How to avoid Sausage Syndrome in your marketing 🚫
I don't have any tattoos.
But I have to admit...if they weren't so not accepted in my culture, I'd probably have one 😆
Something delicate and subtle and okay...cliché, like my kids' initials on the inside of my wrist.
For now though, I choose to live vicariously through the people on Ink Master.
If you don't know Ink Master, it's a TV competition. Kinda like Masterchef or The Great British Bake Off...but for wannabe tattoo artists.
The contestants have to design a tattoo, and then tattoo that design onto a REAL volunteer. (<< Yeah, I would never volunteer myself for this 🤣)
In one episode of the show, a volunteer tells Sausage, his tattoo artist-in-training, that he wants a tattoo on his stomach.
The conversation goes like this:
Sausage: So, you want your tattoo on your stomach?
Volunteer: Yes.
Sausage: It's extremely hard to work on the stomach, and it's a disadvantage to me because it's skin that was now stretched down. I have to make sure it looks damn good so that I can impress the judges and win this thing.
Volunteer: Let me make it clear 😑 I do not care if you go home. I don't care if you lose or win. This is going on my body...Your status in the competition is none of my (BLEEP) concern.
The first time I watched this, I laughed out loud.
Sausage had made an incorrect assumption.
He'd assumed that the volunteer cared about him and his needs.
I see so many business owners making this same mistake in their marketing. Trying to appeal to their target market based on their own wants and needs.
🙏🏽 "Buy this course because I've worked so hard on it."
🙏🏽 "Buy this product because it took me 20 hours to create, and that means you're going to love it."
🙏🏽 "Sign up for my new tool because I believe it's unique and it's going to change the world."
🙏🏽 "Hire me because I'm low on clients". (<< I know that's a hard one to hear, but it's true).
In the same way the volunteer didn't care about Sausage's needs, wants, and desires...
Your audience doesn't care about yours.
Eek. That felt difficult to write because it's so harsh. But it's so so true.
Your audience cares about themselves first and foremost.
And they'll only care about you, your products, and your services once you make it clear HOW caring about those things will benefit them.
In the marketing world, this is called the "What's In It For Me?" principle.
Because your ideal customer is always (consciously and subconsciously) asking themselves, "What's In It For Me if I buy this?".
Your marketing – your copywriting, your sales emails – has to answer that question.
Sausage was all about me, me, me. (He had Sausage Syndrome, as I like to call it).
Here's what Sausage should've said to his volunteer to persuade him to do what he thought was best (which in this case was to get the tattoo on a different body part)...
"It's extremely hard to work on the stomach, and it's a disadvantage to YOU because I won't be able to tattoo your stomach as well as I could tattoo somewhere else. I have to make sure it looks damn good for YOU so YOU go home happy.”
Would the volunteer have taken his advice?
We'll never know.
But he would've been more inclined to listen and to care.
Great sales copy really isn't about persuading someone to do what YOU want them to do. (Because you don't know what's best for that person).
Great sales copy is about making them CARE so much that they actually make a decision (whether that's a yes or no) instead of sitting on the fence and letting your offer fly right past them.
We want them to make an active decision instead of ignoring your offer.
Instead of ignoring you.
Anyway, you got any tattoos? :)
Eman
PS. I have space for a new client! If you're curious about what it would look like for me to work on your emails or next launch, reply to this email with the word INTERESTED and I'll get back to you :)
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Maybe you just want me to give you tailored strategy recommendations so you can get more from your email marketing.
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Hey, I'm Eman Ismail – Founder & Head Email Strategist at Eman Copy Co. That’s where we help you take your email list from “has potential” to highly profitable.
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