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As I recently explained to one of my clients, there’s a lot of psychology behind good copywriting. One thing that you need to do is make an emotional connection with your prospect. But as this month’s article explains, sometimes triggering subconscious emotions can be more powerful than making more obvious emotional connections.


The “halo effect”—the tendency for an impression created in one area to influence opinion in another—can be quite desirable. One way that advertisers often attempt to create a halo effect is by hiring a well-regarded spokesperson to tout their brand. Today I’d like to explore another approach.

Bring Out Your Prospects’ Positive Emotions
It’s a fact that people like to feel smart, competent and knowledgeable. Help them do so, and the positive emotions they’ll feel in response to this can create a “halo effect” for their opinion of your brand. If you can get prospects to experience positive emotions while learning about your offerings, they are likely to see everything about your company in a more positive light.

Validate Your Prospects’ Pre-Existing Beliefs
One way to bring out these positive emotions is to provide validation of how smart, competent and knowledgeable your prospects already are. Even if they’re unfamiliar with your company, chances are they have some pre-existing beliefs about your market or the types of products or services that you offer. Hopefully some of these are positive, because when you can validate the opinions that people already have, you cater to their needs on a deep emotional level. The happiness that this makes them feel can help put your entire company in a positive light.

After you have validated your prospects’ pre-existing beliefs, you can then bring in the additional information that might run counter to their expectations.

For example, say you sell window shutters, and most of your target audience thinks of window shutters as an elegant, high-end and expensive product. You could emphasize that you’re offering “elegant, high-quality window shutters…for less.” This would validate the “elegant and high-end” aspects of this preconception, and then show them that this highly-desirable product is actually within their reach.


Paws Pet Cremation in Los Angeles offers pet cremation with dignity and compassion. The website that I wrote for them is all about validating the difficult emotions that people feel when they lose a beloved pet. The site also validates some of the negative things that prospects may have heard about pet cremation, by emphasizing how Paws is different. For example, many facilities cremate multiple animals at once. Paws offers individual pet cremation. As the text states, “This is what you have the right to expect, and this is what we provide.”

What Others Are Saying


Michael Elliott
Founder and President, The Hammer & Nails Salon Group, LLC