Does Your Copy Have Personality?

Some peo­ple don’t mind hard-​​hitting copy, while oth­ers pre­fer newsy copy. Some peo­ple pre­fer long copy to get as much infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble, oth­ers pre­fer short, brief, to-​​the-​​point copy. Some like drama, sto­ries, and tes­ti­mo­ni­als; oth­ers data, sta­tis­tics, and facts.

Does it all mat­ter? Absolutely.

What makes one style of copy more favor­able than another? Why does one per­son buy from one type of copy and not from another? It really comes down to the buy­ing behav­ior of your mar­ket. And in fact, there are four major per­son­al­ity types.

Before I tell you what they are, remem­ber that the style you choose will not appeal to every­one. It never will. Roy Williams, author of The Wiz­ard of Ads, once noted, “Even some of the best ads miss the mark with at least half of their tar­get audience.”

You may have heard me say this before, but it’s impor­tant. Don’t be all things to all peo­ple. If you do, you have no choice but to paint your copy with broad brush­strokes in order to appeal to every­one. Instead, give your copy per­son­al­ity. Even if it offends some.

Oth­er­wise, ads crafted so as not to offend any­one will be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. They may even back­fire. And more impor­tantly, they might be more offen­sive than you think.

When your tar­get mar­ket reads your bland, vanilla copy, it will often shrug it off because they feel you are not cater­ing to them specif­i­cally — even if what you’re sell­ing does.

There­fore, the more you try not to offend any­one, the more generic you become with your copy. And the more generic you are, the more your copy will be dis­con­nected from your audi­ence. In short, appeal to every­one and you will appeal to no one.

In other words, to your prospect, you appear as if you don’t under­stand them, because your copy doesn’t cater to their spe­cific, indi­vid­ual needs, goals, con­cerns, bud­get, and unique set of cir­cum­stances. Even if the prod­uct is per­fect for them.

As a result, you alien­ate most of your mar­ket that way.

Sure, your sales copy may avoid offend­ing a minor­ity. But in turn, by gener­i­ciz­ing it you inad­ver­tently offend the major­ity — per­haps in a sub­tle, indi­rect, or uncon­scious way — because you appear as if you sim­ply don’t care.

You see, ads are dis­tinc­tive. They’re alive. They’re like pieces of art. Each one has a cer­tain per­son­al­ity. And no mat­ter what you do, like it or not that per­son­al­ity may attract some peo­ple and repulse oth­ers at the same time.

Your goal, there­fore, is to directly and dis­tinctly appeal to the major­ity, in spite of the minor­ity. Oth­er­wise, try to be too gen­eral (or bet­ter said, “too generic”) with your copy, and the result will be copy that’s bland, ane­mic, and unproductive.

Your copy offers more than just infor­ma­tion. It also presents that infor­ma­tion in a way that the major­ity of your tar­get audi­ence bet­ter appre­ci­ates, absorbs, and acts upon it.

Cater­ing to the major­ity won’t just be con­ducive to the great­est results but also begins the all-​​important process of build­ing a rela­tion­ship with your market.

A lot of mar­keters think that tar­get­ing your mar­ket means you must put your ad in front of qual­i­fied buy­ers. But it means more than that. It also means to write and mold the copy in a way that the mes­sage tar­gets them, too. That is, it tar­gets their personality.

There­fore, it’s not only best to tar­get one mar­ket at a time but also to tar­get one pre­dom­i­nant buyer per­son­al­ity at a time, too. That way, your infor­ma­tion is pre­sented in a way that your mar­ket feels the copy is cen­tered on them. And them alone.

So how do you do tar­get your market’s personality?

Over the years, psy­chol­o­gists and behav­ioral sci­en­tists have cat­e­go­rized per­son­al­ity styles. They may have labeled them dif­fer­ently, but they are gen­er­ally the same. They all come down to essen­tially four dif­fer­ent per­son­al­ity styles.

Is this some new sci­ence? No. Around 400 B.C.E., Hip­pocrates, in “Air, Water And Places,” dubbed these four types as San­guine, Phleg­matic, Cho­leric, and Melancholic.

In recent times, Roy Williams, in one of his arti­cles, calls them Spon­ta­neous, Human­is­tic, Com­pet­i­tive, and Method­i­cal. Behav­ioral sci­en­tist and moti­va­tional speaker, Dr. Tony Alessan­dra, labels them as Direc­tors, Social­iz­ers, Relaters, and Thinkers.

They are essen­tially all the same.

(For more, visit Dr. Alessandra’s “The Plat­inum Rule.” The Golden Rule states that you should do unto oth­ers as you would want to have done unto you. But Tony defines The Plat­inum Rule as: “Do unto oth­ers as they would want to have done unto them.”)

How­ever, the most com­mon labels given to them — the ones most mar­ket­ing text­books use, includ­ing the same text­books from which I used to teach mar­ket­ing man­age­ment in col­lege — are: Dri­ver, Expres­sive, Ana­lyt­i­cal, and Amiable.

Those are the labels I pre­fer and will be using for the remain­der of this article.

Where do these labels come from and what do they mean?

