People are lazy. But you already knew that. Anything that can make your ad easier to read and easier to act upon is what you want. As you also know, people would rather have something done for them than do it themselves. So if there is any way you can make your product or service appear that it does all the work, you could have a winner.
Fortunately, direct marketers have done all the work for you and have come up with a twist in language that they have tested thoroughly. When these marketers tested the differences they were amazed at the response rates. (I’m too lazy to go find the exact percentages, but it was substantial.) All you have to do is have your product do all of the work using the third-person singular form.
So instead of saying something like this:
“You can make your ads more powerful with NLP Language Patterns for Advertising.” (which is OK)
You will make it stronger by saying this:
“NLP Language Patterns for Advertising makes your ads more powerful and persausive.”
See (Hear, Feel) the difference? You’re getting your product to pull all the weight.
Here’s the pattern:
(PRODUCT) gives you…/makes you…/allows you to…/gets you…(BENEFIT)
EXAMPLE:“The HAL 9000 gives you the freedom to get things done and allows you to concentrate on the important things in your life.”
To use this pattern, just make a list of the benefits your prospects will get from your product. Then word it so your product is doing all the work.
Image of a two-toed sloth by Leyo (Creative Commons 2.5)