Apply The Law of Contrast to Build Desire

In a recent cri­tique for a coach­ing client, the issue of “gap analy­sis” arose. Gap Analy­sis is some­thing I learned in sales, and it was heav­ily taught by sales train­ers like Brian Tracy, such as in his course “The Psy­chol­ogy of Selling.”

Gap Analy­sis is an immensely pow­er­ful sell­ing tech­nique. It’s also an impor­tant fea­ture of copy­writ­ing. Most peo­ple will know a vari­a­tion of it, which is often called “Problem-​​Agitate-​​Solve,” a term coined by top copy­writer Dan Kennedy.

I pre­fer “Gap Analy­sis” because it dri­ves home the rela­tion­ship between those three ele­ments. So what is Gap Analy­sis and how can you apply it to your sales copy?

A gap is the per­ceived dif­fer­ence between the prob­lem and the poten­tial out­come. That is, you have to describe life with the prob­lem and life with­out it.

Your prod­uct, which is your solu­tion, is the bridge between the two. Show­ing the ben­e­fits enables you to posi­tion your prod­uct as the bridge over the gap.

Once the gap is estab­lished, your words can widen the gap by aggra­vat­ing the prob­lem, or by push­ing away the solu­tion — i.e., mak­ing it seem less achiev­able or reachable.

I know this might sound con­tra­dic­tory, but a great strat­egy is to start out by mak­ing your prospect feel uncom­fort­able and raise their level of dis­com­fort. You do that by exac­er­bat­ing their prob­lem or push­ing the solu­tion as far away as you can.

Specif­i­cally, once you iden­tify the gap, you should widen it as much as you can — in their mind. Your sales copy should make your prospect as uncom­fort­able as pos­si­ble and any solu­tion for the prob­lem it solves as unat­tain­able as possible.

Why? The rea­son is, once you widen the gap, then when you do even­tu­ally present your solu­tion, it will become far more com­pelling, desir­able, even mandatory.

You’re turn­ing what was once a desire into a necessity.

Your prod­uct becomes like a cool, refresh­ing oasis in the mid­dle of a scorch­ing desert, as if mag­i­cally appear­ing only after walk­ing for miles under the sun’s blis­ter­ing heat.

Granted, you must first iden­tify your prospect’s prob­lem before show­cas­ing the ben­e­fits of your solu­tion. But just defin­ing the prob­lem and pre­sent­ing the solu­tion is not enough.

You must give your read­ers a clear, com­mon vision of what relief from the prob­lem will mean to them on a per­sonal level. It’s an essen­tial step in the sales process — the one that fos­ters desire and increases the need and the urgency to find a solution.

Thus Gap Analy­sis is a pow­er­ful tool that should be included in your copy­writ­ing toolbox.

A large part of its power is in it’s sim­plic­ity. It boils down to only four steps:

1. Intro­duce the problem.
2. Intro­duce the “other side”.
3. Widen the gap.
4. Bridge the gap.

Here’s a very sim­ple example.

You qual­ify the reader by intro­duc­ing their cur­rent sit­u­a­tion into the con­ver­sa­tion. Relate to the issues presently fac­ing your prospect. You can dis­cuss how bad things are or at least how bad things are as it applies to the prob­lem you are introducing.

Once the prob­lem is intro­duced, you will want to present the other side. That way, you also intro­duce the gap. For exam­ple, you might say things like:

• “Wouldn’t it be nice if…”
• “What all of us dream of is…”
• “Would you like to know how to…”

Fol­lowed by “avoid,” “leapfrog over,” “skip,” “erad­i­cate,” “reduce,” or “solve” [prob­lem], and “achieve,” “enjoy,” or “pic­ture enjoy­ing” [the ben­e­fits of solv­ing the problem].

Now that you’ve cre­ated the gap, you can work on widen­ing it.

You can make the prob­lem appear big­ger by focus­ing on it, exac­er­bat­ing it, and mak­ing it more real, con­crete, and painful. Or you do so by mak­ing the solu­tion seem unachiev­able and describe the frus­tra­tion of not hav­ing access to it.

To push away the solu­tion even fur­ther you can remind them of how great it would be if they get ben­e­fit, ben­e­fit, ben­e­fit. You can do that by paint­ing pic­tures of them enjoy­ing the ben­e­fits of solv­ing this prob­lem — or of not hav­ing it in the first place.

