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“Draw a dog.”

Those were the commands of the art teacher to a bunch of five-year-olds. They didn't know it just then, but they were part of a psychological experiment.

The command reverberated through the room with varying effect.

Some kids furrowed their eyebrows. Some scoured their brains for inspiration. Others chewed on their crayons uneasily.

Yet three kids seemed unmistakably unperturbed. Whipping out their crayons, they seemed to sport an air of flamboyance, even haughtiness. With practiced, deft strokes, they went about rendering a piece of art that many adults would have been proud to call their own.

Barring the three obviously talented ones, the rest of the class seemed to produce nothing but chaos.

Let me not stop here, for our experiment was only half done

To complete the experiment, we changed things a bit. The kids were then given a command to draw a cat.

Except, this time around, the teacher led the kids through the process. She drew a stroke. They copied it. She embellished the stroke, and so did the kids. Whiskers, tails, noses and eyes appeared magically on every sheet.

Not surprisingly, the excitement levels started peaking rapidly. In less than 15 minutes, every child in the room had drawn a cat.

Huh? How could that be the case?

Just 15 minutes ago, most of these kids had written off their art abilities forever. Now, suddenly, they were budding Picassos. What had changed?

It's called imitation.

And if you've been swearing loudly as you try to put your marketing material together, you'll find this tutorial to be of immense help. Just like the teacher, I'll guide you exactly through the process of creating sales copy that really rocks! Best of all, we won't sweat.

You struggle when you write. I know you do. And the reason that your dustbin looks like a Mount Kanchenchunga is that you're trying to draw a “dog” like those kids did. It's way too hard. Mmm... Wouldn't it be easier to just, um... imitate?

Here's how we'll go about creating a page for sales copy.

I'll simply take an ad from the 1950s or so. Then I'll tweak it, and you'll have the framework for an ad yourself. Here's the original text.

Text above the headline:

Do improvements really add to the value of your home? Are they easy to finance? What about FHA Title loans?

Headline:

The “resale value” of your home may slip—if you don't watch out! Put your home up for sale—even though you don't intend to sell it!

Body copy:

Does that sound foolish? You might learn at little cost a lesson many homeowners are learning painfully: that the resale value of your home is a living thing, likely to shrivel without the care and sustenance it needs. Nothing makes the hard facts about a home's value clearer than putting it up for sale. Then fuel bills suddenly tell a tale about needed insulation. Or the room never added makes the home “too small” for the prospective buyer's needs.

Now let's tweak this ad for a Web design service

Text above the headline:

Do improvements really add to the value of your Web site? Are they cost effective? What about issue like e-commerce?

Headline:

The customer attraction value of your Web site may slip—if you don't watch out! Audit your Web site now—even though you don't intend to sell anything off it!

Body copy:

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sean D'Souza uses age-old psychology, marrying it to modern technology, on his Web site, psychotactics.com. Can "psychological tactics" make a difference? Go there and find out.