I GET ASKED all the time, “Lorrie, how can I make my copy more persuasive?” Well frankly it helps if you can speak your prospect’s language. But writing persuasively is more involved than just saying the right words. You need to say them in the right order…and in a way that lowers resistance to new information and is acceptable to his or her mind. One discipline that translates to writing persuasive copy is NLP or Neuro Linguistic Programming.
NLP isn’t a replacement for good copywriting. It’s a turbo boost. Meeting a person on his or her own level by using familiar words puts YOU in control of the communication almost immediately.
Have you ever been moved to buy a pair of sexy shoes instead of the sensible, comfy shoes you really needed? But when you got home you didn’t know how you got over the resistance of spending the money? See, people understand the RESULT of making a purchasing decision, but are often unaware of the internal recipe that gets them there. We all know we tend to buy based on emotion over logic. In fact, most buying decisions are largely emotional.
WHO’S RIGHT ANYWAY?
We can all agree there are two sides to the brain, correct? The left (logical) and the right (emotional). Interesting fact: information is first perceived by the right brain. Then within a fraction of a second, it shoots over to the left. Then once again, is reflected to the right. In other words, every message we get is influenced by the right brain. Pretty fascinating, huh?
Here is the basic principle of NLP as I understand it. There is no mental resistance to an idea you perceive as your own. And whenever any of us engages our imagination, we think we came up with the idea ourselves. So it must be great!!! It aligns with our own beliefs so it’s unconsciously accepted as being the truth and you act as if it’s true. So NLP always prefers to presuppose that changes can be made quickly and automatically.
So let’s cover some NLP principles and how to use it in the art of persuasive writing.
PACING
Pacing is putting yourself in the prospect’s shoes through language. Look at David Ogilvy (one of the greatest advertising masters who ever lived) as an example. His first headline for Rolls Royce didn’t come from HIS mind, but that of an engineer at the factory. Ogilvy was told, “You know David, the loudest noise from this Rolls Royce comes from the clock on the dashboard at 60 miles an hour.” And David thought this man, this engineer must know something because he’s constantly in the flow about changes and revisions and everything happening at the Rolls Royce factory. So David did his research and made a connection. I’m not suggesting the engineer was deliberately using NLP on David, but it’s an illustration of how we as humans connect the dots and are able to write persuasively as a result.
Though similar to empathy, pacing is a bit more complex. In pacing, you actually encourage the prospect to use visualization or other accessing cues in a very subtle and vague way. These are the same communication skills of matching, mirroring and rapport that allow you to pace and lead someone to the sale.
NLP Master Ross Jeffries says, “People will not accept that you are an authority on where they should go unless they accept you’re an authority on where they are at.”
In other words, if you’re reading a letter or listening to a podcast, it makes sense for me as a writer to mirror that experience for you. Then you subtly relax:
“As you’re sitting there reading this letter…”
“As you are sitting in front of your computer…”
“While you are listening to this broadcast…”
Any of those phrases have you and the prospect share an experience, which moves him or her toward the sale. Have you ever met someone and felt an instant kinship with that person? Or on the other hand, met someone who you just could never quite get on the same wave length?
What if you knew how to get on that person’s “wave-length”? You would have a totally different outcome – the outcome you wanted! That’s the importance of defining your target audience (or my own term, TAR-KET). You can communicate with that one person because you have already defined him or her.
PRESUPPOSITION OF AWARENESS
This technique also ties to speaking directly to your own target market. (If people don’t have their target market nailed down, it doesn’t matter how good their copy is. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to sell beef to a vegetarian. It’s just not going to work. So you really have to zone in on your target market.)
The way you do that is to understand your product. Figure out where they shop, where they eat, what they look like. Are they a family or are they single? Do they have dogs or not? Do they live in a rural area or the city? These keys make a huge difference when you are trying to figure out who your target market is. When I write my copy, I write to one person. I visualize everything about them so it’s very real to me when I start to write. I would suggest that you funnel down your target market to your TARKET as much as possible. That how you’re able to give them the illusion. You’ve given them information and the mind fills in the blanks. The more specific the better is what I’m saying.
In this technique you direct the conscious mind of the reader by assuming something is true. So you speak to him or her as if something has already happened. Here are some examples:
“As you become aware of…”
“As you recognize …”
“I’m not sure just how excited you can get about this offer
but…”
The proper use of language patterns in written words means you communicate by tonal shifts, tempo shifts etc, following the patterns of a question, a statement, or a command. We invite people to share our certainty about our product or service by using an intonation of a command or a statement like “Do you agree?”
PRESUPPOSITION OF TIME
This concept piggybacks onto the previous one. You build on the prospect’s experience of awareness by adding in the element of time. Examples:
“Before you order today…”
“After you make your decision to order…”
“While you are filling out your order form…”
Use language patterns to move yourself and others in a direction that results in a win-win situation. The truth is that we are selling ourselves every day, all day long. Doesn’t it make a lot of sense to use communication skills like NLP to lead someone where you want them to go? And the more that happens, the more successful you will be with your copy.
