Why Your Copy Fails Even When You Apply The Right Formula?
The formula is there. The results aren’t. Here’s the missing piece that will make your sales explode! Based on a real-world example.
Knowing the formula and using it well are two completely different things.
This is a continuation of my latest post that was talking about Aristotle formula for persuasion and it’s modern cousin AIDA. If you don’t know what this is, I recommend you reading that article before to know what we’re talking about here.
Knowing the formula doesn’t guarantee that will work, you have to understand what you’re doing and each case will be different. That’s why I recommend to study other copywriter’s work to develop your own intuition.
Let me show you what I mean with a real example. I found this Instagram funnel many years ago from some random online guru and I’ve been using it as an example ever since.
Here’s the ad that I noted with the distinct parts of the AIDA formula.
A: Do you want to achieve your dream life?
I: In our mentorship program, you will be able to achieve your goals using our personal development strategies.
D: You can access it for $799 from wherever you want, for example from the comfort of your home, it’s all online.
A: If you book now, you’ll get a bonus to practice mindful breathing and reduce stress levels to a minimum with just 5 minutes a day.
The formula is technically there, and yet failed to convince anyone. Why?
The attention step is a cliché so worn out it’s invisible. “Do you want to achieve your dream life?” has been repeated across so many ads, so many landing pages, so many Instagram bios that your brain processes it as noise. It doesn’t stop anyone. It doesn’t surprise anyone. The only job of your oppening is to grab attention. It needs to be be impossible to ignore. This isn’t it.
The interest step fails because it stays vague. “Achieve your goals using our personal development strategies” could mean anything. And when something means anything, it means nothing. Compare that to something like: quit smoking for good after 3 hours of unpublished NLP audio recordings. Suddenly you can picture a specific person reading those tapes and makes you feel something.
The desire step has the energy of a terms and conditions page. And here’s a little tip that will make this whole article worth your time: the word can. “You can access it.” “You can achieve your goals.” Can creates distance. It makes everything feel hypothetical, optional, uncertain. Eliminate the word Can. Write those statements as a commands instead. Access it for $799. It’s online. Start today. These commands read like thoughts, for our brains there is no difference and sometimes action will follow.
The action step is actually the strongest part. There’s a bonus, there’s urgency, there’s a reason to move now rather than later. Buying tension is real, without it even interested readers procrastinate indefinitely. A deadline, a limited bonus, a closing window: they’re the final nudge a genuinely interested person needs to stop thinking and start acting.
As you’ve seen, knowing the formula doesn’t mean you’re going to know how to execute it well. Aristotle’s sequence and AIDA give you the architecture. But architecture without the right knowledge is just an empty frame. You still need to know your readers well enough to name their exact problem. You still need language precise enough to create real feeling. You still need to study the market to know what angles work and which ones don’t.
Master the basic things and the formula becomes genuinely powerful. But if you Ignore them you’ll apply every point and still convert no one.