Copywriting tips - How To Get People To Listen To What You Say | Copywriting Tips | Web Copywriting | Internet Copywriting To Increase Conversion Rate

It’s no news that we all hate to be wrong. It doesn’t matter how much you think you can admit a mistake and work on it, at the end of the day, there’s always a certain voice in you that justifies your action. We always think we are right - even when mountains of evidence shows otherwise.

Nothing new there… I know you already knew that…

But I don’t think you really appreciate just how much we hate to be wrong . I want you to really get this this because it can profound effects on your sales copy. Taking advantage of this fundamental human “weakness” is easy if you know how.

Some Examples As To Just How Much We Hate To Be Wrong

Ok, here are some examples to help understand how badly we need to be right.

In their awesome book “Mistakes were made (but not by me)” Carol Travis and Elliot Aronson talked about the American Justice system where “convicting the innocent is much more common than we feared.”

The book also pointed a study by Samual R. Gross and his associates that concluded, “if we reviewed prison sentences with the same level of care that we devote death sentences, there would have been over 28,500 non-death-row exonerations in the past 15 years rather than the 255 that have in fact occurred .”

Now, if that shocks you, wait till you hear the next part.

The reason that happened is self-justification. The police made a snap judgment form through years of experience and although they are usually right - those snap judgments also helped put innocent people into jail.

And once they’ve got their target into jail, they’re reassured of the the fact that they are right .

The book continued, “Once that person goes to jail, that fact alone justifies what we did to put him there . Besides, the judge and jury agreed with us, didn’t they? Self-justification not only puts innocent people in prison, but sees to it that they stay there .”

Now can you see what I mean? People would rather put an innocent man into jail rather than admit we made a mistake.

Why do we hate to wrong so much?

The reason why do nasty things like that is because of a phenomenon called “cognitive dissonance”. Dissonance occurs when you have 2 conflicting thoughts.

For example, the thought “I’m a competent professional” and “I made a mistake” is obviously dissonant. They don’t match. And if self-justification doesn’t exist,, we would probably go insane.

But with self-justification, we come up with “reasons (excuses)” to justify what we did (although deep down we know we were wrong) - they are the ones who must have made the mistake.

Self-justification is a very difficult to break. It’s like the addiction that causes addictions. Ask dug addicts and other addicts to quit - do you think it will be easy? No!

So what does this have to do with copywriting?

Loads! For one, you don’t want to get in the way of self-justifications. You want to work with them . How?

There’s a very easy way to eliminate dissonance while selling your products… Let’s look at examples.

Say you’re selling a “quit smoking kit”. Your target market is obviously smokers. Now, if in your copy you say something along the line of,

“Smoking will kill you. You’re a stupid jackass to get yourself addicted in the first place. Buy my kit to quit now to save your life.” You obviously will never make a sale - although you’re right, and they know that. But they self-justified and thought,

“No way. Smoking curbs my appetite and keeps me relaxed. Obesity and stress are bigger killers.”

Now, what if you said something like this,

“It’s not your fault you’re addicted to cigarretes. Peer pressured made you try it and widespread lies has kept you blindfolded for all these years. Discover the truth now and break free from the chains of tobacco. Save your life with my kit.”

It’s pretty obvious which one will make bigger profits at the end of the day. The second example doesn’t raise self-justification. It doesn’t place blame on the person. Instead, the second example blames an external source for the problem that person is facing - something we also do very well .

So if at any time you find yourself preaching , stop and think if your target customer would like to hear what you want to say. Remember - it’s exceptionally simple to click away from your website.

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