What Is Your Frame Of Mind When You Write?

The best ads and salesletters are the ones that make a real offer. You make an offer to the reader to give something in return for the reader’s money (or time, or attention or whatever you want from him or her.) But how desperate are you to make the deal? Mind you, I don’t mean to make the ad sound desperate. That would definitely scare everyone away. I mean desperate in a different way. Let me explain:

You’re presenting something in front of the reader that he or she is willing to spend money on. The offer is the MOST important part of the ad.

Why? Because the offer is the most fundamental part of any transaction. When you are creating the ad, the mindset has to be that you won’t leave until you have the money in his pocket. You have to make an offer that the other person CANNOT refuse, and use psychology to get the person to feel good about buying whatever you offer. That’s the element of desperation that you have to work with.

Imagine the following scenario:

You are stuck in a life-and-death situation where you need $30 in the next hour to pay off a terrorist. John, an ordinary guy, is in the same room as you with $30 in his pocket. He doesn’t know what’s going on, and you don’t want him to. You’ve got one sample of your product, and you’re trying to sell him your product so that you can get that money. He’s planning to leave the room any second. You’re that desperate. He doesn’t care who you are or what you do. Somehow you have to appeal to him, hold his attention right now with the words that come out of your mouth, and sell your product. What would you say in order to keep him in the room and get him to give you his money for your product?

That’s the kind of frame of mind that you have to have in order to compose the sales pitch to sell your product. The famous successful copywriter Gary Halbert said you have to imagine that you’re writing to some half-sleeping slothful couch potato, and your words have to fill him with enough fire to get up off that couch and do something about what you’ve written!!

Most ads don’t even bother to motivate the reader, which is a key goal of the ad. What a pity since the money you’ve spent on advertising ends up a waste of money. Only when the reader acts and does what you tell him to do, then your ad proves its worth.

In a nutshell, your offer has to do a few things- to show him that: (1) You understand his desires or his pain that he wants to solve. (2) Your product is the best one for him. (3) You know what you’re talking about regarding the product. (4) You’re the best person to buy from. (5) He will get a better deal from you than anyone else (6) What he’s getting is so risk-free that he’d be silly not to accept it.

These 6 steps above are just one variation of a few processes that an ad can take a person through in order to get him or her to buy. But in the end the main question you have to be able to answer the question that is in his head “What’s in for me?” . You have to be able to answer the question very clearly, and in a way that he believes whatever you say so that he or she feels comfortable buying from you.

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