What’s the most important part in copywriting? Is it the words? The headline? Bullets? Testimonials? Guarantees? The offer?

Nope.

None of these, while all important, are not as important as this one, single yet powerful element. It trumps all the others by a longshot, and it’s the one element that all copy must absolutely have to succeed.

And once I tell you what it is, you’re going to say, “Of course!” But, it’s not what you think — at least, not in the way you think…

First, let me point out something.

“Salesmanship in print” is a popular definition of copywriting, originally coined by John E. Kennedy in 1905. (Did I mention he was Canadian?)

A good copywriter will hit all the emotional hot-buttons, give all the reasons why and answer all the objections. The result will be leading the customer to the best solution, which is to buy.

But…

A debate seems to be raging as to how important copywriting is to a marketing promotion. One side says copywriting is all-important while the other side says it makes no difference, or that content is more important.

One camp says, “you must sell,” while the other, “you must educate.” One side, “don’t bore them with information,” the other, “copy is too hypey.”

Both are wrong. My take is simple…

A marketing promotion has many parts. Every part must be firing on all cylinders to maximize sales and profits.

Like a puzzle, if you are missing too many pieces it just won’t work. Copywriting is a critical part of the marketing puzzle, and can play a major influence in the success of any promotion.

However, there’s one thing that copywriting cannot fix. No matter how great the copy is, who wrote it, how enticing the offer may be, how great the price is, how many bonuses it has or how strong the guarantee it promises.

In fact, you could take all the great copywriters like Robert Collier, Mel Martin, Gary Halbert, Gary Bencivenga, Dan Kennedy and John Carlton, and stick them in a room to have them create a masterpiece.

And it still wouldn’t matter if you put a promotion in front of a group of people who could care less about what you are trying to sell them. A group of people who wouldn’t buy your product to save their mother-in-law.

(Hmmm, maybe that wasn’t a good example.)

Plain and simple, without a starving market you’re dead in the water.

A rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth, wallet-in-hand market desperately seeking a solution to their problem is the key to any online project. And to do that, you need to find out what people want. This is the foundation not only to writing great copy but also to creating a successful online business.

Nothing earth-shattering here, right?

How many times have you heard someone say, “You must find a hungry market?”

I Googled “find a hungry market” today and it appears 4,410 times. There are a lot of people telling you to find a hungry market. But here’s the kicker…

Many don’t tell you how to go about finding that hungry market, much less what do they want — I mean, what do they really want!

I suspect it’s because most don’t really know how to do it themselves. For others, it may be hard to explain. After all, for many successful marketers, it’s second nature to them. It’s largely an intuitive process. Almost psychic-like.

And that’s a shame because it’s an important skill, which can be mastered provided you are shown how.

As I looked around I saw there were plenty of products on the market teaching keyword research. At first glance, they look good on the surface. But after further examination, I could see they were missing a key understanding.

And that is, not who’s your market and what do they want, but why do they want it?

In fact, there are three critical questions you need to ask yourself when finding a target market or writing copy to her. Because the appeal you choose is crucial to making a connection with your market when you know exactly:

1. Who they are,
2. What do they want
3. And how do they want it.

Knowing this, both clearly and correctly, allows you to craft a message that directly appeals to your market, and connects with their dominant fears and desires.

A lot of people try either selling to a market that’s not hungry, or selling to a market who’s hungry but wants a certain kind of food — or food delivered in a certain way.

It’s like, say, try to sell Italian food to a market that’s hungry for Chinese.

Many keyword research tools will not answer these critical questions for you. They might tell if there’s a market out there (or, if you’re researching an established market, what they’re hungry for). But they stop at this point. They don’t dig deep enough.

From a copywriting perspective, you need more than just the right market. You need the right offer in a message that’s delivered in the right way.

Many people will have the first one down pat. (And even then, when they do they have only half the picture, or do it bass-ackwards.)

The second one is important, and the third one is the most important of all.

But these two are usually the ones people ignore or fail to answer adequately. When we see a market with a need, we tend to jump in head first without knowing if the market wants what we offer, much less in the way we offer it.

It’s all about having the right appeal for that market. It’s all about delivering the message and the product in the way they want to have the product delivered.

