Great copy starts from the reader's point of view

Mary Wear says: “Know your target audience. Not intellectually, but intuitively. Think like them, empathise with them, identify with them.” Steve Hayden says: “If you want to be a well-paid copywriter, please your client. If you want to be an award-winning copywriter, please yourself. If you want to be a great copywriter, please your reader.” John Salmon says: “You should write from the standpoint of the reader’s self-interest.” Steve Harrison says: “Read your copy and check that ‘you’ appears three times more than ‘I’ or ‘we’. This helps you write about the subject from the reader’s perspective.” Later in this book, we’ll explore the deeper idea of cognitive empathy that underlies all this.