Copywriting for Startups: ABC123s

You’re reading an excerpt of Great Founders Write, by Ben Putano, writer, entrepreneur, and book publisher. He’s the founder of Damn Gravity Media, a publishing house that inspires and educates tomorrow’s great founders. Purchase now for lifetime access to the book and on-demand video course.

The best copywriting combines sales and storytelling.

This is especially true for startups. You need to convince customers the world is changing around them, then present a new path to a more beautiful future. Along the way, you must build enough trust and urgency to trigger the action you want them to take.

While running WeContent, my content marketing agency for startups, I struggled to fit our clients’ narratives into traditional copywriting frameworks. So my team and I set out to create something new: a copywriting framework that positioned startups as the obvious solution to an urgent problem in their customers’ lives.

After two years of trial and error, we developed the ABC123 framework:

A — ATTENTION

B — BIG change or idea

C — “Why should I CARE?”

One — SOLUTION (“One” rhymes with “solution”)

Two — “Why YOU?” (You / two)

Three — URGENCY (Three / Urgency)

The ABC123 framework is designed to be as flexible as it is powerful. Each step addresses a key psychological need of a potential new customer. Use this tool to write landing pages, product descriptions, sales emails, paid ads, social media posts, video scripts, and even job descriptions (another form of sales).

Let’s explore each step to learn what it is, why it works, and how to use it to generate sales.

A — Attention

The first job of copywriting is to grab your customer’s attention: their most valuable and finite resource. This is much easier said than done. We’re producing more content than ever; on Twitter alone, 500 million posts are published every day.

So how do you stand out in such a noisy world?

There are three proven ways to earn your customer’s attention:

• Be specific

• Create F.O.N.K.

• Evoke emotion

Be Specific

In a stadium full of 50,000 screaming fans, with Darius Rucker playing on the largest stage I’ve ever seen, one single voice caught my attention.

“Hey, Ben!”

It was my brother coming back from the concession stand, arms full of snacks and drinks. I grabbed the popcorn from him and got back to singing along with Darius.

How could I hear my brother’s voice in the crowd? Because he used my name. Specificity cuts through the noise.

According to pioneering psychologist Daniel Broadbent, human brains apply a filtering strategy for managing stimuli. We simply can’t process everything, so we only process the things that matter to us. Broadbent’s Filter Model of Attention explains why you notice every Jeep Wrangler on the road as soon as you buy one yourself (or even think about buying one). It’s also why I could hear my name called out in a massive crowd.

You can use your customer’s selective attention to your advantage. The key is to be specific. Use your customer’s specific job title in your landing page headline. For example, Damn Gravity’s current home page headline reads, “The Book Publisher for Entrepreneurs.” I grab the attention of any entrepreneur interested in writing a book. That’s the goal.

Here are more ways to be specific:

• Personalize emails using your customer’s name or company.

• When comparing your product to your competitors, call them out by name.

• Use memes or inside jokes only your customers will understand.

• Make your pain points ultra specific.

• Use language your customers would use. Don’t say “Acquire a new account” when your customers say “Close the deal.”

Specificity must be well-aimed, otherwise you’ll just blend in with the noise. The better you know your customer, the more specific—and effective—your copy will become.

Create F.O.N.K.

Grab your customer’s attention by posing a question they simply must learn the answer to.

This is creating F.O.N.K., or the Fear of Not Knowing. Like its cousin, F.O.M.O. (Fear of Missing Out), it’s a very real phenomenon. In fact, F.O.N.K. helped an unknown business teacher write one of the best-selling business books of all time:

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

The book’s title wasn’t written by Carnegie himself, but a young copywriter named Victor Schwab. (Schwab would later be named The Greatest Mail Order Copywriter of All Time by AdAge.) It’s the epitome of generating F.O.N.K. and has inspired countless copycats. How to Win Friends sold over one million copies in its first three years, shattering records and kickstarting the self-help book genre.

