The challenge of crafting every marketing message (copy AND content) you’ll ever need has been distilled here into five simple questions.
These questions make the task of writing copy as easy as baking bread – and tasty, too.
Each step in the recipe takes the form of a question. Once you answer each of the five questions about your product or service, you’ll have the basic ingredients, a mini-version of your marketing copy.
NOTE: As you are answering these questions, don’t get creative. Just answer factually. We’ll get creative later. Promise!
Question 1: What’s the Problem? (What’s the client MOST hungry for?)
Most sales, both online and offline, are based primarily on solving a problem. Having identified your target audience, your job now is to identify the problem that your target audience has that can be solved by your product or service. In marketing and copywriting terms these are known as the three Ps – pain, problem or predicament.
Now, if your product or service could be considered a nice-to-have or luxury item, it’s still solving a problem: an unmet desire.
This is where you play doctor. You diagnose the problem. The people in your target audience may not even know they have a problem, so it is your job to make them recognize it. Many marketers shove the solution down their viewers’ throats before their audience recognizes that there is a problem. That’s like a doctor prescribing medicine before you feel sick or understand that the shot will prevent the flu.
There’s another aspect to it as well. Once your audience understands they have a problem, you have to let them know that you understand their problem. There’s an old saying that goes something like this: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”