Help your audience-members imagine what their lives would look like with your product or service in it.

What is the transformation you bring? How does your product or service meet their needs? I call this your “heart content”.

You made some notes about this in your work on Audience Persona in Lesson 2 of Let it Grow: if you’re stuck, dive back into the notes you made on their needs and how you meet them, then see if you can make this content specific to the one product or service you’re writing about today.

Some examples of “heart” copy:

The “Our Place” scented candle from Southern Wild Co: “Our Place is the promise of long, lazy days with golden views taken from the refuge of a cool, shady verandah; the scent of bush blossoms carried on a warm breeze... evoke the warmth of an Australian summer afternoon in the bush.”

Magazine-printing service from Mixam: “Elegant. Compelling. Stunning. Pages made to be turned. A magazine is your chance to share your passion with the world. Collect stories, interviews, and photographs to create a newsstand-quality mag that can’t be overlooked.”

Rocking horse from White Cottage Flower Farm: “Now this is a rocking horse that I wouldn’t mind tripping over. The perfect paint, character and patina. If you collect, or just love rocking horses this one is a cracker ! Very usable and just beautiful. I absolutely adore it. 1800’s and English.”

Coaching services with Jen Carrington: “Imagine feeling deeply supported in your business for an entire year? If you had someone to turn to for guidance, encouragement, and support every single step of the way?”

(And this one, for the older Aussies among us 😉: “If a complete stranger suddenly gives you flowers, that’s Impulse”)

Next, give your audience the specifics of what makes your product or service so special. What’s in it? What does it do? What benefits does it bring? how does it help them?

Some examples of “head” copy:

The “Our Place” scented candle from Southern Wild Co: “Dry tobacco and leather combine with bright florals and spicy clove bud...”

Magazine-printing service from Mixam: “And when you’re ready to put it all together, you’ll find a wide selection of binding options, including saddle stitched (stapled), perfect bound or Wire-O bound and a range of paper types and weights.”

Rocking Horse from White Cottage Flower Farm: “Very usable and just beautiful. I absolutely adore it. 1800’s and English.”

Coaching services with Jen Carrington (I’ve shortened her copy as it is long): “Here’s what’s included… Four quarterly coaching calls (Every three months we will jump on a 60 minute call together to dive deep into your business)…Weekly email and Voxer support (Any time you want feedback, encouragement, guidance, and support throughout the year I am just an email or Voxer voice note away)… A password protected client page (You’ll have recordings of our sessions that you can revisit whenever you want in-between our calls, plus a recap of our calls and any tasks and intentions for your quarter too)... Plus free lifetime access to my group program, Your Simple & Spacious Business (worth £1250)”

This is where you show how the product or service that you’re selling upholds your values. Is it in the specifics of your customer care? The products or packaging you use? Or in sharing your “why,” the motivation behind you doing the things you do?

Not everyone chooses to include their soul content (their values) in every individual piece of sales copy. If you run a shop and have a hundred different items for sale, for example, you might have a page on your website headed “Our values” and you put your soul content front and centre there.

But if you are only selling one or two things (a signature course, for example, or a specific service), it makes sense to demonstrate how your values play into the service you have created.

For the purposes of this exercise, I want you to create “soul content” for whatever you’re writing, even if it’s one in a hundred items on an Etsy shop. It will help enormously if you take the time to articulate how this product in particular reflects your values.

Some examples of “soul” copy:

The “Our Place” scented candle from Southern Wild Co: “Our candles are carefully packaged in beautiful, re-useable canvas bags with matching scented bookmarks for tucking into your reading matter.”

Mixam’s “why” content: “Welcome to the Mixam way to print. Our online ordering system is the most advanced on the web. Our prices are among the lowest you'll find and our customer service team is the friendliest around.”

Rocking Horse from White Cottage Flower Farm: “We always try to source the unique for our shop”

Jen Carrington’s “values content”: “Here’s what I believe. 1. That our business should orbit our life, not the other way around, and that we have permission to put life before work and make our business work best for us. 2. That we all navigate different seasons in our business and our life and each season may ask something different from us along the way. 3. That we’re allowed to embrace a slower, gentler, more intentional approach to business. 4. That no one knows what our business and our life needs more than we do. 5. That there’s nothing more powerful as a business owner than finding a home in our work. 6. And that we’re all so much more capable than we think we are, sometimes we just need a little encouragement, guidance, and support along the way.”