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Why copywriting “systems” fall short of excellence.
We don’t like it when we see the process behind the sales message.
When we listen to a telemarketer our attention snaps closed.
When a salesperson comes to the door and starts talking, we instantly lose our sense of hearing.
When a car dealer tries to sell us a car, our brain just disengages.
Of course, none of these three statements are true 100% of the time.
Occasionally a telemarketer will engage your attention successfully.
However, salespeople get through to you and make you focus on their messages only when their message deviates from what you expect to hear.
You don’t close your mind to all salespeople simply because they are trying to sell you something. You close your mind because of a weary familiarity with the structure and presentation of their message.
The same goes for copywriting.
If your page design and opening headline and paragraphs are grindingly familiar in their structure and direction...you won’t capture your readers’ attention.
The skeleton of your sales message belongs on the inside, not the outside.
It’s the visibility of the underlying structure of your sales message that turns people off.
This is a problem for unsophisticated salespeople, and for copywriters who depend too much on “copywriting systems”.
When you write copy according to a strict system or process, the final result has all the appeal and life of a picture painted by numbers.
At first glance it looks OK. But on closer inspection, you find that both the copy...and the painting...are without any genuine life, inspiration or appeal.
The best copywriters are hardly even aware of the skeleton or structure behind their sales message
It’s the same as with a painter. Successful painters learned the rules many, many years ago. But the rules are not what they have at front of mind when they start to paint.
Good copywriters know the “rules” of structuring a strong sales message as well as anyone. But they don’t build each sales letter or web page according to those rules.
That knowledge of how to sell...the supporting skeleton... stays where it belongs. Inside and out of sight.
On the outside, in the words they use and the flow of copy they create, good copywriters create something that is new, fresh, lively and compelling.
In fact, you would have to be a very good copywriter yourself to even see the underlying structure. And often, when you find it, it’s not exactly as it is “meant to be”.
Good copywriters know the rules well enough, intuitively and unconsciously, to be able to bend and break them sometimes.
That’s what makes people read their copy.
Back to copywriting systems
There are plenty of copywriting “systems” available. They will break a sales letter down, block by block. You then write according to the system, and bingo...you have a sales letter.
But you don’t have a really good sales letter.
Its failing, as I have mentioned, is not the fault of the underlying structure.
The problem lies in the fact that you have “written by numbers”...and your copy has its skeleton on the outside and not on the inside.
What happens when someone reads it?
They experience the same “sudden loss of hearing” as they do when a telemarketer starts reading from a prepared script.
However structurally sound your copy may be, it won’t work as well as it could unless you clothe it with life, genuine energy and at least a flicker of the unexpected.
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