from others, including partners, employees, investors, bankers, family members, and of course customers. Are you starting to see that generic features and benefits aren't going to work well to get this prospect's attention? And that you've got to know the specifics of what's going on in their world to earn credibility with them. On the other hand, you can and should also look on the positive side at the hopes, wishes, and desires of your customer, both individually and with the same people we were talking about before. Hopes and desires with their partners, their employees, their investors, their bankers, their family members, and of course their customers. What do they want regarding any or all these groups that is out of reach for them right now? Is there something on that list that your product could provide for them? I want to spend a little time zeroing in on social pressure. This can be a real edge for you if you dig in deeply. Imagine your prospect is thinking about doing something and worrying, what if I try this and I fail in front of everybody? That's a powerful fear of embarrassment and humiliation right there. Maybe you can address it in a positive way or you can reduce or eliminate entirely the chance that would happen. On the plus side, the prospect might secretly wonder, what if I try this and what will it feel like when everybody else sees me winning? Again, you can offer up a clear believable path or scenario to your prospect. And if you do that, it may end up being a stronger selling point than all your features and benefits combined. So as you can see, you're not really selling the product here. You're selling the prospect a much better future in one particular way than the present they currently have. Now, we're going to talk about how to determine what it is you want to sell to your prospect and maybe in a way you've never thought of before. But first, I want to know what you're thinking Nathan. I'm thinking just the importance of actually narrowing down who it is because you mentioned earlier features and benefits that matter to one person in the organization are not going to matter to another person in the organization. Transformation that matters to somebody in the mail room is not going to be a promise transformation that matters to somebody in the C suite. Also, just the future that you're saying, the future state that they're going to be in is also going to rely heavily on who it is that you're talking to. So again, very important to get clear on who who it is that you're talking to. And I know we've talked before in the past about having the imaginary friend that you're writing to. I expect we're going to get into a little bit more of why and how to do that. Yeah. And we're going to do it in a little more detail, very specific way. That's not as hard as you might think because you can sort of assemble this friend since it's not a real person. All right, well, let's find out how to talk about how in your prospect, before we get the imaginary friend, let's find out how your prospect talks about what's on their mind. To really get into the head and heart of your particular kind of prospect, you need to know two very different kind of things. First, what are the unique pains and desires this prospect has in relation to the solution you're offering them? And secondly, probably much more important, how do they talk about these pains and desires? Why is that probably so much more important? Because when you say it, the way they normally say it, they simply hear it. They don't have to translate it or think about it. So it reaches them emotionally as authentic right away. But how do you get to the point where you really know? And this is where very focused research sure comes in handy. It doesn't need to take that long. But you do need to understand what you're looking for. You're not just looking for ideas, concepts, a general feeling. You're looking for specific words and phrases, and the particular feeling underneath them. So you can write to your prospect later in a way that resonates. One shortcut to this understanding is a customer interview. If you can get on Zoom or the phone and get permission to record, it's better to talk than to use email, but any communication is better than not at all. A number of questions you could ask them. This is someone who's already bought. What was going on in your life? It made you look for this product. What were you hoping it would help you with? What worried you about trying it? What made you finally say yes? Questions like that. Now, this is important. Hear me out. You may not get the answers you wanted. Certainly not the answers you respected. Don't worry about that and don't argue with them. Just listen to what they're saying. The words are worth a lot more the way they say them than the way you might want to spend them. If the same unexpected specific emotional answer comes up a few times in different interviews, then you're on as something important. For example, if someone says, "I really don't like to type. Not at all. Not on my phone and not on my desktop." So I was really happy about the voice-activated instructions on this software. That made it much easier for me to use. And I use it more often, especially on my phone. If you hear versions of that four or five different times, and yet you know that the best feature is the fast-for-your-transform algorithm in the software, give your enormous heap of knowledge or rest. It's the hands-free operation to near the top of the list because it clearly solves a documented pain that paying users have. Period. Okay? You can get a lot out of Amazon reviews. Let me point out again that the specific wordings that point to specific problems and the ones that appear more than once or twice, they're copyrighted and gold for you. Look especially at the three and four star reviews. Most people who leave these are often more thoughtful and forthright about their criticisms than people who leave five star reviews. Or the people who leave one star reviews because the product wasn't delivered to them at a silver platter. Reviewers in the middle will also give valuable details about disappointments and how they got convinced. They'll see phrases starting with "it worked well, but I wish it had," or "I was skeptical at first, but then, whatever comes after that is worth paying attention to." And finally, let's move on to the place called "no filters," and that's Reddit. People don't