Today I woke up with a message from Aeriel.
“LUMABAS NA SI CLYRA”
…
My brain went, “Who??”
Five seconds later… Oh. Right. The baby. His brother’s baby.
…
…
Oh shyt.
Lumabas na si Clyra. CLYRA!
A whole new human just entered the world! 🥳
And that’s the miracle of birth, greeting me a good freakin morning.
But the weird part is… I’m not even that close to the couple. And for some reason, my heart did this little fist pump of joy after reading the news.
Maybe it’s because I’ve known her dad since grade school?
I mean, I’ve watched him be the boss as my senior at our alma mater.
I went head-to-head with him, finding the bottom of the beer bottle in college.
(I won, btw. Unofficially.)
Now? I’ll see him as a father.
It’s literally a story playing out before my eyes.
And when I congratulated him, he texted back:
“Thank you tol!!!”
Three exclamation points… That’s the most emotion he has expressed towards me in over a decade.
🙂
Anyway. Why am I telling you this?
Because empathy.
Your business’s sales message has got to revolve around this thing.
See, what I felt that moment had nothing to do with me. It was about stepping into his shoes, feeling his win.
Now, I’ve never been a father, so I don’t know EXACTLY how he feels.
But as a man? As someone who reads stories? And as someone who has locked eyes with his puppy for the first time?
I have stepped at least on top of his shoes.
Am I truly empathetic? No clue. Science hasn’t tested me yet.
(Altho my HS Buzzfeed-ish quiz said yes…)
But here’s what I do know: I can take myself out of the equation when I write my ads.
I remove my bias and my perspective from the big idea.
Because I know that what I’m writing is made for a specific type of person, in a specific situation, and at a specific time.
So, if I have the faintest idea about it?
There’s no way they would listen to what I have to say.
Look, when doing your marketing, behind all the creativity and the hooks, your market only wants to know one thing…
“Are they on my side?”
When your ads make them answer ‘yes’, then you’re already in.
That needs empathy.
Now, I’m not sure where I read this, but I remember a copywriter saying he does the same process.
Before doing research for his copy, he first thinks, “What would a single mom in the suburbs like to hear when she lands on this page?”
And from there, he builds up.
I did a similar thing to my Campaign Test Drive. I was writing an email launch campaign for a Functional Training studio. And before doing any research, I thought,
“What would a working man in Makati like to hear about fitness?”
From there, I built a sales message. Sharpened it with research. Then, I crafted a campaign simulation.
If it were a paid gig, I’d go even deeper– Talk to actual people doing functional training to soak up their feels and their words.
Because that’s what any business needs to do.
You’re not selling to you.
You’re selling to the market.
So even if you have a heart that makes even Eskimos shiver, you have to feel what they feel. See what they see.
Or at least get to know someone to do that. Someone empathetic enough to feel what a new dad feels, even though he has no kids: https://johnrillemanalo.com/