You’ll Know Who To Pitch Your Copy To

Many people who come into copywriting — coaches, teachers, professors, authors, journalists, salespersons — have a profile in speaking or writing to large groups of people. I myself have spoken to audiences of hundreds. Once I was even asked to address a hall packed with several busloads of Chinese high school students.
When we address large groups, we tend to use impersonal language and talk to them as a group — you people, y’all, of all you. That’s natural when we’re describing, explaining, arguing something that doesn’t involve selling something to individuals who are going to pay out of their own pocket. A personal appeal isn’t necessary then and may be out of place.
But in sales and marketing materials, the opposite is the case. We’re making a direct personal appeal. Of course we hope our appeal will reach a large and growing audience. But when it comes to selling our product or service to the members of that audience, we sell it to one person at a time. The audience doesn’t buy. Individual people do. They may buy even though our appeal is made in general impersonal terms because they’ve already decided to. Maybe that’s why they’re sitting in the hall or logging on to the online seminar.
But those are not the people we should be focusing our main efforts on. The people we should be focusing on are the individuals, probably a majority of our audience, who are undecided. Audiences can in fact be split into three groups — the committed 20% who’ve already decided to buy, the contrarian 20% who’ve decided not to (maybe because they already have our product), and the 60% who are undecided but might buy if we touch the right buttons for them. And that first of all means making an appeal direct to them as an individual.
Making a direct appeal makes people feel special, that we’re interested in them and their problem, and have a solution to their individual need. Whether you like Bill Clinton or not, you have to admit that “I feel YOUR pain” (my capitals) has become one of the most famous sayings in modern politics. Likewise everyone knows the world-famous company that has time for YOU (my capitals). When we make people good about themselves and hopeful about their problem, they’re going to like us. And people buy from people they like. That’s why one of the most important words in copywriting is YOU. That’s why we should use YOU as often as makes sense to do so in our copy.
The specialist in tuition, travel and health copywriting. The one-stop shop for all your business, study and personal written materials. A one-to-one humanities subjects tuition service for adult international students. Premium thesis review service to evaluate, advise on and polish your humanities thesis.