Copywriting Friday: Are you one of us?

Published: January 2025

Let’s say you’re introverted by nature and you love to travel. You attend a festival in a country where you don’t speak a word of the language and don’t know a soul.

Along comes someone holding a bag—and it has the unmistakable crest of the University of Cambridge! Your alma mater! No matter how introverted you usually are, you can’t help yourself as you smile, walk up to the person, and say: “Hi, did you go to Cambridge, too?” Instant, effortless rapport.

Establishing rapport is enjoyable in social settings, and it’s crucial in business. Copywriting legend, Gary Bencivenga, talks about how you have two jobs when writing—to open the sale, and to close it. Rapport enables you to open that sale by getting past the filters that keep us sane and productive in the midst of oceans of messages washing over us. They can also help to close the sale by convincing us that the writer knows our situation.

Five ways to build rapport with your visitors

1. Use the language that only we know

You can spot a Swiftie from a mile away:

Imagine your delight when you and someone nearby at a Taylor Swift concert both have the same bracelet with IFOAYSF on it! (Of course you know that’s from her song “betty”— NOT “Betty”! — and it refers to “In Front Of All Your Stupid Friends”.)

If you are writing to die-hard fans of Apple devices, remember not to say: “Get to know the Mac.” It’s “Get to know Mac.” They’ll be long gone before you make the next blunder and say: “If you have two Macs.” In the future, you’ll know to say: “If you have two Mac computers.” It’s even in Apple’s style guide.

Not only can language build rapport, but it can drive people away. Consider this headline:

“Who else wants to learn a weird trick for day trading that Wall Street doesn’t want you to know?”

That kind of language is common, but it sounds like a copywriter wrote it. The best copywriters don’t sound like copywriters—they sound like people. Let’s say you were sitting down to dinner with your knowledgeable investing friend and you had, in fact, discovered an interesting investing angle. You’d probably say:

“Did you see that private letter ruling the IRS just issued about ETFs?”

You know your audience—your friend—and that bit of news is all they need to pay attention to you.

The thing about sounding like a copywriter or salesperson is it’s so commonplace that when you do talk the way you would to a friend, you stand out in a good way. By using the words, phrases, and nuances your audience recognizes, you prove you’re part of their world—and they’ll trust you more.

2. Show that you are sensitive to our cultural and social cues

In Copywriting Friday: The personal touch, we wrote about the perils of lumping people into giant blobs, along the lines of “Millions of people just like you!” The more you segment, the more specific your cues can be to show that you’re one with your market.

For example, if you’re marketing in East Asia, particularly to Mandarin speakers, try to avoid the number four. That’s because the Mandarin Chinese word for “four” sounds very close to the one for death. The color white is also associated with death.

It’s easy to miss other mistakes that can harm engagement. For example, this image looks like what may be found on lots of websites:

In Malaysia, it’s rude to point in that way. Instead, this is how you point:

How can you possibly become aware of potential pitfalls on your site? Here are two good methods:

Perform user testing

User testing is one type of information among many that our Research Department collects when engaging with a new client. It allows you to recruit people who fit your target market, and learn how your website comes across. You can get highly specific in your questions, asking whether anything on a website might be misconstrued, or is off-putting for some reason.

Create listening posts—and pay attention to them

Almost everyone has a “Contact Us” form and some websites also have chat tools and may conduct surveys from time to time. Here’s where the similarities end between typical companies and great ones: The typical ones collect visitor and customer information but do little with it. The information rarely makes it to the C-Suite, and when it does, it’s been sorted and filtered to display only big trends. An entire television multi-year series has shown the results of this weak focus on customers. It’s called “Undercover Boss”.

The series follows CEOs who go undercover. The excuse for the film crew is that they’re following a worker as part of a show that will be about various jobs and careers. Sometimes these bosses are blown away by what they see on the front lines. Though they focus on the bricks-and-mortar world, the same disparity applies to websites: The C-Suite may learn a great deal by ordering online as a random customer under another name.

