Dan Kennedy was asked, "What's your favorite sales-letter format?"
Here's his response:
"…the structure I lean on the most is problem, agitate, solve. If you were going to limit me in life to only one, and say, 'This is all you can use,' that's the one I would choose.
"Where you start to have problems when you limit yourself like that, is selling to the same people over and over again. Because eventually, they get bored with it. But if you said to me, 'You're going to do fresh lists for the rest of your life, not house lists, and you can only use one sales structure,' that's the structure I'd go with."
"Here's why it works and works so great… It bridges the logical buyer and the emotional buyer… and it is inherently a very logical argument:
"You've got this problem. Here's why this problem is really bad. If you don't solve this problem, these horrible things will happen." Then you proceed to invalidate all the other available options: "Here's the five ways you could solve the problem, and here's what's wrong with one, here's what's wrong with two, here's what's wrong with three, here's what's wrong with four, here's my solution."
"It's very logical. But it gives you opportunity to be very emotional…. So, it's a great structure."
You can use the "Problem, agitate, solve" copywriting formula to write marketing emails, long-form sales letters, or even social media posts (as this CopyBlogger post shows.)
To use it effectively, you need to identify your market's biggest problem they're trying to solve, identify their biggest pain points, and then propose your solution as the only one that will solve the problem for them.
This short piece below from the CopyBlogger post above brings it out very well so, let's dissect it and see (notes are in red):
"Tired of girls not looking at you? [The problem some adolescents and men face who are looking to woo a girl]. You're not alone. [An empathy statement that lets the reader warm up to you and your message]. There are thousands of guys who are trying everything to get women to pay attention to them: wearing v-neck t-shirts, riding heavy motorcycles, running in short shorts. [Now you're invalidating all the other solutions, in advance of proposing yours.]
"But alas, at the end of the day, you just want a nice woman to hold you as you fall asleep. But that will never happen until she thinks you are a man. And that day will NEVER come unless you do something about it … [Here you're agitating the problem, with future-pacing thrown in for good measure (the part about 'you just want a nice woman to hold you as you sleep' gives the reader a peek at the possible outcomes if they get your solution].
"Like learn how to tame a grizzly bear. With your bare hands. Check out this video. [This tells the reader that watching this video will lead them to your solution]."
This short piece above was presented as an example for promoting a post on social media so he doesn't go into details invalidating the other solutions. So, the reader isn't shown why wearing v-neck t-shirts or riding heavy motorcycles won't improve a guy's chances of wooing a girl; or why it's dump, ineffective, etc. With longer copy you'd attempt to do that.
To show you how all this works in practice, we have prepared a template you can use to write emails based on the "problem, agitate, solve" copywriting formula. We have also prepared an example email, promoting our hypothetical product, "Web Content Tycoon" as well as an example sales-letter that leverages the problem, agitate solve formula, again to sell our hypothetical product "Web Content Tycoon.
