You know why Star Wars is so popular?
George Lucas created an incredible world people want to be a part of.
A little green dude spitting out Zen wisdom. Jedi mind tricks. LIGHTSABERS!
40 years after it’s creation, it’s become a $30 billion industry. Hordes of people wear their homemade StormTrooper outfits to yearly conventions. And thanks to Disney’s recent resurrection, it’s only getting bigger and more profitable.
Now, if you’re a business owner/entrepreneur, you can sprinkle this George Lucas magic into your sales copy. You can show your reader a world they desperately want to be a part of. And get them itching to buy from you.
It’s a lot easier than it sounds. And it’ll keep you from having boring, generic copy that makes you look like everyone else.
I’ll show you how in a sec. But first, let’s take a look at copy that doesn’t do this. So you can get a sense of how to transform regular copy into copy that leaps off the page and stirs desire in your reader.
What happens when you don’t do this
MindValley is one of the top players in the personal development world. It’s run by Vishen Lakhiani and sells courses and programs geared towards personal growth and transformation. They’ve got damn good sales copy and stunning design.
Here’s an excerpt from their Extraordinary Summit sales page. It highlights one of the benefits of attending the summit. What do you feel as you read this?
Keeping Your Mind Active During Sleep
We all know the mind is heavily active during sleep, but are you harnessing this time to resolve problems in your waking life? I’ll teach you how with simple hacks to direct your unconscious mind during dream time.
The promise of solving problems in your sleep is intriguing. And they make a compelling case by saying, in essence: “Your brain is doin’ stuff anyway, may as well get it doin’ useful stuff you want it to do”.
While it’s solid copy, there are two changes that could make this even more powerful.
For starters, look at the subhead: “Keeping your mind active during sleep”. How’d you feel when you first read that? Excited? Curious? Did you want to read more?
To me, it fell flat.
The subhead doesn’t spark curiosity or desire. Because nobody’s thinking “I want to keep my brain active during sleep”. If anything, we want the opposite. For our brains to turn off so we can fall asleep fast and wake up refreshed.
The copy beneath that could be pumped up, too. The idea that I can use sleep to solve problems is intriguing. But what does that mean exactly? What problems are we talking about? Will it fix a marriage? Help you find your passion? Be more productive? There’s no spectrum or reference point for what it can do.
This subhead and copy below it could be stronger if there was a clear promise of an enticing benefit. And they could have created that by painting a picture of a world the reader would want to join.
Let’s take a look at how they could have done that.
Use descriptive language to build desire for your offer
Here’s a Facebook post where John Carlton talks about how he uses his subconscious mind to solve problems while he sleeps. Take a look, then we’ll break down exactly what’s going on.
Work Hack #47: Did you know that many top writers use sleep as a productivity tool?
You’ll get more done, at a higher quality level, in one hour after a power nap… than you’ll ever drag out of your brain in five hours of exhausted effort.
Plus, you can easily teach your subconscious to write FOR you. Some of my best headlines burbled up after a nap. I just asked my brain to distill all the info and ideas I’d crammed into it while I snoozed, and deliver a good headline when I woke up. Voila!
Cool part: Once you get hip to this hack, naps are technically “work”.
So you can toss the guilt, and legitimately tell folks you’re working while hitting the couch.
I love my job.
Let’s look at the differences:
- John immediately highlights the benefit: “Sleep as a productivity tool”. That’s going to spark curiosity and desire. Get more done while laying in bed? Yes, please. Tell me more…
- There’s a clear promise: “You’ll get more done, at a higher quality, in one hour after a nap than…five hours of exhausted effort”. What makes this so powerful is this promise has 2 sides to it. Not only are you getting the benefit of more high-quality work, you avoiding the pain of slogging through hours of work!
- He dives into a story of how he’s used it to come up with headlines. Now we have a clearer understanding of what this can do. And John’s audience is primarily entrepreneurs and copywriters. A story of how they can fall asleep and wake up with a brilliant headline will get them as excited as a hungry dog who smells the pork chops you brought home.
- After his story, he paints a picture of you telling people you’re working while “hitting the couch”. By creating this scene, you can project yourself into that situation. You start to feel what it’d be like, which makes you want it even more.
John and MindValley touch on similar topics. MindValley does a fine job of sparking interest and curiosity. But John takes it to another level. He leads with clear benefits, hammers them home with an example, then paints a picture of a better life the reader can project himself into.
John shows the reader a world they want to join.
Now if you want to be able to do this yourself, check out my guide to Dream Copy. It’ll walk you step-by-step through a process that’ll help you create copy like this. Copy with a clear promise that sparks strong desire in your reader (and makes the writing process a lot more fun.)
You’ll also see more examples of how top copywriters in the personal development world use this technique.
You can download it by putting your name and email in the box on the right of this page.
P.S. Just for fun, here’s in-depth breakdown of this very MindValley sales page . If you’re selling a live weekend workshop, I suggest you check it out. You’ll learn the 2 ways you can open a sales page for your workshop, and which one is best for you (hint: it depends on how well known you are in your industry. One is great for “guru’s” with a large following, the other if you’re just starting out.)