Get Inside your Reader's Mind
by: Elaine Berry

Have you ever read an article and felt a powerful contact with the writer? Just as if that person REALLY understood you and was speaking right to you?

It doesn't often happen with an article. Even less often with a sales letter. But when it does, you find yourself pulling out your credit card.

If you can write your copy from a perspective where you can see it from the point of view of the reader, you have an advantage over 99 per cent of people who write copy. If you empathize with your reader, your copy should be head and shoulders above that of anyone who doesn't.

Get inside your readers' minds
Why do you think they are at your site? Do you think it's because they want to hear what you have to say? Or because they are keen for you to sell them something? I don't think so.

They are there because they have a desire. Or a problem that needs solving.

Suppose you are selling a healthy diet product. Your visitor may know with her mind that she NEEDS a healthy diet. But preaching at her about the beneficial effects of a healthy diet on heart, blood pressure etc. will leave her cold.

She may be searching because her deep desire is to attract people with her beautiful body. Or she may have a daydream about reclining on an exotic beach in a bikini and drawing admiring or envious looks Or just be desperate to improve her self-image. She may never even have spoken to anyone about these desires and dreams. But if she reads your copy and sees that you know where she's coming from, your product is as good as sold.

How are relationships formed? When you meet someone and feel the two of you have an instant rapport, why does it happen?

Building rapport
Very often it's because you understand each other, or realize you have something in common. It may be a problem or difficulty. You may find you've both been through a broken relationship, or both have a difficult teenage kid, or both have serious hip pain. Whatever it is, you find for the first time that someone understands where you're coming from. You can talk about it for the first time and know that someone's listening. The bond that forms is often the strongest type of bond.

When you can show your customer that you really understand, that you have been there, that you appreciate and grasp the problem, you have an instant bond even if the two of you have never met.

And once your customers are convinced that you genuinely understand the problem, you can easily and gently lead them to the solution.

But remember – this is about being REAL, not about faking or using clever words.

If you personally haven't been through that problem, then find somebody who HAS and use that person's story. But don't invent it – it won't work.

Learn to write from the heart and get through to your reader, and you have learnt the most valuable lesson in copywriting.

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