hold back. They'll tell you what's on their mind, probably with more intensity and unguardedness on Reddit than anywhere else. Try this. Search for your topic with terms like "struggling with how to or help." So those are three types of pinpoint emotional customer research you can do. The one-on-one customer interview, the Amazon or shopping site review, especially three and four star reviews and the Reddit review. You can do those things to understand what people are saying and use it later in your copy. But the big question is the one Nathan asked at the beginning of this section, "How do you use it?" And that's what we'll talk about next. Okay, so I've got a good idea of who I'm writing to. What do I do next? All right. So you know how people get teased about having imaginary friends and some people really do have them in their imaginations, at least. Well, for this section, I'm going to recommend that you create a very specialized kind of imaginary friend to help you get your copy to connect better with your prospect. Now in a way, this reaches back to our last show where Nathan, when you brought up Stephen King and we were talking about how he creates imaginary characters, of course all of his characters are imaginary, right? But when he's first starting to write, he has these imaginary characters in his mind and he allows them to show him where the story goes. The good news is you don't have to go to that level of effort or into that level of detail to get some real benefit in your writing from an imaginary person. Because all you need for your imaginary friend is a set of focused questions and answers based on your research. Maybe two or three sets if you want to be thorough. Just questions and answers. The questions need to ask about your target prospects pain or their desires or some subset of one of the other, maybe not all their pains, but a particular kind of pain or pain around a particular issue. Then and desires same thing. Then the answers are the actual words and phrases you found in your research, not an interpretation, not a summary, not a diagnosis, Dr. Freud, but the actual words you found in your research. This question and answer is like having a conversation with your imaginary friend. Imagine again, their side of the conversation coming not from best guesses or what your opinion, the obvious answer should be, but from research you've already done. Remember, your imaginary friend is a made up person, but it's a made up person created from real data. And this data represents your ideal prospect. So once you've created this person, you can have imaginary conversations with them to figure out what your copy should sound like, what it should say, what it should never ignore. Here's how to do it. First, give a narrow focus to a particular type of pain or desire. Don't try and cover everything. Pick something you know from your research or prospect is dealing with. It'd be the frustration of spending hours every week and invoicing or the awful feeling of feeling invisible in your industry or maybe the fear that they're going to fail again at losing weight. Once you've picked your thread, turn your research into questions. Just imagine your imaginary friend, your representative prospect is sitting right across from you. Your questions would they ask you about the product? How would you answer using the words and phrases from your research? Soon, you'll have a written dialogue that would represent a real conversation this person would have with you about issues using your product. It could be where they're asking you questions about the product or you're asking them questions about a particular kind of pain or a particular kind of desire. You see how much of an advantage this gives you right away in terms of selling this product. You know what's on their mind instead of trying to guess best on data and you know generalized iconographic survey results. So you're getting great information about what's really on their mind even if the information is coming from an imaginary friend. I know that one of the bigger thin tech companies out there, they take it a step further instead of just having an imaginary friend. They actually have a doll, a character that sits on their desk that represents that imaginary friend that when their copywriters are writing, they have a visual representation of that imaginary friend that they're writing too. Bobblehead, yeah. I know. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. You're talking about a Gora and what is the guy's name, Bob I think, and he's a dentist. He's 65 years old, kind of conservative white guy. Okay. So section five. So you've got this dialogue. So you're not going to go as finished. Nancy Zagora, you know, at least what we're talking about today. Feel free to get a bottle head of your imaginary friend, but for right now we're going to talk about this dialogue you've created. What's so great about this snippet of dialogue is it cuts right to the emotional core of your prospect in a way that's relevant to your offer. It can help in a number of ways. You can look at a conversation you just had with a prospect. It will help you stay focused on what to talk about all throughout your copy. During your headline, your opening, stories, bullet points, even how to phrase your guarantee. And how to do it. For conversations where they are asking questions, look at the rhythm and the questions and pay attention to the emotion under the words. Same thing for conversations where you're asking questions. Look at their answers. Although in that case you have another option. You can actually cherry pick words and phrases from the answers your imaginary friend gave you in a Q&A you wrote up. Sometimes just one right word in the copy can turn an uncertain prospect into a sold one. And of course with just a little editing, you can use the Q&A as a very powerful FAQ. In this case you want the questions to be in the prospect's voice and the answers to be in yours. But again, focusing on the words and phrases that they gave you as much as possible. You can look at this concentrated little dialogue or several sets of dialogues that you put together as an emotional x-ray or a CT scan of your prospect. And don't throw the dialogue away or delete the file once you finish the project. Add to it over time. It will become one of the most valuable and unique marketing aspects that you have. Okay, so I feel like I've got a pretty good idea of