Earlier in my copywriting career, I did copywriting research exactly how courses taught me to.
It helped, but for each course I took or book I read… the research methodologies felt too rigid.
I was going through the motions because I was supposed to, not because I understood why any of it mattered.
That changed over years of working with clients across dozens of niches:
Supplements, pet health, golf, leather goods, apparel, and more.
The reason:
Writing copy for real brands and real products forced me to understand what I actually needed to know to come up with email ideas (and write the copy) and why.
Not always the same specifics, but the same types of information, over and over again.
And eventually reverse-engineered those types of information into a set of 9 questions I seek from the client or attempt to answer independently…
Because without these answers, I can’t write copy to sell the product.
Today, you’ll learn those 9 questions you must answer and why, plus some examples throughout.
1. Who, Specifically, Is This For?
The more precisely you can describe your target customer, the better your copy becomes… almost automatically.
You’ll know what language to use, what problems keep them up at night, how they think about their problem, potential objections, and so much more.
Vague copy “appeals” to everyone but inspires nothing in anyone. No one feels like the copy is addressed to them.
Meanwhile, narrower targeting and copy narrows your readers…
But that smaller contingent is more engaged and more likely to buy.
“Dads” is not specific enough.
“Fathers of kids under 10 who want to get back in shape before their kids are old enough to notice they’re out of it” is better.
Weigh that against “Fathers of teenagers who want to stay active and healthy long enough to see their kids build their own lives.”
Both audiences consist of dads. Yet they differ in various criteria.
For instance, fathers of teenagers tend to be in their 40s or 50s. Fathers of toddlers tend to be late 20s to early 30s.
Different concerns (joint health, energy, recovery time), daily responsibilities, different financial situations, different relationships with fitness, and so on.
The right reader should feel like you wrote the email specifically for them. The wrong reader should self-select out.
2. What Is The Single Most Important Thing This Product Achieves For the Reader?
Again, specificity. Pick one primary outcome that matters the most to the reader.
That may not be the most impressive or unique one, whatever your reader cares most about.
Everything else can support that main point, but that main point is the email’s north star.
Chris Orzechowski’s Cart Abandonment Annihilator sales page is a great example.
The entire page points toward “recovering thousands of dollars in abandoned carts quickly.”
There are other benefits to the product:
The templates save time, the copy is plug-and-play, and the setup is fast.
But those are all secondary.
They exist to support the primary outcome. Every headline, bullet, and section of that page is answering the same question:
How does this help you recover lost revenue?
A useful test:
After reading your copy, can the reader answer “what does this do for me?” in a single sentence?
If they have to think about it, or if three different answers come to mind, the copy is doing too many things at once.
3. What Does the Reader Actually Want vs. What They Say They Want?
Behavioral economics has a concept called stated vs. revealed preference.
It’s a fancy way of saying “what do people say they want vs. what do they actually want?”
The latter is far more important, as it tells you what they care about and how they spend their time and money in real life.
There’s a problem, though.
Surveys, interviews, etc tell you what people say they want. And people are genuinely bad at predicting their own behavior.
They’ll tell you they’d absolutely buy a workshop on email strategy. Then, you launch the product… and when the cart opens, *crickets*.
This gap shows up in copy, too, along a different dimension. Namely, the depth of the problem.
Supplement buyers say they want more energy. What they actually want is to stop falling asleep on the couch before their kids go to bed.
Or they may say they want to “lose weight.” But they actually want to have the confidence to take their shirt off at the beach or the pool.
(I call that specific form of the desire dimensionalization or concretization. You draw out the problem into a more realistic, lifelike situation to “worsen” the pain.)
How do you find out what your customers actually want if, by the nature of the thing, you can’t ask them?
Simple:
Monitor their behavior.
Look at your top-selling products. Study what offers and copy cause your VIPs and repeat buyers to place orders.
People who vote with their wallets offer more valuable data than any survey to a free audience (free subs, social media followers, etc.) could.
For example…
I analyzed our top-performing weeks for a client in the anti-aging/vitality space.
