Method Acting and Copywriting
Wordplay, word association, word meanings, and quotes. They’ve all played a part in my mindset when I’ve started to write anything, and now as a business owner and all around web guy, copywriting.
How does that play into method acting? I’m glad you asked 😉
Method acting is defined as a technique of acting in which an actor aspires to complete emotional identification with a part. Some call this as getting into character for the part they are portraying.
In an interview I watched about the late Robin Williams he talked about how he got ready to play a part. I’ve always been impressed by his quick thinking and improvisation, but to see the time and thought process he puts into acting as a role in a movie in just as impressive.
He said that he would think about every component of that person he was portraying down to what they carried in their pockets. What would they have in their wallet, pictures they may carry, what car would they drive etc.a
Getting down to the details…
This thought process is very similar to what my long time friend and copywriting coach Lorrie Morgan of RedHotCopy.com instructed me. When composing an email, sales letter or anything where you are trying to connect with your customer or potential customer you need to think that granularly.
What appeals to them, what words would they use? Even think about where they may be sitting down to read what you have written. You want to use that same mindset as the method actor, you want that complete and emotional identification with your reader.
When you think about writing, copywriting or even further in my case creating a website or graphics, it comes down to mindset and psychology.
How can we best connect with our customers? Too many times we write what we want, or we use words to sound important, educated, or even impressive. But in doing so we may be really alienating them from even wanting to get to know us further.
Why Would They Hire or Buy From You?
If we’re not identifying with our customer or prospective customer then why would they want to buy from us? We really have to think like our customer thinks and write or even design accordingly.
I know in my twenty plus years online I’ve seen this time and time again. As a web guy and marketing coach I see my customers have me design their site or work on their site to what they like without any consideration of what their customer might want.
The thing is the customer doesn’t even know what they want other than they have a problem, you have a solution, and our job is to let them know that our solution is just what they need.
How can we as the solution provider convince them of that if we’re not talking their language or if we have a design that is off putting to them. Sometimes even less is more! It could be that we have too much information and we scare them off.
So What Can You Do?
Think about what we talked about earlier, if you want to connect with your website visitors you need to become a method actor in a sense.
Here are some things to think about...
- What age group are they?
- What sites would they be visiting?
- What education level would they be?
- What colors appeal to them?
- Are there buzz words they would use?
- What hours are they online?
If you know these things you can get a good idea of who is visiting your site. You can do a little research to see what websites look like that they like to visit. From there you can see what words they might use, colors they might like and so much more. Knowing more about them you get an idea of when they might be up so when you send out emails they see them more quickly instead of sorting through their inbox.
By using these techniques to know more about your website visitors will help you have a better conversion rate with your online marketing. The key thing is don’t just assume you truly know them. Keep your eye on your website stats as they will show you even more about your visitors and as always TEST EVERYTHING!