International copywriting trainer, author and speaker, Lorrie
Morgan-Ferrero has been a freelance writer and journalist
for over 25 years. Her words have made her clients (Mark
Victor Hansen, Les Brown, John Childers and many more) hundreds
of thousands of dollars. Now she focuses her vast experience on teaching
others the skill of copywriting. Lorrie is the author of a highly acclaimed
copywriting course, creator of the Red Hot Copywriting Bootcamp and founder
of Copy Campus, a unique membership resource site designed to support
copywriters and entrepreneurs on all levels. Visit her site to learn more
at: www.red-hot-copy.com
Please visit Lorrie's
blog to listen to the complete interview with Ross Jeffries, and to
experience the power of persuasive language in action.
© Copyright - Lorrie Morgan Ferrero 2005 - All rights reserved!
MANY YEARS AGO, I was chatting with a ballet dancer, who
was telling me the importance of hand gestures in dance. She explained
that in some cultures, the gestures women make when dancing are extremely
specific, & tell a story all their own, which complements the theme
of the dance itself. Years later, when researching child development,
I learned that children develop hand gestures shortly before they start
to speak. In fact, both gestures & vocal utterances can be considered
as part of human beings’ symbol-making ability. Our ability to make
complex symbols (Eg. spoken word, writing, numbers, pictures) is a key
thing (perhaps the only thing) which differentiates humans from the other
mammals on this planet. But when we listen to people, we are typically
only taught to pay attention to the spoken symbols (words) they say.
1) The next time you are chatting with someone, observe
the gestures they make. Notice how certain gestures coincide with certain
words & phrases.
When you listen to someone, their hands will complement what they are
saying to you. You can watch them paint pictures in the air, & interact
with their imaginary world as they speak.
Gestures – The Secret Semaphore
The cool thing is, most people aren’t aware of their own gestures,
let alone anyone else’s. These gestures are (as often as not) communications
direct from the person’s unconscious mind. So if you decide to start
acknowledging gestures, you are communicating with someone’s unconscious.
There are three main ways to interact with a person’s gestures.
The first is mirroring:
2) Once you notice a person’s gestures, feed some
of them back to the person. When you refer to something they’ve
said, use their gesture as well.
Rapport has been described as getting the attention of a person’s
unconscious mind. When you mirror their gestures back to them, a person’s
unconscious mind knows you’ve noticed it. You don’t even have
to mirror the gesture in full! For instance, if a person moves their hand
in circles as they describe going round & round, you could move your
index finger in circles to mirror it.
The second approach to utilising gestures I call “referencing”.
For instance, if someone were to say “I know there’s a job
I’d love to do but I don’t know what it is” & held
their hand up at eye level as they said it, you can subtly point to the
space where their hand was whenever you refer to it (Eg. “So this
job, you don’t know what it is yet you are curious to find out what
it is.”) Like mirroring, this sends a covert message to the person
that you understand what’s going on (perhaps even better than the
person’s conscious mind does.)
3) Experiment with referencing people’s gestures.
If someone says “I’d like to do such & such, but something’s
stopping me” & holds their hand out in front of them, you could
point to the hand & ask “What is it?” Sometimes people
will just say “Whaddya mean?”, but other times, it will bring
pure gold – things will come into the person’s awareness that
they didn’t previously have conscious knowledge of.
The third way you can use this is ‘full contact’. I once had
a client who said “I’d like to be a great presenter, but something’s
stopping me.” As she said this, she held her hands out about a foot
in front of her chest & made a pushing motion, as if trying to move
a heavy object. I asked “What happens when you just knock that out
of the way” & pushed her hands sideways. Her face turned bright
pink & she started laughing hysterically (always a good sign, I think).
She said “Well then it would be easy” & stepped forward
into a relaxed & confident pose before starting to talk about how
excited she was about doing it. Amazing. I’m not going to offer
an exercise on ‘full contact’ gestures, because it’s
not appropriate for all situations (Eg. there are many workplace situations
where any sort of physical contact is deemed inappropriate.) Having said
that, if you are in a situation where you consider it appropriate to do
so, & you have a relationship with the person where it is permissible
(Eg. coach), then go for it.
Business Essentials:
Would you like to know how you can save time with gestures? Business people
use lots of gestures too, so you can mirror them to get rapport. In addition,
people will use gestures when describing a specific problem. I was once
demonstrating their power to some people on our NLP Practitioner course.
The next time we met up, one of them told me this story:
He said that there was a chap at work who often came to him for help in
solving technical problems. He said that it typically took 20-30 minutes
to help the person find the solution to the problem, & cost him a
lot of time. After learning about gestures, he was paying attention the
next time the chap brought up a problem along the lines of “I’m
trying to do x but I have this problem & can’t see beyond it.”
The NLP Practitioner noticed that when the chap said the word “problem”,
he held his hand up in a clenched way. Our quick-thinking hero mirrored
the gesture, then said “What happens when you just forget about
that [moving his clenched hand as if throwing away a piece of rubbish]
& focus on what you want.” The chap with the problem stopped
absolutely still for about 30 seconds then said “Oh! I’ve
solved it!” & left the stunned NLP student in peace, saving
him 20-30 minutes of his day. Proving that… paying attention to
gestures can save you time!
Summary
1) The next time you are chatting with someone, observe
the gestures they make. Notice how certain gestures coincide with certain
words & phrases.
2) Once you notice a person’s gestures, feed some
of them back to the person. When you refer to something they’ve
said, use their gesture as well.
3) Experiment with referencing people’s gestures.
Visit Jamie Smart’s site for articles, seminars and upcoming workshops that will profoundly enhance or change your life and career. Go to: www.saladltd.co.uk/
© Copyright - Jamie Smart 2005 - All rights reserved!