Friday 4: Why they didn't buy

Two people read the same email. One clicks to buy. One clicks unsubscribe.

Same subject line. Same words. Same offer.

Most of us see that unsubscribe and immediately start the autopsy.

What did I say wrong? Was the pitch too strong? Should I have softened the ask?

But the email didn't change between those two inboxes. The reader did. Or more precisely, the story the reader was already telling themselves did.

Your customer walks into every interaction with you carrying a worldview. A set of stories about who they are, what people like them do, and what they will never do. Your message either fits inside that story or it doesn't. And when it doesn't, no amount of rewriting fixes it.

1. They were telling themselves a story before you arrived.

Eugene Schwartz taught us that copy cannot create desire. It can only channel desire that already exists.

But a person’s worldview sits one layer deeper than desire. Desire is what someone wants. Worldview is the story they tell themselves about who they are. And that story decides whether your message even gets heard.

One person hears "new approach" and leans in, because they see themselves as an early adopter. Someone at the next desk hears the exact same words and thinks "another thing that won't work," because they've been burned and their story now is "I don't fall for this stuff anymore." A third person doesn't hear it at all, because trying something unproven is simply not what people like them do.

None of them is right. None of them is wrong. Their stories are just true to them. True enough that they'll hear everything you say through that story.

This is also why demographics tell you almost nothing (and are an outdated way of thinking).

Two 42-year-old freelancers with the same income and the same job title can hear the same offer in completely different ways, because one tells herself, "I invest in myself" and the other tells himself, "I've wasted enough money on programs." Same market on paper. Different worlds in practice.

The worldview is the real segmentation. Everything else is a spreadsheet.

This is why "better copy" so often isn't the answer. You can sharpen a message forever and it will still bounce off a worldview it contradicts. The words were never the problem. The fit was.

2. Same pitch. Two very different rooms.

A web designer I know sells beautiful, modern work. Clean sites, smart architecture, the kind of portfolio that should open doors.

Some meetings, it does. She walks in and the client is leaning forward before she finishes her second sentence. They're eager to meet the sparkly, cutting-edge designer. Come on in. Let's start whiteboarding.

Other meetings, she walks in with the same portfolio, the same pitch, the same smile, and the arms across the table are already folded. To that room, she isn't an opportunity. She's a threat. To their budget, their process, the site somebody in that room built five years ago and still defends.

Same designer. Same work. Opposite receptions.

Now, she has two options. She can spend the drive home beating herself up about the second meeting. Rewriting her pitch. Wondering what she should have said differently.

Or she can realize the truth: it wasn't for them. And go call on someone it is for.

That's the shift. When a message lands with one person and dies with another, the instinct is to blame the message. But often the message did its job perfectly. It found the people who share your worldview, and it repelled the people who don't. That's not a failure. That's the filter working.

And misreading that signal is expensive. Because when you treat a worldview mismatch as a message problem, you start changing things that were working.

You rewrite the offer after one bad call. You water down the promise so the skeptics can't object to it. You slowly reshape your business around the people who were never going to say yes, and in the process you make it less recognizable to the people who were.

One “no” from the wrong room shouldn't cost you your message. It should cost you nothing at all.

3. Stop converting. Start choosing.

Here's what changes when you actually believe this.

You stop writing to be agreeable. Most content entrepreneurs, somewhere around their tenth unsubscribe, start sanding the edges off their message. Softer claims. Broader promises. Fewer opinions. They're trying to build something no one can say no to.

But a message no one can say no to is a message no one can say yes to either. It doesn't fit anyone's story, so it moves no one.

The stronger play is the opposite. Get clearer about the worldview you're speaking to, and speak to it without apology.

If your work is for people who believe slow and deep beats fast and viral, say that. The fast-and-viral crowd will roll their eyes and leave. Good. They were never going to buy, and every hour you spend trying to win them over is an hour stolen from the people already nodding along.

And this changes selling too, not just writing.

When you know a “no” can mean "not my story" instead of "not good enough," the sales conversation stops being a performance you can fail. You're not there to overcome someone's worldview. You're there to find out whether yours and theirs match. If they do, the sale gets easy. If they don't, you both found out early, and that's a win dressed as a rejection.

This has been a Copyblogger position from the beginning: great content attracts the right people and repels the wrong ones. The unsubscribes, the folded arms, the crickets from a certain corner of your audience. Some of that is the system working exactly as designed.

Your job was never to convert everyone. Your job is to choose your people and make them feel chosen.

4. Put It To Work

Finish this sentence: "My work is for people who believe ___________."

Not people who want a result. People who believe something. About business, about their craft, about what people like them do. Write it down. One sentence.

Now open your homepage and your last five emails. Read them against that sentence. Does your message speak to that belief directly? Or has it been sanded down to avoid offending the people who don't share it?

Find one place this week where you can choose instead of convert. Say the thing that makes your people lean forward, even knowing it will make someone else fold their arms.

Because two people are going to read your next email. One of them was yours all along. The other never was.

Write for the first one.

Go move someone.

- Darrell from Copyblogger

DIY with DWYOR

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