Copywriting and Advertising The Psychology of Ads


Staff member
Learn to write irresistible ad copy by using consumer psychology to get results and generate calls.

Lesson Transcript

Hey, Pay Per Callers! Let's talk about the Psychology of Advertising.

The Psychology of Advertising for Pay Per Call

Now, purchasing decisions and decisions by consumers to take action are almost always driven by emotions. And so, people don't typically pick up the phone and make a phone call or buy something or change their behavior unless they actually feel a reason to do it.

Now, some people are very logical and they make logical decisions, but their purchasing decisions are also driven by emotions. As marketers, it's our goal to trigger an emotion in somebody to get them to take action. And so, selling features is a recipe for failure. That doesn't get people excited. It doesn't get people to connect with your brand. It doesn't get people to want to take action. That's we're trying to do, effectively, as marketers, is to get people to take action.

Now, on a one-on-one basis, you're gonna be able to poke holes in almost all of the theories that I'm gonna talk about in this lesson. I just want to preface that marketing, in general, does not work on a one-on-one basis. Our goal here is not to convert each person, individually, based on their specific personality. Our goal is to create advertising campaigns that cause people to feel, based on emotions and experiences that they've previously felt. What we want to do is tailor our advertising so that it applies to people in our audience in the most general way possible.

As humans, we have lots of experiences, positive and negative, and we all share experiences in that way. For instance, we all basically feel the same way about going to the DMV. It's not fun. It's not a pleasant experience. And so, if anyone wants to reference the emotions and disappointment and disgust we feel towards the DMV, all they have to do is trigger a memory of the DMV in our minds and then we feel those emotions.

As marketers, we're effectively miners of memories and what we're trying to do is bring previously felt feelings to the forefront of our audience's consciousness so that they feel those things again. People are bombarded with all sorts of imagery and all sorts of music and all sorts of video and text and everything when they watch TV and movies and they're on the internet or they're Instagramming or whatever they're doing. They're creating memories and feelings and it's our job, as marketers, to tap into those and get them to feel when we want them to make a purchase or pick up the phone and call.

I've broken down the process of how to do this in the most palatable way I could for people that are newer to marketing. Most of the tactics that I'm gonna talk about when it comes to creating advertising that's effective in this lesson are going to be simplified versions of the psychology required to actually accomplish our goal. This lesson should be pretty easy to follow along for just about everybody. My goal in this lesson is to teach you how to use psychology to create more effective advertisements in a very easy-to-follow process.

The first thing we're going to do is determine what type of emotions apply to our campaign. Campaigns are very different, based on the product that we're seeling, so it's important to understand what emotions apply. Now, as a general rule of thumb, negative emotions are 10 times more powerful than positive ones, and the reason for that is we're all just animals that are concerned about dying, breeding, and eating. And that's it!

I mean, basically, we have evolved so that we can do things logically and create amazing technology and be the humans we are today, but at the core of all of us, we still have the same feelings that our ancestors had when they were running around naked in a field trying to get away from lions who wanted to eat them.

And so, the negative emotions that are implanted in us are very powerful. They're there to protect us. They're the most powerful defense mechanisms that we have, as humans. Any time you can do a campaign in a way that taps into a negative emotions, you're gonna have a significantly higher likelihood of getting someone to take action. We'll talk about specific examples of that later in the course.

The first thing that we need to do is we need to understand the copy and the imagery that we're going to create to try and get people to do what we want them to do. And so, we're gonna create a list of words that theoretically could trigger emotions in people, based on common mutual experience that all humans have, and then we're gonna write our ad copy in a story format whenever we can, using these words, because humans always respond better to stories. They want to connect with other people in a genuine way. The easiest way to do that is to talk in story format anytime you can.

It's not always possible in advertising because we have a lot of limitations based on ad copy length. If you're using Facebook or Google ads, for instance, you can only use so many words in your ad copy or only so many words will be shown. So, we have to create our advertising in the construct of the rules that we're given, but as a general rule of thumb, anytime that we can talk in a story format, it's going to be more positive. The outcome is for us, anyways.

And so, we're gonna want to mold our copy around whatever advertising requirements that are given to us, but in this lesson, I'm not gonna dive into any specific advertising platforms. We're just gonna talk about how to craft your copy and advertisements to get the most powerful result from your audience, regardless of advertising platform. And then, it's just gonna be up to you to lengthen or shrink your text so it fits whatever requirements that you have in your ad platforms.

Using Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotion

A psychologist named Plutchik came up with the Wheel of Emotion. Essentially, what he posits is that there's base emotions and that we feel different levels of that base emotion and combine emotions together, similar to combining colors, to get other emotions. For instance, at the root of annoyance, we have rage and at the root of acceptance, we have admiration. At the root of serenity and joy, we have ecstasy. And, as you can see, at the center, we have a very powerful combination of emotions. For the most part, there's some negative emotions woven in there. And like I said before, any time we can cause someone to feel a negative emotion, we're significantly more likely to get them to take an action or respond to our advertising in some type of way.