To create F.O.N.K., you need to ask a question your customers deeply care about. Carnegie’s book wouldn’t have sold as well if it was titled How to Have Better Conversations. Sure, that’s what the book is about, but readers cared about the benefits of better conversation: winning friends and influencing people.

(We’ll dive deeper into the question of making your customers care later on in this section.)

Evoke a Powerful Emotion

Shaan Puri, co-founder of The Hustle and creator of the Power Writing course, starts each piece of writing by deciding which emotion he wants to evoke in his readers. Here’s his reference list:

LOL: That’s hilarious!

WTF : This pisses me off

AWW: So cute!

WOW: That’s unbelievable!

NSFW: Woah … That’s crazy.

OHH: I finally get it! That always confused me.

FINALLY: Someone said what I’ve been feeling!

YAY: That’s great news!

Emotion is a powerful attention-grabber. Unfortunately, negative emotions are more potent than positive ones. For example, one of Puri’s best-performing Twitter threads starts like this:

So … everyone seems to think clubhouse is the “next big thing”—but I think it’s going to fail.

Here’s how I think it all goes down …

At the time, Clubhouse was the fastest-growing social media platform in the United States and had created a cult-like following. His take pissed a lot of people off (WTF!), but it piqued their curiosity as well. Maybe Puri knew something about Clubhouse they didn’t (in other words, he created F.O.N.K.).

Evoking emotion has its pros and cons. On the one hand, it’s extremely effective. On the other, some people avoid brands that poke the bear too often. Don’t be extreme for its own sake unless stoking controversy is part of your brand.

If trying to gain attention makes you feel dirty, you’re not alone. No one wants to add to the clickbait pandemic. But remember this piece of advice from Ship30for30 co-founder Dickie Bush:

“It’s only clickbait to fail to deliver on your promise.”

Bush’s co-founder, Nicolas Cole, went even further: “If you have valuable information to share with people, it’s your obligation to package it in a way that grabs them.”

So if you really believe in your business, it’s your duty to get your customer’s attention—just be sure to deliver on your promise.

B — BIG Change

“An object at rest stays at rest.”

Newton’s first law of motion applies to more than just physics. It describes customer behavior as well. Most people won’t act unless something forces them to. Your job is to shake them from their comfortable status quo. You need to introduce a BIG change.

What big changes are happening in your customer’s world? These could be internal or external changes—ideally, you have both. Are they getting married? Did their doctor scare them into eating healthier? Did the government introduce a new tax credit that could save their company millions? Is their industry on the verge of technological disruption?

Below is an example of a BIG change from Zuora, a subscription management software company. Andy Raskin, the king of corporate strategic narratives, made this example famous in his viral Medium post “The Greatest Sales Deck I’ve Ever Seen.”

Here’s Raskin:

Don’t kick off a sales presentation by talking about your product, your headquarters locations, your investors, your clients, or anything about yourself.

Instead, name the undeniable shift in the world that creates both (a) big stakes and (b) huge urgency for your prospect.

The first slide of virtually every Zuora deck—sales or otherwise—is some version of this: “We Now Live in a Subscription Economy.”

Every decision has a cost, and it’s not just the price of your product or service. Switching costs—or the time and effort that go into making a change—can be overwhelming. The BIG change in your customer’s world must be significant enough to make those switching costs worthwhile.

Sometimes the problem isn’t a big change in your customer’s world, but a lack of change. Stagnant industries are the perfect place to introduce your disruptive new product or service. In these cases—such as the world of book publishing where I reside—your job is to convince potential customers that big change needs to happen. Why? Because their livelihoods depend on it. Focus on what your customer is losing by doing nothing, then paint a picture of the opportunities available to them if they embrace change.

In the publishing world, we need a revolution. Traditional publishers leave authors high and dry, while self-publishing is still difficult and time-consuming. Authors deserve a better option: performance publishing (this is the Solution, which we’ll get to soon).

