How Do You Write Copy That Connects Emotionally? (Wish someone told me this before wasting 2 more years)

Yesterday, I was eating a morning bun with a friend (basically the pastry form of Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal), and we started talking about how she rescues cats.

I shared an unpopular opinion: I have a hot / cold relationship to cats.

Sure, I get obsessed over some of them… as in, I will desperately chase the cat in hopes of just a fleeting moment when I can touch their soft, soft fur.

Others?

Nothing.

I have even swiped left on someone simply because they had a cat.

Harsh? Perhaps.

But as it is with me and cats, so it is with copywriting.

Emotional connection is the name of the game.

If I could give one nugget of wisdom, it’s to create an emotional connection with your words.

Stop trying to make your copy sound "good." Make your reader FEEL something.

I’m going to show you what this looks like in just a sec.

It took me three lonnnnnnggggggg years to figure this out, wasting my time writing copy that doesn’t connect, and therefore, doesn’t sell.

SO: Learn from my mistakes….

When I started writing copy—at 28 years old, a disgruntled barista who probably should have been forcibly retired from the service industry—I wrote copy by simply slapping words together and trying to make it “sound good.”

Except that I was missing the most important part of copywriting that sets it apart from any other kind of writing.

So I spent way too long writing copy that sounded perfectly nice and sold approximately jack squat. (And thus, I was not booked solid until I started doing the opposite.)

Boy howdy, do I WISH that someone had told me that pretty language is pretty useless…

I thought it was:

Take thing.

Describe thing.

Add flattering adjectives.

Make it sound ✨professional.✨

But the whole point of copy is not to fill up a page with nice words…that’s basically glorified journaling.

The point is getting people to give you the most precious currency there is in the online business world: Attention.

For example—here’s what NOT to write, under any circumstances:

Step into the fullest expression of the life you were always meant to live.

Feel confident in your own skin.

Or even this old chestnut… Fall in love with your life again.

Rule of thumb: If it could go on a throw pillow at TJ Maxx, throw it out.

Instead…make me FEEL something.

Instead of: Feel confident in your own skin, it’s:

Walk into the party without mentally ranking yourself against every woman in the room.

Get in the photo instead of volunteering to take it.

Go to the beach without keeping your T-shirt on.

See the difference?

One tells me I’ll be “confident.”

The other makes me think:

Ohhhhhhhhh. THAT. I want THAT.

When you understand what makes people crave things….

And when you know how to write something your readers actually chase down, like I chase after those few select cats…

THAT’S when copy starts maxing out your 401K and letting you take four-month sabbaticals and having the priceless feeling that you are deeply helping many people and getting paid well for it.

And that’s exactly what I want for you. To skip the years of writing copy and wondering why the freak it’s not working.

If you've been emailing your list, want more engagement and sales, and have been thinking, "There's got to be a better way..." There is. ;) And emotional connection is the name of the game.

Until next time,

Gio