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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The Sci­ence Of Get­ting Rich by Wal­lace D. Wat­tles is a time­less clas­sic writ­ten many years ago. Over a cen­tury ago, in fact.

But it’s a prac­ti­cal, step-​​by-​​step guide whose thought-​​provoking prin­ci­ples and strate­gies, though they were writ­ten in 1910, are still very much applic­a­ble to this day. And prob­a­bly more so.

I’m a firm believer in the idiom that you are what you think. And this book dri­ves that point home. So I highly rec­om­mend that your read this book, which is brought to you free on this website.

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As a copy­writer, one of the most impor­tant parts of my job is con­duct­ing research. And in fact, when my copy fails, aside from poor tar­get­ing or a poor offer, it’s almost always due to poor research.

As copy­writ­ers, the infor­ma­tion we need may not be as read­ily avail­able as we want it to be, par­tic­u­larly when we’re work­ing with a new com­pany or prod­uct. We have to dig. Or as my friend and top copy­writer John Carl­ton says, “We have to put on our sales detec­tive hats and dig deep.”

Sure, we can go through the prod­uct. We can go through the client’s col­lat­eral mate­ri­als. We can con­duct com­pet­i­tive research and per­haps even check out com­peti­tors’ products.

But the most impor­tant and salient research comes from…

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Peo­ple have dif­fer­ent buyer per­son­al­ity styles. In fact, accord­ing to behav­ioral sci­ence, there are four: dri­vers, ana­lyt­i­cals, ami­ables and expres­sives. Some­times, they are labeled dif­fer­ently, but they are nev­er­the­less the same.

For exam­ple, Dr. Tony Alessan­dra, in his best-​​selling book “The Plat­inum Rule,” calls them “thinkers,” “social­iz­ers,” “direc­tors” and “relaters.”

But regard­less of the labels used, this means that dif­fer­ent peo­ple com­mu­ni­cate, relate and buy dif­fer­ently, based on their pre­dom­i­nant per­son­al­ity style. Dri­vers pre­fer end-​​results. Ana­lyt­i­cals are per­suaded by facts. Expres­sives are moved by feel­ings. And ami­ables seek out relationships.

I’ve writ­ten about this on my blog and in sev­eral arti­cles. But my sug­ges­tion, at the time, was to cre­ate a saleslet­ter for each per­son­al­ity style, if and when your tar­get mar­ket is com­prised of more than one pre­dom­i­nant personality.

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This is another arti­cle writ­ten by one of my asso­ciate copy­writ­ers, Joe Valente, as an intro­duc­tion to one of mine — which I linked on this blog entry fur­ther down. But Joe’s arti­cle is so good, I decided to reprint it here.

Essen­tially, it’s about appeal­ing to dif­fer­ent buyer per­son­al­i­ties with your copy. Some peo­ple are dri­ver types. Oth­ers are more ana­lyt­i­cal. Some are expres­sive and col­or­ful. Oth­ers pre­fer the warm-​​fuzzy type of copy. Either way, your copy should chiefly appeal to the pre­dom­i­nant per­son­al­ity of your market.

So before I go any fur­ther, you bet­ter read this arti­cle. (There are also many great lessons about copy­writ­ing used — and some hid­den in the arti­cle itself. About sto­ry­telling, about the power of metaphor, and about human behav­ior. I sug­gest you read it, then read it again. Look for them. It’s that pow­er­ful.) Take it away, Joe!

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