Turns out that stories always caused a larger spike in sales on the send day and following day vs. most other email types.
I shifted to a more story-heavy approach, and the results rolled in like clockwork:
Weekly subscription program sales doubled. New customer conversions hit an all-time weekly sales record.
Pay attention to what customers do, not what they say.
4. What Does the Reader Believe That Stops Them From Buying?
Every reader lands on your copy with a set of existing beliefs. In nearly all cases, at least one of these (often more) is a false belief that stops them from buying.
And while product-focused objections like “I don’t think this product will work for me” and “there are too many options, this is no different” are critical to address…
It’s deeper than that.
We’re talking about widely held beliefs in markets that prevent people from being open to the solution at all.
For example, a common belief homeschooling-interested parents have is “I’m not qualified to teach my kids all these subjects.”
When I worked with a homeschooling curricula/supplies brand, we showed why, in general, yes, you can teach your kids subjects in which you don’t have credentials…
But also highlighted how easy our products made it to teach vs. other options.
Another example of this was a client selling custom sleep treatment.
Customers in this niche may have a drink or two before bed, believing it helps them sleep. So why seek out sleep treatment?
I wrote an email showing how even 1 drink compromises your sleep and explained that alcohol sedates you rather than putting you to sleep.
Our audience was affluent, “high-performer” types, so they care about more than “getting to sleep.” They want the best sleep.
Our custom sleep treatment offer did that.
These are market-level beliefs. Your copy fights an uphill battle if you don’t know them.
Overcome these, and you move up to the easier product-level objections (where now you have to set yourself apart from competitors and alternatives… more on that in section 6).
So figure out everything your reader believes.
5. What Have They Tried That Hasn’t Already Worked?
Most readers who arrive at your copy have tried at least one other solution before.
Some have tried several and are “burned” from repeated failures.
Acknowledging that history signals that you understand their journey, not just their problem.
There’s a difference between a brand that says “here’s a solution to your problem” and one that says “we know you’ve been down this road before and we know why it didn’t pan out.“
The second one earns trust the first one never will.
On top of that, it lets you position your product as genuinely different from what failed them by showing the why.
Telling customers you’re better won’t work if you don’t show them why and thus address the reasons they’re skeptical of being burned again.
If the reader tried a cheaper alternative that cut corners, your premium positioning becomes more than a price tag.
If they tried a DIY approach that overwhelmed them, your done-for-you angle becomes a relief rather than a luxury.
Figure out what your readers are trying/have tried and show the reader you understand their skepticism.
6. What Makes This Different From Competitors and Substitutes?
Your reader has options. More than you might think.
There are two types:
- Competitors
- Substitutes
“Competitors” achieve the same result in the same way, in different forms.
If you’re a supplement brand, you compete with other supplement brands. Different forms (different supplements), same functionality (achieving some health goal).
If you’re a business coach, you compete with other business coaches. Different forms (your methods/experience vs. theirs), same functionality (helping with business growth).
Yeah, your audience is more specific than that. A supplement brand making hardcore preworkout and mass gainers won’t have the same audience as one selling calming herbal supplements for sleep.
But then you compete against brands serving those sub-audiences.
Then, you have “substitutes.” These solve the same underlying problem using completely different methods or forms.
A supplement brand’s substitute might be a meal kit company.
That meal kit company may offer meal plans built to help you lose weight or gain muscle. Different solution types, same goal.
Regardless:
If you can’t clearly answer how you are different from other options (as told through your copy)…
Neither can your customer.
And so they have no reason to pick you over anyone else.
The key difference between this section and section 5 is that section 5 covers what they’ve already tried.
This is more about what the customer could go for in general — whether that’s a past option that burned them, a competitor they haven’t, or a substitute they think will work better.
7. What Does Life Look Like After They Buy?
People buy outcomes, not products.
The product is the bridge to get there.
A dad buying a fitness program doesn’t want a fitness program. He wants to be able to keep up with his kids in the yard or at the park without getting winded (or hurt).
A founder buying an email copywriting course doesn’t want a “copywriting course.” He wants to use his email list to make more money and create more flexibility for himself.
