It's Not What You Say, It's How You Say It

Copy is all about words. Or is it?

Copy is about using words to describe the ben­e­fits of your offer. About using words to paint vivid men­tal imagery. About using words to stir the senses, press all the “hot but­tons” and push the reader to take some kind of action.

But is it really ALL about words? I mean, just words? No.

Some copy­writ­ers claim that graph­ics, for­mat­ting and pho­tographs should NOT be added to a saleslet­ter because they dis­tract. They can take the reader’s focus away from the message.

I agree. But not entirely. Here’s why…

You see, it is def­i­nitely true that words are extremely impor­tant. And the words you choose can make or break the sale. You must describe your offer in a way that gives it sex appeal, a sense of urgency and dose of emotion.

But the cos­met­ics are just as impor­tant, too.

They help to direct the reader’s eyes. They also help to drive impor­tant points home. But above all, they help to replace the cues, nuances and non­ver­bal sub­tleties that occur in tra­di­tional, face-​​to-​​face sales encounters.

They are Prox­emics, Hap­tics and, most impor­tantly for us writ­ers, Kinesics.

Prox­emics is the sci­ence of per­sonal space. The dis­tance between indi­vid­u­als dur­ing, for exam­ple, a con­ver­sa­tion, a meet­ing or a shared activity.

This is not some meta­phys­i­cal “Feng Shui-​​ish” thing. I’m talk­ing about our psy­cho­log­i­cal (and often sub­con­scious) reac­tion to the dis­tance we main­tain with other peo­ple — such as, for exam­ple, dur­ing a sales encounter.

For instance, sit­ting across from some­one at a desk may uncon­sciously con­vey that the other per­son is being con­fronta­tional. That’s why some sales train­ing pro­grams tell you to sit side by side with your prospect.

Hap­tics, on the other hand, is the sci­ence of touch­ing. Some psy­chol­o­gists have stud­ied the effects of touch­ing dur­ing con­ver­sa­tions. For exam­ple, they tested how peo­ple would react when they were told a cer­tain statement.

Here’s what they did.

In some cases, the speaker would sim­ply tell the lis­tener a story.

In other cases, they were told the same story. But at times, the speaker would lightly touch the lis­tener on the fore­arm for no more than a few sec­onds, par­tic­u­larly when he was say­ing some­thing important.

Accord­ing to the study, sub­jects in the sec­ond test felt that the speaker was more believ­able. They had higher recall scores. Phys­i­o­log­i­cally, they felt more relaxed and com­fort­able with the speaker. They felt a cer­tain “connection.”

Of course, there’s more to prox­emics and hap­tics than that. And you can’t really use those in copy­writ­ing. But the one type of non­ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion you can use (and the one I want you to focus on) is Kinesics.

Kinesics is the sci­ence of body lan­guage. Non­ver­bal ges­tures, pos­tures and facial expres­sions by which a per­son man­i­fests var­i­ous phys­i­cal, men­tal or emo­tional states, and com­mu­ni­cates non­ver­bally with others.

These mes­sages deliv­ered through non­ver­bal cues, which can be either ver­bal or phys­i­cal, can sup­port, empha­size or con­tra­dict what is being conveyed.

In face-​​to-​​face sell­ing, Kinesics are often used to empha­size key ben­e­fits. But they are par­tic­u­larly impor­tant because they can drive impor­tant points home — such as by adding emo­tion to a sales pitch, which go beyond words.

Uncross­ing of the arms or legs. Rais­ing of the brows. Rub­bing of the chin. Lean­ing for­ward. All of these can indi­cate that you’re inter­ested in your client — or if the client does it, it can tell you she’s inter­ested in your offer.

But ver­bal cues are usu­ally those con­veyed through the qual­i­ties of the voice, such as tone, vol­ume, rhythm, pitch, paus­ing and inflection.

All of these can be inter­preted as many things and used in dif­fer­ent ways.

For instance, inflec­tion is the musi­cal qual­ity of the voice — the ver­bal ups or downs of a part of a word, a whole word or a series of words. In sell­ing, vocal inflec­tion is prob­a­bly the most often used Kinesic form of communication.

