Can Your Prospects Take An Oath?

One prob­lem in copy­writ­ing I often see is the fact that the audi­ence is not tar­geted for the offer. An untar­geted, unqual­i­fied prospect won’t buy, no mat­ter how good the copy is.

Or at least, they will ask for a refund once they smell the cof­fee. But that’s not the topic I want to discuss…

It’s the sec­ond biggest copy­writ­ing prob­lem. Which is the fact that the copy doesn’t speak to the cus­tomer at the stage of aware­ness at which they hap­pen to be.

This is absolutely essen­tial to ensure that the copy is long enough, and strong enough, to appeal to, qual­ify, edu­cate, and sell the prospect. It’s about con­nect­ing with them.

What are these “stages of aware­ness?” There are four.

I’ve used these before I ever learned about their exis­tence. Mostly uncon­sciously through research­ing a tar­get mar­ket while writ­ing copy. I know, for exam­ple, that Eugene Schwartz talks about this and at great length in his book, “Break­through Advertising.”

Schwartz dis­cusses the var­i­ous stages of aware­ness and sophis­ti­ca­tion of a cer­tain mar­ket, but I pre­fer to use an acronym so it is eas­ier to remem­ber and follow.

I call it “OATH.” As in, “Is your prospect ready and will­ing to take an oath?”

It’s a cool mnemonic to help you remem­ber how aware is your mar­ket about the prob­lem, their need for a solu­tion, and of course, your solu­tion specif­i­cally. Here’s what I mean.

Depend­ing one where your reader is at, and the level of edu­ca­tion, cre­den­tial­iza­tion, and agi­ta­tion you need to pro­vide (and the length of copy you need to write, to a cer­tain extent), depends very highly on how knowl­edge­able and aware your mar­ket is.

Maybe they’re hurt­ing right now. Maybe they’re not there yet. “Not there yet” means they may be hurt­ing, but do they really know they are hurt­ing, and by how much?

That’s what their aware­ness level of the prob­lem means. And it’s also how edu­cated they are about the solu­tion — let alone your solu­tion — and how sophis­ti­cated they are.

Granted, this is answered to some degree by how tar­geted your audi­ence is, which is the first prob­lem I men­tioned ear­lier. But the sales copy should flow from, and fol­low with, that stage of aware­ness in order to bring them to a suc­cess­ful outcome.

I like to look at it this way: how pre­pared they are to take an oath, mean­ing how ready, will­ing, and able they are to buy, is based on any one of those four stages.

Here’s what “OATH” means…

O — They’re obliv­i­ous.

At this stage, they’re unaware about the prob­lem let alone a need for a solu­tion. They don’t know they’re hurt­ing or could be hurt­ing (i.e., that there’s a poten­tial prob­lem they don’t know about and should pre­vent with your solution).

So in this case, you need to edu­cate them a lot — about the prob­lem or poten­tial prob­lem. You need to bring it to the top of their minds. If you hit them too hard and too fast with the solu­tion and par­tic­u­larly the ben­e­fits of the solu­tion, with­out know­ing they have a prob­lem in the first place, you’re only going to con­fuse or lose them.

Often, this is what hap­pens with copy that’s too short or too presumptive.

Do they really know they’re hurt­ing? Even if they sim­ply have an unmet desire for some­thing, unbe­known to them they’re still hurt­ing at some other level. As my friend and copy­writer Craig Per­rine once said, “An unmet desire is also a prob­lem to be solved.”

A — They’re apa­thetic.

They know they have a prob­lem, but they’re indif­fer­ent about the solu­tion. Any solu­tion. They sim­ply don’t care for what­ever rea­son. Per­haps the prob­lem is not impor­tant enough or urgent enough to them. Per­haps they’re not hurt­ing enough.

So you need to blow up the prob­lem — or the risk of the poten­tial prob­lem, which is a prob­lem in itself. You need to aggra­vate it. Make it more real, more present, more urgent, more vivid. You need to pour salt into their wounds, so to speak.

More impor­tantly, you need to make them feel the con­se­quences of their inac­tion. Because good copy doesn’t really induce action. Good copy, in real­ity, is meant to pre­vent pro­cras­ti­na­tion — and pro­cras­ti­na­tion is the biggest killer of sales!

This is par­tic­u­larly true with higher stages of aware­ness, for the more aware they are, then the more their inac­tion is about pro­cras­ti­na­tion than it is about the lack of desire.

T — They’re think­ing.

They know they have a prob­lem and that there is a solu­tion, but they don’t know about your solu­tion. They’re shop­ping around, con­sid­er­ing other offers or just think­ing about whether they should be doing some­thing about their prob­lem in the first place.

So at this stage, you don’t need to sell them too much on the prob­lem or the solu­tion. After all, they’re think­ing about it. But you do need to sell them on your solution.

What is it? Why is it a good solu­tion? Why is it impor­tant to them? What makes it so unique, dif­fer­ent, or valu­able? What makes your offer so com­pelling above over all other alter­na­tives, includ­ing unre­lated ones? With the lat­ter, I mean indi­rect competitors.

An indi­rect com­peti­tor may be a totally dif­fer­ent solu­tion, a dif­fer­ent prod­uct or ser­vice, that soothes the same pain. So you need to build value in your solu­tion, too.

H — They’re hurt­ing.

At this stage, they’re des­per­ate! They know they have a prob­lem and how bad it is, they may know about the var­i­ous solu­tions that exist on the mar­ket, and they even know about your spe­cific solu­tion. But they haven’t gone ahead for some reason.

Per­haps they don’t know how to go ahead, or why they should go ahead right now. Per­haps they’ve used other solu­tions unsuc­cess­fully in the past and are afraid.

Their inac­tion may be they’ve seen other offers but they’re over­whelmed, dis­trust­ing, skep­ti­cal, or sus­pi­cious, or they’ve been burnt by other, sub­stan­dard solu­tions or scams.

Think of it this way: if they’re des­per­ate, then clearly they’re already sold. So why haven’t they bought, yet? What do they need to get over the remain­ing “hump?” What’s stop­ping them? What objec­tions do they have left or what ques­tions remain to be answered?

So here, you need to increase proof, urgency, and the value of your spe­cific solu­tion. No need for a lot of edu­ca­tion here. Just sell them on rea­sons why on get­ting your solu­tion and get­ting it now. Build per­ceived value, proof, and urgency.

At this stage, pro­cras­ti­na­tion is the cul­prit. Often, it’s based on fear. Whether it’s the fear of the unknown (they don’t know you from a hole in the wall), the fear of mak­ing a bad deci­sion, or the fear of buy­ing — such as secu­rity con­cerns, for example.

You need to allay that fear. To do so, you need to truly under­stand your cus­tomer at a deeper, more inti­mate level. You need to learn why they haven’t gone ahead yet or what they need to go ahead. And finally, you need to give it to them.

In a nut­shell, that’s my OATH formula.

So the bot­tom line is, by and large your audi­ence may be obliv­i­ous, apa­thetic, think­ing, or hurt­ing. Granted, this may not be true all of the time, but if your tar­get­ing is done prop­erly, then the vast major­ity will pre­dom­i­nantly fall into one of them.

Know­ing this will tell you a lot about not only how much infor­ma­tion you need to gather and pro­vide to edu­cate your reader, but what kind of infor­ma­tion, and what kind of offer, that will stim­u­late them and tran­si­tion them into buy­ing your solution.

And remem­ber, it all starts with your mar­ket. Copy­writ­ing is more about know­ing your audi­ence and help­ing them to buy, than it is about know­ing your prod­uct and sell­ing it.

About the Author

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