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