Emotional Options

Now, Plutchik's wheel is too simplistic for actually writing ad copy. We went out and we put together something that is far more robust. It doesn't exactly match Plutchik's wheel, but in this wheel, there are over 100 different emotions that people feel and then root emotions that sort of tie it all together. We're gonna actually use this wheel whenever we craft advertisements. You don't actually have to understand the psychology of advertising to properly write ad copy and crate advertisements that work if you have the resources and a process like we're gonna cover now.

Cause and Effect

Every single emotion that a human feels has a cause and effect. The first thing that happens as a human is we get some type of stimulus. That's the stimulus event. And then our subconscious, the part of our brain that's driving that we don't really control, does an appraisal of that stimulus event. It decides, "Hey, whoa, what was that and what are we gonna do about it? How do we need to feel to deal with that?"

Then, our subconscious fires off a subjective reaction. It decides, "Is this good? Is this bad? Is it fear? Is it a surprise? Should we be sad? How are we supposed to feel?" This is a rote process. We don't really have control over it. We can control our emotions, but that's mostly controlling how we react to them, not the raw emotion. Our subconscious takes over and just fires these things off at us and then we're just left to navigate and figure out what they are.

After we have our subjective reaction, after we actually feel the emotion, then we modify our behavior. What humans do is they feel the emotion, it bubbles up, we're like, "Oh, my God!" and then we decide to change our behavior, based on that emotion and then our subconscious has achieved its goal of, usually, a function. We call it a function. It's a defense mechanism. A different outcome.

Let's say that we're shopping. We're shopping and we see something where it lights up gold, and we're like, "Ah! I have to have that!" And so, the cognitive appraisal that happens is we need to possess it and then our body feels joy once we start considering purchasing it. We're like, "Oh, my God, this is gonna make me feel amazing. This is gonna make me look great." Whatever it is, the emotion starts flowing and that's when they got you.

The behavioral reaction is our prefrontal cortex. It decides, "Are we gonna rein that emotion in or are we gonna repeat it and let ourselves just splash around in the joy?" or whatever is is. The function of that joy is like, "Okay, yeah!" I'm justifying to myself. "I need to make that purchase. I'm gonna gain a resource or I'm gonna possess an object." That's the actual process that we go through when we're out shopping at the mall or are browsing the internet. We see something and we're like, "I've gotta have it," and then we buy it.

There is an emotion that bubbles up that makes us feel differently and if it's positive, then we associate the positive emotion with that object and then we have to have it. We think that the object is actually the result or causes us to have the emotion.

Now, later, when it comes to material items, we learn very quickly that once we get home and that thing ends up in the closet or on the shelf, it doesn't provide us joy anymore. It's because the process caused the joy. The appraisal of that object caused the joy, not the actual object, itself. And so, once that process runs, it's rare that it happens again. That's why a lot of people just constantly have to shop. Because they constantly want that feeling, they become addicted to it.

That's a very normal human behavior in our materialistic society. You can capitalize on it with your marketing to create that feeling of joy and then someone's gotta possess it. Then, that's how you sell a product.

Now, this applies to just about everything, not just possession. Stimulus event, you see someone that's a member of your group, your tribe or tribal people, your subconscious appraises that person as a friend, and so the emotion that bubbles up is trust. You're like, "Alright, I can trust that person. We're connected." That's why you see people high-fiving and like, "What's up, bro?" whatever. That's a symbol of that trust, that tribal nature. It's a stroking of the ego. And then behavioral reaction is to groom the relationship. That's why you shake people's hands or you say hi to people you know or if they're your boy, you do the awkward hug thing that introverts like me just can't seem to master but its cool, right? It's just, trying makes it okay. And then the function of that is to say, "I'm in your tribe. You're in my tribe. We're friends now. Whoo!" And so, "There are people like me that relate to me. I'm not alone in this world."

Depending on your product, you want to create that level of trust. This all depends on the type of product that you're selling, how this process goes. But all emotion can be broken down this way. And don't worry, this is not the process to write your advertising. This is just to help you understand how the mind works so that this will make sense when we put it together.

Now, far more powerful than the first two we talked about is a stimulus event of a threat. Like, "Oh!" The glass break. You get the fight or flight response. Your body tenses up, your shoulders turtle up, your muscles contract. You get the shot of adrenaline, and you perk up. You're at peak awareness, peak focus. That's your threat drive, trying to protect you from lions.

And the cognitive appraisal your subconscious gets from that stimulus event that's a threat, like a broken glass or some banging around or a gunshot or something like that, is danger. Like, "Oh, my God, we're in danger!" And so, your amygdala, your subconscious that's responsible for your emotions, fires off fear. You're like, "Whew!" Then that fear, it just consumes your body. Now, really high-level people with a high level of emotional intelligence are less susceptible to this, but they're still susceptible because fear is incredibly powerful, especially when you layer on things like family members and fear of something with their children going wrong.