Essen­tially, per­son­al­ity styles are defined by two key behav­ioral char­ac­ter­is­tics, which are assertive­ness and respon­sive­ness. The cat­e­gory — or label, if you will — is based on one of four com­bi­na­tions of how assertive and respon­sive they are.

For exam­ple, a per­son can be:

1. High assertive and low respon­sive, or a dri­ver.
2. High assertive and high respon­sive, or an expres­sive.
3. Low assertive and low respon­sive, or an ana­lyt­i­cal.
4. Low assertive and high respon­sive, or an ami­able.

Respon­sive­ness, which is expressed out­wardly, is how well a per­son responds to oth­ers. Assertive­ness is expressed inwardly, and it’s how well they assert themselves.

For exam­ple, some peo­ple are task-​​driven while oth­ers are results-​​driven. Some peo­ple are more emo­tional than fac­tual, and oth­ers vice versa. Some are ego-​​driven and self-​​absorbed, oth­ers are people-​​pleasers and focused on those around them.

But to explain it visu­ally, and one of the more pop­u­lar mod­els (and the best one for copy­writ­ing pur­poses), is by look­ing at these styles in the form of a quad­rant. The key is to deter­mine where one’s level of respon­sive­ness and assertive­ness inter­sect.

Here’s a screen­shot of the per­son­al­ity quad­rant from my video train­ing series, cur­rently avail­able online.

With all things being equal, your tar­get audi­ence will pre­dom­i­nantly fall into one of these styles. Granted, it may not pre­cisely fit into a sin­gle, neat cat­e­gory, and your entire mar­ket may not fit one spe­cific style.

But keep in mind, the key­word here is “predominant.”

(If they do fall into mul­ti­ple cat­e­gories, you might want to cre­ate dif­fer­ent prod­ucts, offers, and sales copy for each one. The more con­gru­ent your mes­sage is with your mar­ket, the more sales you will make. I’ll come back to this later as it is important.)

Nev­er­the­less, depend­ing on your prod­uct, your indus­try, and both the demo­graph­ics and psy­cho­graph­ics of your tar­get audi­ence, it is safe to say that the major­ity of them will likely demon­strate one par­tic­u­lar style more than any other.

To give you an idea, here’s a brief look at them:

Drivers are concerned with RESULTS.

They are prac­ti­cal, impa­tient, and time-​​sensitive. A Dri­ver is a per­son who usu­ally is more con­cerned with the bottom-​​line. They want to know how long does it take to get your prod­uct, what kind of results they can expect, and how much does it cost.

Bankers, sales man­agers, pur­chas­ing agents, busi­ness­peo­ple, cor­po­rate exec­u­tives, and so on are typ­i­cally Dri­vers. They don’t care how to get from point “A” to point “B.” They just want to know if and when you can get them to point “B.”

Analyticals are preoccupied with DETAILS.

They don’t care much about results. They’re dri­ven by facts and far more inter­ested in the inner work­ings of your prod­uct. They might want to know what is its exact size, where and of what is it made, what are the ingre­di­ents, what fea­tures does it pos­sess, what kind of guar­an­tees do you offer with it, and what, pre­cisely, makes it work.

Sci­en­tists, devel­op­ers, math­e­mati­cians, engi­neers, com­puter pro­gram­mers, doc­tors, and so on are mainly Ana­lyt­i­cals. They want facts and just the facts. So give them sta­tis­tics, data, spec­i­fi­ca­tions, ingre­di­ents, mea­sure­ments, etc. The more, the merrier.

Expressives care most about FEELINGS.

Sta­tus and recog­ni­tion are impor­tant to Expres­sives. How they per­ceive things and how other peo­ple per­ceive them take prece­dence. They are mostly impul­sive, col­or­ful, ego-​​centric, undis­ci­plined, and spon­ta­neous. They pre­fer to talk than to listen.

Actors, teach­ers, musi­cians, artists, graphic design­ers, movie direc­tors, come­di­ans, etc fall in the Expres­sive cat­e­gory. They buy mostly for the sake of pres­tige of own­er­ship, or to boost their stand­ing in their com­mu­ni­ties, orga­ni­za­tions, or peer groups.

(For instance, Expres­sives are the types of peo­ple who inten­tion­ally park their brand new lux­ury car on the street so that the neigh­bors can see them.)

Amiables are interested in RELATIONSHIPS.

They are emo­tional, car­ing, and human­is­tic. They’re social-​​minded and care deeply about the rela­tion­ships they hold. How your prod­uct will help oth­ers and strengthen the rela­tion­ships they main­tain with them will be of utmost impor­tance to Amiables.

It’s not uncom­mon for Ami­ables to hold careers as sales­peo­ple, social work­ers, human resource per­son­nel, con­sul­tants, and so on. If your prod­uct solves a prob­lem, that’s good. But if it allows your prospect to solve other people’s prob­lems, that’s even better.

So how do you appeal to your buyer’s personality?

At this point, you should have an idea of how to cater to buyer per­son­al­ity styles.

With Dri­vers, be pithy and give them the bot­tom line. With Ana­lyt­i­cals, offer cold, hard infor­ma­tion rather than hype and sto­ries. With Expres­sives, tell them how you will make them look good. And with Ami­ables, use tes­ti­mo­ni­als, sto­ries, and anecdotes.