You also empha­size how urgent it is to solve the prob­lem. Talk about the impor­tance of solv­ing the prob­lem quickly, or the down­falls of not tak­ing action right now. Use vivid descrip­tions and men­tal imagery to enlarge the effects of the prob­lem going unsolved.

Then you can move on to the final step.

Now, with per­fect tim­ing, you release your solution.

Just like the mount­ing pres­sure of a soon-​​to-​​erupt vol­cano that has built up over a period of time, grow­ing, expand­ing, and fes­ter­ing with no end in sight, your solu­tion comes along to finally relieve the bal­loon­ing stress and pent up frustration.

It’s at this point that your solu­tion will be far more in demand. By finally bridg­ing the gap, they can grasp more fully how achiev­able “the other side” really is, and this increases their desire to buy your solu­tion in order to reach it and relieve that pressure.

It’s apply­ing the law of con­trast, really.

If I offer a solu­tion to your prob­lem, you may be apa­thetic about it, regard­less of how fan­tas­tic the solu­tion is or how great its ben­e­fits are. Why? Because the prob­lem is not as impor­tant to you. If it is impor­tant, it may not be as urgent.

In other words, even if solv­ing the prob­lem is impor­tant to you, you may be shop­ping around for alter­nate solu­tions, or the solu­tion may not be as desir­able since solv­ing the prob­lem is not at the top of your mind at the moment.

(For instance, when do you think about see­ing your doc­tor the most? Before a prob­lem hap­pens in order to pre­vent it? Long after a prob­lem has hap­pened and is now in the back of your mind? Or while the prob­lem is hap­pen­ing and hurts you the most?)

But you will be a lot more excited about the solu­tion if the prob­lem is indeed at the top of your mind at that moment, and if you know how bad the prob­lem really is — or you know how bad things can be if the prob­lem is left unsolved.

Now that’s the power of Gap Analysis.

Also, it also helps you to apply the law of con­trast in another way.

Since pay­ing for your solu­tion is a prob­lem in itself (money is secu­rity, and nobody wants to lose their hard-​​earned dol­lars), then by widen­ing the gap the prob­lem of not own­ing your prod­uct is now a lot larger in com­par­i­son to the smaller prob­lem of pay­ing for it.

In other words, by blow­ing up the prob­lem, you’re also shrink­ing the prob­lem of mak­ing a deci­sion to buy. You’re reduc­ing the price in their minds and its psy­cho­log­i­cal impact.

Of course, you can and should lower price sen­si­tiv­ity by increas­ing the value of your solu­tion. But by using Gap Analy­sis and the power of con­trast, you make the pain of pay­ing for your solu­tion a lot more bear­able in con­trast to the pain of not own­ing it.

The pain of the prob­lem is greater than the pain of pay­ing for the solution.

Ulti­mately, by now it’s prob­a­bly quite clear to you how impor­tant it is to intro­duce both sides of the gap dur­ing a sales pre­sen­ta­tion. It’s the only way to pro­vide your read­ers with a com­plete pic­ture of how impres­sive an impact your prod­uct will have on their lives.

Remem­ber to use your tar­get market’s most basic yet dom­i­nant desires — we all hate prob­lems — as emo­tional high­lights to your descrip­tions. It’s impor­tant to elicit an emo­tional response in your reader, and “widen­ing the gap” has the poten­tial to do so.

An added ben­e­fit is, the whole of this process works to build your rela­tion­ship with the reader, and by exten­sion the reader’s rela­tion­ship to the product.

By pre­sent­ing the gap effec­tively, you con­nect with your reader by relat­ing to their predica­ment as well as their dom­i­nant desires, while inflat­ing both at the same time.

So that, when you finally reveal your prod­uct, they are not only ready for the solu­tion, but also pre­dis­posed to accept it, desire it even more, and eager to buy it.

Obvi­ously, you will want to prac­tice and per­fect this technique.

Just remem­ber the four steps out­lined. Mind the gap, and it will help if you keep a solid pic­ture of your tar­get mar­ket so that you use words, phrases, sit­u­a­tions, sto­ries, and “rea­sons why” that your reader will be able to relate to, appre­ci­ate, and be com­pelled by.

You’ll soon find that “widen­ing the gap” is a nat­ural part of your copy­writ­ing repertoire.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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