Turning Customer “Pain Points” into a Compelling Crisis
Lesson 8 from: Write Copy that Compels and SellsMelissa Cassera
Turning Customer “Pain Points” into a Compelling Crisis
Lesson 8 from: Write Copy that Compels and SellsMelissa Cassera
Lesson Info
8. Turning Customer “Pain Points” into a Compelling Crisis
Lessons
Class Introduction
08:13 2How to Move Your Audience to Buy
03:56 35 Storytelling Guidelines
20:38 410 Stories That Get People to Practically Throw Cash Money at You
21:44 5Understanding Your Client’s Motivation
03:49 6Turning Customers into Fascinating Protagonists
05:20 7How to Write a Logline
03:18 8Turning Customer “Pain Points” into a Compelling Crisis
05:15Lesson Info
Turning Customer “Pain Points” into a Compelling Crisis
So now we're gonna turn customer pain points into a compelling crisis that they're dying for you to solve. So pain points are things like, I'm not making sales! (laughs) I wanna run a 5K, but I can barely walk without getting out of breath, right? Help, I need to write but I'm such a bad writer! Some of us might feel that way. So when you're communicating pain points, you wanna echo your customers' words and then you wanna spice up 'em up a little bit, right? You wanna make sure that they feel heard and valued and listened to, but you also wanna make it more exciting so it's not just like this. Let's say your customer says, I never know what subject lines to put in my newsletter to get people to open it. I would say, coming up with an amazing newsletter subject line and a call-to-action that drives you crazy! I just added, I just took what they said and then I just added something fun, which is like, it drives me crazy! So there's more emotion and feeling in this. Let's say they say, I...
'm not buying clothes 'til I lose weight. You might say, you have a closet full of clothes that used to fit and are clinging to them until you lose weight. Until then, you dress in the same black leggings that at least make your thighs look kinda small. That would be, this is actually from one of my clients. (laughs) She gave this to me to use. And she does this because all this stuff is all the details that her clients always tell her. They're like, "I wear my black leggings all the time." And so they're saying that, so she's just reflecting this back, but it's way more fun than just saying I'm not buying clothes 'til I lose weight. That's not as fun, that's not as descriptive, there's no story in that. There's lots of story in this. Alright, customer says I got featured on the Huffington Post but it didn't bring me any sales or traffic. I used to get this one all the time, (laughs) from customers. So adding this, still reeling from the last piece of press you got that you thought would explode your business but just brought you a trickle of traffic? So again, I'm just taking that but I'm amping it by saying explode your business, trickle of traffic, so just making that a little bit more visual and descriptive, calling back to the earlier lesson where we used the nervous example. We'll just do one quick example with one person just so we can talk about how to make a compelling crisis a little bit more exciting. Alright, so just basically taking those examples I was showing you, I'm just gonna call on Nicki. I'm picking on her because she is my client. (laughs) So she gets to duty today. Tell me one thing that your client struggles with. Something that they struggle with is they want to go work out and do things but it either hurts or they're afraid it's going to hurt, so they don't do it. Workouts hurt. (laughs) Workouts hurt, okay. What are some visual ways that we can describe that? I like this term, workouts hurt, so let's just, let's just quickly do that in a more descriptive way. And it could be things that your clients say to you or it could just be a way that we describe it in a more hurt way. What would that be like visually? Instead of saying hurt, what would we say? It could be something like they describe how they're limping around. So you might say, yep, you might say limping around. Or they might talk about how they can't wear the cute shoes that they wanna be using. Yes! Or they'll talk about, like, cringing to have to pick up a heavy pot to cook their food when they get home 'cause their arm is so sore. Okay, these are all great. Okay. Just to use that as the quick example, do you see how we went from that and now we have all these awesome visual details? She could easily just start to work on her log line using these details instead, or compelling crisis, rather, not log line. She could say, you know, are you tired of cringing when you have to pick up a pot to make dinner? Or are you sick of not being able to wear the really cute shoes that cost a fortune, that cost your entire rent? But instead, you'll be hobbling around in pain. Super simple, right? You just did that in, like, 10 seconds, to be able to think about what your clients are saying to you. And now that just made this, my workouts hurt, sound so much more exciting, and also calling out little sensory details about their life. That shows a much bigger or more visual image when you say, I just bought shoes that cleared my bank account and now I can barely walk in them, or when, the cringing to pick up the pot. I think that's awesome because everyone has to, at some point, get dishes and things out in order to make things in your house. And so that's a great one because even just thinking of that one sensory detail is so descriptive, rather than just saying workouts hurt. Workouts hurt for all of us. They hurt me! (both laugh) If it's hard enough, right, it's gonna hurt. That's just a quick example for all of you guys to show how simple that is to bounce that around.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Brooke
I thought this course was pretty great. Melissa packed a lot of value into a short class. I took notes and brainstormed on a lot of the exercises and strategies she recommends while watching (pausing as needed) and finished the class with a document full of good ideas and first-draft copy. It is a short class, so if you're looking for something that really gets into the nitty gritty of how to write, this probably won't be enough for you. But if you're just a bit stuck on how to tell your story in a compelling way, or need to inject some excitement into your copy, I'd recommend it.
Simone
This was a great course for giving starting points and methods to make your copy more engaging. It doesn't tell you what to write or is not overly specific, but then what course could cover that for everyone. It does set you up with ways to write and include storytelling techniques that will help make customers read your copy, and hopefully, take the action you want.
Mariya Haberberger
This was super helpful!