What Your Prospects Most Want To Know, Part 1

Published by: David Garfinkel on 08-09-2021

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We’re back with our Old Masters Series, and this topic is so big and so important that we’re going to take four shows to do it.

The question is: When your prospect starts to read your copy, what is the one thing your prospect wants to know, more than anything else?

I won’t keep you waiting. The answer is simple. What your prospect wants to know is:

What will your product, or service, do for me?

It sounds like a simple question. Maybe even a stupid question.

But it is neither stupid nor simple. Because the answer you give, and the way you put your answer together, will make all the difference for how long your prospect keeps reading. And, at the end of the day, whether or not your prospect actually buys.

This show is in the Old Masters Series because it comes from a very special book: “How to Write a Good Advertisement,” by Victor Schwab. I’ll tell you more about the book in a few minutes.

For now, Schwab identifies four categories of things a prospect wants a product to do for them: 1) help them gain something, 2) help them be something, 3) help them do something, and 4) help them save something.

Today, we’re going to drill down on the things your prospect would like to know that your product will do for them. And you’ll see how you can use this information in your own copy.

So here’s what we’re going to do today. First, we’ll go over all eight things Schwab found prospects want to know if your product can do. It doesn’t have to do more than one, and, as we’ll discuss, it may not even have to do one of these eight, but these are all proven winners.

Vic Schwab spent 44 years working in advertising and kept a lot of notes. He took his fund of knowledge and organized it into this book, “How to Write a Good Ad.” It’s so important that my mentoring clients and I spend almost half a year going through this book in a special way I’ve developed. It’s as good in its own was as Gene Schwartz’s “Breakthrough Advertising.” In short, I’d saw Schwab’s book is a gold mine for copywriters.

After we review the eight things, we’ll take a look at a few examples of how they show up in well-known ads. Then we’ll look at how you can use one or more of these in your copy.

Now, as I mentioned before, you don’t have to use one of these eight. Your odds are usually a lot better if you do. But we’ll look at how you can use the general idea and adapt it to something else, if you think that will work better for you.

And finally, we’ll look at what else you need to think about to really bring your prospect off the fence, once you have told your prospect what the offer will do for them.

How to Write a Good Advertisement, by Victor Schwab

https://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Good-Advertisement-Copywriting-ebook/dp/B01AXJ7SES/

Keywords: headlines and hooks

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