Hey there, if you're an online content creator, if you're a coach, or maybe you're an author, and you want to figure out what is the secret that really creates that copy that converts, that connects with an audience. Well, I have an episode just for you. It's copywriting 101 for beginners, but I think you'll find it very valuable, so stay tuned. Welcome. I'm Arissa Shadrick, host of the Resilient Faith Online Show. I'm an online marketing coach and certified copywriter. In this podcast, you'll find a different perspective to the external and internal challenges we face as online content creators. Join me for some inspiration and practical tips as we create positive change online. To connect with me in my private Facebook group, go to Marissashadrick.com forward slash community. Hello, hello. So good to be here with you today. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I am Marissa Shadrick. I'm an online marketing coach and a certified copywriter. And today I want to share the number one reason why copy converts. Now I'll tell you why this came up. I've been working on a project for the past couple of months. I'm going to launch a membership site for those people that are not professional copywriters that really are struggling to get those clicks to convert and so forth. And I'll tell you more about that later. But it's forced me to kind of go back and think if I was starting over, what would be the first thing I would want to know about copywriting? What would be important? And so as I've been thinking about this, this episode came about because I think this is really important to understand this. And if you miss it, it may derail everything else. So here we go. In this episode, we're going to talk about connecting with your audience, but what does that mean? We hear it a lot. Lots of people say that you need to connect with your audience. What does it actually mean? Because it's so critical for anything that you write, whether you're blogging, whether you're writing snippets for social media, whether you're writing a sales page. This is key, connecting with your audience. So what does that mean? So if we pull back the curtain, it simply means uncovering their private desire. Because here's a misconception. We think that products sell, but they don't. It's the desire, and meeting the desire is what sells with the products and services that we have. There's a great, great section in a book that I absolutely love. It's called Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz, and he touches on this, and he's so articulate, I just have to read it. I can't, I can't paraphrase it. He says, copy cannot create desire for a product. It can only take the hopes, dreams, fears, and desires that already exist in the hearts of millions of people and focus those already existing desires onto a particular product. So we're really tapping into that inner desire, the existing desire. Copy can't create desire, it already lives in your audience, and the way you connect with them is tapping into that desire. That's why market research is so important. I show people often how to do market research effectively so they can really understand what is that private desire. Oftentimes we think that the market is too saturated, or we think there's other people selling the same thing. So how am I going to be able to penetrate the market and get people to look at what I have to offer and get them to click and buy? And maybe you've had some failed attempts in the past. My friend, I'm going to tell you that this particular principle of copywriting, if you understand desire, it will be a game changer for you. I wish I would have known this in the beginning. I kind of fell into it afterwards. You know, I was learning some things and but I didn't really understand the concept of desire. And as a copywriter, again, we don't create that desire. That desire already exists in your audience. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to illustrate this. And I decided to use a product that we all are very familiar with. And hopefully we can unpack this and you can begin to understand about desire. So we're going to look at the auto industry, cars, vehicles, right? Everybody knows what a car is. A car is very expensive and a car is transportation, right? But there's so much more to it when we think about it as a copywriter. There's different types of cars. There's compact cars, there's sporty cars, family minivans, there's trucks, there's luxury automobiles, different types. So those different types are for different types of audiences. And those audiences, there's different reasons why people buy a car. Now, we might think off the top of our head, well, it's for transportation, right? That's too general. We have to be more specific to be able to reach the audience for a specific vehicle. So when we think of reasons, it could be speed, it could be value. Maybe somebody wants to buy a car that's really economical and has a lot of value. It could be dependability. Women like to buy a car that's dependable. They're not going to spend a lot at the auto mechanic, right? Or it could be gas efficient. Somebody that has to commute for work may want a car that's very efficient with gas and doesn't want a gas hog, right? So they might want a smaller vehicle. It could be status. Some people just want to buy a certain type of car because of status. Now I remember some years back, I was so tired of minivans. It seemed like I was in station wagons and minivans forever until my kids were finally gone out of the house. But in any event, I was really wanting a car vehicle that was just expressive of me. That was my car. I wasn't driving kids around anymore. I was no longer tethered to the minivan and I wanted a Jeep. It was just one of those things that I wanted it. I didn't care. I wanted the Jeep. I didn't care I was going to pay more gas for it. I just wanted a Jeep. At the time I had a dog, it would be perfect for my dog. We could just go anywhere. It didn't matter. I could take my dog on trails. I wanted a Jeep and I bought a Jeep. That was my inner desire. If somebody tried to sell me on an economical car or a compact car or truck, or truck would be too big for me, or maybe a luxury car or even a convertible, uh, no, that is not what I wanted. I wanted a Jeep. So there's different reasons. And besides status, there's also safety. Now, families might want a car that's safe. They might want to buy a car for their teenage daughter that just got her license. And safety is the issue. The reason why I laugh is because we bought a used car for our daughter when she was learning to drive, and safety was an issue, and I wanted to make sure it was safe. And my husband ended up getting this old like Cadillac that was, it looked new. I mean, the owner was this older man, he took really good care of it, but it was like a tank. And it was so funny because my daughter said, I'm gonna drive this to school, but we knew it was safe. If she got an