Nobody in a crowd hears you as a crowd. Each person hears you on their own.
So when you communicate with other people, think about how many people are inside each listener’s head. Are you talking to a crowd, or are you talking to one?
If you want to connect on a deeper level, you have to speak like you’re speaking to one person. You have to write like you’re writing to one person. Your communication needs to be one to one, human to human, always.
Claude Hopkins was making the same point more than a hundred years ago. In Scientific Advertising, published in 1923, he tells the ad writer to keep a typical buyer in mind and do what a good salesman would do face to face.
Don’t think of people in the mass. That gives you a blurred view. Think of a typical individual, man or woman, who is likely to want what you sell.
Claude C. Hopkins, Scientific Advertising, Chapter 2, Just Salesmanship (1923)
A blurred view. That’s what you get when you write for everyone, and it’s exactly how it reads to the one person who’s actually reading it.
Hey people of LinkedIn
I’ve seen it many times in my career. The post that starts “Hey people of LinkedIn.” The speaker who walks on stage and opens with “Who here...?” Neither of those really connects with an individual.
Words like “you” do. So do words that describe the person you’re trying to talk to, in a way they’d recognise straight away.
Find the label your ideal client uses
Start with this question. What label does your ideal client give themselves?
Once you know it, use it. Call it out, and make it really clear that’s who you’re talking to.
Then read back what you’ve written and check who it sounds like it’s for. Does it read like you’re talking to one person, ideally one you care deeply about, in a way that helps them feel understood by you? I’ve written before about how to make people feel understood, and it matters just as much on a page as it does in a meeting.
Before you write your next post or email, do what Hopkins says. Picture the one typical person who’s most likely to want what you sell, and write it to them.
When it comes down to it, that’s all marketing is. Starting conversations. Earning the right to have a conversation, and getting permission to explain a bit more about what your business does and how it could help someone. And every one of those conversations happens with one person at a time.
There’s more on that in marketing earns you the conversation.