Why? Because it can vir­tu­ally change the entire mean­ing of a mes­sage, even when a sin­gle word is inflected. Take, for exam­ple, the fol­low­ing sentence:

“I didn’t say I love you.”

It’s pretty straight­for­ward, right? But instead, if I said:

“I didn’t say I LOVE you” (where ver­bal empha­sis is placed on the word “love,” as in ” loooovvvve”), then I might be imply­ing that I sim­ply “like” you.

On the other hand, if the word “you” was empha­sized (such as ” I didn’t say I love YOU”), then it could imply that I love some­one else altogether.

If I inflected the word “didn’t,” as in “I DIDN’T say I love you,” then it could imply that I wrote it, or I said or meant some­thing else instead.

In essence, it’s not what you say but how you say it.

In copy, we’re lim­ited, not by what we want to say but how we want to say it. That’s where cos­met­ics, for­mat­ting and cer­tain ” visual trig­gers” come in.

Sure, you shouldn’t add graph­ics willy-​​nilly. But you should add graph­ics and pho­tos that sup­port (and per­haps even empha­size) the sales process, and not graph­ics that could dis­tract the reader from the sales message.

Auc­tion giant eBay reports that list­ings with pic­tures out­sell those with­out pic­tures. While anec­do­tal, I’ve heard of boosts in bids as high as 400%.

There­fore, if you can add a pho­to­graph of your prod­uct (or if you sell a ser­vice, a pic­ture of you in action with a client), you will likely achieve greater results.

But graph­ics and pic­tures aside, the look of the copy is just as impor­tant as the the words them­selves. That’s why, when I write copy, I usu­ally pay close atten­tion to the cos­met­ics. I even call it “copy designing.”

How do YOU do that?

Incor­po­rate visual trig­gers, cos­metic “com­mands” and response devices into your copy, usu­ally with for­mat­ting, in order to boost read­er­ship and response.

Now, I’m not talk­ing about going crazy with dif­fer­ent fonts and colors.

I’m talk­ing about strate­gi­cally placed bolds, ital­ics, type­styles, font sizes, boxes, bul­lets, col­ors, white spaces, bor­ders and so on. (Take, for instance, the way I empha­sized cer­tain words in the inflec­tion exam­ple earlier.)

As copy­writer Mar­tin Hay­man noted: “Michael Fortin is right. The way the copy is set out on the page makes a mas­sive dif­fer­ence to the way the reader responds. Typo­graphic prac­ti­tion­ers have known this for, oh, centuries.”

Here’s just one example.

Over 60 years ago, Frank H. John­son, a direct mail copy­writer, decided to start a new tech­nique to boost the read­er­ship and impact of his salesletters.

He would high­light the offer in a cen­tered, rec­tan­gu­lar box placed at the very top of the let­ter above the salu­ta­tion. Why? Because he wanted to sum­ma­rize his offer upfront in a way that saved his read­ers’ time and hassle.

Instead of forc­ing read­ers to wade through a mass of copy before mak­ing the offer, he gave them the essen­tials, right upfront. The results were astonishing.

Direct mail copy­writer Ivan Levin­son reports he has seen claims that adding a “John­son Box” to a plain let­ter can shoot response rates up by 40%.

This tech­nique can also be applied to boxes placed within the heart of the copy in strate­gic loca­tions, such as right before any call-​​to-​​action or when high­light­ing some of the most impor­tant points of your copy.

So in your copy, put your bonuses, pre­mi­ums, guar­an­tees, tes­ti­mo­ni­als, fac­toids, key points, sto­ries and side­notes in John­son Boxes.

Take a look at The Copy Doc­tor, or a recent saleslet­ter I wrote at Traf​fic​Se​crets​.com. You’ll notice John­son Boxes inter­spersed through­out the copy, often in dif­fer­ent col­ored or shaded tables.

My the­ory of why they are so effec­tive is this: These boxes tend to direct the read­ers’ eyes and force them to read their con­tents. They help to incul­cate into the read­ers’ minds those key points you want to drive home.

There’s lit­tle your prospects will retain from your copy. But if you use John­son Boxes, the like­li­hood they will remem­ber their con­tents more — and over any other point stated in the rest of the copy — will be stronger.

Nev­er­the­less, the moral is this…

Copy is not all about what you say. It’s also about what you mean.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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