Why great copy is romantic, not formulaic

You won’t struggle to find people or resources promising to give you the secret to great copywriting. And this secret pretty much always boils down to a framework, template, or formula.

Which is a very marketable way to deliver these promises.

But the idea that great copy can be reduced to some sort of repeatable recipe never really sat right with me. It feels like a paint-by-numbers book promising to help you create great art — it simply can’t deliver.

That doesn’t mean great copy doesn’t all have something in common, though. I’ve been studying copywriting for several years now and have worked with some great SaaS brands. And what I’ve noticed is there’s one thing all great copy and content has…

Romance

To be clear, I’m not talking about Heath Ledger serenading you on the football field type of romance…although if you manage that you’ll definitely boost your sign-ups.

I mean the romantic notions people have of what life could be like. And when someone makes a purchase, it’s because they have a romantic notion of how that product or service could impact them.

When someone buys a tub of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, they’re not thinking “Ooh, this will really get my blood sugar up after a long day”. Of course not — they’re imagining being snuggled up in a blanket, eating ice cream while watching a movie.

Is that how they will actually eat the ice cream? Probably not, but that doesn’t matter.

Similarly, someone doesn’t subscribe to a budgeting app because it’s got the best customisation features. They subscribe to it because they have a romantic idea in their head of what it must be like to be debt-free — not worrying about money week-to-week. And they chose that budgeting app because it was able to evoke that romance in some way.

And as humans, we romanticise A LOT.

We romanticise money, time, status, success, family, relationships, holidays, travel, pets, style, etc.

(Hell, I still romanticise flip phones. I never had one when they were all the craze, so I’ve been tempted to buy one recently. I’ve been trying to convince myself that I want it because it’ll help me disconnect and switch off. But really I just have a romantic idea in my head based on TV and movies from the late noughties.)

Isn’t ‘love story’ a bit dramatic?

Yeah, probably.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not also accurate. Think about it — every purchase you ever make has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Sometimes the story is a Jane Austen epic where it starts with a glance at an ad, you follow their content on social media for a few months, and then one day you build up the courage to finally pull out your credit card.

And sometimes it’s a one night stand where you follow an impulse, try it out, then cancel the free trial the next day.

How each love story ends will depend on how well the product or service matches the romanticised picture in the buyer's head. Sometimes it will be a huge let-down, and that’s it. But sometimes the reality matches the romance, and they become a customer for life.

Use emotion and romance to grow your SaaS

The point of this blog post isn’t to just make some warped connection between sales and romance. It’s to encourage you to use this connection to improve your own copy and content.

You do this by identifying the things your customers romanticise.

The easiest way to do this is by talking to them. Asking them what their hopes and dreams are, and how your software fits into that bigger picture. This might be in a big way or a small way, but I bet it fits in there somewhere.

Ask them big open questions about what they want to achieve in life, what their big goals are, and how they’re planning to achieve those goals.

If you’re a new SaaS without a catalogue of customers to chat with, review mining can also be a great place to look. Take a look at the reviews of your competitors, and find all the bits where the reviewer expresses where the software has helped them in real life.

Basically, you’re looking for anything that tells you what the customer wants life to be like, and ideally where you’re helping them to achieve that. These are the things you want your copy to promise new customers.

That’s how you use romance to make more sales.

Want to learn more about using emotion and romance to grow your SaaS? Subscribe to the HEY! READ THIS Newsletter today!