Written by: Shantel Perschon, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
The mouth of a whale is approximately 10 feet wide and can hold water volume equivalent to its body mass.
However, the THROAT of a whale is only the size of a human fist. Depending on the type of whale, the throat can expand to be about the size of a basketball.
When you think about content, copy, and sales, consider this
Your content may be effectively inviting people into the mouth of the whale, but NOT into the throat. And the throat is equivalent to the sale.
You can think of this as a more exciting way to describe the classic “funnel”. Your audience is essentially the “volume” you hold in your hypothetical “whale mouth”. However, in business and sales, the volume determining success more than anything else is how many people you can move from the “mouth of the whale” to the “throat of the whale”. In today’s social selling climate, content and copy are the way to do that. It matters much less how much volume your “mouth” can hold and much more how many people you can move to become buyers.
What’s the difference between a content binger and a buyer?
The content. Not the reader. More specifically, YOUR content; technically, we’re talking about COPY. Because COPY is writing designed to move a reader to BUY.
So, go ahead and write content all day long. You need content. You need to add value and get the reader interested. You need to engage them and nurture them. But when you’re audience is ready, and when you’re ready, you need to write COPY, the juicy stuff that moves your audience to whip out their wallets.
Here are 3 steps to convert a content binger to a buyer
1. Meet the reader where they are – with words. Your job is to describe to them with painful accuracy what’s going on in their head and heart RIGHT NOW. The goal is for them to self-identify with the content and character in the story you’re telling. And by the way, the story you’re telling makes or breaks this step. 2. Take the reader to the end game – with words. Describe to your reader what their life could look like in X amount of time. Write so impactfully that your readers sigh with relief as you illustrate their life WITHOUT the problem they’re currently married to.
If you can do that, then step three is cake.
3. Present your solution – simply, with words. There’s no need for an overcomplicated solution. There’s no need to sell a bullet list of bells and whistles. Get good at effectively presenting a solution that makes sense for the character in the story (which happens to be them).
Presenting a solution should NOT be complicated.
After these steps, you’re readers are ready to BUY. They DECIDE it’s time to act, pull the trigger, and pass through the throat and into the “belly of the whale” to experience change and relief from their most pressing and frustrating problems.
If you’re good at what you do, if you’re good at the customer experience, the “belly of the whale ”will be a transformational experience (in the best way). Think Jonah, but much less dismal.
*Disclaimer – to make this analogy work, we have to get your readers to the “belly of the whale”, but based on the fact that whales can’t swallow humans (unless God’s involved), this is, in fact, just an analogy.
If you’d like to hang out with me on social media and hear more about my unique approach to story selling and copywriting, you can find me on Instagram here.
Shantel Perschon, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Shantel Perschon is a copywriter and story strategist for solopreneurs. She believes good business solutions start with personal breakthrough. Shantel is brilliant at finding the story in every business and finding the solution in every story. She can flawlessly connect a story and solution to an audience of potential clients. She uses honesty, unconventional thinking, and personal flair to write content that demands the hottest commodity of all: attention. At the end of the day, her goal is to create a mesmerized reader ready to buy.
