What’s Tivo, you ask, and, more importantly, what’s it have to do with my prospects’ brains?

As you know, Tivo allows you to automatically find and record your favorite shows and then play them back at your leisure. Skip boring. Repeat exciting.

Some people actually Tivo commercials. Because Tivo exists, more commercials are Tivo-able than ever before. Tivo upped the ante on commercials. Commercials had to go beyond clever to compete with the others. After the Superbowl, they measured a commercial’s success by often it was Tivo’d. And then, for good measure, they measured the Tivo’d-commercial-watchers’ brains.

What Tivo did for commercials, the strategy I am about to show you can do for your website & other copy.

How do you get people to remember what you have to say and to store it for automatic replay in that quiet, secret part of their brains?

Listen closely, oh aspiring hypnotist, because I’m about to teach you how to climb inside your prospects’ brains without them resenting you. You see, you don’t actually have to take that hypnosis class down at the community center. Save the mind-control tactics for your family. No need to buy Zee Best Copywriter In Zee World’s Very Fancy Very Expensive Information Product.

This is going to sound absurdly simple.

It is called the Offer.

The offer is responsible for 40% of the success of any marketing piece. Another 40% comes from list quality, and only 20% depends on the copy. Lousy writers of the world, rejoice!

Here are the elements of a great offer, loosely summarized from Mark Joyner’s excellent book, “The Irresistible Offer,” which I highly recommend.

First, make sure your copy & messaging answer the following questions:

1. What are you selling?
2. How much are you charging?
3. Why should I believe you?
4. What’s in it for me? (WIIFM?)

These are the gatekeeper questions. No amount of cleverness will get you past them. (Unless you can provide the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.)

Joyner writes that an offer is the core of your business approach, the foundation upon which everything else—clever one-liners and benefit statements alike—rests. Don’t be fun without it.

Here are the components of a great offer:

1. It communicates a high return on investment. Joyner writes, “The believable return on investment is communicated so clearly and efficiently that you’d have to be a fool to pass it up.”
2. It covers as many of what Joyner calls “touchstones” as possible. (See the 4 questions above.)
3. It’s believable. Unless you’re already famous, you’ll need to add believability ingredients. These can include providing proof, testimonials, lists of reputable clients, qualifications, awards, and recognition. Good-old-fashioned logic works, too.

Over the next several weeks, I will be collecting good offers and posting them for the benefit of the group. If you come across any great offers, please post them here in the Comments section. In return, you will receive a year-long membership in the Copylicious 10%-Off-All-Copywriting-Projects club. (Disclaimer to clever people: my own offer can’t be used as an example of an offer.)