We all want to belong. It’s especially thrilling if we belong to an exclusive group, a group where outsiders aren’t welcome.
Your job as a copywriter or marketer is to make prospects and customers feel they will be part of a special group – if they buy your products or services. You have to convince prospects that your product is the word in the bouncer’s ear which allows them to jump the long line, bypass the big guys blocking the door to the general public – and gain entry into an exclusive club filled with beautiful people.
You start by using NLP’s Milton Model language pattern of Generalization (All, Every, Most, etc.). Then you include the type of people your prospect aspires to. Finally, you add what you want them to believe or do. So the pattern would go like this:
(All/Every) + (GROUP PROSPECT WOULD LIKE TO BE PART OF) + (VERB) + (WHAT YOU WANT THEM TO BELIEVE OR DO).
NOTE: You don’t need to include the adjectives “All” or “Every” to imply a generalization.
Here are some examples:
• All the most successful freelance writers we spoke with, the ones who are actually living well from their writing, subscribe to Writer’s World magazine.
• The best-loved teachers give their students ACME Gold Stars. (OK, that’s a bit of a stretch – remember to keep what you say believable. This one is more believable: The best-loved teachers are eager to show delight in their students’ success.)
• Bloggers who have become financially independent give their readers useful, hard-to-get information.
• Caring mothers serve their families Hostess Twinkies and Cupcakes.
Another way to use group mentality, and is especially useful for people with more of a moving-away motivation, is to tell prospects NOT to belong to an undesirable group. It’s very easy to set up:
• Don’t be part of the herd!
• Don’t join the Chicken Littles of the world.
• If you’re happy with being in the bottom 15%…
• Only the naysayers would think that.
To make this group pattern even stronger you need an outside enemy to attack the group or what it stands for. Why? Because it helps us band together. Feel closer to each other. Emperors, kings, and politicians have known, used, and abused this method of persuasion for centuries. I’ll include how to do that for your ads in a future post. Successful people will be sure to read it; cretins will probably ignore it. (Ha! Just kidding!)