But you can’t just claim the sky is falling. You have to prove big change is happening (or needs to happen) with both statistics and anecdotes (sales and storytelling). Show your customers the change is real and it’s happening now.

Then you must convince them to care.

C — “Why Should I CARE?”

In a world screaming for our energy and attention, nothing is harder than getting someone to care about what you’re building. Never assume the benefits of your product or service are self-evident—you must explicitly answer your customer’s most pressing question:

“Why should I care?”

Generally speaking, humans care about four things: health, wealth, time, and happiness. There are infinite nuances here, but most of our motivations fall into one of these buckets. (We’ll go deeper into the subject of human motivation in the section Know Thy Reader.)

In addition, reams of psychological research have proven that humans care more about losing things than gaining them. Studies conducted by Nobel-winning behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman found that losing $100 was just as motivating as winning $200. In other words, we care twice as much about losing something as we do about gaining it.

So when answering the question, “Why should I care?” don’t just tell your customer what they’ll gain; show them what they’ll lose if they don’t act now.

Loss-aversion copywriting is a tough balance. You don’t want to come off like a fearmonger. One trick to avoid this is to pair every loss statement with a gain statement. Here’s an example from my friend Justin Moore’s Twitter bio—in my opinion, a masterstroke in copywriting:

I teach you how to find & negotiate your dream sponsorships so that you can stop leaving money on the table. (Emphasis mine)

Justin perfectly captures what customers will gain by working with him (dream sponsorships) and what they could lose if they don’t (money on the table).

When doing research for your copy, make two lists: What customers will gain if they work with you, and what they will lose if they don’t. Then experiment with different pairings to create the most powerful answer to the most important question:

“Why should I care?”

1 — Solution

You’ve now grabbed your customer’s attention, showed them a big change happening in their world, and convinced them to care and act.

Here’s where you strike: present your product or service as the obvious solution for your customer’s urgent problem (more on urgency later). You know exactly what your customer needs to take advantage of the big change—to help them maximize their gains and minimize their losses.

This is the part of the copy where you stop talking about your customer’s world and focus on your product or service. When presenting your solution, you need to be detailed enough to answer your customer’s technical questions, but not so thorough that you lose their interest.

If you’ve heard any piece of copywriting advice in the past, it was probably this: “Talk about the benefits of your product, not the features.” This is only half correct.

Think about a time when you landed on a company’s website. It was well designed with compelling copy and cool visuals. But after reading it, you still had no idea what the company actually did. This is a huge problem, especially for startups.

Here’s a real example of a B2B SaaS company’s website (name omitted to protect the guilty):

Title: Be your customer’s shipping hero

Subtitle: Smarter logistics for a faster world—without the hassle

Benefit 1: Fast, simple, smart

Always deliver when you say you will—without the pain of constant maintenance.

Benefit 2: Ready to scale with you

Don’t worry about switching tools as you grow. We’re here for you every step of the way.

Benefit 3: Your partner in shipping

You’ll deal with humans, not chatbots. 24/7 support when your customers need it.

Based on this website copy, do you really know what this company does? I don’t. The benefit statements are compelling, but as a potential customer, I’m not going to waste my precious time trying to decipher what they do.

The fix is simple: when presenting your solution, share both benefits and features. Benefit/feature pairings will help customers connect your solution to their problem. Be very clear when describing your features. To quote an anonymous genius, “Confused customers don’t buy.”

Let’s update the copy above to clarify the features:

Title: Be your customer’s shipping hero

Subtitle: Third-Party logistics—without the hassle—for fast-growing retailers

Benefit 1: Fast, simple, smart

Get up-to-the-minute shipping recommendations with our AI-powered logistics engine so you always deliver when you say you will.

Benefit 2: Ready to scale with you

Don’t worry about switching tools as you grow. Pricing based on shipping volume, not a subscription, so you only pay for what you need.

Benefit 3: Your partner in shipping

24/7 support when you need us. Send customer support inquiries directly to us, where your customers talk with humans, not chatbots.

