Three Ways To Great Angles - Using Method Acting (8)
Ah, angle block. That moment where you're looking at an offer and you think "well, I can come up with one angle for this. Maybe two. That's it."
Angle block's pretty common. I've seen the same comment in dozens of Follow-Alongs - "how do I come up with more angles for that?"
I have a big advantage when it comes to angle creation: I've been a professional creative type for two decades, and in that time I've learned a lot of techniques for inspiring creativity.
Today, I'm going to give you three of the approaches I use most frequently - and they don't come from writing or conventional advertising, as you might expect.
Instead, they come from acting.
Why Is Angle Creation Like Acting?
One of the biggest problems actors face is "stiffening up" - becoming stagey, playing a cliche performance. Similarly, with angles, we often "stiffen up", locked into only one way of looking at an offer.
Most acting techniques are designed to loosen your performance, to give it a new way of looking at the text (which becomes subtext in the finished performance or film), and to freshen up an actor tired of staring at the same material.
Hence, these acting techniques, which are mostly drawn from Stanislavsky's school of "Method" acting - the same school Daniel Day Lewis is famous for - really work to draw out new angle ideas. They bring out fresh, unexpected angles by approaching things in a different way.
Give 'em a go!
Act less
Sounds like the most crazy instruction possible to give to an actor, right?
Actually, no. One of the biggest problems that an actor can have is trying to perform too hard. It makes his or her performance unnatural, over-the-top, and stiff.
Likewise, one of the most common mistakes in affiliate marketing - particularly from newbie affiliates - is to "act too much" with their angles. So try an "act less" pass on your angles.
What do I mean by that? I mean do less. Don't try and be creative, think out of the box, push yourself. Just describe the offer and its benefits.
For example, if you're pushing a dating site: "Meet attractive, single women". Or the famous "Get A Girlfriend".
If you're pushing an antivirus: "Make Sure You Don't Get A Virus". If you're pushing a mobile browser: "Get A Better Web Browser For Your Phone".
If an offer has multiple benefits, act less on each of them - just describe them in simple, everyday terms like you were describing the offer to your friends.
Very often, our angles hide very the reason that someone might actually take up your offer. So try acting less!
What's Your Intention?
A Method actor preparing for a role will go through his or her script, line by line, and next to each line they will make a note: a verb. That verb describes what their character is doing with that line - what their intention is.
This is the process behind some of the greatest performances of all time. But how does it work? Surely each line only means one thing?
Not at all. Let's take an extreme example: Arnold Schwarzenegger's most famous line, "I'll be back".
That's the same line delivered with five different intentions. "Threatening". "Reassuring". "Warning". And the last one, "Promising".
There are dozens more. For example, you could deliver the line as "Reassuring Self" - an unconfident Terminator afraid to die. You could deliver it as "Arguing". As "Regretting". Even as "Flirting".
... Ok, let's take a moment to wipe the last one from our mental movie screens. Yikes.
You can use the same tool with your angles. Take a verb which could describe an action you could take that could lead to someone converting - "Promising", for example, or "persuading". Or "Threatening", "Frightening", "Pushing", "Seducing", "Protecting" - there are dozens of them.
Work around that verb. What angles can you come up with based on that verb?
For example, let's look at the antivirus again, and "Seducing". Sounds ridiculous! But... When you're seducing someone, one thing you'll want to do if you know anything about PUA is demonstrate high social status. So how can we do this for an antivirus? Maybe we position ourselves as experts on viruses in general, or phone security: have some links for more info, add some social proof, some trust symbols. Maybe get a couple of folks on Fiverr to write signs saying "Caurmen's Antivirus Reviews is my top source to keep my phone safe". OK, now we have an angle.
Or with seduction, sometimes you have to take the initiative and make the first move. How does that apply? Well, what if we actually just scanned their phone and checked if it was virus-prone? Maybe target older versions of Android with vulnerabilities, and actually point out "We've ALREADY scanned your system - click here to learn what threats you're vunerable to."
(If you're concerned about the legality of the last bit - you, or rather the traffic source, actually has scanned their phone if you know their model and OS version number. This is a completely legit angle.)
And so on. Rather than brainstorming angles for an antivirus, think about how you can seduce people into installing your antivirus.
What Were You Just Doing?
One of the actors I most frequently work with is very fond of asking me "What was I just doing?".
That isn't because he's forgetful - it's because for a Method actor, one of the most important things to know when they start a scene is what they were doing the moment before. It helps contextualise their character, it helps them know what frame of mind they're entering the scene in - it completely changes, and in some cases creates, their performance.
And for angles, it works the same way. Much of the time when you're creating an angle, you're creating it for a nebulous, vague, customer-shaped object. You might know a bit about their age or the sites they like - but you know nothing else, and hence you can't use that to inform your angles.
So take a moment and build a picture of a potential user: just one.
Let's take an adult dating site, for example, advertising on PornHub. We know that we're looking for high-quality leads, so we ideally want someone with reasonable income who is likely to sign up. We know from research that person is likely to be 35+.
OK, so who could that person be? Let's call him Derek. He's got decent income, so he must have a job that gives him that - let's say he's a lawyer. And why would he sign up to an adult dating site? Let's say he's recently divorced.
You've already got a goldmine of info to build angles from there, but let's go further. What's going on? What was Derek just doing?
So, he's working late. He's just come home, he's fired up a microwave meal, he's sat down on the couch. He's bored, he's lonely, he's horny. He picks up the iPad and starts surfing porn. And he's making the most of the touch interface and its one-hand controls when he sees your ad.
Right. Now create an angle based on that. What makes him stop spanking the monkey long enough to sign up? What intrigues him? What feels like it's talking to him?
Create a dozen angles based on that - and remember, just like in acting, it's OK if some of them are bad, or ridiculous, or obvious - and test 'em. Then create another character in a different circumstance, think about what he was just doing, and keep going.
And that's it! Any questions, comments, suggestions for angle creation techniques that work for you? Post 'em below!
Awesome posts caurmen, big thanks.
I really like second method about creating angles based on a few different verbs that describe desired action.
No problem!
Yeah, intentions are really powerful.
You can potentially even use them within an angle to describe the various parts of your funnel - so you could try an "enticing" ad vs an "informing" ad, and then a "persuading" versus a "qualifying" lander, for example.
Powerful stuff, thanks Caurmen! Added these 3 techniques to my angles cheat sheet!
I really love comparison with acting, especially the third method, because I can relate to it and easily morph into someone else's situation.
I have a question though. When you create such an in-depth persona, how does that affect your targeting. Do you still target everyone, or do you try to find a specific placement for this? (i am learning mobile so might be a nonsense question).
@dr_champa - It can work either way. Personas work really well if you're targeting a specific placement, but even if you're targeting broad they're very useful - you just need to aim a bit more lowest-common-denominator.
awesome post... puts everything in a much clearer and simple perspective. definitely saving this and coming back to it.
is there a "clever" way of figuring out what someone is going through in his/her life that might cause them to want to sign up for something?
I don't mean FB insights or Google display planner.. what i mean is., what in their life that they've experienced that makes them sign up for something? For example, if you have a .. say, dog loss tracking device offer... you would want to target a dog owner who's experienced losing a dog in the past. (Yeap, that's me. I have a dog tracking device now.)
@taewoo - aside from simply taking bets on things enough people will have experienced (birth of child, messy breakup, etc), or that enough people in a sub-demo will have experienced, I'm not aware of a way to do that on a mass scale yet.
However, there could be tricks out there I'm not aware of?
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