So, the behavioral reaction that comes from that perking up is like, "Escape! How do I get away from the lion? The lion's gonna eat me. I need to run. Do I run? Do I stay? Do I get my gun? Do I fight?" All these things are going around in people's heads when they get fear. Fear is the most powerful one.

The function of the fear is to terrify you into finding safety, to get back to your comfort zone, to get back to not having lions around you. Like, sitting on the couch, just Netflixing in the comfort of your own home. You're safe. That is a very powerful motivator of humans and you need to understand it if you're gonna be in ads because the purpose of advertising is to get large groups of people to take a repeated reaction and the only way to do that is to trigger an emotion that is common among them using words and imagery that resonates in large groups of people.

I won't go through all of these. You can do it on your own. Same with anger and disgust. These are really powerful emotions. Like, stimulus event, unpalatable object, you eat something or you think or you visualize something that's bad for you. The appraisal is, "There's poison. We've got to get it out of the system." You feel terrible. The behavioral reaction is to go throw up, eject the poison, get it out of our body.

That can be framed in many different ways. It doesn't have to be a physical poison that's actually inside your body. It could be the thought of a poison or the thought of being poisoned or the thought of catching a disease so you need to take preventative care. This is what all the drug ads are about on TV. They're using this type of process to actually design their advertising.

Emotional Combinations

Different emotions have different combinations of root emotions. Similar to how blue and yellow makes green when you're mixing paints or you're drawing, the same thing happens for emotions. Most emotions that we describe, and we describe them so eloquently, it's just multiple streams of emotions that are converging in a different way.

For instance, when we feel love, that's a combination of joy and trust. Those two things come together and we love someone. We trust them with our future. They bring us joy. When we see them, we're super happy. And so, there are combinations.

For instance, guilt is joy and fear. When you feel guilty about something, you feel like you've negatively affected someone else, and so it's a combination of that fear but also joy because you want to feel good about the situation and you feel like you've done something wrong. Which is really interesting when you think about it, because if you know what emotions combine together to get something you want, you can actually create it through very thoughtful communication. That's verbal, nonverbal, written, or imagery or videos, music, or a combination of all of the above.

Whenever you're creating an advertisement, I think a lot of people, they think about, "How do I sell this person?" and they go for the benefits. Like, "Let me just lower your rates," or something like that. That can work. Greed is powerful. But in reality, the more emotional you can make someone, the more likely you are to get them to take action and to change.

Whenever you listen to a really powerful speech, a really charismatic person that's delivering something that resonates with you about something you believe in, whether it be religious or political or social or whatever it is, past, present, or when you feel it in the future, those people are creating emotions inside of you that make you feel and when you feel, you never forget. That's really the ultimate goal of what we're trying to do here is make people feel so they don't forget.

If you think about something that's bad that's happened to you in the past many years ago, what you remember isn't necessarily all the details of the event. Most of the memories are gone or distorted or blurred. If you meditate on it, you can kind of pull it back up, but it will still be distorted through the lens that you see the world today.

But what you do not forget is how you felt. That's why negative events are so traumatic to people. That's why PTSD is such a big problem in the military, because these people went through really crazy experiences that triggered endless amounts of fear and surprise and sadness and fear and surprise and disgust and anger. All these negative emotions at really high levels for extended periods of time. And so, the details of the memories fade but those feelings don't disappear and when you experience them over and over and over again, that becomes your norm. That's what post-traumatic stress actually is. And while that's an extreme explanation of emotional experiences, it's very powerful to understand how they work because we can apply them to advertising.

Copywriting for Pay Per Call

And so, how do we do this when it comes to copywriting? How do we trigger emotions in people in copywriting and how do we do it in such a way that someone who has no experience in advertising can understand? Because I've been researching this for more than 15 years as a professional marketer and I still learn amazing new things about the brain and about myself. What I'm gonna attempt to do here is turn it into a repeatable process that you guys can use to write your advertising with no formal psychological training. We'll also include a whole lot of materials that you can read if you're interested in seeing how I came to a lot of these conclusions. It's a lot more complicated than I'm gonna make it, but I highly recommend you read it if you're gonna be a professional marketer because we're knowledge workers, right? And it's important to us that we have the knowledge so that we can change our lens and understand how the mind works.

Whenever we're copywriting or creating an advertisement, obviously, the first thing we need to do is determine who our target audience is. And so, if you're talking about insurance or whatever, you need to go research on the internet who the decision makers are, typically, for your product. Are they young? Are they old? What ethnicity are they? What gender are they? Are they single? Do they have a family? Realistically, in large groups of people, there is gonna be demographic groups of better potential for you.

