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Write to Your Reader’s Anxiety

By Roberta Rosenberg on Nov 15, 2006 in DM Copy Tips & Tools

Many moons ago when I worked as an Account Exective for a direct marketing agency, the VP was very excited about a prospective new client. High prestige, deep pockets and they wanted us to do the marketing for a new newsletter geared to parents. (My boss, the VP, pitched the account based on my publications marketing experience.)

"So tell me all about it, I implored." He proceeds to layout a newsletter geared to parents with children ages 6-12. "These children have any particular issues or conditions that would drive parents to purchase information (this was the pre-internet days, mind you)?"

"Nope, just basic parenting info." Uh oh. I knew this was going to bomb and I told him so. At first he fought me. How did I know that. He was a parent, I wasn’t. What did I know?

But I instinctively knew that parents with kids ages 6-12, unless these kids had specific conditions/issues/concerns, were no longer at that high-anxiety phase of brand-new parenthood when you feel totally incompetent and buy every book, magazine in sight that maybe, just possibly might have some useful answers about everything that scares the bejeebers out of you.

That, my friends, is a marketer’s dream. Prospective customers at the height of their anxiety. Yummy.

So my boss, being a reasonable guy, calls his wife at home who’s
minding their 3 kids. Roberta says, This newsletter is a dog. What do you think. Blah, blah, blah. Wife says, she’s
right. Listen to her. (I always liked her.)

After a little more research, we decided to take a pass on the newsletter. We saved everyone a lot of grief and a huge pot of money.

Maven’s Maxim
Life cycles events are terrific times to sell products/services because these kinds of events, usually exciting and happy, are also high-anxiety events. When you’re writing or developing your next promotion, think about which high-anxiety markers you can target in your prospect’s mind. What are they afraid of and what’s the environment context for that fear? Ideally, your mailing lists will already reflect high-anxiety prospects, but if it doesn’t, ferret out what could be the markers and write directly to that emotion.