Benefits-led language

“Most great sales copy is written backwards, from the customer’s interests, desires, frustrations, fears, thoughts, feelings, and experiences, journeying to a revealing of a solution or fulfilment tied to your business.”

• Dan Kennedy, No B.S. Direct Marketing: The Ultimate No Holds Barred Kick Butt Take No Prisoners Direct Marketing for Non-Direct Marketing Businesses

My lecturer for Professional Writing was a gun.

I was lucky because she ran the tutorial I was in too.

The tutorials were smaller groups of 12 people.

We gathered in the tutorial each week for an hour and a half.

We brought printouts of our piece, shared them with everyone else, and they would get read and annotated at home by everyone.

The annotations were shared with feedback to everyone in the group the following week.

The feedback had rules.

A maximum of one thing you liked about it with a specific why, and more importantly two edits that would improve what the person was trying to say.

This went for 11 weeks.

I still remember those classes fondly.

The collective forced feedback process always produced better work without exception.

12 smart people who wanted to be better writers, who chose to take the class, and led by a world-class lecturer.

She always talked about the “agent and the action”.

There are many ways to write of course, but for punchy prose that did the heavy lifting for you, the agent and the action worked.

Every sentence needs an agent think of this as the thing the sentence is about.

Then every sentence has an action, this is what’s happening to the thing.

Stop for a moment and re-read from the top of this chapter, you’ll notice there’s a thing and something happening each time.

1. A long time ago (thing) access to an awesome lecturer (happening).
2. Core subject (thing) good fortune (happening).
3. Tutorial (thing) contained 12 people (happening).
4. Gathering (thing) significant duration (happening).

…and so on.

It’s hard to do this intuitively, but it will make your writing better.

However, you don’t have to start from zero.

In the last section on Assembling Your Offer you committed to doing the “so what test” and coming up with benefits that your customer will get.

You can now assemble and write copy with the benefits.

The agent is your customer, and the action is the benefit.

This is benefits-led language and starts with the customer in mind.

Let’s bring this together and pretend I’m selling the Professional Writing course on behalf of The University of Melbourne.

Features:

• 12 weeks of lectures and tutorial
• Collaboration with peers
• Led by world-class lecturer

Benefits:

• Training on how to write more professionally
• Develop a better understanding of drafting, editing, and producing under pressure
• Access to really smart writers who will coach and help me better

Now let’s focus the language on the agent (prospective student) and the action (the benefits they will get).

Know what to say and when to say it.

Our Professional Writing course is focused on making you a better writer over 12 intense weeks.

You’ll grow alongside your peers by honing your craft under pressure.

The foundation for lifelong skills will be laid out for you by world-class talent that teaches you to communicate clearly, precisely, and with more punch.

Writing is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the 1-10-100 rule.

You can take it to extremes.

The first words you produce will seem so bad that you’ll cringe in agony when people see them.

By the 100th time, they will be so foreign next to the first attempt they’ll look like they’ve arrived from another plane of existence.

This is the case for EVERYONE, so start practice today because I believe you can do it.

You’ve got this!