Yes, I understand that everyone can have car insurance that's 16 years of age or older. That doesn't help you. It doesn't help me. What demographic group is typically responsible for purchasing the most insurance? That's gonna be, and I don't know this for sure, but it's probably women, 35-45 years old that make purchasing decisions for their households. So, their insurance decisions for them, their husband, and their teenage children.

It's that simple. That's what we're doing. We're trying to figure out who are prospects are. Now, in some campaigns, like plumbing campaigns, like, "My sink is overflowing," that can be literally anyone but it's probably gonna be someone who's out on their own who's a homeowner so you're probably talking 25+, male, female, whatever. And if the value of the calls is higher if they own their own home, you can skew it to an older audience because the older someone gets, they have a higher propensity of owning their own home. And so, you just have to test, but you need to determine what your audience segment actually is so that you can approach it.

Then, you need to put yourself in the mind of a prospect. Who calls for plumbing help? What is that person like at the very moment? How do you do that? How do you think that way? Okay. Well, I'm standing in my kitchen right now and I'm visualizing it as I'm talking. I'm looking out the window and I'm doing some dishes, scrubbing some dishes, and then all of a sudden, I reach up to grab the faucet, it breaks off, and water starts shooting out into the air. Like, all over the window, all over the wall. I try to stop. I try to plug it. I grab a towel. I'm trying to shove it in there. I'm like, "Oh, my God, fucking water is going everywhere! What am I gonna do?" What am I doing? I'm panicking! Fear! Panic! Anxiety! Uncertainty! Like, "Oh, my God! Shit! My house is gonna flood! My neighbors below me are gonna freak out. I need to call a plumber. I need to call the building. What am I gonna do?

There you have it. Panic, fear, uncertainty, disassociation. Those are the things that people are feeling at that very moment in time. What we're gonna do is we're gonna make a list of emotions prospects should be feeling when they have a problem or when they're shopping for something or when they need something.

And, we're trying to target in a general sense. Obviously, you can call a plumber if you just want to move your toilet six inches to the left. Maybe our advertisement doesn't apply to every situation and it won't. It never will. That's why we're trying to figure out common emotional traits among large groups of people. We're not worried about outliers. If you've ran ads before, you know you get a thousand impressions, maybe 12 people click, maybe 30. What did the rest of them do? They didn't click. They weren't interested. They didn't feel it. So, we're not going after everyone. If we could get everyone, that would be incredible, but it's probably not gonna happen. We're going after as many as we can, so we want to create ads that have an emotional context to them.

Now, maybe we try that ad about the plumbing with the panic and it doesn't work. Then, we have to re-approach it from another scenario, but we have to come up with these scenarios first and then see if we can approach these target audiences for campaigns in as many different ways as possible with different emotional combinations and then we test them. We create 10 different ad groups, 10 different images each, 10 different ad types with 10 different emotional traits, and then we run them and then one of them just rises to the top. For some people, they just like that ad the most, it resonates the most with them, they feel it in a way that's important to them, and then that's the winner. So, it's all testing, but what we're trying to do is come up with the most reasonable way to create our ads.

Once we have our emotions, we're gonna write words that trigger those emotions. We're just gonna create a list and we're gonna focus on words that fit in the age range. If you're talking about a 13 year old, they write in a way that's just not mature. If you're talking about a 65 year old, they use a different set of words than I do because different words were popular at different times. My wife and I are seven years apart. We use different words in different scenarios. I think it's funny and I make fun of her for it, but it's just how we are as humans. About every decade, you're gonna have different words.

Now, in some campaigns, it doesn't apply. You can communicate more generically to anyone of any age group. But, if you're targeting a specific age group like 55+ or 65+, you want to do a little research into words that were popular then because what will happen is you can use them in your ads and you will differentiate yourself from all the other ads because an emotion will be triggered that no one else is able to trigger because there's some forgotten word that people don't use in today's vernacular. When everyone writing ads is a marketing intern just out of college that sucks, they're not taking the time to do that research. They've never even thought about this. Like, "Oh, do people that are 65 today use different words? You mean that my grandma is not responding to 'savage' in an ad?" So, you have to understand the mindset and the vocabulary of the people that you're talking to because you're not writing ads from your point of view. You're writing ads to their point of view.

And then, you also want to think about words that fit the gender. This may sound odd. If you're a woman, you definitely understand that different words affect you differently. As a man, I think we're less in tune to that and so you need to get in tune to it. You need to understand the vocabulary of how women describe problems, depending on what you're selling.

And so, if you're selling something medical, you need to understand how women communicate about their bodies. It's different than how men like to think about women, and so you have to put yourself in that mindset. If you need to, Google it. There's lots of information out there. Just do a little research or talk to some women.

It works in both ways. If you're a woman listening to this and you want to market to men, you need to understand how men think. Thankfully, for you, you probably understand how we think a lot better than I understand how women think. It just men are a little are a little bit simpler.

