Using Fear Based Copywriting to Sell Internet Products

June 4th, 2007 Dina at Wordfeeder.com

In my last copywriting blog post, we discussed the means by which big companies “scare” their readers into buying their products. Today we’ll talk about how the Fear Factor can work especially well for an internet marketer selling internet business tools.

Mind you, I’m not suggesting you abandon your current strategy in favor of scaring the bejesus out of your customers. I’m simply sharing with you a very old, and highly effective method of writing sales copy.

Why would it be so easy to frighten folks over internet-related matters? Because a lot of people are confused about the web. When you don’t fully understand something, you can become fearful about it. Being fearful means you’re an easy target. Fear-based advertising generally works better on female audiences than it does males - although there’s no denying that both genders can fall victim to this type of persuasion.

Here’s an example of how one might use fear as a secret copywriting weapon to help sell more product on the internet.

Meet Bob. Bob’s a go-getter making a name for himself in the world of online marketing. He has plenty to say about web content and how to go about publishing it. People listen to Bob; Bob’s been around the internet block a few times. Bob gets respect.

Bob spends a significant amount of time on sites inhabited by females. If you type Bob’s full name into a Google search box (in quotes of course), you can view pages and pages of women’s forums, with his good name plastered all over the discussion boards. Within these forums, Bob makes himself available to answer questions and position himself as The Expert, as gaggles of girls glean all they can from him about how to profit from publishing content on the web.

After several months of wooing the women of the web, Bob makes his move - the big product launch. There is an accompanying sales pitch, of course. Let us examine the sales pitch to learn what kind of sounds Bob, a.k.a. the Rooster, makes while visiting the Hen House.

In his sales pitch, Bob the marketing star makes quite a racket about web content, and the potential Do’s and Don’ts of publishing it. This is done to create a sense of fear in his readers. Fear of the unknown, a barrage of “Whatifs” to spook them out about the articles they’re putting out there into global circulation. Fear of the legal ramifications attached to the content they might be picking up.

Someone could sue you out of house and home, all because you published articles for free on the Web. What other atrocities could befall you, from doing a simple thing like writing and publishing Web content? God only knows… and oh yeah, this guy Bob, the Star Marketer, he knows too (because he IS God in a way, to these women?).

So then Bob suddenly changes his tune from Chicken Little “Sky is Falling” to “I’m the guy who can rescue you from yourself and the danger of publishing your own content… if you would only GET THE MISSING INFO YOU NEED.

(And that missing info, is of course… Bob’s Information Product.)

And this works. Bob makes a ton of cash in just the short week that he aggressively promotes his instantly downloadable Content Publishing Expose, published in convenient PDF format. In a few weeks, Bob will hire a few copywriters to help him morph his Expose into a new form - perhaps he’ll add an Audio CD to his product pipeline and then run a similar pitch all over again.

Why does this work? Well, because just like your friendly neighborhood mechanic, Bob is very good at preying upon the worrisome nature of the world’s females.

What do you sell, and who is your ideal customer? What are his or her fears, as related to your product? How can you work this type of psychology into your future sales letter, as a way to generate more interest in what you offer?

Get your persuasive copy on the fly - contact Dina@Wordfeeder.com for more information.

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