For instance, avoid lac­ing your copy with feel­ings and emo­tions when your audi­ence is com­prised of Ana­lyt­i­cals. Be spe­cific, objec­tive, and fac­tual, and refrain from hyper­bole or drama. Ana­lyt­i­cals are also highly skep­ti­cal, so offer as much proof as you can.

Sure, you can — and must — be emo­tional. All humans are. Even ana­lyt­i­cals make pur­chas­ing deci­sions based on emo­tion first. But don’t do so at the expense of facts. Back it up with logic and lots of it with which they can jus­tify their decisions.

While an Ana­lyt­i­cal will never have enough infor­ma­tion, don’t drown your vis­i­tors with need­less details when they con­sist of Dri­vers. Be quick, pithy, and straight to the point. If you use long copy, make sure it makes a point and sticks to the point. Consistently.

How­ever, be sen­si­tive and friendly when pitch­ing to Ami­ables. Use sto­ries, case stud­ies, and tes­ti­mo­ni­als. Take your time with them. Be warm and inter­ac­tive. In fact, your rela­tion­ship with them is just as impor­tant as the ben­e­fits of your product.

For Expres­sives, talk about how the prod­uct will make them feel, boost their sta­tus, and get oth­ers to notice and com­pli­ment them. Or how the prod­uct will make oth­ers around them cringe in hor­ror, turn green with envy, or even be humiliated.

Here’s a real-​​life sce­nario. A patient vis­its a den­tist for an ini­tial consultation.

The Ana­lyt­i­cal will be pre­oc­cu­pied mostly with the details of den­tal work. Know­ing pre­cisely how much freez­ing will be applied, which spe­cific teeth (and parts thereof) will be repaired, and what kind of fill­ing will be used are of enor­mous inter­est to him.

On the other hand, a Dri­ver will want to know how long will the pro­ce­dure take, how fast can he return to work after the pro­ce­dure is done, and, of course, how much will it cost. Every­thing else is unim­por­tant and irrelevant.

But for the Ami­able, they are mostly con­cerned with their abil­ity to please their spouse, friends, or boss with their improved appear­ance. They want to know if going ahead will improve their rela­tion­ships and make oth­ers happy, as well as secure oth­ers’ approval.

The Expres­sive, how­ever, will be inter­ested with how good will their new teeth look, how much pain such a pro­ce­dure might incur, how their teeth will change their appear­ance, and how attrac­tive the pro­ce­dure is going to make them.

Again, your mar­ket will likely fall into one pre­dom­i­nant cat­e­gory. In other words, the major­ity of your mar­ket will fit into one cat­e­gory more than any other.

Depend­ing on your type of indus­try and the kind of prod­uct you’re sell­ing, the style of your mes­sage should chiefly appeal to that one spe­cific per­son­al­ity style.

For exam­ple, if your prod­uct caters to expec­tant moth­ers, you will def­i­nitely speak to them dif­fer­ently than if you were to cater to entre­pre­neurs or sports fanatics.

But what if your mar­ket con­sists of more than one?

What if your mar­ket con­sists of strong, iden­ti­fi­ably dif­fer­ent groups? In other words, what if you have more than one pre­dom­i­nant per­son­al­ity type in your tar­get audi­ence? If so, I sub­mit that you can have a dif­fer­ent ad or saleslet­ter directed at each dif­fer­ent market.

It’s mar­ket seg­men­ta­tion, pure and simple.

You split your mar­ket into groups, and cater to each one sep­a­rately and indi­vid­u­ally. Large cor­po­ra­tions and retail­ers have been doing this for years. Take Coke ver­sus Diet Coke, or Levis’ Red Tabs sold in high-​​end stores, ver­sus Wal-Mart’s Orange Tab Levis.

Even if it’s the same prod­uct and they hap­pen to fall into more than one cat­e­gory in high enough num­bers, then you might want to clus­ter your mar­ket into groups, and cre­ate a new offer and sales copy that tar­get each dis­tinct segment.

For exam­ple, a clever entre­pre­neur can take a prod­uct and pack­age it, price it, and sell it to two dif­fer­ent audi­ences on two dif­fer­ent web­sites — and thus max­i­mize sales from all poten­tial mar­ket seg­ments. Even cre­at­ing her own com­pe­ti­tion, in some cases.

(Take, for instance, Audio​Gen​er​a​tor​.com ver­sus Instan​tA​u​dio​.com. The for­mer is geared for the small busi­nessper­son, while the lat­ter is more for cor­po­rate audiences.)

The bot­tom line is, give your copy per­son­al­ity, and your response will shoot through the roof. Sure, you might alien­ate a few. But what would you rather have: generic copy that pleases more but sells less? Or tar­geted copy that offends few but sells more?

As the late, great copy­writer, Gary Hal­bert, used to say in response to his detrac­tors regard­ing his pointed, dis­crim­i­nate per­son­als ad: “Don’t be so pre­oc­cu­pied with upset­ting the dogs when you’re try­ing to sell the foxes. Con­cen­trate on the foxes.”

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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