If you get really good at this, there's not a lot of people who do a great job at marketing to women, specifically, and so you can carve out a niche for yourself. This also applies to ethnicities. Different ethnic groups use different vernacular and words ina way that other ones don't and so you can reach these audiences differently using the right words. And if you just Google some ads, and Pay Per Call, what you'll notice is there was almost zero creativity that was put into the vocabulary. You will notice that no one is really targeting any group of people the way they probably should because this is incredibly high-level advertising thought process that most people are not engaging in.

It's not that hard to do, you just have to sit down and think about it. Most people aren't sitting down and thinking about it. This is why most people fail at affiliate marketing. I mean, effectively, if you give me any affiliate campaign and then go look at the copy that's out there, all you have to do is change the copy to take it from not profitable to profitable. That's because it's how you communicate to the group of people so that they can relate to it and feel something, get that emotional reaction to get them to take action.

Once we understand our audience, we're gonna write some phrases that use the words that we wrote down. And then, if it's long-form, we organize it into it a story. If it's short, we get really decisive about what words we're gonna use. And then, no matter what the ad, you finish with a call to action or you have call to action in it. Call to action is very important. You have to tell people to pick up the phone and make the call. "Call now! I want you to pick your phone, dial 800-899-3726 and call now before it's too late. Don't wait! Call now! We'll provide the relief you need!" Blah blah blah, over and over and over and again. Just keep repeating yourself with the call to action.

Let's do a debt consolidation example. We have our wheel of emotions here. So, if you aren't able to really digest everything we just talked about, let's just use it in a practical way.

How does someone who has a lot of debt feel when they think about their debt? People don't like debt. It's a negative emotion. Do they like what we're talking about? That's how you determine if it's positive or negative. I guess some people like debt. I think billionaires like debt 'cause they can leverage it to take over countries or whatever. But for the average person, debt is a problem. Problem? Inherently negative.

So, what emotions do they feel when they think about their debt? And this is a simplistic example. It doesn't just have to be, what do I have here? Seven? It doesn't have to be just seven. It could be 15 or 20, depending on how deep you want to get into this. As you optimize your campaigns and massage out new stories into your campaigns and change the ad copy, you're gonna want to do a lot more than seven. We're just gonna do seven so that you can understand the process and then you can figure out the rest on your own.

Now, with debt, we're not just selling the problem, though. In fact, we're not really selling the problem, at all. We're selling a solution. But in a debt campaign or any campaign where someone's in a negative situation and you want to get them to a positive one, you actually need to make them feel twice. First, you need to present the problem, and then you need to sell the solution. That's how you generate a lot of profit.

So, in a debt campaign, we're really talking about both sides. A lot of marketing around debt doesn't do this well and then you don't see the marketing again. What they do is they just go into it. Like, "Do you need debt relief? Let us help you relieve you of your debt," and they're focusing on the happy emotions. Well, if you don't get me into a state of panic and stress when talking about debt, I'm not gonna be clamoring for that solution. You should think about it this way, my visual example there.

I'm just sitting there. I'm just Netflixing and chilling and let me just eat some Doritos or whatever and then an ad comes on. I'm like, "Oh, okay. Cool. Ad. I'm watching it. Don't care. Oh. Ooh. I'm really not feeling good about ... Man, what is with these people? Why are you reminding me of my student loan debt? Come one, guys! Oh, fuck, I've got $70,000 I've gotta pay back? Oh, my God, I'm never gonna get out of this apartment. Give me the solution!" So, you actually have to make me feel it. I mean it. I really mean it. And that may be funny to watch me act this out, but this is actually how you need to approach the problem. And if you're not approaching it this way, someone's kicking your ass at marketing, plain and simple.

And so, we know we need to make the person that sees the ad feel stressed, anxious, helpless, nervous, exposed, vulnerable, and frightened. And some of you may not really like the way I'm approaching this. The only thing I have to say to you is you'd better fucking get over it or you're not gonna win at marketing because if you're unwilling to provoke emotions in people that are potentially negative, you just got rid of 90% of what you can sell on the internet! Just get over it. This is how it's done. Just understand that you have to think this way to be successful at advertising! We're effectively talking about controlling large groups of people and getting them to do what we want. You should approach it from that way, as much as it may be comfortable, because if you really want your career to be this, you have to know how to execute this way. Otherwise, you're never gonna get to the pinnacle of ti.

The best advertisers of all time all think this way. If you go back in history, the people like Edward Bernays who invented public relations, he was Sigmund Freud's cousin and sent letters to Sigmund Freud and was like, "Hey, Freud! How do I get these people to do my bidding?" And Freud was like, "Well, you could try some of these things." And then, next thing you know, modern day advertising is built and it's built using this process, in one way, shape, or form.

