Selling the Arch
There's an old saying that goes, "Why do you speak to me of the stones? It's only the arch that matters to me." In writing, it's easy to get caught up in all the minute details that are important to us, the writer. But the reader — the consumer of our material — doesn't necessarily need to hear about every stone, every brick, every bit of mortar. They simply need to know that together they form a good, reliable arch. More importantly, the structural support or visual appeal the arch provides.
For example, have you ever been reading a novel where the author drones on and on about the tiles, the tables, the upholstery, the brand of glasses the librarian is wearing or the color of shirt random bystander lady #3 is wearing, and thinking, “For Pete’s sake, get ON with it!” What do you do when you encounter that? For the majority of you, I’d wager to say — if you’re anything like me — you start skimming the pages looking for where things get good again. “Shut up and take me to the action, already!”
Look, I get it. The author wants to paint a vivid picture for the reader, to immerse them in the world they so carefully created. But the author also has to be careful to not to overdo it, because there’s a BIG difference between painting someone a picture and bashing them over the head with it repeatedly. When the reader gets to the point where they start looking around for the dead horse and the guy holding the whip, you’ve lost ‘em.
The same thing applies with copywriting. You may like writing about all the pearl buttons, the brass knobs, the hand-crafted, made-by-magical-gnomes-in-a-fairy-garden qualities of your product, but that doesn’t mean a reader likes hearing about it. At least, not right off the bat. Not when they’re casually skimming a page looking for something to pique their interest. You’ve heard the phrase “putting the cart before the horse”? The copywriting equivalent would be, “putting the features before the benefits.”
Think about that endlessly-rambling author again. When you skim the pages, what are you looking for? The action, right? The exciting stuff. The stuff that makes you go, “Ooooh, now that’s cool!” Aka, you’re searching for the BENEFIT; the payoff to you, the reader, for investing your time in the novel. That's what hooks you and keeps you turning the pages, NOT the color of the shorts Jimmy’s second cousin twice removed is wearing in the background. This also applies to copywriting. If you’re going to hook a reader into becoming a customer, you must always lead with the benefit. Let me say that again, in all caps and bolded for good measure: ALWAYS LEAD WITH THE BENEFITS.
You can go on and on forever until Methuselah cries “Uncle” about every little nut and bolt that went into your product, but unless you first make the benefit very clear to the reader — what does this do for me, how can this improve my life, how can this make a daily mundane task easier — then guess what? You’ve lost ‘em. Go join our long-winded author in the corner; you’re both in time outs.
It can be tough, killing our darlings, but it's often a necessary step to ensure we aren't bogging the reader down with too many irrelevant details. Remember, you don’t grab a reader with the fine print, you grab them with the bold benefits.
As a copywriter, our job isn't to sell the bricks; our job is to SELL THAT ARCH.
~J.B.