The trick is to look for whispers that point to changes, rather than shouts that require changes. For example, let’s say a single website visitor points out that all the clothing models for safety gear are men, but women also use the gear. Some people may say: “We haven’t received many complaints about that, so let’s wait until we do.” First, most people don’t complain—they either suffer or leave. Second, why wait if the single comment is valid?

Demonstrating awareness of your audience’s values, customs, and preferences shows respect, builds connection, and reinforces that you understand their perspective.

3. Make it clear that your users are like us

We’ve talked about the importance of testimonials as a form of proof. Although testimonials are indeed a powerful persuasion tool, they are sometimes counteracted by an equally powerful force: the concern people have that their situation is unique, so your product or service may not work for them.

One way to address this is to seek testimonials that align as closely as possible with the target audience. Here are several ways to do that:

• Use language that insiders know, as we discussed above.
• Express a common frustration in addition to the solution.
• Use terminology that is familiar to the audience. If the target audience is massage therapists, for example, look for testimonials where you can list that occupation beneath the name, along with any certifications. Most “civilians” would have no idea what they mean, but terms like LMT, BCTMB, and CMLDT would be meaningful to insiders.
• Think about how you can get specific in other ways like location of the testimonial givers, their age (if important), and the specific product used. Amazon includes product specifics, no doubt as a result of extensive testing:

4. Who’s our enemy? Call them out

This was a cornerstone for the legendary copywriter, Clayton Makepeace. He loved to ride motorcycles and explained that if he were writing to bikers, the common enemy would be the “feds” or the federal government, which mandated wearing helmets. As sensible as that rule may be, his point is you will get bikers’ heads nodding in agreement if you bring it up. If you’re writing about supplements, then Big Pharma is most likely the villain. By identifying the enemy you share with your readers, you’re building rapport.

What if you’re selling a SaaS solution and there’s no clear enemy? If your tool helps people optimize their websites for search engines, then the enemy is probably the next algorithm change by search engines, potentially causing your rankings to plummet overnight. You can think of “the enemy” as any force that can pull out the rug from under you and change the dynamics of your market at a moment’s notice. It might even be something like interest rates or the next election cycle. The trick is to find this wild card that your audience cares about and talks about.

5. Don’t tell me how I feel

This advice seems to run counter to the old copywriting dictum of: “Problem, Agitate, Solve.” That rule states you should amplify the problem at the outset to get the reader lathered up to want the solution.

That may work in some situations, but it’s not how a friend would talk. Let’s say you’ve had great luck with a new neural stimulation device that helps your debilitating migraines. Would you sit down to have coffee with your friend and say:

Do you suffer from migraines? Does it make you feel like lightning bolts are blasting through your head? Does it hurt to be in daylight and you feel like a vampire because you need to stay in the dark? Well, look no further, because I have found a revolutionary solution for you…

Most likely you’d say something like this:

You know those migraines I was having almost daily? I tried a thing that I stick on my forehead and last week, I had only one migraine.

Is that language far less promotional? Yes. Does it sound like a real person? Yes. Will you hear it and feel like someone is closing you? No. If you have a legitimate solution to a problem common to your target audience, you need not shout. All you need to do is enter the conversation already going on in the minds of your prospects, and you’ll have their attention. Those migraine sufferers have already been moving heaven and earth to find a solution. They need no agitation.

Effective persuasion need not be loud

Writers sometimes attempt to manufacture emotion through the use of exclamation points. When that doesn’t seem to sell enough, they turn to hyperbolic words—especially adjectives. It’s not a solution, it’s a revolutionary solution!! Let your target market come to their own conclusions about your solution.

The secret to building rapport is simple: Speak the language of your audience, show you understand their world, and make them feel like you’re one of them. Do this, and you’ll stand out in a sea of generic messaging.

See you next time on Copywriting Friday.

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