You’ve done the hard work of making your customer care. Don’t waste their time by not clearly describing what you do. Share both benefits and features.

2 — “Why YOU?”

But even the most convincing pitch won’t inspire people to act if they don’t know you or trust you.

This is the highest hurdle for startups to clear. Without an established track record, how do you convince potential customers to take a chance on you?

The question of “Why you?” has a three-part answer: your mission, expertise, and social proof.

Mission

Why did you start your business in the first place? If it was just to make a quick buck, you’ll have a hard time getting customers to trust you. Customers want to know you’re in this for the long haul. They need to know you care deeply about the business, and by extension, your customers.

Expertise

Your company may be new, but what’s your personal experience in the industry? Why are you an expert in this field? If you aren’t an expert, don’t pretend to be. Instead, borrow expertise from business partners, co-founders, or advisors.

Social proof

Finally, are you trustworthy? Will other people vouch for you? It’s critical to secure early testimonials or reviews any way you can (besides faking them, of course.) If you’re struggling to attract those first few customers, offer to do work pro bono. Then do a fantastic job and ask for a testimonial. Even a single piece of social proof is enough to get off the ground.

Finally, when you’re just starting out, it helps to offer some sort of guarantee:

• Satisfaction or your money back

• 30-day risk-free trial

• No credit card needed

• No contract—cancel anytime

Remove any risk from choosing you. Customers need to know they can safely abandon ship if you start to sink.

3 — Urgency

The last piece of great copywriting is urgency. Why should your customer act right now?

Creating urgency is a delicate balance. You want to press your customer without being pushy. Ideally, as Andy Raskin pointed out, your BIG change should generate huge urgency on its own. But you can also add layers of urgency to create an offer customers can’t refuse.

There are three tools at your disposal to create urgency: scarcity, action-oriented language, and no-brainer offers.

Scarcity

If you have limited capacity to serve customers, you can use scarcity to create a sense of urgency. This includes limited-time offers, finite seats available, or one-of-a-kind products like NFTs. Scarcity is the most powerful tool for generating urgency, but don’t overuse it. If the customer catches a whiff of dishonesty, like if you’re artificially limiting supply, you’ll lose their trust and likely lose them as a customer.

Action-oriented language

When writing your calls-to-action, use descriptive verbs to promote urgency. For example, compare these two CTAs for setting up a demo:

• Request a demo

• See it in Action

Which button would you be more likely to click? “See it in Action” promises an immediate payoff, while “Request a demo” is vague and a little intimidating. Inspire action by making the next step crystal-clear.

No-brainer offer

When in doubt, make your offer so good customers would feel dumb not taking you up on it. Casper’s 100-day trial set a new standard in the mattress industry. It was such a stupidly good offer that customers had no reason not to try it.

Another way to make your offer a no-brainer is to make it insanely easy to sign up. Use integrations like Google Sign-In or Apple ID to make the sign-up process as fast as possible. This will encourage customers to just sign up immediately instead of waiting.

Practice Makes Perfect

There’s no right way or wrong way to write copy.

For every “rule,” there is an example of a wildly successful campaign that breaks it. The only true test of great copy is this—does it work? And the only way to answer that question is through trial and error.

Feedback is the real secret ingredient of great copywriting. The more you can get, the better your copy will be. This is why I love social media platforms like Twitter for quickly sharing ideas and getting feedback. Test your copy in a Tweet to see if you’re getting the attention and reaction you want. Don’t have a large enough following? You can always cold email or direct message potential customers and get instant feedback. Even no response is feedback—figure out a different way to get a reaction.

And remember: great copy will get customers through the door, but deliver on your promises to keep them around.

Free Tool #2 BONUS: ABC123 Framework Template

Use the ABC123 framework to tell your story and land more customers. Go to www.greatfounderswrite.com/bonus, enter your email, then click on “ABC123 Framework” to get the free template. Use this framework to write copy for your landing pages, sales emails, paid ads, or content marketing.