Having the right appeal is something Dan Kennedy often calls “message-to-market match.” The problem, however, is the fact that people focus on the first two. They may have the right message for the right market. But they don’t have the right match.

You know the golden rule, right?

“Do unto others as you would want to have done unto you.”

But I prefer what sales trainer and behavioral psychologist, Tony Alessandra, coins as the “Platinum Rule.” It’s “do unto others as they would want to have done unto them.”

Can you see the difference?

I think one of the most important lessons in copywriting I’ve learned of late is from my good friend David Garfinkel, also known as the world’s greatest copywriting teacher.

He says, to write great copy, you should ask three important questions. And they are very similar to what I presented earlier. They are:

1. Who is your market?
2. What is their problem?
3. And how do they talk about it?

Again, the third question in David’s premise above is key — but it’s also the one most people tend to ignore, skip over or fail to answer correctly.

At the same time, it’s the question most keyword research tools fail to uncover. Obviously. Because tools only offer numbers and search volumes, without a proper understanding behind them. They offer mere glimpses and not the whole picture.

Which is why typical keyword research sucks.

Look at it like a recipe. Many ingredients are required to create a gourmet dish. But ingredients alone are not going to guarantee your success with any market.

Each ingredient must be used in the correct order for the dish to turn out fantastic. One missing ingredient, or one misused ingredient, many times will ruin a dish.

My wife, Sylvie Fortin, and I have helped some of the top marketers rake in millions in sales. And we’ve helped newest marketers create the business of their dreams.

We took our combined experience from over 15+ years helping people create profitable online businesses, launch wildly successful products and implement masterful marketing campaigns…

… And finally created a unique system for finding hot, hungry markets online using easy-to-follow instructions, videos, tools and resources.

This system is broken down into four simple, easy-to-implement steps. Steps you can use no matter if you already have a product or if you have no idea where to begin. It takes you by the hand and covers everything.

These four steps are:

1. Step #1: How to find hungry markets you can sell to.
2. Step #2: How to dig deep inside your market, read your market’s minds and think like they do.
3. Step #3: How to ethically spy on the competition and get product ideas that will sell like hotcakes.
4. Step #4: How to determine your market’s dominant fears and true buying motives by seeing things through their eyes.

But explaining how to do this — and how to do it right — is not an easy task. After nine whole months, my wife has put together the first in a series of cookbooks aimed at answering these three key questions.

It’s called, “Marketing E.S.P.: How to Pinpoint Hot, Hungry and Highly Profitable Markets.”

In Marketing E.S.P., Sylvie goes over the same process she conducts while doing proper viability market research for her top marketing clients.

This is one of the most important skills you could ever acquire to help build your online business — and writing your copy, too. Because it allows you to dig deep within your market so you can properly connect with her.

(In fact, I use the same process when writing my own copy, because it helps me gather more in-depth market research before I write the first word.)

Marketing E.S.P. gives you the tools to develop this skill.

Imagine a website that hands to you on a silver platter the most popular topics, an almost endless stream of product ideas, a list of customers perfectly targeted to your market, and an understanding of the mindsets and driving emotions behind them.

Not only does she show you how to find these websites (yes, there’s often several for each market), she also shows you how to pull key information from each one so that the next product you sell and the next piece of copy you write is a surefire winner.

(And how to get maximum value from each one, too.)

For example, in this course my wife exposes a simple offline source as a surefire way to find markets with money to spend. Most people are oblivious to it!

This same source will also show you what products the market is currently buying, what offers are working best, the most popular topics, answers to questions the market wants and much, much more.

It’s almost a one-stop shop for research.

The bottom line is this…

Before you start writing your own copy, are you appealing to a hungry market? And if you are, are you giving them exactly what they want, in the way they want it?

Copywriting is not about selling or educating your market.

It’s about connecting with them.

About the Author

Michel Fortin is a direct response copywriter, author, speaker, consultant, and CEO of The Success Doctor, Inc. Visit his blog and signup free to get tested conversion strategies and response-boosting tips by email, along with blog updates, news, and more! Go now to http://www.michelfortin.com.

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