Avoid This Top Copywriting Mistake for Better Direct Response Marketing

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You know that catchy part of the song you just can’t get out of your head?

Or that cover of a book that makes you want to crack it open and find out more?

Or that advertisement slogan or tagline that sticks with you?

These are all hooks that perfectly attract and maintain your attention. And this is where the average person can go wrong with direct response marketing–hooking their audience.

I see way too many preventable mistakes in copywriting dealing with this. What these marketers don’t know is hurting them. They're missing out on valuable customers because they don’t understand the vital elements of hooking them.

In this blog, I’ll reveal a few of my strategies from my best books on direct response marketing. You won’t want to skip how to fix this one very common mistake.

​Make sure you:

Crafting copy that resonates with your audience requires you to understand your USP, your audience, the chain of belief and overcome objections.

​Let’s look at each of those.

Defining why you exist–your unique service proposition–is one of the most foundational aspects of promoting yourself. However, the more “in the weeds” you get when growing your business and clientele, the more you can’t see the forest for all the trees. People’s ‘why’ for their existence gets buried or lost all the time.

What are your business benefits, facts, and features? What promises can you make and consistently deliver?

​If you can’t explain what makes you better than the competition, how can you expect anyone else to see your value? Be different, be truthful, and live up to your promises.

Know who you are trying to have a conversation with. You would speak much more formally and intelligently to an audience of lawyers or medical professionals than a group of bowling buddies. Know what your audience sounds like and talk on their level.

You can’t sprint out of the gate proclaiming all your USPs and promises. You have to start further back, getting your audience to believe certain things instead of assuming they will or already do.

For example, if you promise you can coach someone into making six figures, you first have to get them to believe it’s even possible (“Who me?!”).

​Work up your niche’s unique chain of beliefs before trying to sell. What do you need your audience to believe about themselves, their present and future realities, or anything else before proceeding? Do they have a problem? Is there a solution that already exists? Are they capable of handling it themselves? And so on.

Not the same as their disbeliefs, their objections are reasons they tell themselves not to buy:

Think about the reasons you don’t buy something. Research your audience to find out what prevents them from buying.

​Go ahead and face those objections head-on. Some gurus claim you shouldn’t put negative thoughts in your customer’s head. In my experience, customers appreciate when you can anticipate their negative objections, call them out, and abolish them.

A comic can tell a joke on stage that falls flat at a comedy club. That same comic can tweak the delivery and present it to the same type of audience on a different night and hear the crowd roar with laughter. Comics know joke-telling depends largely on timing and delivery. The same holds for delivering marketing messaging. You have to put it in the right place with a suitable delivery.

​Your audience takes about five mental steps between initial contact and sale completion. These steps are:

You must use words, pictures, and sometimes sounds and videos to talk to your audience in a way they like and in a place and time where they will most likely find you. They must be ready to buy, and you encourage them to do so quickly with timely offers.

If you cast a wide net, you’ll end up with a lot of minnows. If you aim for bigger fish, you’ll catch bigger fish. Start aiming for and attracting your ideal “big fish” customers to become more profitable.

​It’s okay and preferable, in fact, to start weeding out the customers you don’t want. You won’t stay in business very long if you don’t find your most profitable customers and engage with them more.

Snake oil salesmen and Nigerian princes down on their luck have made your job harder. You must prove you are authentic and worthy.

​In addition to addressing inner objections out loud, you should provide potential customers with the following:

There are way more tips than I can make when keeping this to a short and sweet blog length. I could write an entire book. In fact, I did–MANY of them.

​Join my marketing training program to avoid common marketing pitfalls and skip straight to the innovative direct marketing tactics that work best. You can also watch my free YouTube videos, subscribe to my newsletter, and read my bestselling books. I’ve laid out all the information for you. All you have to do is absorb it and put it to work.