I highly recommend if you haven't seen it, go watch The Century of Self. It's a documentary. It's four hours long. It talks about Bernays and how all of this came about, but you will see very clearly that the most powerful advertising, the best campaigns that are ever done, they literally hire psychologists and put them in a room and have them run focus groups to try and elicit emotional responses in people before they go out and run huge marketing campaigns. You can't do that. You don't have a billion dollar budget. So, how do you do it? This is it! You've got the psychology of ads and Ringba's Pay Per Call Masterclass. You need to follow this process if you're gonna write successful ad copy.

Once we have someone in that state of anxiety, they want relief, and so then we offer them relief. That's how we get them to take action. We make them feel a problem that they're intimate with and then immediately offer them the solution. They're like, "Give me it!" They jump for it and that's what you want them to do.

The solutions we want them to feel or, not to necessarily feel, but to know that if they act, pick up the phone and call us, they'll get it, are freedom, courageousness, sense of hope, happiness, feeling powerful and in control, liberated. That's what we want to offer as the solution.

Now, they don't get that solution unless they call us. And so, the fear portion of them, once you get them to feel this way, is like, "Oh, my God. If I don't call these people and I don't deal with it, I'm just gonna keep feel ... This isn't gonna be good. I'm not gonna be able to finish doing whatever I'm doing." That feeling's gonna stay with them and when it's negative, it will and then they'll pick up the phone and call. That's what we're trying to accomplish here.

Negative Emotion Words

All we have to do is take these negative emotions we want someone to feel, and write words that trigger those emotions. And you have to put yourself into the mindset of the person that you're trying to influence. Then, you literally say these words out loud, pretending that you're in debt, and see if you can actually trigger an emotion in yourself.

That's what I did. I sat down, and I was like, "Alright, how do I make myself feel stressed? Ooh, collectors. Ugh. Interest, oh!" I hate interest. Interest is shackles. And so, interest is just, ugh! Payments and due dates, late fees, oh, my God! I'm never late to anything. Just the word "late" scares the crap out of me. Penalties. I allow myself, even though I'm varying control of my emotions to feel this stuff when I write the words. I'm like, "Okay. This will trigger emotions in people that have a lot of debt."

That's it! And I don't, so I have to put myself in that person's shoes. So, if you don't have a lot of debt or you've never had collectors calling you, you won't quite understand. You have to try and put yourself in those shoes. What does it feel like? How do they do it?

Check out the Pay Per Callers episode with All Finance Leads' Josh and Anthony. These guys are fucking amazing, and Anthony said some stuff in there that I love! He literally put himself in his customer's position so that he could understand how they feel so that he would know how to market to these people. That's this process. Highly commendable to do that. It takes a lot of work, but if you really want to build a business, you have to understand how to do this.

And so, I did this with every one. And you can keep going. Anxious. Debt makes me anxious. In general, owing someone else makes me anxious. Past due makes me anxious. Late, again. Ringing. Like, what if your phone just kept ringing and it was collectors over and over again? You would, literally, Pavlovian train yourself so every time the phone rang, you'd be anxious and nervous. So, when you have a lot of debt and collectors calling, phone rings, you're like, "Ugh, cringe." So, the phone ringing.

What words associate with helpless? Being alone. Being broke. You have no power. Prison, jail, drowning. Those are all helpless situations. And it doesn't mean we're gonna tell people that if they don't call us they're gonna go to jail. This is an exercise. This is a word exercise so that we can come up with some root words. We're not gonna use them all.

Nervous. People are panicking. When they see other people panic, they get nervous. Deadlines make people nervous. Like, "Am I gonna turn my college paper in on time?" "Oh, I've gotta pay my mortgage on time," whatever. Due date, which is the same thing as a deadline but it's different words and phrases so it's okay that they're the same. Take away, like, any time you take away something from someone or the fear of having something taken away makes people nervous.

Exposed. Faceless. You don't know who is coming after you. Credit score. "Oh, my God. Someone else is controlling my future." Late fees. "They can just bill me. I don't have any control. I'm exposed."

Vulnerable. I agreed to something. "Oh, my God, I have to follow that agreement. I never read it," because most people don't read them. Overdue. Overdraft is another one that's not on here.

You literally can create endless lists for these emotions. It just takes a little bit of time. I've never done it this way, specifically, before but I wanted to simplify it so it took me a minute to get in a groove. It took me a minute to get the first couple and I was unsure, and then it just started flowing. I could have kept going, but this was enough. This was more than enough to write our copy.

And then, frightened. Judgements, lawsuits, lawyers, bad credit, a judge. Repo, repossession, like someone's gonna come take my car. That frightens me. And so, all these words that are in this matrix now can be used in writing copy.

