Do your lips move when they read? >> And why does it affect your profits?
You may consider that first question – about moving your lips – insulting. You probably think I’m referring to folks who aren’t too smart.
If you’re thin-skinned you may even think it’s a crude way of implying YOU’RE not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.
But if you write copy – or content online or for your front-line service workers – it really matters. That’s because when we read – whether we are highly educated or totally uneducated – we “play” the words back to ourselves in our minds. And so do our readers and listeners.
What does this imply for your writing and your profits?
Well, here’s what a great advertising man – Leo Burnett, founder of the giant agency Leo Burnett Company – used to say when a writer showed him copy he didn’t care for:
“Would you say that to someone you know?”
And one of the great comic novelists of the 20th century, Evelyn Waugh, said:
“A good letter is like a conversation”
So let me ask you: Is your writing conversational? Or is it full of stuffy corporate jargon? Formal and pretentious, striving to be literary?
Does it get people to act – or bore them to tears?
If your copy is like that – if it isn’t conversational – it won’t be read. And it won’t sell. As Winston Churchill, whose persuasive powers moved an entire nation to beat Hitler said:
“Use simple words everyone knows, then everyone will understand.”
And as my old boss Roger Borsink noted:
“You cannot BORE people into buying.”
Well: are they buying?
Or are you boring them?
It costs no more to run copy that makes them buy – conversational copy – than malarcky that puts them to sleep.
How do you do it?
And who am I to talk?
You can see more about all of this at EricValdivieso.com
Best,
Eric
- My writing elevator pitch - 06/06/2024
- What is Service Arts - 04/11/2024
- Service Arts - 03/28/2024