this. I just wanted to add one point. When you have this nailed in, when you're writing, only write to that one avatar. And maybe you have two or three different ones. Maybe your product is for two or three different people. But don't try and scatter shot to all three of them. I need to include some messaging that makes sense to Bob. And then email on day number two needs to make sense to fill every email and the sequence for Bob needs to be written directly to Bob. And then you write a separate sequence for Phil. And if you have a landing page for Bob, don't link that landing page to the emails that you write to Phil. And make sure that you are writing to that same person every time because every time that you throw in an email that's written for Phil in the mail room and you send it to Bob in the C-suite, all of a sudden you've lost trust with Bob. Absolutely. I mean, if you start to cover your bets like you're playing roulette and you're putting money down a lot of different numbers, you're undoing the entire power of this. So yeah, I mean, I know we're titling this the imaginary friend to, you know, clickbait people into looking at it. But this is really about microtargeting, isn't it? Yeah, I think imaginary friends. But I'm going to make sure that I'm speaking to each one individually. Yeah, that's good. All right, well, let's recap then. We started out examining the dangerous belief and expensive belief that copy is about the product selling it directly because it's not copy is something that needs to sell the product. But in doing so, it needs to be more about the prospect than the product and the prospect's problems and desires and the features of the product or even generalized benefits or even promise the transformation. No, to really connect, you really need to write directly to a specific group of people based on what they care about the most, which would be their pains and their desires and in their words. And when your copy describes their inner reality in a way that resonates, you have a much better shot at selling something. Now, to get there, this is not time to use your intuition or guesswork or your creativity. This is a time for research. You need to know exactly how your audience talks. You need to see a record either hear it or read it of what words they use when they're annoyed, skeptical or hopeful or enthusiastic. What you're looking for are repeated themes and specific phrases. From that research, you start to build your new imaginary friend and this is a fictional character made up entirely of things you've heard real people say. All you do is create a simple Q&A between you and the imaginary person using actual language from your research. The questions come from their point of view where even when it's focused mostly on their answers and the answers come from what your product or service can do to help. And you can do the reverse where you can ask the questions, have them ask the questions and then you can plug their gripes and their desires into the answers. Once you've created that dialogue, you can use it to guide what you write and it's a really powerful way to prepare for writing. I will say one thing that I made the mistake of doing when I was first getting into copywriting because I was a little bit introverted and scared of reaching out and talking to previous clients and customers. That is so important. We want to, I've experienced it. I've seen a lot of other copywriters experience that I want to just assume, guess, maybe interview my client and figure out what they think the customers are saying. But actually talking to the top customers, actually talking to their top clients, more so than just reading what they put on an Amazon review or a Reddit review, actually having those conversations is so powerful and don't skip that step. Yeah, I mean, that's an advanced technique that I didn't mention or specifically mention and that is if you can get your clients to let you talk to their customers, just for this kind of research, not for any other reason. If you have enough trust between you and your client to do that and they're willing to make, sometimes it takes a few steps and they may have to contact the customer and things like that. Yeah, I remember when I wrote the, I did a sales letter for Renegade Network Marketer for a mentoring program that we're doing and even though they're Renegade Network marketers, there were still network marketers and I don't know anything about network marketing. It's not my jam. And so they let me interview six people who were the kind of people who would likely be prospects for this mentoring and we did over a million dollars in three days. So you know, there was more to it than that. They did a good job marketing. I did a good job writing the copy, but I don't know if I could have done it without having done that research and really gotten into the mindset of the kind of person who was really into network marketing. Yeah, I think the closing thought that I have for this is you need that imaginary character, imaginary friend, but it's better if it's based off of real world people. Yes, as is most good fiction by the way. There you go. Alright, if you enjoyed this episode, check out everything else that we have for you over at CopyrightersPodcast.com and until next time, we will catch you later. Yeah, catch you later. When you have some copy and the performance of the copy is mission critical, who you're going to call? Not ghost busters. They don't do copy critiques last time I checked. A lot of people from the most advanced to the up and coming copy raters reach out to me. I do copy critiques. One client, Brett Elkorn, has hired me 20 times. Yep, 20 times. That's because on the very first critique I did for him, he doubled his conversions on a video sales letter. Every month I do a handful of critiques for GKIC members. These are copy writers and small business owners who are trained in experience, but they need another set of experienced eyes to go over their copy to take it to the next level. One a-lister told me I go over a copy like an IRS auditor. Now, I wasn't sure whether to take that as a compliment or not, but he assured me it was. I can find the one flaw or several flaws in copy that no one else was able to and make winning suggestions on how to fix them. So when you need a copy critique, just go to garfinklcoaching.com and click on the Services tab. Garfinklcoaching.com for a critique. Thank you.