The Big Idea revisited
A great principle in creating sales copy involves the Big Idea. This is a concept of identifying what moves the customer and reader. We've all seen information about user experience, pain points and expectation.
The days of just saying please buy this are long past. The Big Idea is more than an idea. It is a marketing technique that requires a strong skillcraft in customer psychology. If you think in terms of the highest or Self Actualization stage in Mazlow's Hierarchy of Needs you won't be wrong
Header images have a way of escaping from the last post and coming out with a big roar! You really want to get those great thoughts out there and convince that client/ customer/ reader that YOUR message should resonate best with them. In copy writing language, you are talking about the big idea in marketing. Attributed to master guru David Ogilvy.
- You start with targeting emotions. Your prospects' hot buttons have t be reached.
- It must have instant appeal. I gotta have this now!
- It must be original. Customers are savvy and more than you think. Everybody reads. The response must be "wow"
- Timeliness is critical. Yesterdays news is only informative for archival reasons. It also has no literal financial currency.
- It must move the reader. It has to reach in and make an epoch difference to the readers desires. As it is read it needs to carry the reader along. The copy must do the work!
- This idea must have depth! The reader must not be able to say I've seen this before in any context. This is especially challenging.
- Jay's presentation on user experience is quite timely. I am at my annual copy writing intensive in Florida this week and the Big Idea as applied to user expectation and experience is identified as a foremost marketing concept for 2019. We must all pay attention to this motivating concept. Our business depends on it!
Recent Comments
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That's not an easy thing to do, but certainly something to strive for in your writing. Good post.
Mike this was Excellent information. Maybe it's the teacher in me, but your writing has really progressed! Truly an evergreen idea for developing and reaping greater and greater profits, by becoming a technician of finding the trigger, and what the heck, pulling it!
Great job!
Suzay
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Hi Michael.
"Say, what's the big idea telling us this?" (Imagine James Cagney, Joanne Crawford or one of that crowd saying this in the manner of a 1930s movie.)
I understand what you're saying, but I wouldn't know how to go about actuating this in my articles. When you have a concrete example, maybe you could provide some training and walk us through it? That'd be super.
Regards,