It’s all about the premise (what makes them click?)

As a term in formal logic, the premise is a proposition supporting a certain conclusion. Applied to copywriting, use the word premise to mean the emotional concept that not only attracts attention, but maintains engagement throughout every element of your landing page copy and imagery.

In other words, the premise is the concept that weaves itself from headline to call to action, tying everything together into a compelling, cohesive, and persuasive narrative with one simple and inevitable conclusion — your desired action.

The premise connects you to the emotional center of your prospect’s brain, stimulates desire, maintains credibility, and results in the opening of the wallet. It’s the unification of the prospect’s worldview + the market + the benefits + the proof + a call to action into one simple, compelling message.

This happens when you understand how to frame your message and overall offer to merge so tightly with your prospect’s worldview that the “I want” trigger is pulled subconsciously.

Does anyone want your product or service? (research)

Meet Ian Smith.

Ian is a smart, creative, talented, mediocre kind of guy. He’s come up with an idea for a software product that every small business owner should use to improve their business.

He decides to create a web-based application and charge a monthly  fee.

Ian hires a programmer who can give him a functional web app for only $40,000 (ouch). Ian then comes up with a marketing plan, and spends days writing the site copy that explains all the benefits his software service has to offer.

The site launches.
And nothing happens.

For the first week, Ian hears nothing but crickets, despite all his work on pre-marketing and publicity.

He manages to get a joint venture with a prominent small business blogger, but the conversion rate is terrible and the
blogger is disappointed.

Since the product is obviously great (in Ians mind), Ian thinks the problem must be his marketing approach. It’s got to be a matter of getting the word out to more people. So he puts together a Google AdWords campaign, and puts his last $5,000 of credit on his card.

Again, nothing but crickets.

Ian never recoups his investment. After he brings in a professional copywriter to rework the offer, he gets the bad news about his real problem.

No one wants the software Ian is selling. Poor mediocre Ian did not do his research.