Future pacing is the technique that makes this concrete in copy.
Instead of describing what the product does, you walk the reader through what life looks like after they have it.
For example, “By week three, you’re not hitting that afternoon wall anymore. You’re finishing the day with something left in the tank.”
The more specific and vivid the after-state, the easier the buying decision becomes. Vague promises of “feeling better” or “getting results” don’t move people.
They need a precise, believable picture of a life that’s measurably different.
8. Why Now?
Think about how many times you’ve saved something “for later” and forgot about it.
I do that all the time. Tons of bookmarks, folders, saved emails, a few open tabs… and yet I haven’t acted on any.
Yeah. That’s your product if you don’t give your customer a reason to act NOW.
Time-based and scarcity-based urgency are the most obvious forms.
A limited quantity, a sale deadline, or a price increase build concrete costs of waiting into the offer structure itself.
But what if you’re not running a sale? Or you don’t have some special offer running? Faking scarcity and urgency are stupid ideas.
Fake countdown timers and perpetual “limited time” offers train readers to ignore urgency entirely.
Instead, highlight the cost of inaction. The pain of staying where they are.
The founder who doesn’t learn how to run a solid email marketing program continues to miss easy money and depend too heavily on acquisition.
The dad who doesn’t hire the personal trainer continues to get winded playing with his kids and finds it harder to be motivated to “be there” for his family.
The homeowning couple who doesn’t purchase the fancy new shades or shutters continues NOT to have the satisfaction of impressing company when they have guests over.
These all have urgency built in, but centered on the customer’s situation.
Even better:
This urgency never expires.
You can use it whenever you want.
Paired with future-pacing a la section 7, and you have a killer “two paths” logic here.
9. Why Should The Reader Believe You?
A fundamental rule of good copy is to NEVER make a claim without proof. Otherwise, you’re asking the reader to “take your word for it.”
And why should they believe you? YOU know your product and brand are great… but the customer doesn’t (especially if they’re brand new and seeing your front-end offer).
Proof attaches real-world evidence of the claims you make, increasing trust and credibility. It tells customers (and yourself) why customers should trust your product and brand.
Some types include…
- Social proof: Customer testimonials/reviews
- Case studies: In-depth customer stories
- Scientific proof: Studies and research that back your product (the product itself or the features/ingredients/mechanism)
- Authority: Credentials, awards, etc.
- Risk-reversals: Guarantees and similar protections that remove risk from the reader
Each proof type does a different job.
For instance, testimonials show readers that someone else like them attained results. The reader can imagine themselves in that situation.
Meanwhile, scientific studies appeal to the more inquisitive reader — especially in niches like health where science is more important — and reassure them they aren’t buying something useless (or even harmful).
The stronger your proof, the less your copy has to work.
A reader who believes you before you make the ask is already most of the way to buying…
While a reader who doesn’t believe you won’t be convinced by clever writing alone.
Good Copy Starts With Good Questions
These nine questions don’t guarantee good copy.
But they do guarantee that when you sit down to write, you’re not starting blind.
You know your reader, their journey, their beliefs, their objections, their past attempted solutions, and what it will take to move them. The copy becomes the natural output of that thinking rather than a shot in the dark because these are the things such copy must address.
Work through them before your next email, sales page, or campaign. You’ll feel the difference immediately and start to win with your copy.
Your email flows are a great starting point because they run automatically, in the background, 24/7.
A welcome sequence goes out to every new subscriber. An abandoned cart flow fires every time someone leaves without buying.
You don’t get to adjust on the fly.
The copy has to be right from the start, because it’s doing the work without your supervision.
When you know the answers to these nine questions, writing that copy gets a lot easier — and implementing the flows becomes less daunting — because you know they’ll start working properly from the get-go.
My free eBook, Simple Email Sequences That Sell, reveals the top 10 flows you need to boost your store revenue by 10-15% (including a brief description of each email in each flow)…
So all you have to do is write the copy with your answers to these questions in hand.
⇒ Learn the 10 critical email sequences here
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