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?

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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.

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What’s the most impor­tant part in copy­writ­ing? Is it the head­line? The bul­lets? The ben­e­fits? The tes­ti­mo­ni­als? The guar­an­tee? The offer?

Nope.

While all impor­tant, none of these are as impor­tant as this sin­gle yet pow­er­ful ele­ment. It trumps all the oth­ers by a long­shot, and it’s the one ele­ment all copy must absolutely have to suc­ceed. Once I tell you what it is, you’re going to smack your head and say, “Of course!”

But, it’s not what you think — at least, not in the way you think…

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When a sales page is not per­form­ing or if it’s not per­form­ing up to your expec­ta­tions, the worst thing you can do is… nothing.

By tak­ing action and mak­ing changes, you can strengthen your copy quickly and improve your sales con­ver­sions. In most cases, there are rel­a­tively sim­ple steps you can take to alter the copy to improve your results immediately.

The key to this process is test­ing to boost your outcome.

The sad truth is, the vast major­ity of mar­keters don’t test. But if you are test­ing or about to, then con­grat­u­la­tions. Because you’re miles ahead of most peo­ple in this industry.

How­ever, when most peo­ple start test­ing, they imme­di­ately think of some­thing they can add or change. Or they’re con­fused as to what to test, par­tic­u­larly what to test first.

In my expe­ri­ence, I’ve found that the best and most effi­cient ele­ment to test is to actu­ally first remove the things that are stop­ping peo­ple from order­ing. In other words…

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Ralph Zuran­ski: Hi, this is Ralph Zuran­ski. I’m on the phone with Michel Fortin. He’s one of the lead­ing copy­writ­ers in the world today. He is so suc­cess­ful in his writ­ing that he’s helped a num­ber of the Inter­net mar­keters achieve $1 mil­lion dol­lar days in sales.

He has been at a num­ber of the Inter­net con­fer­ences. Michel Fortin knows more about copy­writ­ing and test­ing copy than any­body that I’ve ever met.

I think that’s one of the rea­sons why he’s such a great teacher and also such a great copy­writer. He tests every aspect of copy­writ­ing to find out what works. I know that most of the time, on any of the copy­writ­ing pieces that he cre­ates, he has four or five tests that all run simul­ta­ne­ously… the color, the fonts, the place­ment of images.

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My recent arti­cle about Face­book not being a viable mar­ket­ing tool has cre­ated quite a stir.

Many peo­ple agreed with me. But some peo­ple didn’t, and I respect that. How­ever, while a few were scathing and harsh in their remarks, oth­ers posted some excel­lent rebut­tals on their own blogs.

This topic seems to be as con­tro­ver­sial as the long-​​versus-​​short-​​copy debate in copy­writ­ing cir­cles. Deja-​​vu? Well, it’s no won­der because, just like the copy length debate, both sides are right.

It all depends on how you use them and with whom.

That’s why I agree with most of Facebook’s pro­po­nents. That might sound like a con­tra­dic­tion, but I believe it’s because many mis­un­der­stood my post. So I wanted to take a moment before hop­ping on the plane to clar­ify a few things.

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I’ve had the plea­sure of meet­ing Rus­sell Brun­son at var­i­ous sem­i­nars. Rus­sell is not only an Inter­net mar­keter, he’s also a bright guy.

And recently, he’s proven my assess­ment to be true.

When he told me I was nom­i­nated as part of his Mar­keter of The Year 2006 Awards, in the copy­writ­ing cat­e­gory, at first I was some­what ret­i­cent. But when I saw the list of those I’m up against, need­less to say, I was stunned.

Nom­i­nees include the likes of Dan Kennedy, Yanik Sil­ver, Armand Morin, Mike Fil­saime, Mark Joyner, Rich Schefren, Perry Mar­shall, Shawn Casey, Joel Comm, Ryan Deiss, and a ton of others!

But here’s Russell’s brilliance.

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