If you want to sell something using emotional direct-response copywriting, one of the MOST effective ways to get prospects to listen to you is by rallying them around a cause - or against a cause or a common enemy.
For instance, no matter what you're doing, there is nothing that gives your call to action more energy and more validity, than finding a bunch of other people doing the same thing and then joining them all as one united front.
This works whether what you're doing is popular or unpopular, healthy or unhealthy, commonplace or unconventional.
Even if what you're doing kills people - like smoking cigarettes.
As an example, here's a very clever "strength in numbers" marketing strategy, one of the largest tobacco companies in the world has come up with - and it's one you can easily copy.
As you probably know, in many countries around the world, smoking is being banned in public places, including restaurants.
So to rally their customers against this, and to make sure this doesn't result in more people quitting smoking, Altadis (a big European tobacco conglomerate) has set up a website that actually glamorizes smoking.
It's called Le Lab, and inside this lab there are many things.
There are tons of photos of celebrities smoking, for starters.
As you know, our society is absolutely manic when it comes to pop culture.
And it is brain-dead simple to validate what someone's doing, by showing them how this same behavior fits into the lifestyles of so many of the rich and famous we look up to and model.
In fact, I'm surprised pharmaceutical companies don't use celebrities to endorse products like anti-anxiety tablets and items of this nature.
Anyway, in Le Lab, there are also a series of cutting-edge artsy videos, which show the pleasures of smoking - portraying smoking as sensual even.
They even wax nostalgic, as in "Remember the first time you took a drag?" (As a side note, "nostalgia" is one of THE most effective emotional buy-buttons you can push, when you're trying to sell something, especially in print.
) Altadis is planning on using Le Lab as a platform for social networking for all it's consumers.
What I'm incredibly puzzled about, is that right now, only Altadis employees can access this site, which makes absolutely no sense at all.
So...
how can you use this formula in your business? There are a number of very simple ways of doing this, actually: create an offline newsletter for your list and have your readers contribute material to it...
create an online forum for your list...
create some sort of social networking for your buyers...
let your customers or clients attend a public speaking engagement you will host (have them bring friends, of course)...
create a big huge cause that all your buyers feel passionate about, and then create a mechanism where they can all contribute to it or participate in some way.
The list of things you can do to rally your prospects for or against something, is virtually endless.
What you want to keep in mind is the "us versus them" psychology behind this.
I don't care whether you're working with cancer survivors, Harley riders, or smokers -- everyone wants to feel united with someone, and everyone wants to believe how they think and feel, makes them different.
Understanding this, and leveraging it, is worth a small fortune when it comes to writing direct-response copy.
Now go sell something.