Positive Emotion Words

And then, we also need the other side of it because we need to be able to communicate that we are the solution. Freedom. What is freedom? Zero dollars due, no debt, on time, options. I can choose my own future. Future! It's gonna be bright! My future's gonna be amazing! I'm courageous. I paid off my bills. I fought and I won and I took back my life. That's being courageous. Hopeful. Reducing, lowering, getting relief, lifting the weight off my shoulders. Debt-free, that made me happy. What other words? Smile, dance, happy-type events. Being free, being able to meet with friends and family and take people out. Do what you want to do. Live your life.

And then, powerful. You want them to feel powerful. Fighting. Lawyers, but on their side, defending them, beating the other party, winning. And then, being debt-free is liberating, relief, help, planning. And then, in control. Debt-free, again. Saving money for my future. Investing. Taking back control of my life.

Creating Negative Emotions

And so then we're gonna take all of these root words and we're gonna write phrases using them. I took the words for each of these emotions and put them in a sentence that was describing a feeling. "Crushing pressure of due dates, late fees, interest, and penalties." That's a trigger sentence. That's gonna cause someone to feel something.

Anxious. Your phone ringing off the hook, knowing you can't answer. They're anxious and they're helpless and so that's gonna trigger an emotion. Your phone ringing off the hook, knowing you can't answer. Anyone that's in debt and overdue is getting called by collectors and their phone rings and it's anonymous or they can't answer it because they're around friends and family. So, they can't take the call. They end the call. They put it back in their pocket and they're all anxious. We can actually have someone re-live that memory in just a short sentence by saying it.

Now, it won't work for everybody. That's why everyone doesn't click. But this is a common theme and memory of people that have debt and so we can trigger that memory and get them to think about their debt by triggering that memory.

Helpless. Trapped and alone, drowning in a prison of debt. And these are just going for it, no holds barred, trying to trigger an emotion in someone. And so, depending on your ad platform or what's allowed or how you feel or how you want to represent your brand, you can soften these things. These are just all-the-way-in phrases. And you can do it that way, too. There's nothing wrong with it. It just may not be as effective, depending on your audience. You may have to soften it.

What I mean by softening it is removing some of the words. Don't stuff so many trigger words into the sentence. Like, "Are you feeling trapped and alone due to your debt?" That's a much softer way than, "Trapped and alone, drowning in a prison of debt." That's just all for it. I wanted to go all the way with the phrases and then you guys can understand how to do this practice and then you can soften them however you want. Softer versions of these will actually convert better, depending on the audience. So, don't think that just going for it is always the best way to approach this. That's why testing is important. You want to test soft, you want to test hard, you want to test different approaches to different audiences so that you can figure out what works best but any way slice it, this is the process.

Nervous. Feeling of panic from rapidly approaching due dates. Ugh. Exposed: "Faceless collectors and endless late fees." It doesn't feel good to even express this stuff to you guys while I put myself in the context of someone that owes money.

Vulnerable. Overdue, again. You want to pay but life is out of your control. A lot of people who are in debt blame it on outside influences, blame it on outside people. That's why they're in debt and struggling in the first place. We can't fix that part of it, but we can definitely relate to it in text by saying, "Life is out of your control."

So, people who have a lot of debt typically blame a lot of people because if you don't have debt, you take responsibility and you pay your bills. You figure it out. So, people in debt, in general, and that's why you have to put yourself in the mindset of your target audience, are blamers. You can reach that trait by understanding the person and then writing copy to fit it.

And then frightened. Threatening lawyers, lawsuits, judgments, bad credit. When will it end? You've seen a lot of this in commercials and whatever for debt consolidation. None of this is new. None of this is groundbreaking, as far as copy goes. But what it is is a process that you guys can replicate in a very easy way, regardless of the type of campaign that you're doing.

So, what do we do with this? Obviously, these are really short phrases, maybe for Google ad words, but even then, you get a lot more space. So, what do you do with this? That's what we're gonna do after we go through the positive ones. I forgot about these. I got too excited about the negative ones.

Creating Positive Emotions

The solutions. The solutions, the same type of thing. We want to offer them relief and the feeling of these emotions if they call us. Like, "If you call us, we'll set you free, baby. Your future is bring and you have options! Fight, win, and take back your life by finally paying off everything."

When you say this, they realize that they're gonna hae to pay it off, they're gonna have to deal with it if they want that feeling of courage. The negative emotions don't disappear when we talk about positive ones because they're 10 times more powerful.

Hopeful: "Reduce interest, lower your debt, and lift yourself up." Happy: "Smile and dance, living your new debt-free life!" Powerful: "Our expert lawyers will fight on your behalf." Liberated: "Get the help and planning you need to live a debt-free life." And, in control: "Save your money, invest in your future, and take your life back. Take back your life."

All I did was take those words that we put that triggered those emotions and tossed them into phrases. I put a couple of them from each into a phrase and just added some contractions, turned it into an English sentence, and bam! Now, we've got a trigger sentence. We're gonna trigger emotions in people.

