Method copywriting - Your ultimate goal

Have you ever watched a movie so arresting that it made you completely forget that all you were watching is fictional? We all have, plenty of times. Actors like Anthony Hopkins, Sean Penn and Robert DeNiro seem to have the natural ability to cause that effect on command… and they can, but their ability is not natural. They have studied and perfected a series of techniques that are known as “method acting”.

In method acting, an actor goes deep into the skin and mind of the character and studies every little possible detail. By becoming the character, they are able to suspend your disbelief and convince you that what is happening on the screen may actually be true. But the truth is that they are fooling you, you have not lost your mind… instead, you have willingly stopped disbelieving in the fiction.

This willing suspension of disbelief does not happen only in movies or the theater. It also happens when you read a good novel… and most importantly, it can also happen when you read a good sales letter or marketing piece.

How many times have you been in a situation where someone is trying to sell you something (a product, a service or even trying to get you to subscribe to a particular idea). You are listening to the pitch, but are thinking “I’m being sold and I am not going to get pulled into this”… but then something happens and bit by bit, detail by detail you end up caving in.

At some point during the sales pitch, and usually without you noticing it, you got carried over and ended up buying the product or accepting the idea. You don’t realize when it happens, but suddenly you hear your mind racing ahead and picturing vividly how good your life will be once you start using the product.

It happens all the time. People “suspend disbelief” not because they have been fooled or tricked into something; but because they actually want to believe in what they are hearing. Something in the writing resonates with their most heartfelt needs and they end up giving in.

Your ultimate goal as a copywriter should be to suspend the disbelief in your readers and make them day-dream about your product while they are reading the sales letter. This is what’s called “method copywriting”.

How can you achieve “method copywriting”? The theory is simple, the reality takes long hours of practice. To achieve method copywriting you must: 1) Understand the deepest needs and desires of your prospect; and 2) ignore everything else and focus most of your writing in persuading the prospect that your product is what will ultimately meet those needs and desires.

If you don’t do your research and dig deep into the mind of your prospect, you will never find her most heartfelt needs, her deepest desires and her most authentic feelings – and without knowing them, method copywriting is a virtually impossible task. You’ve got your homework… go out there, start your research and try to achieve the ultimate goal: suspending the disbelief of your readers through method copywriting.