erect, she would be fine, right? And then years later, once we replaced it, she got one of those VW bugs. And my husband and her went out shopping for the car when they came back. I said, Where's the rest of the car? Because it was so small, right? I was still in that safety mode. But in any event, we buy it for different reasons, safety or pet friendly, like I bought my Jeep because I had my dog at the time and I wanted to go to river trails and so forth, or versatility, which exactly is what the Jeep was. It was transportation for me, but it also was very versatile and had four-wheel drive and so forth. So you can see that just in the one product car, you can see how there's different types. And the different types sets a certain car apart from other cars. Okay, do you see how that works? So whether it's a truck compared to a compact, a compact is for a different audience. And the fact that it's compact sets it apart from a truck or some other type of vehicle. So you can see that even though when we think of cars, it sounds so massive and so general. And how could these companies compete with each other? They really have a specific target audience. And so they connect with the desire that that audience has, whether it's safety, status, speed, value, whatever it might be. And they really do a lot of market research to figure that out. So once you tap into desire, you find the desire. We begin to connect with a specific audience using their language, using language that they would use to express their desire. And we want to keep in mind that we always want to have one audience, right? Maybe it's moms that want a family-friendly, safe minivan, right? One audience, one big idea, and maybe it's the fact that this minivan is, you know, how they do those collision tests and so forth. Maybe it had a high rating for safety or something, that that was what made it different from other vehicles. So you have one audience, one big idea, one promise. What is the promise? Not only are your family going to be safe in this minivan, but it's also one of the most fuel-efficient vehicles on the market. You make a promise and then you have the offer. You can maybe trade your car in and get so much off and be able to buy this vehicle at your local dealership. So, do you see how that can unfold just by tapping into desire? Desire is really, really important. As I read earlier, copywriters do not create desire. We need to figure out what that desire is, and it has to be one desire. What is the primary desire behind that audience wanting to buy something? There could be multiple desires, but you have to find the primary desire, the main desire. And that often ends up being in the headline. So once you figure out what that main true desire is, you don't want to cloud it up or confuse it with other things. You want to keep it very singular, that desire. Again, one audience, the big idea, the big promise, and the offer, but it's all connected to that one desire. What is that desire that they want? And so you turn that desire into a benefit in your headline. So oftentimes we can write headlines, and sometimes when we do our market research, we find out different things and we find out what people don't like or what they do like, and we can even take what people say that they don't like about something and we can flip it and turn it into a benefit that aligns with the desire. So what we're doing is we're connecting the dots, we're figuring out what that inner desire is, and we're fulfilling that desire with the product that we have. So we're actually connecting the dots, we're understanding where they are, we're understanding what their desire is, and we're bringing this product in front of them using their language and satisfying that desire. And that way it becomes a no-brainer for the reader. It is exactly what they're looking for, and they will be more likely to read every line that you have in your copy, and they'll be more likely to click and buy. So I hope that makes it really, really clear. I know this is just a very simple, simple principle, but it's so important because we neglect to put that in there and we try to feature the product first, and we forget that we always have to connect with the audience first and figure out where they are and what that desire is. When we show them that we understand what their desire is, then they're going to lean in and they're more likely going to continue to engage with your copy. So connecting with your audience means uncovering their private desire. And that takes a little bit of research. And you can do research in different ways. You can actually talk to maybe past customers that you've had, you can reach out to people and just ask if they have a moment of time that you can just ask them a few questions, that you have a product that you're developing and you like to ask them a few questions and see what is it exactly that they're struggling with, but also what is their desire. Because struggle alone isn't enough. You want to be able to provide benefit when you write copy, and you're not going to be able to really craft a benefit that's going to resonate with them until you know what the desire is. So struggle is one thing, just like in the example of the vehicles, maybe somebody doesn't have a car. Okay, somebody doesn't have a car. That is a struggle, right? That is a problem. But again, as you can see from the example I gave you, the struggle isn't enough. We have to figure out the variety and the types of vehicles from compact, sporty trucks, luxury, and then the unspoken desire. Is it that they want value, status, safety, speed? What is it? And then figure out how we write copy in a way that connects our product with their desire. So I hope that made sense for you guys. I know it sounds very fundamental, but it's so, so important. I see it so often when I critique copy that the desire isn't really there and it's not really connecting with the audience. And that can be terrible because people are not going to stay on and take a look at it and read. A lot of people may glance at a headline, but the percentage decreases if it doesn't resonate with them and they will click out. So there'll be less people reading the rest of your copy. So I hope that helped today. So remember, this is a skill set that will help you in everything. It's a skill set that will help you if you're a blogger. It's a skill set that will help you if you're doing social media. Copy rating is everywhere. If you're writing a book, you need the front cover, the back cover. If you're a coach, you need to be able to write your website in a way that's got copy that explains how you serve people. Copy is everywhere, but we want to be able to understand desire and figure out how we can bridge the gap by showing them how our product and service can meet and satisfy that desire. So until next time, I hope that was helpful and I'll talk to you soon. Take care. 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