Combining Phrases for Short Form Copy

Then what we do is we combine these because in debt, specifically, in a lot of campaigns, first we're gonna offer the problem, then we want to offer the solution. So, I'm gonna take two of my phrases from each and just put them in sentence form with a call to action. Now, these are short-form. You've got to do it real short, you don't have a lot of space? It's totally easy.

"Is crushing pressure of due dates, late fees, interest, and penalties ruining your life? Your future is bright and you have options! Call 800-123-4567 now for a free consultation!" That, right there, ladies and gentlemen, is great copy that works with a process to make it.

Next one. "Your phone is ringing of the hook but you hide the screen, knowing you can't pay. It's time to fight, win, and take your life back by finally paying off everything. Call 800-123-4567 now for a free consultation!" Problem, solution, call to action in copy, based on emotions we want people to feel when they read our advertisement to get them to take an action that we tell them, with the call to action, to do.

Combining Phrases for Long Form Copy

Combining it for long-form? It's the same thing. You just take more of the phrases and combine them on both sides. "Do you feel trapped and alone, drowning in a prison of debt? That feeling of panic from rapidly approaching due dates keeps you from living the life you deserve while faceless collectors and endless late fees suffocate your future." Anyone that's in debt is gonna feel something when they read that. They're gonna relate to it. One of those words is gonna get them.

"There is a way out! Reduce your interest rates, lower your debt, and lift yourself up. In no time, you'll be smiling and dancing, living your new debt-free life. Our expert lawyers will fight on your behalf. Call us now for the relief you need to take your life back! The call and consultation are free. Call 800-123-4567 now!"

The key to a great call to action? Tell them what to do and when to do it. Some people don't do that. They're like, "What? No. No, no. Call today. Call us when it's convenient for you." No! I want them to call right now, so tell them to call now! Why delay? I don't even want to say the word "delay." I don't want it to prime in their head. Like, "I can delay, even though he told me now." No! "Pick up the phone, dial our number, and get out of debt now!"

That, my friends, is the entire process of weaving emotions into copy for successful advertising and it applies to every single ad platform that's out there.

Using and Finding Images for Creating Emotions

And the process works exactly the same way for images. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this because it's not that complicated.

This is an ad on the left for a home security camera. This is one of the worst ads I've ever seen for a home security camera. I'm not gonna say the brand name, but they should fire their marketing team. Because when I look at this ad, I see a camera staring at me, and I'm like, "Why is a camera staring at me? What, exactly, is going on here? Those apples look delicious and shit, maybe I forgot my keys." I don't feel anything. I'm confused. That's what I get. I'm confused! Is this an ad for apples? Where did they get those apples? Because apples at my grocery store don't look that delicious. What do we have to ...

"Oh, shit, someone's breaking into a house!" Yeah. It's that simple. What's going on in the right image? Someone is breaking into my house. "Oh, crap. I don't have an alarm. I don't have a security camera. My kids may be home." That's it. That's all you need. You have to give them imagery that triggers the emotion that I want.

Obviously, if I'm selling security services, I want fear! That is fear. A faceless person breaking into my house. You can even put some copy on it. "Are your kids home? Super cameras, buy now!"

But, that's it! That's how you do it! And so, if we're talking about advertising and we're going to combine imagery with copy, there's a real easy way to do that. Let's go back to the debt consolidation example and let's take a look at it. And guys, this is so easy and the fact that no one does it, it blows my mind.

What do we do? We take the emotions we want people to feel and we plug them in to Google Images and it gives us a list of images that show people in that emotional state. How hard is this? Why are ads so shitty? It makes no sense to me!

So, what do you do? What do you do? I'm gonna take the copy I just wrote and I'm going to save almost every single image on this page. I'm probably wouldn't do the guy with the clocks, but actually, yeah, I would. I'd totally do the guy with the clocks. So, if we were doing Facebook ads, I wouldn't do ... Well, actually, I probably would the Sigourney Weaver with the alien in there. My God! Okay.

Literally, if you just go search the emotion you want people to feel in Google Images and then save almost every image and split test your copy with all these different images, you're gonna find the one that works the best, probably on your first try. I mean, if you're gonna do a Facebook campaign with images, images are 80% of it. The text is 20%. If you use text like I did, you'll probably win.

And then, if images are 80% of it, that means you need to probably test 250 images per advertisement to find the one with the highest click-through rate. But you don't really have to put that much work into it! You just search the emotion and the answer's given to you! I mean, it's mind blowing to me how people don't do this. It's because they think that advertising isn't about emotion, but it absolutely, positively is.

So, make sure you put yourself in the mindset of people, use the emotional wheel I gave you to pick out the emotions people want you to feel, create a word matrix, write 25 different advertisements, Google the emotion you want people to feel, put 250 images in Facebook, and there you go! That's how you make a ton of money with advertising on the internet!


Previous Lesson | Next Lesson: Online Advertising for Pay Per Call
Last edited: