On June 23, 1965, a group out of Detroit called The Contours released a record which became a big hit. The tune was written by written by Smokey Robinson and Bobby Rogers, and it was called “First, I Look At The Purse.” Many other groups covered this song afterwards, including the Jay Geils Band. It’s a very interesting song… but, when it comes to critiquing copy, I have my own version. Actually, I don’t have a whole song, just a title at this point. Maybe someday I’ll write the song and then release it first on this podcast, Nathan. We could even do it as a duet. But for now, just the title. It’s… “First I Look For The Hook!” In any piece of copy, your hook’s so important. We’ll get into what it is in a minute, and how you can find your best hook for any copy you’re writing. This will be a revelation to a lot of people. But before we do, first an important announcement from your conscience: Copy is powerful. You’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you’re writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. What is a hook? How is it different than the headline? 1. My own story: Let your clients do your selling. 2. Ted Nicholas story: The only way left for the little guy to get rich. 3. Stuart Lichtman story: How to get lots of money for anything fast. What do these all have in common? (besides money) All came from paying attention First two cases, just looking and listening In the third case, research — digging, asking questions, seeing if you could look at it a different way Here’s one that’s not about money — it’s about another one of life’s necessities, beer Claude Hopkins - Schlitz First one to tell There was resistance — but they finally agreed to use it, and it worked There is a technique to create a hook quickly, which we’ve talked about twice before (most recently in “The USP Shortcut,” episode 38) STEP 1: Make a list of what people hate about competitors STEP 2: Find the one thing highest on the list that you can do the opposite of STEP 3: Use that as your hook, your USP Example - BMW, about 10 years ago Even though there’s that technique and it can work, the best hooks usually come from observation or research Here’s a short list of things to look for: What have you or your client overlooked that’s simple and emotionally compelling? What’s a memorable way to say it? What “lights up the boards?” (Gets a lot of response.) (Ted Nicholas example.)Download.

Copywriting is a lot like magic. With good sales copy, you can hold a reader captive. You can take them on a journey and open them up a world of opportunities. You can spell out some words and cast a spell on your readers. David Allan is both a copywriter and a magician. He joins the podcast this week to share some of his knowledge with our listeners. We talk about the overlap between his two worlds, including the skills he's been able to bring over from one to the other. David reveals some of the secrets of human nature that makes magic work. Then he explains how those same aspects of our nature apply to persuasive sales copy. This one is a "must listen" episode. Download.

How does copywriting apply to a sales funnel? David Allan joins us to break it down. We start with the 5,000-foot view by exploring what funnels are and how they work. Then, David goes over some simple rules to follow when building your sales funnels. We cover some of the most common mistakes people make when crafting their sales funnels. And David shares some of his favorite resources for people to learn more. If you're trying to build out a full-fledged marketing machine for your business, this is the episode for you. Download it now.Download.

When I first started copywriting, I had a real disadvantage. I had been a journalist, and the underlying belief -- at the time -- was that people are rational: You simply give them the facts, for and against, and they will make a reasoned decision. So when I started to see promotions that were working based on emotional appeals that seemed foreign and bizarre to me, I didn't understand. It took a while. But eventually, I came to realize what every successful copywriter realizes: that people are motivated by forces that had nothing to do with what I had learned in school, or on the job as a working journalist. One way I came to make sense of all of this was by looking at what's known as "the Seven Deadly Sins." That is -- all of these things you were NOT supposed to do and feel, were, in fact, what motivated large numbers of people to act and to buy. That's what we'll be talking about today. Warning Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. Overview If you are deeply religious or highly idealistic, I want to make one thing very clear: The Seven Deadly Sins we'll be talking about today are presented as obstacles to overcome. When I present this information, I'm not advocating for humans to be this way. I'm acknowledging that no human alive today has been perfected, to the best of my knowledge. This is about what I have observed... what actually happens, what motivates markets in the real world, where humans are mostly NOT rational. 1. Lust definition from Wik: intense longing (more than just sex) Think about collectors. (My guitar story) 2. Gluttony definition from Wik: overindulgence, overconsumption It's certainly food. But there are people who can't get enough of anything. Think of all the wonderful wine clubs. Endless bottles of fine wines. 3.Greed definition from Wik: artificial, rapacious desire and pursuit of material possessions Certainly luxury items. Nobody "needs" them. Why do they want them? You could say greed. Really, the first three are all about untrammeled desire. Most people have a hard time controlling all their desires, and if you can find a way to tap into a desire, it will make your copy stronger. 4. Sloth definition from Wik: physical laziness - unwillingness to exert Even people who are hard-working are lazy at some times. "The Lazy Man's Way To Riches" Like with all of these, don't CALL your prospect lazy. Simply by contrasting the hard work required for other solutions and how much easier your solution is -- you'll make your point, and that can help you make your sale. 5. Wrath definition from Wik: uncontrolled feelings of rage People are REALLY angry these days. If you can show that you share their rage AND tie your offer to a solution out of that rage, it's a very powerful way to make a sale. 6. Envy definition from Wik: insatiable desire, jealousy This is my favorite - I think envy is fear of loss brought smack-dab into the present. Fear of competitors getting ahead of you. "keeping up with the Joneses" 7. Pride corrupt selfishness - putting one's own desires and urges, wants, and whims ahead of the welfare of other people Well, there's another way to look at pride. Being proud of yourself. Being proud of your kids. Being proud of your team. Old headline: "Build a Body You Can Be Proud Of" Summary Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, Pride. These won't do all the work for you, but they will point you in a good direction.Download.

1 Bob story "Like my family's kitchen." My experience was a little different - Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford. I knew how to ask questions - but still hadn't learned how to ask engaging questions that helped people to open up. That's what I've spent the last 40 years learning, and I'll share what I can today with you. 0.1 Warning Copy is powerful. You’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you’re writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. 2 What interviewing is It's not an interrogation It's a conversation starts with building rapport Stan Russell - Jerry Richardson, The Magic of Rapport http://a.co/e3JqwHo Comes from experience, common sense, skills training, clarity of your purpose of the interview -- and, research ahead of time. "It's all part of the job-one must be prepared to be a host, to share food, to entertain with stories, to basically do anything and everything to make the subject feel comfortable, to put them at ease, so that when you turn on that tape recorder and begin asking questions they feel like they're talking to a friend. It's not always easy to be such a chameleon, but that is what a good in­terviewer must be." From a book I'll mention later. 3 Why interviewing is important There's stuff you need to know You can't find out all of it from book/internet research alone. So you need to talk to people. And people are glad to talk to you, almost all of the time, if you can convey to them that you are truly interested in what they have to say. That's where interviewing comes in. 4 -- 3 tips - what to do 1. Prepare. Find out all you can before the interview. Not to show off your knowledge. More to avoid annoying the person you're interviewing by showing a lack of respect for their time, asking a question you could easily have found the answer to, yourself. 2. Listen. Strive to understand what the person is saying. Don't be in a rush. Respect their time, but give them time to answer. 3. Be ready for the interview to go in a different direction than you had planned. Sometimes you'll get gems from tangents! 5 - 3 tips - what not to do 1. Avoid the urge to show how clever you are. I learned this the hard way, starting on the South Lawn of the White House in 1976. The person you're interviewing appreciates intelligence, but they may resent your efforts to one-up them. Be humble. 2. Don't be like an interrogator in a detective show on TV. Harsh yes/no questions leave people cold and defensive. You want to do the opposite -- make them comfortable so they open up. 3. Don't be in a rush. Respect the time limits you've agreed to, but be as relaxed and focused as you can be. One of the great interviewing skills is to make the person you're talking to feel like they are the most important person in the world! 6 Summary and book rec Prepare; make it a conversation where the person you're interviewing does most of the talking. You can tell a little about yourself to disclose who you are as a person, and as the interviewer doing this job -- but keep it short. Develop and maintain trust. Take really good notes or better yet, record with permission. Book recommendation: The Art of the Interview, by Lawrence Grobel. One of the great journalistic interviewers of our time. This gives you a lot more than you need to know for what you'll be doing -- unless you'll be interviewing celebrities for articles in major magazines -- but you can glean tips and techniques from one of the greats. He also taught a class on this subject at UCLA, his alma mater. He really does know how to teach through storytelling! http://a.co/iLgeYPCDownload.

I remember when I was a kid, I asked my dad about the cigarettes he was smoking. Very sarcastically, he repeated words from a commercial: "For the best combination of filter and good taste, Kent satisfies best!" I smiled, but he could tell I didn't get his little joke. Then he said, "Seriously, David - it's because Kent has this Micronite filter. It filters out the harsher parts of the smoke." Dad, being a nuclear physicist, really bought into Kent's so-called "logical" Unique Selling Proposition. He told me about the Micronite filter like it was established scientific fact. But of course, it was just a USP dreamed up by some ad agency. Now… these days the old ads for cigarettes are considered evil. And though evil they may have been, they were definitely effective. Having a good USP for each brand was definitely a big part of their success. So the question arises: Can you use a USP to sell healthy products? Good products? Products that improve people's lives? And here's the answer: Not only you can, but you should. What's more, these days, very often you have to use a USP if you want to half a chance of selling anything. And that's where the problem comes in. How do you create it? That's what we'll talk about today. In fact, I've got a shortcut method for you. But first… Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. The Importance of USP • What it is • You're always competing • Answers (sometimes hidden) question: "Why should I buy from YOU?" • Big mistake people make - they write USP's from their own / the business's point of view • Best USPs should state or imply a clear benefit to the CUSTOMER USP For a Copywriter • Two Steps • First step: Talent Stack • Term originated by Scott Adams, explained in two books • How I used the talent stack for my USP • Use your talent stack by making a list, and put together a combination that sets you apart • Second step: Make a list of common benefits, or "should-be" benefits • Through research, find out what people are disappointed or outright pissed off about among others in the field – WHERE YOU CAN HONEST PROCLAIM THE OPPOSITE USP For a Product/Service/Business • Same idea as second half of process for a copywriter • You need to do research… on your own product, and on customer views of competition • Then, an analysis: What's the one most important thing people are complaining about, that you can offer the opposite of • Once you have the concept, come up with words that convey it in a captivating and memorable way Recap of the Steps • You should be doing this kind of research anyway • So you can piggyback on what you're already doing • A good USP can make half the sale for you all by itself. Download.

Have you ever see a musician who's like this unimpressive guy, sort of could fade into the background at the drop of a pin. Then he picks up an instrument, and he's like in a different universe. What happened? He'd tell you, "I got in the pocket" or "I slipped into the groove." Another way to say that is, "I got into flow." What's what we'll talk about today. Advisory Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. What Is "Flow?" • Ease of writing • Non-stop • Low stress • Easy access to creativity • Could even feel like a rush - dopamine drop Benefits Of Flow For Writing • The writing's smoother, it's easier to read • When you're in flow and you're writing - your writing is more likely to put the reader in a flow state • A reader in flow state has turned critical thinking off. That person is more likely to be able to make a good decision about buying. • When you're in flow, access to your imagination is better. Words come easier. Metaphors come easier. Creative selling ideas (that work) come easier. • Flow helps you stay in a state of momentum and build up greater momentum. That means you'll get done writing sooner! What Gets In The Way • Not enough knowledge loaded up • Not enough experience loaded up (Mental Representations - Ericcson) • Premature Perfectionation • If you hate what you're writing. Sorry, can't help you there How To Get Obstacles To Flow Out Of The Way • Do more study and research, especially on the current project • Write a few more sales letters. You need to have those Mental Representations. • Put off your Perfectionation until you've finished a full draft. How To Get Into Flow • See if you can get out of "hurry up and wait" deadline situations. Give yourself time to ponder. • Understand flow comes best when you're in a creative space, where you're not feeling pressure, there's nothing on your mind, you're open. Not task-oriented space. • Silicon Valley solution – will ask Scott Aughtmon tomorrow.Download.

I was at a marketing conference and ended up sitting next to a woman named Maya who had the most unusual briefcase I'd ever seen. I asked her about it and she said, I got it at the Coach store. I was planning to spend no more than $300 but the Fashion Advisor asked me some questions, and she recommended this one, based on my answers. I nodded. Then she said, I ended up spending $700. And I really hate the salespeople at the OTHER stores. But Connie wasn't a salesperson at all. She just found out what I was looking for and showed it to me. I simply HAD to have it! I bit my tongue and did my best to keep a straight face. I didn't want to burst Maya's bubble by pointing out that Connie was a GOOD salesperson, and that's why she didn't see her as a salesperson at all. But Maya's attitude about salespeople would have made it very hard for her to be successful as a copywriter. That's what we'll talk about today. Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. Why Sales Is So Important For Copywriters One A-lister who has thought about this a lot told me that success in copywriting ultimately boils down to: one-third writing two-thirds sales ability If You Have A Background In Sales It helps, but even there, you have differences. The mindset is the same in copy, but the techniques are different. If You Don't Have A Sales Background, Check Your Attitude If you have a negative attitude towards sales, succeeding as a copywriter is going to be very tough for you. If you're open to / interested in / sales, there's hope for you. Three key sales skills for copywriters 1. Lining up: prospects, your offer, what sets you apart Prospects: understanding them well. Their world. Their values. How they talk. What their biggest problems are, that they can't solve, that your offer can help them solve. Your Offer: What you have that solves their biggest problem or problems, and how it solves them. You really need to know this inside-out. What's Unique, Valuable, and Preferable About Your Offer: What can they get from you, they can't get anywhere else. Or, how is what you have: better, cheaper, more convenient, faster, simpler. In other words, preferable. You need to know about the other offers your prospect is looking at, to be able to get this across believably. When you have knowledge of your prospects… your offer… and what sets it apart in a favorable way, then you can line these things up and come up with some really compelling copy. 2. Anticipating And Answering Objections. In copy, think of objections as THE REASONS A PROSPECT WHO WANTS WHAT YOU HAVE TO OFFER, IS HESITANT TO BUY. There are about half a dozen basic objections most people will have about most offers: 1) It costs too much 2) How do I know it will work (in general)? 3) How do I know it will work for ME (specific)? 4) What if something goes wrong? 5) Will I be able to use it myself? 6) What do others say? You'll be able to come up with answers to these objections a lot more easily once you have the basic knowledge and understanding of the three areas from the "lining up" section, above: 1 Your offer 2 Your prospect's mindset 3 Competing offers your prospect will consider, and specifically why yours is better 3. Increasing two things: desire, and a sense of urgency. Both, of course, in your prospect. Desire: The more you can make your prospect want it, the easier it will be to get them to buy. The key here is, you're not just selling a product or service, or even just the first- level set of benefits. You're selling your prospect a better LIFE. Urgency: One way is with devices in copy Limited Quantity Deadline Price Goes Up (worked with me on Tuesday) The other form of urgency is more internal to the customer: The danger of doing nothing. What will your life be like if you don't get this offer? Summary 1. Line up customer, product, unique value of product 2. Anticipate and answer objections 3. Increase desire and sense of urgency in your prospectDownload.

They say that laughter is the best medicine. It can uplift the soul. It can make people fall in love with you. But it's one of the hardest things to accomplish in writing. And that's doubly so when it comes to copywriting. Kevin Rogers is back to join us this week. Kevin has a long history of both copywriting, and stand-up comedy. He knows what works and what doesn't when it comes to injecting comedy into your sales copy, and he's spilling the beans for you to gobble up. There's a lot of overlap between a career in comedy and a career in comedy. But it takes a man talented in both to bring these similarities to light. And in this episode, Kevin and David do just that. Kevin's Website Copy ChiefDownload.

Getting started is often the hardest thing for a new copywriter to do. That's why we invited Kevin Rogers on the podcast to shed some light on the topic. Kevin is the head of the Copy Chief community, an online resource for copywriters of all experience levels. And he brings a wealth of knowledge for newbie copywriters to the table in this interview. We cover: How to get clients when you're first starting out Classic mistakes new copywriters tend to make How to join the Copy Chief community and much more. Kevin's WebsiteDownload.

My friend Michael owns a sushi restaurant in my neighborhood in San Francisco. His place is one of a dozen, maybe dozens, in the neighborhood - I've never taken time to count all of them. Even though the restaurant has much more seating than your typical sushi bar, it's always nearly full at dinnertime. One day I pulled Michael aside and asked him how he got so many customers. "David, it's not all that many customers," he said. "It's that the customers I have, keep coming back." Does a sushi restaurant owner know something that you don't? Or even if you know it, are you falling short when it comes to taking advantage of this truth? That is: You'll make a lot more money when you find a way to get old customers to keep coming back. We'll talk about that in today's episode. But first on the menu is this: Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. Most marketers leave the vast majority of their money on the table by not making additional offers to their new customers. Big mistake. True, sometimes people want to buy one thing once from you, but most would want more if you made them good offers. One of my A-List copywriter friends writes for Mindvalley. He doesn't write all their copy. In a minute you'll see why that would be physically impossible! Mindvalley makes two new offers every month to its large and growing list. It's currently an eight-figure company - between 10 and 100 million - and my friend thinks they're on their way to crossing $100 million a year. Of course not everyone can come up with 24 unique offers a year. But anyone can benefit from different variations of their strategy, and that's what this episode is about. One reason going back to old customers works so well is you have already broken down the barriers of unfamiliarity and distrust. When a customer knows you and trusts you, they are five to six more times likely to buy. When you ignore that, you truly are leaving money on the table. Let's talk about how to pick up that money off the table! Three types of copy after the initial sale 1. Sell the same thing again Sometimes, all it takes is an ask. Especially if you have a consumable product that people use up. Amazon does this to me all the time. Maybe you, too. They'll usually ask for the SAME sale inside the website. Fact is, there are some things I buy over and over again. But I don't consume them at a regular enough pace to subscribe. One example is an Italian espresso coffee. So what I'll do is order it when the bag of beans gets low. Let's say you are a golf equipment company, and the golf balls you sell are unique. Well, golfers lose golf balls. And if they like yours, all you might need is a little push - a special offer - to sell more. Let's say you have a book, and a buyer list. If people love your book, they might want to buy a copy for a friend and/or a family member. Or a business associate. If you take the initiative, and make the suggestion, you'll have a much better shot at getting them to buy. 2. Sell them something similar, but not exactly the same Two ways to do this: First way: Make frequent similar offers of products you have developed. Mindvalley is the perfect example of that. They make 24 offers of their own related products per year. And people buy them! If you are an author or a teacher/trainer/info-product creator, this is a strategy you can use at any size business. OK, you probably can't come up with 24 brand new offers a year. But you can come up with more than one. Coming up with new services will also work using this strategy. If you make a physical product, or if you have an online store, the next way is better for you. Second way: Offer a related affiliate product, or related products you buy at wholesale and sell at retail. Do these seem more like marketing strategies than copywriting strategies? Well, in a way they are. But there's no way they'll work without good copy to support the development of the relationship with the customers and making the additional sales. Now let's talk about the third type of copy: 3. Get them to buy something from you every month - Continuity program - membership site - Gift box program - Some foods and supplements I buy on Amazon offer these - Subscription to a publication - Copywriters Podcast, except we forgot to charge you for this… -- Tips: 1. Don't always go for the close in every communication. 2. You have to sell them fully each time. Trust is higher and resistance is lower, but you still need a complete sales presentation. 3. Remember why they bought from you in the first place, and reference it directly or indirectly in your follow-up communications. Download.

I started teaching writing 30 years ago, and one of the biggest challenges my students always seemed to face was the amount of time it took to write. This of course was especially true for people who had to do writing as one of a few or many tasks in their businesses or their lives. Over the years, I've developed systems and techniques that help people write faster. But I've never before shared the system for writing copy faster than I'm going to share today. This one is based on some of the same ideas I used 30 years ago for doing other kinds of writing, that worked so well. We'll move on in a minute. But first, there's this: Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. We'll cover five steps. These steps take the hard work out of writing, which is the fifth step. By concentrating only on each step when you do it, you cut way down on distractions and not knowing what to do next. This doesn't make writing copy easy as pie, BUT it makes it a lot easier, and faster, than most people do it. Step 1 - Get all your research done in advance and ORGANIZE it for yourself so it is easy to access later on. Three types of research: - product (or service) - customer (avatar) - competitors Step 2 - Write out your offer: the best possible version of features and benefits so you could sell a primed customer what you have just with your description of your offer alone. You'll be dropping this into your copy later. Step 3 - write out bullets. Anywhere from 20 (niche offer without a huge price) to 100 (for high-ticket offers in very competitive markets) - the THINKING involved in writing bullets is the hardest part of writing copy, if you're writing your bullets right - that's because you're translating your features into appealing, even tantalizing, benefits, that are very concrete and highly appealing - while you're doing this, you may get copy ideas. Even headline/hook ideas. Jot them down on a separate sheet of paper, or a separate computer document. Step 4 - Outline your copy - as bare-bones or as detailed as you like. Here's a nine-step formula to start with 1. Headline/hook 2. Lead 3. Introduce yourself or your client 4. Talk about the problem you're solving or the opportunity you're presenting up to… 5. Your offer. Make it here. Add copy for bonuses if you have some. 6. Present your guarantee 7. Make a clear but not overly aggressive call to action 8. Give believable reason for urgency 9. Strong call to action OK. Now you've got - your research - your offer - your bullet-point thinking done, and - a roadmap for your letter. you're ready for step 5: Write! Important concept - Gene Schwartz - you're not writing so much as ASSMEBLING. As you get more experienced with this method, you can cut your time by up to 90%. There are certain types of sales letters now I can write in an hour or two. They would have taken me weeks or months in the past. Not everything. Some copy still takes a long time. But with methods like this, I've cut time on everything down to the bare minimum to still get high quality and results.Download.

Copywriters are solitary creatures who spend large amounts of time alone. Yet the good ones understand quite a bit more about human motivations and behaviors than almost anyone else, including most professional psychologists. Why is that? A lot of it comes from observation and thinking about what they have observed. But more to the point, they have to… or, their copy just won't work. Last week we talked about a "core curriculum" of books people copywriters need to read. This week, we're going to talk about "the advanced stuff" – a deep and possibly disturbing survey of how and why people do what they do. Stuff you need to know if you want to improve the response to your copy. So today these words are especially relevant: Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. Now, some friendly advice regarding what we're going to be talking about today. Of the dozens of books I considered for last week's episode and this one, the nine books I'm suggesting today made the cut. My advice is that you need to brace yourself when you read them. This stuff can be scary, because as you start to find out how people REALLY behave – and why – it will almost certainly shake up some of your cherished assumptions about humanity. But as a marketer and copywriter, you need to know anyway. Three categories of books: 1. Persuasion 2. Story 3. The mind, and learning -Persuasion Books 1. How to Argue and Win Every Time, by Gerry Spence • Spence is a lawyer with an incredible winning record • Learned some hard lessons early on, changed his approach • Not easy or fun, but incredibly valuable 2. Scott Adams: Winning Bigly – Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter Anymore, by Scott Adams • Visionary thinker about persuasion • This book could upset you – it's worth the disruption • I have it on order. I've only looked at the table of contents on Amazon. 3. Never Split the Difference, by Chis Voss • Former top FBI hostage negotiator • Not what you would expect • Some very valuable insights about persuasion I've never seen anywhere else. - Story Book 4. Wired for Story, by Lisa Cron • Talks about story and how the human brain responds to it • She's got plenty of Hollywood and NY publishing experience • Great teacher – clear explainer - Books on the Mind and Learning 5. Mindset, by Carol Dweck • Two types of people • Invaluable for understanding those who will/those who won't • Author is Stanford professor 6. The Talent Code, by Daniel Coyle • Shows why talent is NOT the deciding factor • Lots of tips for learning and improvement • Good introduction to work of Anders Ericsson (book 8) 7. Mastery, by George Leonard • Great book by terrific writer • Helps you understand the frustrations of getting better • Short book, easy read, strangely motivating 8. Peak, by Anders Ericcson and Robert Pool • The "10,000 hour rule" demystified • Clear and well written, but not an easy read • If you want to become a master copywriter, you must read this - Evolutionary Psychology 9. The Moral Animal, by Robert Wright • Will open your eyes to things you never thought about • Not always pleasant and sometimes scary • You'll understand human nature at a MUCH deeper levelDownload.

When I first got into writing copy, I was having a hard time finding any good information about how to do it. So I took every seminar I could and read every book I could find. It was exhausting, and frankly, maybe not the best use of my time. Originally I put this episode together with the plan to come up with a handful of books every copywriter should read – what I wish I had known when I started. But my list got so long that I realized we were going to need two episodes to cover things fully. So this is part 1 – what I'd call "the core curriculum." Next week, we'll go through a second list I'm calling "the advanced stuff." First, a pleasant reminder: Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. Now, to the books. Some of the books I read, like Ted Nicholas's "Magic Words That Bring You Riches," are either not available at all, or available in very limited quantities. I set three ground rules for this core curriculum: . You have to be able to get the book easily . Each book is a course in itself. You don't need a study group or someone else to walk you through any of them to get really good value from them. . They're affordable. (One is a little pricey… but… it's worth every penny.) -Copywriting Books 1. Scientific Advertising, by Claude Hopkins • The "foundation document" of copywriting/direct response marketing • Ogilvy: Read 7 times; I've read 15 times; recently re-reading • Not easy or fun, but incredibly valuable 2. The Adweek Copywriting Handbook, by Joe Sugarman • Based on a seminar Joe used to give in his home • Joe's a dm pioneer and great copywriter • Easy to read, very valuable 3. The Ultimate Sales Letter, by Dan Kennedy • Takes you through all the steps • I've always found Dan Kennedy to be reliable source of great money-making ideas • Can absolutely put you on the right path to writing a winner 4. Breakthrough Advertising, by Eugene Schwartz • Hard to read and understand • Like a gold mine. 30 years later, I'm still getting new ideas from it • Expensive for a book – but worth it 5. Breakthrough Copywriting, by David Garfinkel • Easy to understand • Comprehensive • Includes templates and tools for a copywriter - Sales/Marketing/Creativity Books 6. Tested Sentences That Sell, by Elmer Wheeler • Early pioneer in testing words, phrases, pitches • The words/sentences may or may not work for you • But the method of split testing always works. This is a good introduction to split testing. 7. Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath • Excellent book on clear, memorable communication • "Curse of knowledge" is super-valuable concept • Very practical, useful for copywriters 8. A Technique for Producing Ideas, by James Webb Young • Great introduction to / and working method for / tapping into the power of the unconscious mind for writing copy • Tremendous overall book to read for brainstorming and creativity • Worth reading more than once; I've read it five times. - Online Resource 9. The Gary Halbert Letter, thegaryhalbertletter.comDownload.

The other day I was watching a TV interview with a Hollywood actor in his 80s. The interviewer asked him, "What do you think of all the new movies with special effects and robot characters?" The actor clearly didn't want to answer the question directly. Instead, he said: "What I look for in a script is three things: 1) What's the story? 2) Who are the characters that embody the story? 3) What's the emotion?" It was a good answer, and I think the third thing the old actor mentioned is also important for copywriters. Even more than that, I think the conventional wisdom we've gotten about emotion is not nearly specific enough to be useful. I'll review the conventional wisdom in this episode, & replace it with specifics you can use. Before we do, here's something that you might not find emotional at all: Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. Now, let's talk about emotion in copy. You'll often hear that the emotions you want to appeal to in copy are fear and greed. There's truth in that. But it's so broad and general. And what can you do with that information, really? It leaves you guessing. We'll get very specific in just a sec. First, let's start with some basics: - You need to provoke emotion to prompt a sale. People don't make decisions based on rational thinking, even though some think they do (and would get very upset if you told them otherwise. Hmmm… think about that!) People make decisions based on emotion. So you need to prompt emotion. - You can prompt positive emotions, but that's much harder work, since people don't always trust or believe good feelings. But they do tend to believe negative emotions more often. Negative emotions seem more "real." - So today we're going to focus on three proven uses of negative emotion. These are from Chapter 9 of my book Breakthrough Copywriting. I call them "emotional triggers." - What I'm going to share with you can be adapted in almost any selling situation to sell a product or service. Emotional Trigger 1: This one's called "Anger to Envy to Offer." Let me read some copy to you, and then we'll dig into it. This copy is for an ebook on auto repair: "For most people, the only thing worse than going to the dentist is taking your car to the mechanic. At least the dentist warns you when he's going to hurt you and he does his best to numb the pain, but Mike Thompson is different. "For Mike, going to the mechanic is never a big deal, because he's never been overcharged, and he always gets treated with a level of courtesy and respect that a king would expect. Does Mike know something you don't know? He probably does, and that's why I thought you'd be interested in his new eBook Never Let Your Mechanic Intimidate You Again: How to Stay in Control and Save a Lot of Money with Every Auto Repair You Get from Now On." OK – what's going on here? Let's talk in broad-brush strokes about the psychology of this: Anger and jealousy are two of the most powerful motivators known. In fact, someone said to me that jealousy is fear of loss brought into the immediate present. Think about that. If you see someone else walking away with something you want, that's fear of loss right before your eyes. Now, in this case, I made a statement that would arouse anger in my target market. If I had this book, and you have a car, and you've ever been treated badly by a mechanic, you'd probably buy the book right now, wouldn't you? The second thing is that I made a contrasting statement about a positive aspect of the same situation. Here is the contrasting statement. "But Mike Thompson is different. For Mike, going to the mechanic is never a big deal because he's never been overcharged, and he always gets treated with a level of courtesy and respect that a king would expect." Do you feel a little jealous of this guy? We've gone from anger, "That blankety-blank mechanic said it'd be ready at five and it's not done," to envy, "This other guy never has to put up with it," to offer, "And here's my offer." "Does Mike know something that you don't know? He probably does, and that's why I thought you'd be interested in this new eBook, Never Let Your Mechanic Intimidate You Again." The way you can use this is • Make a statement your prospect or reader can identify with – about a negative situation that gets them angry. Just not angry at you. • Then, make a contrasting statement about a positive version of the same situation. Your prospect reading this will feel envy of the person in this situation who has it better than they do. • From there, slip right into your offer – the solution that can get your prospect out of the bad situation they're currently in, and into the situation of the person they envy, from your story. Emotional Trigger #2: It's called Doubt to Confidence. Now, notice only the first emotion is negative – doubt. I mean, who doesn't want to feel more confident in life? Here's some copy for an imaginary ebook for doctors, dentists, chiropractors, and other health-care professionals. Listen: "Professionals have an especially thorny problem when it comes to marketing, because often the kind of marketing likely to work is deemed too aggressive. On top of that, ethical standards often stand in the way of getting results from ads and mailings. When I started to read Never-Empty Waiting Room, I wondered if it would have the same tepid techniques I've read about so many times before." That part was the doubt. Now, here comes the confidence: "It turns out my fears were groundless. The go-for-it methods mentioned in this book could never be called unethical, yet they work like a charm… " And you can almost feel the formerly worried prospect breathe a sigh of relief. The way you do this is pretty straightforward – you use a testimonial that starts out with the same doubts a prospect has. And you give the story a happy ending by transforming the doubts into confidence. When you ask someone for a testimonial, find out from them what specific results they are getting. Ask them to think back to when they read your copy. Was it hard for them to believe at the time that they could get these results? Ask them to include how they felt before, and how they feel now. And to tell why they feel that way. This is another reason you should constantly be gathering testimonials. Emotional Trigger #3: This one's called "Shared Outrage." That sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it? Here's an example of this trigger in copy: "You know what it's like when diets don't work. It sucks. I remember one so-called 'diet' I went on. What a load of crap! I had stomach pains for weeks! I didn't sleep well, I was crabby and tired all the time, and at the end of five weeks I'd gained five pounds! I was so mad I wanted to smash something into a thousand little pieces. "It was then that I made myself a solemn promise—never go through that humiliation again! I wanted a way to lose weight that was easy and permanent. I searched and searched until I had all the pieces in place for the perfect program—the No-brainer, No-gainer Weight Management Plan. And now I'm ready to share it with you." See, the way this one works is you AND the prospect get mad at the same thing! And your solution solves the problem you're both mad about. And here's how you do it: First, you express your anger about a situation you're upset about, that your prospect is upset about, too. That's anger, and people can relate to that anger. But you're not angry AT them – you're angry at the same thing they're angry at. Then, you use that anger as a springboard to get to a solution. One that soothes your anger, and should soothe your prospect's anger as well. -- OK, that's it – three emotional triggers: 1. Anger to Envy to Offer 2. Doubt to Confidence 3. Shared Outrage That's three of 11 emotional triggers in total, in chapter 9 of Breakthrough Copywriting. And the book has 12 other chapters with hands-on, ready-to-use tools as well.Download.

I remember a few years ago I had had it up to here with all the bulky, complicated audio equipment cluttering up my house. I needed something simpler, faster, better. I called BH Photo Video in New York and got a salesman, Aaron, on the line who listened very carefully to me. At one point I said to him, "Listen, I am not a technical wizard. I don't want to spend 15 minutes adjusting knobs and faders just to be able to record something." "Of course not," he said. "You want to stay in a state of flow." He had me right there. I had never thought about that before, but he was absolutely right. That was why I hated all the complicated stuff – it pulled me out of my flow state. And if I wasn't in a flow state, I couldn't do a compelling recording. Then Aaron very patiently and thoroughly recommended a device called an Apogee Duet. It cost about four times what I had planned to spend. But the more he talked, the bigger a believer I became. I bought it, because I was in a state of total conviction. And years of experience has proven this was the right audio device for me. In fact, I'm using it right now, even as we speak. Copywriters can create conviction in their sales letters and ads the same way my salesman created it in me. And conviction can make all the difference with a hesitating buyer. We'll talk about that today. First, I'd like to mention this: Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. ▾ What conviction is • deep-seated belief that takes away all barriers to action • In a movie, you can see this in a major way in how the hero, eventually, gets to a point where they will STOP AT NOTHING to achieve their goal • In copy, it's seldom as dramatic as it is in a Hollywood movie. But it's just as important. Because conviction is what opens the door to a sale that sticks. ▾ Why it's important • When you have created conviction in your prospect, they are as ready to buy as they'll ever be. ▾ What happens when you create it • You put yourself, as a copywriter, in the perfect position to close the sale ▾ What happens when you don't • You might get the sale, but you risk getting buyer's remorse, which means: more refunds, and more customers from hell ▾ Where most people screw up • They do a "paint by numbers" approach to creating conviction rather than really working at it to make it powerful: research, selection, feeling, thinking • They don't create an authentic, believable conversation in their copy between themselves and the prospect ▾ Where you need to start: yourself ▾ If you don't believe in the product or service you're selling — to the point where you would buy it yourself, you've got three choices: • Convince yourself so you really do believe in it that much • Fake it. Pretend that you believe in it that much and write from that state of mind. (Not recommended, but we don't always end up writing the copy we would most like to write.) • Walk away. If you can't "mock up" a feeling of conviction in yourself, you're not doing yourself or your client (or your business) any favors. You shouldn't be writing the piece. • … but, assuming you can develop a solid feeling of conviction in yourself, here are some powerful techniques: ▾ Make it personal… relevant… meaningful • personal - Talk about how the product or service fits into the prospect's life, and what difference it will make. Aaron did that, and it made all the difference for me. This means you really have to understand the prospects and their lives, including their frustrations and why they have those frustrations. • relevant - don't give generic reasons and examples. Be specific. So it's believable. Remember again Aaron. • meaningful - Again, you need to really understand your prospect. Only then will you know what's meaningful to them. Aaron understands creative people and performers, and he knows getting in a state of flow and staying there is high on the priority list! • Use metaphors, analogies, comparisons Especially when you have something that's new or unfamiliar to your prospect. Compare it to something familiar. "It's the Swiss Army Knife of food processors." Someone who's into cooking will get that right away. • Write to a PERSON from YOURSELF Imagine someone you know, like, and care about. Write in a way that would create conviction in them. • Specifics rather than generalities Kim Phelan: Specifics spark emotions; (usually) generalities don't. • "Important trivialities" Find out the little details most people would never care about, but your prospect cares about a lot. Mentioning those can strengthen conviction.Download.

I saw a story on quora.com about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Before he became California's governor and while he was still a bodybuilder, he was walking down Venice Beach in southern California. Two young women saw his huge muscles, and I do mean huge!, and one of them supposedly said, "Ewww… I would never want to look like that!" He replied, "And you never willllll." The point being, he didn't really care what other people thought about the way he looked – he was pretty confident in who he was. Now, it's a great story and as a copywriter, you do need to worry… at least, about how prospects respond to your copy. And always keep this in mind: Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. Now, let's talk about confidence, and then we'll talk about how to build and keep a high level of confidence as a copywriter. There are some people who think you can say magic words over and over and that will make you confident. It's a very seductive theory, but it's simply not true. Then there are more sophisticated theories about deliberately rewiring your brain to increase your confidence. I don't know how that works, but I've never seen that work for copywriters. I'm not against these things. I'm only against depending on them by themselves. I know some of the most successful copywriters used techniques to build on the foundation of ability, skill and copywriting experience that gave them confidence in the first place. And I want to stick to the foundational stuff in today's episode. To start with, big difference between - confidence in self and ability to get the job done, and get results, and - confidence in a particular piece of copy you're writing or you've just written Self: This is what you want to establish, fortify, increase. We'll talk about how in depth in a few minutes. A particular piece of copy: Some anxiety is the price you pay to do this work. Reasons: - You never know for sure how well it will work until you test it - The creative process includes anxiety. Universally. All writers. Musicians. Comedians. Public speakers. Artists. Many other types of performers. > Aaron Sorkin quote abt screenwriting (paraphrasing): Very productive sessions followed by long periods of depression. (He was clearly only half-kidding, if kidding at all) - This is not necessarily something to "cure" – it's something to learn to live with. Here's why: o Edge of Chaos – you're going where no one's ever been before o Creativity, by its very nature, takes you from the familiar to the unfamiliar. If it's totally familiar, it's the same old shit, and it may not work very well. If it's unfamiliar, it might be uncomfortable. - When you get into that flow state, it's an adventure. - Two pieces of advice, which I've used successfully myself: o Surrender to the weird feelings. That helps them move through you and move on. Fighting them locks 'em in. o Attributed to Fritz Perls, founder of Gestalt Therapy: "Fear is excitement without breathing." You don't need to be a nervous wreck. Everyone has their own way of handling it. I'm going through all of this in detail to point out that you can still be baseline confident and solid, and if you're freaking out about a particular project you're working on – that's to be expected sometimes. Don't confuse that with lack of confidence. They're two different things. Now that we have "The Creativity Dance" covered, let's talk about baseline confidence. Four key steps most people are too scared to take: 1. Failure 2. Resiliance 3. Reflection and analysis 4. Adjustment And start over. Most people think confidence comes from success. And there's some truth to that. But if you take a person who has only had success and put him in a situation where he fails, he's not going to handle it very well. Deep down such a person knows that. And that's why that person is not really as baseline confident as the person who's had his share of success, but also weathered his share of storms. That's confidence. The other key ingredient to baseline confidence is learning. Not just learning through doing, but learning through studying. Reading the copywriting books. Taking seminars. Studying what other people are doing with their copy. Really building a practical knowledge base about copywriting. Hey, even listening to the Copywriters Podcast. ESPECIALLY listening to the Copywriters Podcast. Hey, let me tell you about scaling the heights, in a way you've probably never thought of before. This will help you grasp what I'm saying about baseline confidence, compared to temporary uncomfortable feelings on a project. Have you ever been on the top of a skyscraper under construction? I have. Many years ago. The early 1980s. I was a reporter for a construction magazine. The contractor invited me up to the top of this building on North Michigan Avenue in Chicago. I'm not sure why. Part of the story, I guess. When I was up there, I'm not sure I had any tether. But I know the scaffolding or whatever it was called was solid around me. The floorboards were nailed down and weren't bending or creaking. It was kinda windy up there, though. I'd never been up nearly that high on a building in the open air. It was scary. But I felt confident that the scaffolding and the floorboards were solid. Now imagine that the scaffolding was rusty and not well put together. And one of the floorboards broke when I stepped on it. I would have felt entirely different. Not just scared of the heights and the wind, but really worried, maybe even terrified, that I was going to take a 200-story plunge to the ground. Let me show you how that true story provides a model for the difference between baseline confidence and the anxiety or other negative feelings you might have when you're working on some copy. The solid scaffolding and the stable floorboards are like baseline confidence. In copywriting, your scaffolding and your floorboards are you experience, including your failures – what you learned from them, and what you decided to do differently until you found out what works. The scaffolding and the floorboards are also your study and your experience with others – mentors, teachers, other copywriters, clients. All of the things we've talked about. But each new piece you write might be like walking around for the first time in the open air, 200 stories up. You have a solid foundation underneath you and around you to give you confidence, but you could still feel a little weird in an unfamiliar place. Now I want to turn the Arnold story we started with on its head a little bit. Actually Arnold DID care what people thought about him. A lot. He wouldn't have won the bodybuilding contests if the judges didn't think he was the best. He wouldn't have starred in so many movies if directors didn't like him best, and of course audiences. And he wouldn't have gotten elected California governor if enough people didn't vote for him. The key thing about Arnold and the women on the beach is, he ACCEPTED himself for who he was. He wasn't insecure about THAT. But other people do matter. And to get confidence as a copywriter, you want to be around other people. It could be work in a group. It could be taking seminars. It could be getting a mentor. It's important not to go it alone and to learn from others. That builds confidence too.Download.

With a few years of success under my belt as a copywriter, I started to notice there were two types of clients who were approaching me. The first kind of client was way better at what they did than their marketing indicated. The second kind of client had really exciting marketing that made big, big promises – but their level of quality didn't come close to measuring up. Once I realized this, I made a decision: I would only work with the first kind of client. I could help them because once their marketing caught up to the quality of what they were offering, they would make a lot more money. But I was also determined to stay away from the second type of prospect. I wasn't in the business of improving the quality of what they delivered to the prospect. So the best I could do, if I was successful, would be to increase the level of fraud in their marketing. No thanks. And that brings us to what we're going to talk about today: hype. It was hype in the marketing of the clients I didn't want to work with that pushed me away from them to begin with. But hype remains an ever-present mystery, and problem, for a lot of copywriters and marketers in a lot of situations. In this episode, I'll explain why, and what you can do about it. But first, listen to this: Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. What's hype / what's mistaken for hype but NOT hype / what's simply not hype at all - hype: big claim with no substantiation - not hype, but looks like it: big claim, with inadequate substantiation - simply not hype: usually dry, sterile facts. They are true but they don't sell. Why the hype problem? - you need a BIG CLAIM and EXCITEMENT to sell - both can be either negative or positive Problem #1: When copy's "too mild" - true, you could never be accused of being hypey - the problem is, "mild" copy almost never sells. You need to be aggressive and confident enough to get people convinced to buy from you - so mild copy won't work very well Example: Money-making skill training "Too mild" headline: You'll probably make a little extra money when you learn these skills You're off the hook for overpromising, but, you won't get enough interest or sales with such a tentative attitude. Problem #2: When copy's too "over the top" - This, of course, is hype in it's most toxic form - The problem is, people won't believe it. Or if they do, they'll get disappointed and look for a refund… maybe even seek revenge. And then there's the problem with the regulators, if they see it… Example: Money-making skill training Too "over the top headline" Make an extra million dollars a month – in your spare time! It's very appealing, but you're going to run into all kinds of problems with it. I'm giving very extreme, blatant examples to make the point. Real problems with hype follow the same pattern. And the solution I'm about to lay out works just as well with more everyday hype problems. The Solution: Deeper research plus extended creativity - So, let's say you have the same program we're talking about - You call your 20 best students - 12 of them tell you they have doubled their income in a few months - Six of them say they would give you a testimonial or case study That's the deeper research part. The extended creativity is: brainstorming how you can take that information and put it into your headline. So you come up with nine headlines that don't quite work. Your tenth one is: Many of our students have doubled their income in less than six months. Here's how you can do the same That works. It's bold. It's on the edge – but it's not hype. It's true. You can prove it. More than that, you're not saying the prospect WILL do the same… you're saying they CAN. Because not everyone will. But most people can, if they apply the training. Bottom line on hype: If you take your promise to the MAXIMUM of what's POSSIBLE… and you let your prospect know that not everyone will do this, but if you follow instructions / do the work / use the method correctly, etc., it's possible for the prospect to do that well.Download.

Whenever you look at a bestselling book by a celebrity or a politician, the chances are better than good the so-called "author" didn't actually write it. A ghostwriter did. Good ghostwriters command fees comparable to, and sometimes exceeding, the fees of the best copywriters. One of the main reasons they get paid so well is they have the ultimate "chameleon" skill for a writer – they can write convincingly in someone else's voice. As copywriters, we are often ghostwriters for our clients. How important is the skill of writing in your client's voice for you, as a copywriter? Today we'll talk about that… and… I'll give you some tips on how to do this. Before we get into all of that, a reminder: Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. So let's talk about writing in your client's voice… what it means… where it's important… and how much of it is important in copywriting. Where Writers Must Totally "Speak" In Their Clients' Voices - Speechwriters - Ghostwriters for books - Screenwriters (each major character needs a unique voice) Here, mastery of "voice" is mandatory. Fortunately for copywriters, you don't need to be this skilled in capturing your client's voice. Next Level Down: Webinars A webinar is where the client speaks through an online presentation, usually with slides, to make a pitch. Getting some sense of the client's voice is really important here, because the slides and script (or outline) needs to line up with a reasonable approximation of the way your client talks. If your client is stuck with a script that goes so far away from the way they talk, it won't ring true. And you want it to ring true. Next Level Down: Sales letters, print ads, emails There are a few basics you should cover, which we'll get to in a minute. But remember, in most cases, nobody knows what your client really sounds like. So you need far less developed skills than you would as a speechwriter, a screenwriter, or a ghostwriter for a book. A few words about writing conversationally, period. This is one of the hardest things for most copywriters – really, most writers – to master. Writing in a way that sounds like speaking. Why? How to fix it: - listen at a Starbuck's / transcribe like a secret agent - interview / record / handwrite out the way a person talks - develop an awareness. Which writing reads conversational? Why? Which writing doesn't. Why - Get The Art of Plain Talk by Rudolph Flesch. A lot of used copies are available on Amazon for as little as a few dollars. Read it. Figure out how you can put it into practice. It also looks like you can get a pdf of the book on scribd.com, if you sign up for scribd. - Practice, practice, practice. This should be natural, but the school system and other institutions have beaten our natural ability to write conversationally, out of a lot of us. So the first thing to do in writing in your client's voice is to learn to write like people speak. Any people. You. A "generic" person. By doing the things mentioned. Now, assuming you have some sense of how to write conversationally, here are some tips for - Remember you don't have to sound exactly like your prospect - Here's how you need to reflect how they sound when they talk: - values - their reason-why. Find out why they're doing what they're doing. See how you can include that in your copy. That personalizes the copy a lot without your having to be too precise in the language - still, you want to make it sound as much like them as possible. Again, interview them and transcribe the interview. Take note of o Any pet words or phases o Their overall view of the world o The rhythm of their speech o How emotional, or non-emotional, the way they talk is - No matter what you find, you still want to aim for copy that works. So make sure your final draft has - Clarity - Simplicity - Easy to understand words, sentences (high readability) - And active voice. Tight, muscular writing. Focused on action!Download.

People always ask me, what's the difference between "copy" and "branding." My answer is: There's no difference between copy and good branding. It's copy and bad branding that are so different. Here is why: Good copy is not about you, or your product. Really. It's about the customer. What their life is like right now, and what their life experience will be like once they have your product, or use your service? That's what good copy is about. And good branding is really a condensed description of what your customers experience doing business with you. Your reputation in a catchphrase. Look at it this way. You know what a half-silvered mirror is? Where you can see through one side, but the other side is a mirror. Like you see on the back wall of an interrogation room on a detective show on TV. The bad branders hold the mirror side in front of their own faces. So the customer sees the brander, the marketer. The good branders, and the copywriters, hold the transparent side to their faces and point the mirror side at their market. So customers see themselves when they look back at the mirror. All of this gets back to the topic of today's episode, Including Yourself in Your Copy. As direct marketing copywriters, we have been sternly warned not to write about ourselves in our copy (or, write extensively about our clients when we're writing copy for someone else). That's mostly good advice, but there are some exceptions. I want to dig into what they are and how to use them, today. But first, I want to talk about you… and me… and copy. Like this: Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. Now, let's talk about when to include yourself… when not to… and why. When I say "yourself" here, substitute "your clients" if you're a copywriter writing for a client. When NOT to include yourself - long rants about your life that have nothing to do with what you're selling. Especially bitching and moaning about the injustices of life. This is copywriting, not group therapy via email. - your opinions, on politics, culture, sports, current events, and other external things. Now this can work in a post on your blog or on Facebook, to get people to know you and maybe start a discussion. But it's not going to help you sell anything unless it frames an argument related to what you're selling and your target audience shares the opinions you have that you have expressed in the copy. - information you think will "humanize" the copy, but actually detracts from the sales momentum. Personal info about you that ties into your offer is good – we'll get to that in a minute – but randomly trying to "humanize" your copy by throwing stuff about yourself from out of left field and into your writing is a very bad idea. - a long resume-like recital of all your credentials, degrees, certificates, trainings, and so on. Especially when they don't apply to your offer. You're trying to make a sale, not get a job! When to include yourself - Most important – your relevant credentials (difference between relevant and irrelevant – and why copy is different, say, than a resume or a platform speaker's introduction) - your experience – as it relates to what you're selling. What have you done, seen, learned, that is important as regards the offer you're making? - conversations with other people you have had, regarding your offer Why people want to hear about you (as the product/service provider) - They want to know if they can count on you – if you are trustworthy - They want to know if you know what you're talking about and what your track record is – is what you are selling, something you have competence in? - They want to know if you do your homework. That is, have you really done the study and had the experience to qualify as the expert you claim to be.Download.

Mike Shreeve joins us again to discuss what works (and what doesn't) when it comes to Facebook advertising. Topics covered include: - Could you take a few minutes to describe the Facebook ad landscape, the way most people see it? - What are misconceptions most people have about using Facebook ads? - What are the hard realities about Facebook rules regarding ads that frustrate most advertisers? - You’ve found ways to make Facebook ads work that most people would have considered difficult or impossible. Could you share some secrets? - What are the key points to remember to be successful with a Facebook ad? - What have been some of your biggest wins with Facebook ads? This is just the tip of the iceberg. Tune in to get the whole experience. Download.

Mike Shreeve is the man behind the curtain for a lot of successful people. He joins us this week to discuss how to stop chasing clients, and instead, get them chasing you. Here are just a few of the topics covered in this week's episode. - Could you talk about your own experience getting clients: What you’ve done, what you’ve learned, what you’re doing differently today than you used to? - What are the biggest mistakes copywriters typically make when they try to get clients? - What keeps copywriters happy and keeps clients happy at the same time? - You have a concept for copywriters you call “your superpower.” Could you explain that and give a couple examples? - What are the red flags you’ve discovered that warn a copywriter to stay away from a potential client? - If you could sum up everything we talked about today, what are you most important takeaways?Download.

When I first started writing copy, it looked so easy. I had been an award-winning journalist and had nabbed the San Francisco Bureau Chief job for a large news organization. I thought it would be breeze… but that wasn't how it happened. Not at first. Copy looked very simple and straightforward to me, and, on the surface, a lot like news stories. And I was good at writing those fast! Now, the more I got into writing copy, the more I found differences that weren't obvious to me when I first started writing copy. Today we'll talk about what I kept and what I threw away. Things that don't work and things that do. But first, I need to tell you something about copy. Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. Advantages of journalism - despite current charges "fake news," high historical credibility. Journalists play by the rules, which are unique to journalism. The journalistic process, because it needs to happen so fast, is not 100% accurate. But it's thorough and responsible, most of the time. As a result, most people believe what they read in the paper or see on TV.- advertorial / native advertising: "Borrowed credibility" (Gene Schwartz) – the format lends itself to credibility. 5x more ad readership when in editorial format (Ogilvy)- facts make things believable. Journalists are trained to recognize and separate facts from opinions. This is different from bias. Ben Shapiro, of dailywire.com, yesterday on Joe Rogan: "Something can be true, and biased." Sometimes tricky for readers to separate facts from opinions in the final product. But a good journalist will confirm facts by the rules of journalism, and that makes stories believable. Being believable/believed is every advertiser's problem and what every advertiser wants. (James Webb Young, diary of an ad man). Journalistic techniques you probably shouldn't use in your copy: big picture: except for product reviews, most of what you'll find in a paper or on a website will not be suggesting that the reader do something, like copy does. It will usually be entertainment and information. Sometimes, more entertaining, sometimes more informative. In almost all cases, that doesn't work in copy, because you need to sell, too. Technique not to use: entertaining, silly – from a biz point of view, news stories and features are there to surround the ads in the paper. That's how newspapers make money. Rarely is a news story designed to persuade a reader to take a specific action. Technique not to use: impressionistic writing (a certain amount of mind-reading -- as a copywriter, you need to base what you write onresearch, and solid experience) Journalists have license to do this. It will help make a story more entertaining, but it can backfire on you if you use the same technique in copy. People will be very skeptical if you describe someone in an ad the way a good magazine or newspaper writer does in a Technique not to use: inverted pyramid. Wik: "Communication of major details before minor details." So readers can know all they need to know in the first paragraph. That means they stop reading. Great for informing and entertaining (news) … not so good for copy. A better big-picture model for copywriting is: promise/claim, proof, call to action How journalists work, and how copywriters can borrow their techniques - Interviews - if you're a freelance copywriter, interview the owner/founder/client - the rest are for business owners and copywriters: - team that developed the product - if info-product, interview the expert - interview customers, find out why they bought - note: an interview is much more powerful (and truth-revealing) than a survey- Confirm facts; skepticism - Ugly old saying among journalists: "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." - You have to be diplomatic, not prosecuting attorney/hard-boiled reporter, when investigating. But get to the bottom of things. Not to advertise what's wrong with the product, but to know what you're working with so you don't eventually get yourself/your client in trouble by including untrue things in your copy. - Quote sources. Journalists have "on the record/off the record." Kind of touchy to do "off the record" in copy. But on the record, with a written release, can add tremendous credibility to an ad. Always start with a hook in the lede. That's what journalists are taught to do. And if their lead sucks, their editor will probably kick it back to them, or kill the story altogether. Here are a few leads from recent news stories: Associated Press: CHICAGO (AP) — By extracting Chicago money from a measure all Illinois public schools needed to get state funding this fall, Gov. Bruce Rauner reignited an age-old but divisive political strategy on a new front. Arizona Republic: Joshua Schwabenbauer was only 26 when he died in a tragic boating accident. His organs were donated and gave four people a second chance at life. The woman who received his heart, Adelia Harris, 24, met his family for the first time. TMZ: Romeo Santos not only ripped off a musician's song and released it as his own, but he didn't even bother to change the name ... according to a new lawsuit. Nazim Guity claims he wrote a tune in 2011, titled "Eres Mia," and worked with a music producer and recording studio to mix and record the track ... and copyrighted the song in March 2014. -- Those are interesting ledes. Good for info and entertainment, but not good setups for a sales pitch. Still, notice how they grab attention and will make you want to keep on reading – if you're interested in Illinois politics (first one), if you like uplifting human interest stories (second one), and if you're interested in the music and musicians mentioned in the lede (third one). Zeitgeist / top of mind. Journalists need to keep up to date on the news overall, and will sometimes refer to other things going on as a jumping off point in a story. Example, during the Olympics, a business has record sales. A newspaper could say, "ABC company earned itself a gold medal in June for having the best second quarter in its 14-year history." Well, the business didn't really earn a gold medal. It's a reference to the Olympics, which is on everyone's mind.Let's say you had a green thumb with all the vegetables in your garden at home and you had an info-product for other home gardeners.Someone writing about you could start the copy: "I don't know if they give out gold medals for gardening, but if they did, Nathan Fraser would easily get all of them. And I just found out his ready to share his world-class gardening secrets with the public!" That could be a good lead for a sales piece, and it would tap into the top-of-mind thoughts of the Olympics. Handy technique!Download.

You can improve the persuasiveness of your copy by using hypnotic language. This episode shows you how. About 10 years ago, I took a series of seminars on how to sell from the platform when you're giving a speech. The teacher was good… really good. I decided to try to figure out why he was so good. I asked him, "It sounds to me like you're taking a sales letter and making it horizontal – that is, turning the script of a sales letter into a speech."He agreed with me. But something was bugging me… he was doing more than just dictating sales letters. I realized he was doing something else… he was slipping in hypnotic techniques as he spoke. He certainly didn't invent these techniques, but he was using them in an expert way. Today, we're going to talk about some of those techniques, and other ones, that you can use in your copy. Warning – don't drive or operate heavy machinery. You'll probably be fine – this is not "deep trance" hypnosis. But you might find your mind goes to a different place, so above all, stay safe… And here's another way to stay safe: Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. Hypnotic language for copy is about bypassing the thinking mind partially or entirely and going directly to the unconscious mind, in a way that doesn't disturb the conscious mind and in fact, makes sense to the conscious mind. All of these examples do that. 1. Hypnotic phrases (examples for each) (u/c – causality) - because (Cialdini talks about this, too) Ordinary: You'll really enjoy this new course. Hyp.: You'll really enjoy this course because you'll find it easy to do things that used to be hard for you to do… or, impossible. - and Ordinary: This book gives you a lot of information to help your business. It has changed the lives of millions. Hyp: This book gives you a lot of information to help your business, and it has changed the lives of millions. - which means Ordinary: I've spent decades putting together the best possible system. People who haven't been able to "get it" before can now succeed. Hyp.: I've spent decades putting together the best possible system, which means people who haven't been able to "get it" before can now succeed. - every time Ordinary: Do this regularly and you'll see constant progress. Hyp.: Every time you do this regularly, you'll see constant progress. - when (try the same sentence) Ordinary: Do this regularly and you'll see constant progress. Hyp.: When you do this regularly, you'll see constant progress 2. Hypnotic sentence structure- The more, the more Example: The more you listen to Copywriters Podcast, the more you'll make extra money with your copy.- Reframe: "It's not that ___, it's that __" Example: (this is an old one!) It's not that advertising is a cost… it's that advertising brings more money into your business. - As you_____, you ____ Example: As you study this material, you find your confidence increases exponentially! 3. Two extremely powerful hypnotic techniques - open loops (Zeigarnik effect) Also known in the entertainment industry as a "cliffhanger." Zeigarnik's experiments found that people pay more attention and remember better when you leave them hanging in the middle of a story. Getting attention focused is what hypnosis is really all about. - embedded commandsHam-fisted: You want to buy this book. Embedded command: Depending on how closely you're paying attention, it may turn out that you want to buy this book. Recap: Phrases, sentence structure, techniques. The idea is to engage the unconscious mind in a way that positively influences the prospect's decision to take action. Next time: What I learned in journalism that helps copy – and what I had to unlearn from journalism because it was hurting my copy. Download.

What if you have some copy and you'd like it to convert better? In this episode, David shares some closely-guarded secrets on how the pro's do that. Let's say I could show you a very special slot machine. This one only takes quarters. Every time you put four quarters in, you get five quarters back. Pretty soon, those extra quarters start to add up. Wouldn't you want to play a machine like that all day? Or play two at a time? Or play 10 at a time? Or 100? That's what a good piece of copy does. After the copy is written, you spend, let's say, $1.00 in marketing, and you get $1.25 back in profits. For every letter you mail out. Or every ad dollar you spend. Twenty-five percent ROI. Nice return on your investment. But suppose the slot machine changed. Suppose it started only giving back three quarters for every four quarters you put in. What would you do? Or, suppose instead of getting five quarters back, you wanted to get six back? Or seven? What would you do then? In both cases – turning three quarter back into five quarters, or turning five quarters to six or seven – the solution is the same: Improving the performance of a piece of copy. In this episode, I'll share some little-known secrets for getting more money in for the same money you put out. But first, listen to this: Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. Now … how do you fix a piece of copy that's not performing well enough, and how do you improve copy that's profitable, to make it more profitable? There are three time-tested, proven ways to do that. Adjust… Headline, Offer, Pricing. We'll go over several ways to fix each one. When you get them right, they work like gangbusters. 1. Headline You have your greatest leverage with a headline. Ted Nicholas – reported 17x improvement in response by changing a headline. Don't know which one. Radio show "The only way left for the little guy to get rich." Board lit up. He knew he had a winner. Key is to pay attention and constantly be on the lookout for words, phrases and ideas that get people interested and motivated. I critique 2-4 pieces of copy every week, and the biggest problems I see over and over have to do with weak headlines. The way weak headlines can be fixed will also work to improve performance of copy that's already working, but could work better. FIRST PROBLEM: Giant claims which are not believable and not even relevant to what the marketer is offering prospects Fix: make it believable and relevant to your solution The problem comes when the copywriter does not take the time or do the work to discover what the prospect believes to begin with, and then to figure out what the prospect wants or would like, but is possible… that the prospect believes could be possible. Do that and it becomes a lot easier, and your chance of improving your copy goes way, way up. And if you've got a piece that's working, look at how you can tidy up anything that might make it more believable and more relevant. SECOND PROBLEM: Headline does not even remotely have anything to do with "the conversation going on in the prospect's mind" Fix: tune into the conversation already going on in the prospect's mind, and join it Way too often, people depend on their own imagination by itself, or their own life experience, and make this huge leap to the idea that they have discovered or come up with something other people want to buy. People buy based on what they want and they need, not what you pretend that you know they want or need, or, even worse, what you think they should want or need, but in reality, they don't. Again, this gets back to that one piece of research that too many people haven't done: Who's their prospect, and what's on this person's mind? Now, if you've got a piece that's working, your situation might be a little different. Your headline might miss the conversation going on in your prospect's mind by an inch rather than by a mile, that's a great opportunity to fine-tune and zero-in. Get it exactly right and your response will soar up into the stratosphere. THIRD PROBLEM: Headline is more of a description than a meaningful promise to the prospect. Fix: turn headline into an intriguing promise, that relates to a big problem your prospect has and is aware of, and that you can solve Gene Schwartz in Breakthrough Advertising says it in Chapter 1 of Breakthrough Advertising. You can't put your product in the headline. You have to put something captivating about your product's performance in the headline. Example: Fan – blade / cool breeze Performance is a benefit. A good benefit can also make a good promise, and really pump up your response. The better the benefit, the better the response. FOURTH: Headline is long and rambling when it could be a lot tighter, punchier, and more effective; fix: tighten it up and make it punchier A lot of people look at long headlines and figure you can throw anything up there as long as you fill it with hype and emotion. Actually, that's not true at all. In a headline, every word has to earn its place. You know who I heard that first from? The guy who writes long headlines everyone tries to imitate. John Carlton. Who we had on the show a few episodes ago. But it's almost impossible for most people to imitate Carlton. For one thing, every headline he writes is very customized to a specific situation. For another, if you look at his headlines, you can't take out a word to make it better. Even though it's hard to tell until you really examine his headlines, every word is honed and every headline is as tight, muscular and efficient as can be. Example from a Carlton letter: Why Does This Man Have One Of The Most Dazzling Records On Wall Street? Mysterious Arizona "Human Computer" Humiliates Wall Street "Experts" For 21st Consecutive Year! You can't make it any shorter and I defy you to make it any better! Other ways to boost response Offer: FIRST PROBLEM: No imagination in presenting the offer. No excitement, no romance, no sense of possibilities. Fix: Put more emotion, creativity, context into your offer. Talk about how the prospect's life will be different and better once they have and are using your product. SECOND PROBLEM: The offer's not clear. You don't know what you get. Fix: Rewrite your offer until it's crystal clear THIRD PROBLEM: The offer doesn't highlight attractive differences well enough. Fix: Do more competitive research. Put together a chart if necessary. Point out clearly and vividly why your offer is better. Price: FIRST PROBLEM: Price is too high or too low. Do price testing. A/B splits till you find the most profitable price point. SECOND PROBLEM: Lack of payment plan or payment plan can be improved Gary Halbert story – 30 day delay Guthy Renker – conversion tripled.Download.

Sometimes you'll make more sales when copy is only PART of the picture. This episode is how copy "plays well with others." If you've ever bought a direct mail list, you can get a typical compiled list for as little as 10 cents to 25 cents a name. Sometimes for even less than that. A compiled direct mail list is usually put together from publicly available records. It doesn't tell you anything about the desires or behaviors of the people on the list. For that, you might want a response list. For example, magazine subscribers. Seminar attendees. Product purchasers. Response lists are made up of people who have demonstrated their desires through behavior. That is, they have bought something. And buying is a behavior that shows a desire. The people who sell these lists know that the names are a lot valuable. And so, with a response list, the price can climb steeply. You might pay $1 a name… $5 a name… even $10 a name. But then there's a still higher level of pricing, and that's where you buy qualified leads for prospects who are interested in making high-dollar purchases. For example, here's an interesting fact: 85% of all new salespeople in the insurance industry wash out within two years. It's not necessarily that they're all such terrible salespeople, or even that they all hate selling insurance. It's that it's so hard for most of them to keep getting enough qualified leads to stay profitable. The people who sell qualified insurance leads know this, and you can pay astronomical prices for highly qualified insurance leads from mailing list brokers and lead brokers. Remember we started at 10 cents a name with compiled lists. Insurance leads can run as much as $60 apiece… which is 600 times more than 10 cents! Maybe even more, depending on how qualified the lead is. Why? Because in the right hands, a $60 insurance lead has the potential to create a four-, five- or six-figure commission for the insurance agent. And in very rare cases, a skilled and lucky life insurance agent can make over one million dollars in commissions for selling just one policy to a lead like that! Now, what does all of this have to do with copy? Am I suggesting copywriters go into the business of writing copy that produces highly qualified insurance leads? It's not a bad idea if you can figure out how to do it, but that's not what this episode of the Copywriters Podcast is about. I tell this story – from 10 cents to $60 a name – to make this point: In an insurance sale like I described, the million-dollar commission does not come solely from copy, but the very expensive name is one part of the traditional direct marketing process. And if you use copy to solve a big sales and marketing problem – which may be only one part of the larger sales process, and could be something other than getting qualified leads – you can really boost the bottom line of a business, or, if you negotiate a good deal, make a lot of money for yourself. So, here's the point: You don't always need to use copy to close the entire sale. A lot of people think that's the only way to use copy when you're using copy to sell, but it's not. Today we're going to explore some of the other ways copy helps you get more business, when it's only part of the process. But first, here's some copy many listeners have grown to know and love: Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. Let's start with what copy is good for and typically used for- small price product sale: book, gadget, everything under the sun (Amazon), tickets (stubhub), stuff in your garage that you would like to trade for cash (eBay, the owner of stubhub)- that's a "one step sale," which in the sales world is called a "one call close" - this episode was inspired by a long and spirited thread on Facebook, where I asked about closing high-end sales with copy. Some people adamantly insisted that if the copy was good enough, that was all you needed. I'm not sure how much actual experience they had, though. Most people said copy was part of high end sales, and that live conversations were used after copy generated qualified leads - to be sure, there are people like Frank Kern and Dan Kennedy who can fill $10K seminars with copy alone, and have done so more than once. And there are publications like Forbes and Bloomberg Businessweek that fill high-end conferences and cruises the same way. So it's not impossible. But I would say it's the exception more than the rule. When copy makes more sense as part of the sale - My $5000 Breakthrough Copywriting Seminar in Las Vegas. We had to talk to almost every person after they had read the sales letter. In the FB post, a lot of people reported similar experiences. Since the hardest part of marketing a high-end event is often generating a hot lead, this is a very workable situation. - Where people have to see what they're buying. You can use copy to generate leads for residential real estate. I'm sure it's possible in some cases to close the sale with pictures and sight unseen (in person), but usually a homebuyer wants to walk through the house and see the neighborhood before they buy. - With a personal service like coaching. Only mentoring one client in recent memory signed up without talking to me, and that was because of a referral from a very trusted source. Generally they want to talk with me first, after they've been to my website and filled out the application form. And I want to talk to them, too. There's some personal chemistry that's necessary to make that kind of service work. - With something like a job application. You don't usually want to hire someone just because of a résumé, which can be seen, and used as, a form of copy. You want to talk to them first. Nor do you usually want to accept a job without talking to the employer, even though with good copy an employer can "close the sale" and make someone want to apply and work for a company. People need to talk to each other most of the time in a situation like that. How to look at copy differently - Copy is leverage. The old phrase is "salesmanship multiplied." That can be insulting to women and in some businesses, women do a better job selling than men do, so it can also be an inaccurate phrase. Now if you look at copy as a sales presentation multiplied, the idea is this: You can do more, more quickly, more effectively, and at a lower cost per sale, with copy, in many cases. - So let's take the whole sales process for one product or one service and break the sales process down into connected pieces. 1) There's lead generation. 2) There's building trust and conviction. 3) There's closing the sale. 4) There's dealing with buyer's remorse. 5) There's getting referrals. 6) There's getting repeat business. And 7) in continuity, there's keeping your customer month after month. - You can use copy for any one of those seven pieces of the complete sales process. Or more than one piece, without using copy for every piece of the complete sales process. - A lot of it depends on where testing and experience shows you need human interaction. Two examples with my clients 1) Abacus. All I did with my $40 million letter was generate leads. But that was all they needed. They were brilliant at everything else. But they were at their wit's end trying to generate leads. 2) MLM training company. They did the launch. That wasn't too hard. They hired me to do the back end, an expensive mentoring program. Letter took a long time. Over $1 million in sales in a couple days. If the server hadn't melted down, it would have been more. Advice If you can sell it all with copy – do it! If you need human interaction, test and tweak to figure out what pieces of the complete sales process need human interaction, and which pieces can be leveraged and scaled up with copy.Download.

How do you create a Big Idea? Remember what Steve Jobs said about saying no to 100 good ideas before you say yes to the thing you've got to focus on? That means you've got to come up with some good ideas first- You don't necessarily need 100, but "you've got to turn over a lot of rocks" to find what you're looking for. - The key thing is going through the process of coming up with great ideas, not skipping steps, not rushing. And not stopping just because you've come up with one. Or two. Or three. This involves research. A lot of it. First, within your field – about the product, competitor's products and marketing, customer comments on Amazon and other online review sites. Napoleon Hill – synthetic creativity vs. original creativity. Synthetic OK. Then there's research outside of your field. Sometimes related, sometimes totally off the wall.- For example, these factoids from July-August 2017 Playboy magazine: According to a survey, 28% of Millennials say having sex with a new person is a good way to figure out if you're in love with them. The same survey found that 57% of Millennials say they're lonely. Playboy asks – could the second statistic have anything to do with the first one? – Idea: could you use these stats to create a Big Idea to sell relationship counseling? More tidbits from Playboy: The following are from TSA's list of Top 10 strangest items found at security checkpoints at the airport: A baseball hat wrapped in barbed wire Dead sea horses A life-size zombie (actually, a movie prop) -- Idea: could you use this to sell seats on private jets? And finally, this factoid from Playboy: 8% of Americans think it's OK to take a selfie at a funeral! -- I don't know what you could use that to sell. Maybe some of our more creative listeners will have an idea! But on a less bizarre note, you can research sales letters and other marketing materials in markets different than yours… you can read books that have nothing to do with your market, maybe even nothing to do directly with business… you can really get ideas from anywhere, once you know what you're looking for. (reticular activating system) a diffuse network of nerve pathways in the brainstem connecting the spinal cord, cerebrum, and cerebellum, and mediating the overall level of consciousness. (like a search engine for your awareness) -- example – My own reticular activating system was tuned to explanations about creativity when I was putting together this podcast – Jordan Peterson island example – otherwise, would have slipped right on by… - Finally, a resource that can get you on the path to developing unique creative advertising ideas: "A Technique for Producing Ideas" by James Webb YoungDownload.

Some copy ideas change history. They're called "Big Ideas," and that's what today's show is about. He and his team pretty much redefined the music industry, the face of personal computing, and the way we use our phones. I'm talking about Steve Jobs, of course. In 2009, Fortune magazine said, "the past decade in business belongs to Jobs." In 2017, Recode, a tech website, said, "No single device will have as much impact as the iPhone in the next 10 years." But I don't want to talk about technology or business right now. I want to talk about creativity, and not just any kind of creativity. I want to talk about that holy grail of product design and marketing and also copywriting, called the Big Idea. Steve Jobs came up with a few Big Ideas that pretty much changed the course of history on planet Earth. Forever. Here's what Karen Blumenthal, a Wall Street Journal reporter and author of "Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different," wrote about him in her book: "Jobs attributed at least some of the success to the company's intense process of elimination, which meant rejecting far more things than it accepted. " ‘People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on,' he said. ‘But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the one hundred good ideas there are. You have to pick carefully.'" If Steve Jobs left a legacy to the world's future creators of Big Ideas, those 39 words are it. They're worth saying again: " ‘People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on,' Steve Jobs said. ‘But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the one hundred good ideas there are. You have to pick carefully.'" Today's episode is about Big Ideas in copywriting – what they are, and how to come up with them. Now, here's a big idea for you before we get started: Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. Alright. Let's continue. In copy, what is a Big Idea? - A big idea is something new… important… and creative. That is used in copy to sell something. First, about creativity and creative people. explanation from Jordan Peterson: creative people (artists, entrepreneurs) at the shore of an island. Can see what others can't. Now Peterson points out that while the artists are often productive, they're not making much money in many cases. Sometimes they're broke. That's because either they are so far ahead of the times that they are producing what the market does not yet want… or they're producing things that the market will never want… or, they're not skilled at marketing and selling what they have, if it is something the market would want if they knew about it and had it sold to them in an appealing way.So let's look at this same scenario as it applies to copywriters. An experienced and skilled copywriter can stand at the water's edge and get a sense of what's next in the culture, in the marketplace, and come up with a creative idea that can boost sales big time for a product.Important: The new idea is not the copywriter making up a brand new desire in the marketplace that he or she came up with in some brilliant flash of random creativity. The product the copywriter will be selling is still based on existing, predictable, and largely unchanging desires of the market. What's new is the way the copywriter came up with to get a prospect's interest and to sell the product that already taps into existing desires. That said… - A Big Idea is a concept, maybe a headline, maybe something else, that's so fresh and original it can redefine an industry, or start a new one, by itself- Gene Schwartz talks about this in the introduction to "Breakthrough Advertising: copy that opens up "an entirely new market for an existing product (example: imagine you came up with a pitch to sell Segways to golfers, that they could use instead of golf carts. There are about 25 million golfers just in the U.S. So that would be a Big Idea… )… or copy that gives an old product a brand new slant (example: bring back fax machines as a way to foil hackers)… or copy that provides a competitively-battered product a new weapon—not only to protect itself against its imitators but actually damage or destroy the loyalty of the competitors' following." (example: a Big Idea to make the Blackberry only smartphone people wanted to buy) - So again, and this is crucial, notice a Big Idea is not necessarily about coming up with a new product idea. It's more about coming up with a breakthrough copywriting idea… whether the product is brand new or well established. A Big Idea can also be something that dominates an industry. A real example: - Wall Street Journal "Two Young Men" letter. Story – college reunion; classmates – one was CEO, one was department manager at the same company who worked for the CEO. Difference: CEO read the Wall Street Journal. I don't know of any other publication that sent out a sales letter implying you would become a CEO if you subscribed."Two Young Men" highest sales of any tracked ad known: $2 billion A Big Idea can turn a niche product into a mass-market product. Another real example: -Stansberry and Associates – investment newsletter firm in Baltimore - Copywriter Mike Palmer: End of America - Idea… economic trends that would remove the US dollar as the world reserve currency – the yardstick against which every other country's currency was measured – and cause economic disaster in the US - Was used to sell a newsletter, which was about other financial topics - I used to hear it on satellite radio – a commercial for the video sales letter. Was talking to a mentoring client about this recently. He remembered the same thing. - Obviously, The End of America was a Big Idea that became a HUGE hit for Stansberry. Download.

A blockbuster Hollywood movie can make hundreds of millions of dollars in a matter of weeks. Here's how you can cash in on one of its major secrets in your copy. Nearly 20 years ago, I used to hang out with my friend John Cantu. We would meet once a month at Mel's Diner on Geary Boulevard in San Francisco's Richmond District, and we'd talk about all sorts of things. Before Cantu and I ever met, he was co-producer of a comedy club that had been located just a few blocks away from Mel's. The club was called "The Holy City Zoo." Many great comedians got their start there, including Margaret Cho, Dana Carvey, Will Durst, Paula Poundstone, and most notably, the late, great Robin Williams. Cantu had a great line about him: "Robin would work anywhere you could imagine. He'd show up for the opening of an envelope." One day Cantu and I decided to crack the code of great storytelling. I'm not sure we ever did, completely. But one thing we figured out is that movies are entertaining especially because there are so many people in the story. We went on to coach speakers with this discovery, and even did a special presentation on this subject for the local chapter of the National Speakers Association, along with our friend, the great motivational speaker Patricia Fripp. Unfortunately, Cantu passed away in 2003. But he lives on in my memories… and I think our discovery offers a lot to copywriters, too. That is, when you put people in your copy, it comes alive and holds interest. Yes, what works is different than what works in a screenplay or in a speech. We'll talk about boosting interest and getting prospects engaged in your copy, by the artful use of including people in your copy, in this episode. But first, in case you've never heard this before: Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. Now, about people in your copy… Let's reach back a few minutes… that story I told you about Cantu. It's inherently interesting because it's about show business and celebrities… but did you count all the people in that story? Besides me and Cantu, there were five other people in the story: Patricia Fripp, Margaret Cho, Dana Carvey, Paula Poundstone, and of course the unforgettable Robin Williams. It was only a two-minute story… seven people. Of course four of them are famous, if you know comedy. And a fifth one if you know professional speaking. But let me tell you another story that's mostly about everyday people. I went to the bank Tuesday morning. When I got to the window, Jasmine the teller was very excited. You see, the Warriors had just won the NBA championship the night before, and they're our hometown team. She told me in great detail about watching the game with her brother, who was a Cavs fan, because he likes LeBron James. Even though his team lost, she told me, he went out to party. He asked her to go, but, she had work the next day (which was the day we were talking). She told him she needed to get sleep and she couldn't do her job very well if she was hung over. So he went out by himself. OK, there's a story. Four people in two paragraphs. Me, Jasmine, Jasmin's brother, and of course the great Labron. Don't you think this story's just a lot more interesting than, "I went to the bank on Tuesday and I had a nice conversation with the teller." This is important because, that was out of real life. That's how people talk all the time. What they talk about isn't always that interesting by itself, but it becomes more interesting when they populate their stories with other people. And the same is true with your copy. Let's start at square one. The best copy is from one person to one other person – the prospect. A lot of people make the mistake of trying to be too "businesslike" by not writing personally. Big mistake. • reveal enough about yourself A lot of people make the mistake of trying to be too "businesslike" by not writing personally. Big mistake. • write to your prospect like you know something about them, like you know what's important to them and it's important to you, too – and write in a conversational way. • "businesslike" is more formal and aloof. Not good for copy. • you don't need to overdo it. A few personal details that are meaningful to the prospect will do the trick. Another place to include people is a testimonial, or a case study. • At the very least, use names and a location. • And where it fits, an occupation. By the way, "Mom" and "homemaker" are just as much occupations you can use as "CEO" or "chiropractor" – and just as important. We're not talking about conventional social status here. We're talking about your prospect identifying with the person giving the testimonial. • Testimonials typically talk about results that people get from products or services – or, their experience using those products or services. Take it one step further by talking about how the results or experiences fit into the bigger picture of their lives. It doesn't have to be elaborate or detailed. Just meaningful and believable. And, by the way, true. And agreed to by the person giving the testimonial. Example: (not as good) "David's critique gave us tweaks that improved our conversion rates substantially. We're getting a better bang for our advertising buck." - J.E. (better) "David's critique gave us tweaks that improved our conversion by 27%. We're getting a better bang for our advertising buck. I sleep better knowing the advertising pays for itself, and then some." - Jared Excellentus, Topical Life Tips, LLC Now, let's get a little more sophisticated: What others will think of you. - Victor Scwab in How to Write a Good Advertisement: "BOY PT MOM" – "Because of You, People Think More Of Me." - One great desire wired into our neurology – the desire to improve status. - Perfect example is the famous Wall Street Journal letter, the two young men story. The young man who started out reading the Journal ends up as the CEO of the company. The guy who didn't ends up working for the guy who did. And, along the same lines, how what you sell will not only affect the prospect, but also affect others. - Say you've got a self-defense course. - Always START with self-interest: It helps the prospect protect himself or herself - Next level: It also helps you protect your family - Next next level: You can help them learn to protect themselves when you're not with them - By the way, this is a key piece of the end of the Hero's Journey. The hero returns to society with valuable wisdom, and shares it with the community. Finally, why do people and personality matter so much in your copy? - We live in a world of other people, not products and services - Your prospects aren't inherently interested in products and services - They're interested in benefits – which, really, are how a product or service will affect them, as a person, and how the product or service will affect them in the context of other people - Bringing people and personality into your copy makes your copy more meaningful… and makes what you talk about come across as more realDownload.

One of the biggest keys to improving conversions with your copy is getting inside your prospect’s head. This episode reveals proven methods to do so. When I held my Breakthrough Copywriting Seminar in 2005, one of my special guests had everyone there on the edge of their seats. It was Brian Keith Voiles. He told us how he got into his prospect’s heads. I was stunned myself by the thoroughness of what Brian told us. He said he imagined his prospect (let’s say it was a male) at the start of his day. What did he have for breakfast? What was the conversation he had with his family around the breakfast table? Then Brian walked us through the whole day, hour-by-hour. Remember, this was all in Brian’s imagination! By the time he got to the end of his prospect’s day, it was clear that Brian knew this person pretty well! Now I don’t think Brian was holding back one bit. But I do think that there were some steps for him that were so automatic – or so “already built in” based on his years of experience and writing of multiple multi-million-dollar sales letters – that he didn’t even think to mention them. Steps that came before he would mentally walk through his prospect’s day. Today we’ll talk about what some of those steps might be. I’ve never talked to Brian about this part of his own process, but I have gone through them many times myself, and coached dozens of other people on steps they needed to take to get deep inside the thoughts and feelings of their prospects. First, though, my friendly reminder: Copy is powerful. You’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you’re writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. Now, onto the mind-reading. It’s not really mind-reading, by the way. You don’t have to be a psychic to get into the inner world of your prospect. You simply need to understand human nature, and then apply this understanding to your particular target customer in light of what you have to offer. • Zero-in on the problem your prospect has, that your offer can solve, and the frustrations your prospect experiences in trying to solve this problem. - We think in generalities, but we live life in specifics - Example: Business owner looks for ROI and higher profit margins. But what they think about, as a problem, is: - the results of not having enough cash flow or margins that are not big enough. Can’t make payroll. Can’t pay taxes. Can’t pay vendors. Can’t take home a paycheck themselves. - or, the results of what it would be like to have more cash flow and higher margins. A bigger personal paycheck. Hiring more people. Buying better equipment. Taking a vacation. Getting a cool new car. - To get into your prospect’s head, you need to drill down from categories, clichés and generalities - The specifics are what resonate and what generate emotions. - This is where you need to know something about your prospect’s life and their issues. - But understand, people are remarkably similar in general. They want to get certain things done, or have things done for them, and there are specific things in the way. Your job is to figure out: What’s in the way? • Understand it’s the unconscious mind that generates the feelings that are reactions to this problem – but the conscious mind is where the feelings get put into the words that create your opportunity to get into your prospect’s head. - Forget about “logic” and the word “should.” That’s not how the unconscious mind operates. - It’s seemingly much simpler, but it’s not stupid. This could be a LONG conversation but we’d go off on a tangent. - For our purposes, let’s say the unconscious mind is very specific, but it speaks a different language. Call that language “emotions” and “feelings” - Look at it this way. Any time you feel happy or sad, angry or confident, thrilled or disappointed, that’s your unconscious mind talking to you. - Know (or imagining) the feelings of your prospect is one step. But you still need to home in on what those feelings mean to your prospect. • Use research to confirm and hone your understanding of what’s going on in your prospect’s mind. - Let’s say you’ve got an info-product on alternative cures for arthritis. You’ve thought about the initial problems, which are joint pain and discomfort in moving the body in certain ways. Then you take it to the emotions – how does the prospect feel when they try to do this, try to do that? What can’t they do now that they could do if the arthritis pain disappeared? How are they frustrated with other solutions. - You feel pretty confident about what you’ve come up with. Now’s the time to be like a journalist or a detective and confirm what you’ve come up with. - You can do this by: talking to people… eavesdropping on conversations where people complain about their arthritis… reading reviews and comments on books about curing arthritis… talking to people, like MD’s and chiropractors, who treat people with arthritis… and getting any other real-world information about what people say, think, or feel. - Your research results will let you keep, or force you to throw away, what you speculated about up until now. What your prospects actually think, feel, and say is the final authority on what’s going on in their minds. - When you’ve finally come up with verified information, you’re on the right track to getting inside your prospect’s head. • Realize the more your prospect feels understood about what he or she is feeling and thinking, the more receptive your prospect will be to learning about your offer, and, to buying. - The wisdom from the Bible, “The truth will set you free,” is important, but in copy, it’s only the first step. The keyword here is “free.” While the truth as your prospect experiences it is vitally important, it’s not enough. You have to win your prospect’s confidence. - Don’t simply beat your prospect over the head with what you have discovered. - You need to show some empathy. For the prospect to be receptive to your offer, you have to show concern and caring for what is true for the prospect. - Old saying in sales I learned from interviewing Harvey Mackay: “People don’t care what you know until they know that you care.” - You don’t need to go overboard here. You need to simply acknowledge that this is a problem for them and not make them feel like you are judging or blaming them – or, that you are being simply objective, like a computer spitting out facts. - Make them feel like you are on their side. Don’t be shy. Make it a genuine human communication. • At the end of the day, it’s the words you use that resonate most with your prospect that will determine how effective your copy is. But for this to work, there needs to be a lot of smart psychology behind the words you use. - Simplicity is the key. But don’t confuse simplicity with simple-mindedness. - You need to use a thoughtful process to take the complexity of a person’s life and experiences and boil it down to a simple way to express it, that rings true with your prospect. - That’s why this process is so important. Notice you’re going between your own human imagination and specific research to get to the right words and knowledge behind the words. - The steps again are: 1. Zero in on the problem your prospect has, and how that problem affects their life. 2. Understand the difference between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. Unconscious mind generates feelings; conscious mind generates words to describe those feelings. 3. Use research to confirm what you suspect is going on in your prospect’s mind. 4. Make your prospect realize you understand how they are feeling, and that you care about that. 5. Choose the words that accurately describe what your prospect is feeling and thinking, and make those choices based on the four steps I’ve just laid out for you.Download.

This episode covers eight reasons people buy. You’ll get an example with the same product so you can see how to apply any one of these reasons in your own copy. When I first started writing copy, I was overwhelmed with all the differences from what I had known and done before. As a journalist, there was a certain set of rules and a format to follow. Copy seemed to turn everything on its head. I was trained as an old-school journalist. Back in the day, journalists were supposed to be objective, keep themselves out of what they wrote, and give equal weight to “both sides of the story.” Of course that was a goal more than a reality. After all, some stories have more than two sides to them. But most of us really strived to be objective, impartial, and fair. I know I did. I wasn’t entirely happy with that model, because I liked to get behind things I believed in, and writing copy gave me a way to do that. One of my biggest questions when I got started was, “How to you get people to buy things?” It took me many years, but I have finally boiled it down to eight reasons. It started out as seven, so now I call it “The seven reasons people buy, plus one more.” Knowing this made writing copy a whole lot easier for me. I’m going to share my seven plus one reasons today and I hope it make things a lot easier for you, too. Now, Nathan: I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it right now: Copy is powerful. You’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you’re writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. OK, so, to the topic at hand. First of all, let me give you the big picture, and then we’ll drill down to each reason. I’m also going to invent an imaginary product to sell, and show how to use each of these reasons to sell it. And, I’ll give you a little commentary on each one. The seven reasons people buy are: 1. Make money 2. Save money 3. Save time 4. Save effort 5. Reduce pain 6. Increase pleasure 7. Improve health And number eight is: Increase prestige. Now, for the imaginary product: It’s a magic pen. This pen is magical because it allows you to write the best copy faster and more easily than anything you’ve ever experienced before. We’ll just call it “the magic pen” in this episode. Wow… I can hear the orders coming in already and we haven’t even finished our prototype of the product yet! Of course you can build you own magic pen by learning to write copy… and this episode is about a major part of that, learning the reasons people buy about 95% of the time… so let’s get into them. 1. The first reason – make money You can make more money with this pen than you can with any other writing implement. And you’ll make more money per word writing direct response advertising copy than you can writing anything else – except ransom notes. Comments: - specific - you’ll need to prove the claim; people are VERY skeptical about money-making claims, and reasonably so. - more for b2b offers than b2c. But really just about the only primary driver in bizop and financial copywriting 2. The second reason – save money With the magic pen, you’ll never have to spend $5000 - $10,000 – even $50,000 – on an expensive copywriter again. With this pen, you can create all the high-performing copy yourself. Comments: - show how - don’t expect them to figure out the savings, walk them through ’em - people love to save money. Rich people seem to love it even more than people without a lot of money to begin with. 3. The third reason – save time Copy takes far too long to write. Now, with the magic pen, you can write great, profitable copy in practically no time flat! - nobody seems to have enough time in their life. Saving time is an increasingly powerful appeal - when you make this claim, people will be skeptical until you prove it - if you can prove it, this is a very powerful appeal 4. The fourth reason – save effort Do you struggle writing copy? Say goodbye to struggle with the magic pen. This is the easiest way to write copy you’ve ever seen! - ref: laziness headlines. Even hardworking people like easier solutions - show how your product, or service, makes it easier for someone - testimonials, time measurements, before/after comparisons 5. The fifth reason - reduce pain Does the prospect of writing copy make you anxious or give you a headache? Does writing copy with an ordinary pen give you hand cramps? Forget about those problems with the magic pen. It’s the most painless way known to humankind to write copy. Everyone who has tried it says it doesn’t hurt at all! - you need to know what their pains are - the appeal promises to eliminate those specific pains - as with all of these appeals, you need to show how and to prove it 6. The sixth reason - increase pleasure What if writing copy was actually fun? Most people can’t imagine this possibility, but with the magic pen, writing copy might end up being the highlight of your day! - as you can see from this example, it’s pretty hard to sell something as increasing pleasure if the initial activity or experience isn’t pleasurable to start with - but there’s a difference between hard and impossible - if you use this with something that’s not pleasurable to begin with, be sure to acknowledge that the prospect (probably) didn’t think this could even be pleasurable 7. The seventh reason - improve health Research is increasingly showing that stress is seriously dangerous for your health. And writing copy causes most people stress. But now, with the magic pen, you’ll not only get rid of stress hormones when you write. You’ll also increase the flow of hormones that make you feel healthier. - this one was a pretty big stretch - if it’s not a health-related product, you need to come up with a pretty good argument - I’m not sure I’d use this as my main appeal, but it could “add fuel to the fire” in an actual promo for the magic pen Now let’s get to the eighth one, which, candidly, I developed later after I had my list of seven. It answers the question: Why do people spend $100,000 on a Rolex? Why do people buy a car for $250,000 when you can even get a very nice luxury car for $50,000 or $60,000, and a good, safe, serviceable car for a lot less than that? The answer is: Prestige. It gives you status. Used correctly, something like this can get others to admire and respect you. So… 8. The eight reason: Increase prestige When people find out you’re a writer AND they see how well you’re doing in business, they will respect you as one of the very rare and successful. You can have all that and more with the magic pen. - here, you need to get into the prospect’s world - prestige is usually/almost always about what others think - you need to figure out what your product or service will do to make a good impression on others Review: 1. Make money 2. Save money 3. Save time 4. Save effort 5. Reduce pain 6. Increase pleasure 7. Improve health 8. Increase prestigeDownload.

My all-time biggest hit was a direct mail sales letter for Abacus Travel Management that generated $40 million in new business. I wrote this pretty early in my career as a copywriter… over 20 years ago. One of the biggest challenges I had was getting into the way of thinking that ran through my prospect’s minds. My prospect was an entrepreneur who had a successful company and bought a lot of travel. I had never met anyone like that before, so it took a lot of research and a lot of mental effort before I could zero-in on who this person was. What I found out was, because they were so successful, nobody would cut them any slack. Everyone assumed the successful entrepreneur had no problems, since it seemed like they had endless amounts of money and other people did all the work. The reality, of course, was quite different – these people worked harder than anyone else at their company. And what good was money if you didn’t have any time to enjoy it? So eventually I came up with the perfect headline. The idea was, here you are, you overworked entrepreneur who everyone wants something from. How would you like to get a first-class vacation at rock-bottom prices? The reason we, Abacus Travel Management, are offering this to you, is so we can give you a little sample of what we could do for all your business travel. Not just you, but everyone in your company. Prospects loved it. Abacus had to stop mailing the letter after a few weeks because they couldn’t keep up with the appointments! The funny thing was, nobody actually took Abacus up on the vacation offer… but, a lot of people hired Abacus for their companies. Here’s what’s important about that true story: A big part of the success of that letter was that I was able to get in the prospect’s way of thinking. I made them feel understood and cared about. That in itself was rare enough in their world so that they would ask for a meeting… and my client was able to take it from there and close sales. And that is how valuable getting into your prospect’s way of thinking can be. In this case, it was worth $40 million. Now, looking back nearly 25 years, I know that I was not unusual in having a hard time getting into my prospect’s way of thinking. I know this because even the most talented copywriters I coach often have problems with this at first. It’s not something they teach in school, you know. In fact I don’t know anyone who teaches a system for how to do this effectively. Today I’m going to share some steps with you on how to do this. It will make your work a lot easier and your copy a lot more profitable. But first, I want to remind you of something: Copy is powerful. You’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you’re writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. OK, now, here are some tips on how to get into your prospect’s way of thinking: • Everyone talks about getting into “the conversation already going on in your prospect’s mind.” That’s right. But how do you do it? It’s not guesswork or magical intuition. After we go through these steps, you’ll have a basis for doing so. But you’ve got to take the steps to have any hope of accuracy. • Remember how I said I didn’t know any people like my prospects. I do now… maybe in some ways I’m one of those people… but, the important point here is, I didn’t then. So I had to find out about them. That brings us to a really important point for most marketers and copywriters: Realize that you are NOT your prospect. That means it’s incumbent upon you to find out who is. Now some steps: • Start by finding out what PROBLEMS and FURSTRATIONS are causing their problems. Remember how I said these recently successful entrepreneurs got no sympathy from anyone, because almost everyone thought they had no problems? That in itself was a problem. And of course it’s bullshit to think anyone in the world doesn’t have problems, everyone does. Key point here: Knowing the problems they have is good, but it’s only half of this step. Problems lead to frustrations… obstacles. What gets in their way as a result of these problems. Just knowing a full answer to these questions alone will get you in much better shape for getting into your prospect’s way of thinking. • Now ask: What are their values? People have different values. You need to respect their values to sell to them, even if you disagree with them. (My experience with mlm folks and the $1million one day launch.) • Ask: What are they afraid of? Even the bravest and also the most stoic people have fears. True, people like that deal with their fears differently. It’s true that there’s a small minority of people have no fears, but they are almost certainly not your prospects! See if you can figure out logically what these people would most likely have fears about, especially in relation to your offer or set of offers. • A little friendly advice: If you have an idealized view of how humanity should be, then take note of that and set it aside. A lot of people with strong political, religious, and non-religious spiritual beliefs have this kind of view. You don’t have to abandon what you believe, but it’s really important to sell to people where they are, emotionally and experientially. Be a curious researcher, not a proud idealist, when you’re doing this part of your work as a copywriter. • Now we can get to it: “The conversation already going on in your prospect’s mind.” Once you have a sense of how they live their lives, what their values are, what they’re afraid of, what they really want – and, especially, what their problems are and what frustrations that leads to – then you have the building blocks for that conversation. Three Research Tips To Find All Of This Out • TALK TO PEOPLE IN THE MARKET - don’t argue. Be curious. Seek out their opinions and respectfully appreciate what they say. Even if you can’t stand what they’re saying. Because they’re handing you GOLD. • READ UP - Look at reviews on Amazon. Look especially for strongly held opinions and complaints. If you see versions of the same thing more than a few times, that’s a good sign it’s a widespread feeling in your marketing place. • Look at successful copy from others in your marketplace. Don’t steal it. Instead, see how you can figure out what values, fears and desires this copy is appealing to. You’ll want to appeal to the same thing. Download.

A friend of mine had an old Fender Stratocaster guitar he wanted to sell. He put up an ad on Craigslist. The price was good and he got five people to come by and look at it. Most of the people liked the way the guitar played, but they all kind of hesitated and nobody bought. He asked me what was wrong. I looked at the guitar. It was clean enough and it had new strings. It sounded good, but it looked kind of dull. “Get something to polish it up with,” I said. “Then raise the price $100, and you’ll sell it.” My friend said he wasn’t that much “into appearances.” But he was so frustrated that he followed my advice anyway. And, guess what? It worked. The first person who came by from the new listing looked at the guitar… played it for five minutes… pulled the exact amount of cash out of his pocket… and walked out the door with my friend’s old guitar. My friend smiled. After the buyer left with the guitar, he admitted he was dumfounded. How could one coat of polish make such a difference? As it turns out, the same thing is true with your copy. Turning it in to a client when it’s rough and “almost good enough” does not usually work out very well. Or, if the copy is for your own product or service, showing your prospects sloppy copy will hurt your sales results. So, this episode is about polishing your copy once it’s written. Not with Fender Guitar Polish, but with a series of simple techniques and steps to make it shine… and sell. Today we’ll talk about 10 ways to polish up your copy for maximum engagement and sales. And before we get into these 10 ways, a quick announcement: Copy is powerful. You’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you’re writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. OK, now, on with these 10 ways to polish your copy: 1. Get your spelling and grammar correct… and your punctuation, too. - Microsoft Word tool: “Spelling and grammar” under “tools” - A review will make punctuation suggestions - But the bottom line is, you’ll need to learn the rules yourself, or get a good editor who won’t mess up your copy but will fix the errors. 2. Use only one idea per sentence. - A lot of good writers will put more than one idea in a sentence at first - You need to edit ruthlessly - Either break up the sentence into two or more sentences, or choose one idea and get rid of the other or others. 3. Tighten things up. - Find the extra words you don’t need and take them out. - Especially, unneeded adjectives and adverbs, and the word “that” - Good copy moves at a pace. Extra words slow it down. 4. Cut out the boring stuff. - Famous movie director Alfred Hitchcock: “Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.” - Same with copy. The excitement and momentum come in large part from lean writing - Focus on the human elements (emotions, experience, how things affect people’s lives) and minimize the technical elements that only geeks care about. Even if you are a geek and/or are selling to geeks! 5. Read it out loud. Notice especially if you are keeping the momentum going and the excitement building. - Good copy is conversational - One of the hardest things to do is to learn to write truly conversationally - A great way to get closer to that is to read it out loud. If you stumble or it comes across as awkward, 6. Change passive sentences to active sentences. - Passive sentence: “The ball was thrown.” Or “The ball was thrown by him.” - Active sentence: He threw the ball. - Key: use of a form of the verb “to be” before the main verb. Was, were, is, will be. 7. Wherever and whenever you can, use visual and/or visceral and/or emotional language. - We experience life through our feelings and what we see. - You may have to learn what these kinds of words and descriptions are, if you’re not already familiar. - Notice in other copy. Also, The National Enquirer. Also, good fiction. 8. Build and maintain a chain of logic. - Logical thinking is not natural. It’s something need to learn. - A clean logical flow is invisible in your copy. Everything just seems to pull together. - The most important thing I can tell you is start with a strong promise you can prove and deliver on, and make sure everything in your copy flows from that and is related to it in one way or another. 9. Keep your copy focused on: your prospect… your offer… and selling your offer. - It’s easy to get off track. Rein yourself back in when you’re polishing your copy. - Think: What do my prospects need to see and hear to know this is about them, that you are for real and can be trusted, and that this is an appealing offer - Take out any tangents that are “interesting” but not relevant to your prospect, your offer, or selling your offer. 10. Make sure your close is clear… and strong. - Tell your prospect how to buy in clear, simple language. - Don’t be shy. - Make it as impossible to screw up as you can. -- If you can’t do all of these, do as many as you can. Your copy will still be a lot better than if you didn’t do any at all. The same thing applies to how well you do the ones you do. The better you do them, the better your copy will be. But if you do the best you can, your copy will be a lot better than if you skipped the “polish” step altogether.Download.

Looking for some tips on how to get over the blank page blues? We've got you covered. This week's episode is all about how to get started when you're in a slump. I used to take a lot of road trips, especially when I was in college. 500 miles from Ann Arbor, Michigan to Rockville MD. Back in the day, the length of this trip home was never a problem for me. But getting ready to go was. I was a worry-wart. Did I have everything packed? Was my tank full? Did I have enough food and coffee for the trip? Then one day I made three important discoveries: - Gas stations - Restaurants on the turnpikes - And stores near home in case I forgot something. With those discoveries, hey – getting ready was a LOT easier, and I knew in 8 to 10 hours of drive time, I’d be back home. Writing copy is a lot like that. You need to prepare, but the need to over-prepare can get in the way of you getting started. And if you find you’re missing something while you’re writing, you can always take a break and get what you need. Today we’re going to talk about getting started. This is one of the hardest parts for most people when they’re writing copy. We’ll cover some things you can do beforehand, and three ways to actually start to get words down on the page. Also, I will share with you some tricks the pro’s use when they get stuck, to keep on track. But before we get started, a reminder to our listeners: Copy is powerful. You’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you’re writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. OK, that’s good to know. Now let’s get right into the belly of the beast – getting started writing your copy! Preparation Before you start writing, you need to have done some research. The reason for that is, if you haven’t done research, it will be harder to write anything, and what you will be writing will be off the top of your head. That’s bad for a lot of reasons. So let me tell you about the minimum and the maximum research you should do: - Minimum: product / how it works / what its strengths and advantages are. How it was developed. What makes it unique. What would make it appealing for others to buy. Other kinds of research: The sales letter might work just with product research, but it will work a lot better if you do customer research. Who is your customer; what is their biggest problem that you can solve; how do they talk about the problem. And the icing on the cake with research: Competitor research. What else will customers be looking at? Even look at competitors’ sales letters. You can go so far as to put together a matrix comparing all products side by side so you can see where you have definite advantages. Why is this so important? Because it gives you facts to start from. Your copy will be a lot more solid and believable that way. Other things in preparation that make getting started a lot easier: - Outline. Some people like this, others don’t. Advantage of an outline is you know where you’re going next. You can see the flow of the letter all at once. You can do very high level outlines, or detailed outlines. Either kind works if it helps you get a sense of the whole. Outlining software I use: OmniOutliner for Mac. Lets you collapse the outline. You can also use mindmapping software to outline – I’ll talk more about mindmapping later. - Get clear on the goal of what you’re writing. Who do you want to do what when they read it? How do you want that person to feel? Getting started - You really need to be able to focus on writing and nothing else. That means no distractions. No TV, nobody talking to you. No email. No facebook. Just writing. - Gene Schwartz method / pomodoro method. Short segments of 25 to 33 minutes. Pomodoro means tomato in Italian. You can find physical tomato timers online, as well as virtual tomato timers (called pomodoro timers). Gene Schwartz used a digital timer and punched in 3333. The idea is, you have a limited amount of time. You don’t need to rush. Just see what you can get done in that time, knowing you can stop when the timer goes off. -Talk it out to another person. Sometimes you’ll discover things speaking that you won’t find when the words are totally inside your head. It’s good to record in any case and then transcribe it. - “Theatre of the mind” technique: Imagine you’re face to face with the prospect and you want to sell them what’s going into your copy. What would you say? What would they say in response? How would you respond to that? The more conversational you can get this in your mind, the better off you are. Of course, when you actually start writing the copy, it needs to be a one-way conversation – you, to the prospect. - Start with the close. Or at some other part of the copy than the beginning. Write bullets first. A lot of copywriters really get into the mindset of the whole piece by writing a lot of bullets before they write anything else. Or write the guarantee. Or anything. Sometimes just getting started on something will get the flow going for the whole piece of copy. Tricks pros use to keep going Take a break. Before you feel you need to. Short spurts of work followed by short breaks. Take a walk, or listen to some music, or meditate. Don’t do anything too distracting or tiring, though. Save the liquor cabinet for later. Change location. You can take your computer or a pad of paper and a pen, and go somewhere else where no one will talk to you and you can work undisturbed. Sometimes a change of scene will make it much easier to write. Mindmapping. This is good beforehand, as an outlining tool. Sometimes while you’re writing you get a lot on your mind and it’s better to organize it visually so you can get back to the task itself, of writing the copy. You can learn how to mindmap on paper, and there are lots of free and inexpensive mind-mapping programs. Oh, and we announce the winner of the iTunes contest in this episode as well. Was it you? Only one way to find out. Download.

When you watch a show on TV like “Law and Order” or “NCIS,” the detectives are mighty impressive. They efficiently rule out innocent subjects and nail the killers – all inside of 60 minutes! And how do they do it? First, by doing hands-on, smart research. And then, using what they learn to develop convincing proof … … to solve the case and nail the perpetrator. Now… copywriters are usually not called upon to solve murder cases. But we still need to be just as thorough and convincing, in proving the claims that we make in our copy. First I’d like to say something about what you’ll hear today: Copy is powerful. You’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you’re writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. Good thing we got that covered, huh? Now, onto the subject of today’s podcast. You may be wondering… why is proof so important? What’s the big deal about proof, anyway? Here’s what: Once you sit down to write your copy, there’s a big difference between how much you believe what you’re saying, and what a real prospect will believe. People are naturally skeptical, and rightfully so. On a scale of 1 to 10, your belief level in what you’re saying may be a 10. But your prospect may have a belief level of a 7… or a 5… or even a 2. If this upsets you, stop taking it personally. Now. Because this is human nature. People lose more sales arguing with, or trying to change, human nature than just about anything else. They’d be much better off learning the laws of human nature and following them, even if those laws are unfamiliar, even uncomfortable, at first. You need to deal with people as they are, and the fact that people are skeptical and often untrusting, even when you might think they shouldn’t be, is just something to learn to live with. So, that, in a nutshell, is why we need proof. You’re best off starting by assuming that the prospect has no reason to believe you. Even if you think they should! So, do the right thing and give your prospect plenty of reasons! This episode covers different types of proof that work in copy. Some that you may already be familiar with, and some that you may never have heard of before. Let’s start with: • Testimonials and case studies This category includes quotes from others about you, your company, your product, and sometimes even the idea that your product represents – and, stories about customers using your product, or service – and what their experience was like. Big warning: Be very careful about reporting results. Especially financial and health results. I’m not a lawyer so I can’t give you expert or specific advice here. The general rule is to use disclaimers to let people know results are not typical or guaranteed. But if you are going to use testimonials or case studies with results, you’d be wise to consult with a lawyer who really knows advertising law – what you can get away with and what you can’t. The examples I’m giving you are safe, because no reasonable person could expect they will get the exact same results, or even comparably similar results, to the ones I’m sharing. They are examples that show my capabilities, and how my coaching and critiques have increased the capabilities of my clients. - Why proof elements need to include both emotional and logical components - The purpose of proof is to overcome skepticism and resistance. Proof by itself doesn’t sell, but it greatly bolsters the sale. 1. Testimonials – three types: customer results testimonials, customer experience testimonials, expert testimonials For the examples in this episode of Copywriters Podcast, I’m going to use testimonials, case studies, and reviews from my own website, Garfinkelcoaching.com. Because I already have permission to use those testimonials. You need to get permission to use testimonial quotes, and written permission is best. o Customer results testimonials from Brett Alcorn, an internet marketer, on copy critiques: “I’ve worked with David twice so far and will continue to do so. On one promotion, David’s small but meaningful changes increased conversions of my sales video by 139.43%. As I said before, I intend to continue working with David and would encourage anyone else to as well. His expertise is well worth the investment.” Comments: - Specifics: - Brett mentions he has worked with me twice so far - “small but meaningful changes” - 139.43% increase in conversions - His conclusion: work with me again (he’s hired me 20 times) - Any prospect who measures their results and wants better results – o Can relate o Would be interested o Customer experience testimonials (describe) From Chris Haddad, a/k/a Michael Fiore, who many now consider a legend in the digital marketing industry. “Before I met David Garfinkel I was a wet-behind-the-ears wannabe copywriter way more concerned with protecting my ego than I was with writing copy that CONVERTS. David took me under his wing, brutalized my copy, burned away the bullshit keeping me from reaching that next level and transformed me into a world-class writer with well over 9 figures in sales to my name.” Comments: - he talked about his experience - future mentoring clients can identify with Chris’s situation at the beginning of his testimonial - To this day, Chris reaches out to me when he needs some outside clarity on a situation. He actually did so a few days ago, this week. That conversation is private so that’s all I’ll say about it. o Expert testimonials From Guerrilla Marketing author and former big Ad Agency exec Jay Conrad Levinson “David Garfinkel is the best copywriter I know.” Comments: - I think the quote speaks for itself - The expertise/authority of Jay is massive. He is one of the best known authors, if not THE best known, author of small business marketing books. And he was Sr. VP for a well known ad agency, J. Walter Thompson. So surely he must have known a lot of other copywriters. Why testimonials work: People like to hear about experiences from others so they can compare that to what they want. Best of all, they like to hear it “right from the horse’s mouth.” That what a reference is. But a testimonial is the next best thing. 2. Customer Results Case Studies (describe) o From my Professional Copywriting mentoring page One of my mentoring clients, “Million Dollar Mike” Morgan, wrote a sales letter for Agora Financial that has the highest customer value in the history of the company. Another client, Angie Lole, wrote a VSL that rose to the number-two position in ALL of Clickbank. My client Jim Clair is writing copy for a group of digital fitness products that bring in eight figures a year. And his income is significantly higher than it used to be. Comments: These are one-sentence case studies that spotlight accomplishments of some of my most successful clients. The kind of accomplishments others would like to aim for. 3. Product/company history (describe) • The experience and effort that went into creating the product - Example: iCoffee coffee-maker. Sum-up: The importance and necessity of proof. Next episode: How to get started on your copy. Even when you have no idea where to start.Download.

Special Episode with copywriting legend John Carlton, on the topic of "Copywriting Is a Team Sport" Key takeaways: - Beginning and intermediate copywriters need mentors and critiques on their work. But, surprisingly, so do A-Listers and super-successful entrepreneurs. A different kind of support -- but, what's similar, is, they need to hear the truth about their work and their businesses from supportive, experienced people who aren't afraid to point out flaws and missing pieces. - Dan Kennedy on how to decide what creativity fits and what should be cut from your copy: "Does it advance the sale?" - Golden advice from Gary Halbert: "When all else fails, give people what they want." - To this day, other top marketers and copywriters count on Carlton to round out their advice and presentations: Two current examples -- Dan Kennedy at Cleveland event, Clayton Makepeace at online Mastermind. - The Mastermind process, first described by Napoleon Hill in "Think and Grow Rich," is uniquely valuable for writers and business owners - David read "Think and Grow Rich" in the mid-1980s, and has been in a number of Masterminds continuously since 1989 - Early in his career, Carlton learned and benefited from what he calls "mind melds" with people like copywriting legend Jim Rutz; marketing master Jay Abraham; some other famous people he declined to mention; and of course Gary Halbert, who was his business partner and writing partner - Sometimes Halbert would take his copy into a bar and read it to folks over a beer. If he heard, "That's a great ad," he knew he had a loser. If he heard "How can I get that???", he knew he had a winner - There's no way short of testing to know for sure if copy will be successful, but the closest you can come is to have someone with a lot of successful experience (and a lot of remembered failures) to look at what you've written and be completely honest with you - The Platinum Mastermind is a relatively small group (about a dozen people) that offers a classic Napoleon Hill-style Mastermind, using the hot-seat format Carlton has refined and perfected over many years - More info on the Platinum Mastermind: http://garfinkelcoaching.com/loveDownload.

Stephen Covey famously said "seek first to understand, then to be understood." Too bad most copywriters skim over this important part of selling. For many copywriters, market research is just too difficult. For others, they just don't know where to start. In this episode, David covers those bases, and more. Many years ago, a golf ball company was running a successful mail-order ad in a golfing magazine. The company owner decided to update the ad, and brought in a top designer from New York to redesign it. To everyone’s horror, response to the ad dropped to zero. No one could figure out why. The copy had not been changed. The market was still hot and growing. There was no bad news about the golf ball company that anyone was aware of. Turned out, the top designer had redone the coupon in the ad to be solid black, with white lettering and white blanks to fill in. This caused a problem for customers, because to fill out the coupon, they would have needed a pen that wrote in white ink! The business owner ordered the coupon to be changed back to white, with black lettering. Once the ad published with the normal coupon, response shot right back up. What’s important here is that the company could figure out what was wrong until they did hands-on research, step by step, to determine what the customer would have to do to order. This episode is all about copywriting research, which makes a huge and measurable difference in the profitability of your advertising. But first, my friendly reminder for you: Copy is powerful. You’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you’re writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. • How to research your customers: what they want, and what they need to read or hear in order to buy 1. Basic research – talk to them o Don’t ask them about your product – ask them about their problems o Ask questions like: ■ What’s the one problem with __ you’re having trouble finding a solution for ■ What happens or will happen when you don’t solve this problem? ■ Do you have an idea of what caused this problem? o Conversationally, ask them what specific solution to a specific problem, that’s important to them, they would like… that they can’t find anywhere right now o Or, if they can find a solution, ask them about what they don’t like, or they wish they had, that they don’t, in that solution o Pay close attention to the words they use. The exact words. Don’t try to “help” them, or to correct them. Just listen and keep ’em talking. The way they talk about problems and solutions, the exact words they use, are very important in the crafting of your copy. 2. Read reviews. Especially on Amazon and social media. Pay less attention to what they gush about (positive) than what they complain about (negative) o One review doesn’t make a trend. Multiple similar complaints do o The same languaging for the same complaint in different locations (ie on Amazon, in a forum, in a blog post) is a sure sign that you’re onto something you can use in your copy. o A reminder: You don’t just want to repeat their complaints. You want to also offer a unique, valuable solution that SOLVES their complaints! 3. If you have a product going and a customer service department, listen in on the customer service calls – make sure it’s legal – or, better yet, do a shift or two on customer service. You’ll learn tons. o People never have a hesitancy to complain. o Just listen at first. Don’t try to fix it right away. o Sometimes, the REAL complaint is “below the surface.” That’s why you want to give people time to get to it. The REAL complaint is the one charged with emotion. Sometimes it will come out of nowhere. Cherish that information… it is gold. o Example: Someone is talking about dry skin… then it gets to wrinkles… finally the REAL complaint comes out: “I just don’t want to look that OLD!” • What to research about your competition – especially, how to determine what’s missing in their products, and what you can do better and/or differently to make them prefer you over your competition 1. The simplest thing you can do with the highest probability of success is find out what complaints are about WINNERS – and fix the biggest complaints in your offer – and trumpet it loudly. o The first place to start is to look at successful competing ads from present day. Just look around; opt-in to lists of competitors; watch your Facebook account. You’ll start getting related ads remarkably quickly. o The second place to look is successful ads in different fields from present day. Could be closely related or not related at all. What you’re looking for is an example of a complete package of words and … that’s plagiarism, and you wan to avoid that at all costs. More about that a little later on. o Third place to look is old ads. There are a bunch of books like The Greatest Direct Mail Letters of All Time and They Laughed When I Sat Down: An Informal History of Advertising in Words and Pictures. Also, there’s a website – swiped.co. It’s free, and it has copies of many old ads you can look at. Claude Hopkins, John Caples, etc. Has current ads too. Promo’s running right now. As best I can tell, it’s free. 2. Find out what appeal current winners leading with in their ads… especially ads that rank high (like on Clickbank) or appearing often (like Google AdWords, or Facebook ads). o By now you should be familiar with the range of features and benefits of your product and related products. o Simply find out which one(s) are being used in headlines and lead generation. o That should give a starting point for your ad. Don’t copy word for word, but use the same idea in different words. Example: For a sleep aid, instead of “sleep soundly,” you could say “sleep all through the night.” It means the same thing, but the words are different, so you’re much safer. 3. Buy a competitor’s product and go through the entire sales cycle. Note what the upsells are. A successful product with successful upsells has zero’d in on, and nailed, the exact “mass desire” that will buy the most. o Get a sense of the structure and the content o Successful promotions usually have a theme. You’ll find the theme in the main product is repeated in the upsell. I heard a great example at a seminar, I think it was Nick Andrews who said it. If the main offer is Excedrin, the first upsell should be “extra strength Excedrin.” Look for patterns that you can adapt and duplicate. o A good funnel with email follow-up is very valuable research. Learn all you can before you design yours. • The secrets of profitably researching other ads that are winners in your field and other fields. Without plagiarizing, using what they are doing by adapting it to improve results with your own copy 1. Swiping – the difference between plagiarism and borrowing/adapting concept o This is hard to teach and advanced concept – but, worth knowing about. o The important thing to remember is there is a concept behind each successful ad… at least almost all of them. Also known as the Big Idea. o It might be a metaphor… it might be a huge claim… it might be comparing a well known news situation or landmark, like global warming or the Eiffel Tower, to a specific situation your prospect is concerned about or wants. Global warming could be compared to toxic mold in a person’s home. You could make a case that there is gold buried under the Eiffel Tower. (But you need to have some backup!) And then compare it to a business or investment opportunity. o The key thing is not to use the same elements. Instead of global warming, you might talk about disappearing species of animals. Instead of the Eiffel Tower, you might use London Bridge. That steers you away from plagiarism. 2. Swiping – the difference between plagiarism and borrowing/adapting structure o Same idea here o The way to swipe structure is to identify the different elements in copy, map it out, and follow your map with different copy o Headline – warning about threat o Opening – expands on the threat o Writer of letter introduces himself and talks about his relevant experience in regard to protecting yourself against this threat o … and so on. 3. Notice how competing successful ads get into the customer’s head (conversation already going on in the prospect’s mind) and what they’re doing with their offer that is fresh and innovative. o At the end of the day, this is what you’re looking for: The conversation going on in your customer’s mind o It’s always very specific and down-to-earth o More often than not, it’s about avoiding some specific pain or achieving some specific and probably elusive goal o That, more than anything else, is what your research should help you figure out.Download.

Bullet points can be tricky to get right, but they pay off big when you do. This week's episode will teach you how. An Afghanistan vet and his wife went to the housewares department of a “big box” store. They were looking for an electric can opener. The vet was an amputee. He only had his right arm, but it worked fine. The salesman showed the couple the best model, and started rattling off the features: U.L. Approved, cordless operation, easy to clean, 5 star reviews online. The couple listened politely but didn’t say a thing. This made the salesman nervous. “Are there any questions I can answer for you?” “Just one,” said the vet with a smile. “If I get this, can I open a can with just one hand?” The salesman was embarrassed that he had failed to mention this, but he recovered quickly enough. He said yes—and the couple happily bought a new can opener. Every customer is like the vet. I don’t mean that every customer is an amputee. What I mean is that there’s usually one feature or benefit the prospect is looking for. Or maybe they’re not even looking for it, but when they find out about it, that alone may be enough to get them to buy. Bullet points are where you highlight individual features and benefits. Better bullets = more sales. And here’s the first thing I would like to remind you of: Copy is powerful. You’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you’re writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. Now, back to bullets. How to screw up a bullet point – and how not to - Don’t use bullet points to list your features example: you’ve got a device to hang business suits for guys six foot seven hand higher Don’t: • One foot taller than your average standalone suit hanger Do: • Built for guys like you, so the bottom of your suit will NEVER touch the ground or even: • At one foot taller than other suit hangers, it’s built for guys like you. That means the bottom of your suit will NEVER touch the ground. - Don’t make bullet points obscure, or hard to understand - Don’t make them so short that people need to strain their brain to figure out what they’re all about - DO: Focus on a benefit very close to what they prospect already wants, or would want if he or she knew about it - DO: Use intrigue to “tease” the prospect about unusual benefits they might want, without always spelling it out 100% example: you’ve got a tropical resort with a petting zoo for children. Don’t: • Your children will have a great time with our friendly petting zoo crew: seven sheep, two ponies, four llamas and three kangaroos. Do: • Your children will love our special petting zoo with familiar and exotic animals. They’re all safe, and your kids will learn about animals they’ve never seen before! - DO: Do your best to keep one simple idea to each bullet. Because if it is clear and compelling enough, one bullet alone can knock your prospect off the fence and convince them to buy. • What the best copywriters do when they write their bullet points - When you’re swinging for the fences, take some time crafting really good bullets ° One of my A-List friends, who has had multiple controls in the mail for a major mailer at the same time, told me he writes each bullet four times ° Another A-Lister, known for beating controls of other A-Listers, admitted that at times he would spend hours on one bullet ° If you’re going for a major-league grand slam, this is what you do. If you’re not in the most competitive market in the world, you don’t have to. But it certainly pays to put more time and craft into bullets than you have been doing in the past, unless you’ve been doing what these A-Listers have been doing. ° Most people don’t spend nearly enough time on bullets. Good idea to put more into them. - Go over the whole product slowly and carefully – when you write and edit bullets, this is a time when you really need to slow down ° Pull out as many unique features as you can ° Make each feature into a bullet ° Then make each bullet as good as you can make it ° This is what the pro’s do - Vary the length and style of your bullets ° All should be written in as few words as possible to get the idea across, like a headline or a subhead ° But some should be short and punchy ° Some can be longer and more in-depth ° As a rule, it’s always a good idea if you can start with one of the 5 W’s or an H: Who, What, Why, When, Where, How 5 tips for writing better bullet points 1. Know your prospect, inside-out, so you can write from the point of view that will most like get your prospect interested… intrigued… or SOLD.Download.

Ask any experienced, successful salesperson what the single best form of selling is, and you’ll nearly always get back the same answer: “Demonstration.” That’s why savvy car dealers let customers take a new car home for the weekend before they actually buy the car. It’s the same reason Internet marketers offer a $1 trial for the first month, on products or services that are billed for far more than that every month. They know that when people get to try what they’re selling, a lot more of those people will buy it. That’s why pet stores let people take a puppy they’re interested in, home for the weekend. In sales, there’s even a term for this kind of hands-on (paw’s on?) demonstration – “the puppy dog close.” Oddly enough, you can get your prospect to demonstrate your products for themselves without ever letting the touch the product! How? By telling them what I call “demonstration” stories. Prospects get to try out your product in their imaginations. How to create and use stories is known by some of the best marketers and salespeople—but virtually unknown by everyone else. If you don’t know what they are, we’ll turn that around now. Now for my friendly reminder: Copy is powerful. That’s why I’m going to give you some really powerful new strategies today. And then, you’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Now, most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you’re writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. OK, back to demonstration stories, and other tiny little stories that really pack a wallop! And by that I mean, for the small number of words in these stories, you’ll get a disproportionate payoff. How? In advancing the sale in your copy. In getting your customers to want to learn about and then buy what you are selling, more than they did before they heard the tiny little story. • How to get your prospect to imagine experiencing the benefit of your product, without ever having the product yet So the great artist Pablo Picasso said: “Everything you can imagine is real.” Easy for him to say. When he died in 1973, he had an estimated net worth of $500 million – which would be $2.8 billion today. And on June 21, 2016, his 1909 painting “Femme Assise,” which means “Woman Sitting Down,” sold at an auction in London for $63 million and change. I’m not bringing up all these numbers to make the point that he was a great artist. I’m just saying, when someone can dream up images, put them on canvas, and sell them for big bucks, it’s easy for him to say, “Everything you can imagine is real.” But Picasso was right. In this way. If you imagine doing something or seeing something or hearing something vividly enough, your mind really cannot tell the difference between what you imagined and what actually happened (or never happened). It seems that real. This is important with the kind of stories we’re going to talk about today. Because these stories are designed to get your prospect imagining enjoying one or more of the benefits of what you are selling. In such a vivid way that they actually feel like they experienced it. Then, when they realize they don’t really have what they just imagined having, they will want it all the more! We’ll come back to that point and explore it in depth in a few minutes. For right now, let’s look at some very short stories that get the customer imagining benefits. These are from a full-page ad in the National Enquirer that’s been running for at least a year and a half. The ad is for a product called “Jitterbug,” and it’s a cell phone designed especially for seniors who do not want complicated, sophisticated smart phones like an iPhone or an Android phone. Each one of these paragraphs appears in the ad, and each one of them, by itself, is a story that gets the prospect to not only experience the benefit of the Jitterbug. They also tell a wonderful mini before-and-after story – contrasting the storyteller’s frustration with the old, difficult phone to the delights and ease of the new, easy Jitterbug phone. FIRST ONE: In quotes – “Cell phones have gotten so small, I can barely dial mine.” Close quotes. That first sentence was from a person like the prospect, talking to the prospect, and it’s in quotes. The next three sentences are from the company that makes Jitterbug. All part of the same paragraph: Not the Jitterbug Flip. It features a large keypad for easy dialing. It even has a larger display and a powerful, hearing aid-compatible speaker, so it’s easy to see and conversations are clear. That’s it. WOW! Incredible story there. I had this problem – so small, I could barely dial it. Jitterbug offers this solution: large keypad, large display, powerful speaker that works with hearing aids. Covered the waterfront in four sentences… Another one: SECOND ONE: Quote “I had to get my son to program it.” Unquote. The copy from the company follows: Your Jitterbug Flip set-up process is simple. We’ll even program it with your favorite numbers. THIRD ONE: Quote “What if I don’t remember a number?” Close quote. Friendly, helpful Personal Operators are available 24 hours a day and will even greet you by name when you call. In all – there are six short paragraphs like that. It’s 90% of the full page ad. Structure - Objection (that most prospects have about current phones) - Description (of how Jitterbug is different, better) - Gives prospect experience in imagination of new phone - Complete story: -- it was like this before -- it’s like this now -- this is much better than it was Completely different from hero’s journey. Here’s another one. By A-List copywriter Richard Armstrong. This was a control for Kiplinger’s personal finance for over a decade. This little story on a one-page letter: Dear Friend, My aunt Jane is rich as sin. And nobody in my family can figure out why. She worked as a librarian her whole life. Her husband, who passed away a few years back, was a tool-and-die maker. They never earned much money in their lives. But boy, were they ever smart with what they had. There was a little vacation home that they picked up for a song and wound up selling for $250,000. Some well-chosen stocks that grew in value over the years. Mutual funds. Municipal bonds. Treasury bills. Even a vintage Volkswagen “Beetle” that’s worth more now than the day they bought it. Nowadays my Aunt Jane -- who we always thought was just a little crazy -- is a bonafide millionaire! One day I asked her for the secret of her success. “I have three rules,” she said. 1) Never let your money sit idle 2) Never pay more than you have to for anything 3) Never pass up anything that’s free Well, my friend, unless you return the enclosed card today, you’re going to break at least one -- and probably all three -- of my aunt’s rules. Because if you return the enclosed card, you’ll get a free issue of KIPLINGER’S PERSONAL FINANCE (Rule #3). If you decide to subscribe, you’ll get the next 11 issues at a very low price, plus three free bonus gifts (Rule #2). And instead of spending the rest of your life working for money, you’ll put your money to work for you. (Rule #1) I know my Aunt Jane wouldn’t pass up a free sample issue of KIPLINGER’S PERSONAL FINANCE magazine. But of course… She already subscribes. Best regards, Richard Armstrong Brilliant. And short. Less than 300 words. Now, how would this have gone as a hero’s journey story? Aunt Jane, graduates from an archivist program with a degree in library science. Ordinary life. Gets a job. Expenses go up, faster than salary. Gets married. Starts saving. Sees the writing on the wall. Jane and husband start investing. Husband gets laid off. Government budget crunch, Jane’s job is in danger. Will she continue to invest or is she going to start looking for a new job… And so on until she retires and discovers she’s a millionaire… But what Richard did was much more pared down, much more elegant, and much more effective. The first good thing about a demonstration story is that it quickly and effectively gets the prospect imagining they have the product or are using the service you’re offering – and this increases their desire. But there’s a second good thing about a demonstration story, too… • How not having the product (after hearing or reading a “demonstration story”) has the same effect as a super-powerful “takeaway close.” In other words, your prospect close themselves! Takeaway close – works probably better than any other close. Get a prospect excited about having something, and then telling them they can’t have it - after a deadline - after a limited quantity is no longer available - at the same price after a certain date, because the price goes up and there are other versions. Usually comes at the end of a spoken pitch, or the end of your copy. Reason: Human nature. People want what they can’t have. If they can wait forever, they will… With these demonstration stories, you’re doing a second level of takeaway… because… each time a prospect reads one, they “have” the product/service in their imagination… and then, boom! It’s gone. So with the Jitterbug ad: Five demonstration stories, five takeaways. Then they end with a fairly simple and light close, which simply pushes the prospect off the fence: Enough talk. Isn’t it time you found out about the cell phone that’s changing all the rules? Call now. Jitterbug product experts are standing by. By the way, if this a phone you’re interested in… jitterbugdirect.com I don’t have any business relationship with the company, but, for example, I know this is something my girlfriend’s parents would probably be interested in! So… you can see the power in these demonstration stories • How to create your own “demonstration story.” These stories are incredibly easy to write. Here’s the catch: You need to know your prospects well. You need to know what’s on their mind. What they’re unhappy with about competing products. What they’re afraid of. How they’ve been disappointed in the past. And, most important, how they talk about it. Once you know that, you simply state their objection, and answer it in a sentence or two. Example: Website software is too rigid and difficult to use. “I used to go crazy trying to put a web page together.” Well, with EasyWeb, you can put a professional looking web page together in 10 minutes or less. And you have complete flexibility as to what it looks like – or you can use one of our six proven templates for your page if you don’t want to design it yourself. This kind of thing is easy to do if you know what’s on the mind of your prospects, and how they talk about it, and how what you offer solves the problem that you’re talking about. So the key to these stories is not the formula – that’s simple, and by now you should understand what it is. The key is knowing how to fill in the formula – and the only way you’re going to be able to do that so it works is by knowing your prospects—ideally, knowing them inside-out. You can get this information in a number of ways. By talking to prospects. Talking to customers. If you have salespeople, talk to them. If you have customer service people, ask them about the most common questions and complaints. Look on sites like Amazon where there are reviews… you’ll find common themes if you read enough and think about what you read. In short, once you start to become an expert on your own customers, the copy starts to almost write itself! Download.

Birds and airplanes don’t always get along so well. Just ask Sully Sullenberger, the Air Force Academy graduate. On January 15, 2009, Captain Sullenberger was piloting a commercial flight on an Airbus A320 as it took off from New York’s LaGuardia Airport—and the plane ran smack-dab into a flock of birds. Both engines went out immediately. One caught fire. Sullenberger quickly decided there was only one way he could save the lives of the people on the the plane, and that was to do the impossible: land it on the Hudson River. It was a risky move, but he correctly concluded it was his only option. What happened next has been called “The Miracle on the Hudson.” Captain Sullenberger and his co-pilot Jeff Skiles made a safe landing on the icy river. All 150 passengers, 5 crew members, and both pilots of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 were rescued safely. That’s a truly heroic story. And, it’s a perfect example of what mythologist Joseph Campbell calls “The Hero’s Journey.” This kind of story can work very well sometimes in sales copy. Yet at other times, a hero’s journey is the worst possible kind of story you can use. We’ll cover what a hero’s journey is – a six-step formula. When this kind of story works in your copy, and when it doesn’t. How to create your own hero’s journey. But first, let me tell you a true story about copywriting: Copy is powerful is powerful… it’s SO powerful. I’m going to give you some really powerful new strategies today. And then, you’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. You. Yes, you! Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you’re writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. What are the elements of a hero’s journey story? you have an ordinary person on a typical day, who is suddenly thrown into a MISSION (Captain Sullenburger, another day, another flight) the MISSION gradually becomes more and more crucial, and difficult (bird strike! No engines) the ordinary person is now walking the path of a HERO (he’s evaluating his options, but all the doors close except landing the plane on the river. He has no other choice. None.) At a crucial point, the mission becomes a matter of life-and-death. Either literally or symbolically Happy ending – hero overcomes insurmountable odds, wins, then goes on to share what he learned with others (wisdom) Tragedy – hero fails, dies. My own hero’s journey Trying to make a living as a writer after my big corporate gig Things got worse and worse; debt; tax problems; relationship blew up I discovered copywriting I HAD to make it work Abacus letter – I died a thousand deaths writing it, but, it worked. Company went on to make $40 million with it over the course of a decade People started asking me to teach them copywriting I started to put out products, write books, and become The World’s Greatest Copywriting Coach (ORDINARY LIFE – trying to make a living as a writer SUDDENLY THROWN INTO MISSION – I need to change something to survive WALKING PATH OF HERO – It’s copywriting… and it’s do-or-die) CRUCIAL POINT – Abacus letter. HAVE to make it work or my new career dies. And I can’t go back to the old one. Life-or-death. HAPPY ENDING – It works – into eight figures of sales. I continue in my new life, adding: putting out products, writing books, and becoming the World’s Greatest Copywriting Coach. Every hero’s journey has some version of this. It’s true in romances and comedies, too. It’s true in comic books. I just saw the movie Jack Reacher, Never Look Back. Classic Hero’s Journey. The Rocky and Bullwinkle movie, from the year 2000, was basically a cartoon brought into 3D. It was a hero’s journey. Singin’ in the Rain, the 1950s romantic comedy, follows a fun and light-hearted version of the hero’s journey. It’s a flexible format… and it’s pretty universal. There are some fairly convincing theories that we are genetically wired to tell and hear stories. When this kind of story works in your copy — and when it doesn’t I started studying the Hero’s Journey in New York City in 1982, at a playwriting class, and I’ve been studying it in one form or another for over 30 years. Hollywood classes; books on fiction writing; observation and analysis of movies; writing stories… long list of different ways I’ve studied it. It took me a long time to really get. I understand it pretty well. Bringing it into copy is another story. I’ve used it; I’ve coached others on how to use it. It can really work great, but there’s one thing to remember. Often it doesn’t work, and you’re better off without it. Also, there are lots of little details to keep track of. For the story, your hero really needs an inner journey and an outer journey. And for a solid hero’s journey, what they hero wants needs to be at odds with what he really needs. Dialogue needs to match and end character traits. And it goes on and on and on. It can get really complicated. It doesn’t have to all the time when you use a hero’s journey story in a sales letter, but you do need to know what to leave in and what to take out… and while sometimes it’s no big deal and it’s a perfect fit, other times it’s more trouble than it’s worth. I’ll get into some alternatives that work better than a hero’s in many cases in the next podcast. But you still need to know how to build one in case you need to use one. How to create your own hero’s journey story It’s probably going to be a story about transformation It’ll go like this I had this problem I looked for / tried everything Nothing worked I was about to give up Then I discovered [PRODUCT] [SERVICE] I used [IT]; here’s what happened It might be easier and better in the third person Jane had this problem She looked for / tried everything Nothing worked She was about to give up Then she discovered [PRODUCT] [SERVICE] She used [IT]; here’s what happened. Next podcast: Simple little stories anyone can use along with a hero’s journey story or without a hero’s journey story at all!Download.

I was recently watching a video sales letter from an investment advice publisher. The narrator told the story of Steve Jobs, in 2008, walking in the hills of San Jose, California, with one of Apple’s best engineers. Jobs had the vision of an Apple car. The one problem he couldn’t see his way past at the time was the enormous amount of data back and forth needed to make this kind of car work. The technology was not available in 2008 to transmit, manage, store, and access all that data – fast enough to operate the kind of car Steve Jobs had in mind. Fast forward to today, nearly a decade later. The narrator of the VSL said, one company now has the technology needed to bring into physical reality Steve Jobs’s unrealized vision. That one mystery company, the narrator said, has solved the one problem standing in the way of building the Apple car. (Of course, the narrator wouldn’t reveal which company it was. You had to buy the investment newsletter for that, which I didn’t do.) Now here’s the point: Solving one crucial problem can be worth A LOT to a company… or, to an individual. Or both. And, when you put the promise of a solution to an important problem into your headline… that can be a crucial ingredient in a very profitable sales message. Today we’re going to talk about how all that works, and how you can do that… but first… Let me remind you that copy is powerful. Now, you’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you’re writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. OK, now back to problems and solutions… and the problem-solution headline. • Why you get your best results when you identify the itch that they can’t scratch… and, how to identify that itch. - Let’s talk about carpet-bombing versus laser focus. Out with the carpet and in with the laser. ° O.M. Scott, founder of a company in the 1800s that today is known as Scott’s Miracle Grow ° Carpet-bombing approach. Could have advertised his original grass - seed with all of these possible benefits - The speed that the grass grows - the research that went into developing the grass seed - the cost-effectiveness of the product - that the grass seed required less fertilizer than other brands - awards the grass seed had won ° But Mr. Scott was smarter than that. He knew people didn’t care or worry about those things. ° What they did worry about was: that their grass would turn brown in the summer, or just that it “wasn’t green enough.” (You’ve probably seen people worry about this. Maybe you’ve even experienced this worry yourself about your own lawn.) ° So – he told his marketing team: “People don’t buy our grass seed… they buy greener lawns.” ° Because Mr. Scott knew the itch they couldn’t scratch was, “How can I get a greener lawn?” ° It looks simple. And the result is simple. Getting to that result, though, is rarely simple. As you will discover the next time you try to do this yourself. ° But I’d like to make it simpler for you. ° So… how do you do this for your own product or service, and your own marketing? ° Step 1. Get to know a few of the people who are likely to be your customers. ° Step 2. Talk to them. LISTEN to what they say. Listen closely. Nail down what they say and how they say it. Especially, their complaints. Not about your product or politics or religion or sports. Their complaints about the problem your product or service seeks to solve. ° Then… get the answer to this famous question: “What keeps them awake at night?” ° The answer to this is “the itch they cannot scratch.” ° IMPORTANT: DON’T rephrase it to make it more “correct.” Don’t say, “We increase the chlorophyll content of every blade of grass you grow.” Say it the way they say it, so they’ll instantly recognize it: “We give you a greener lawn.” • The hard core reality is most people are NOT driven by goals or dreams. Instead, they simply live their life dealing with one problem after another. Knowing this helps you to get people to buy into your solution. How to “reach people where they live” with your headline: ° First, understand that seeking out and focusing on problems is built into human biochemistry. There’s a solid feeling of familiar certainty that courses through us when we have the chemical cortisol in our system, which is associated with worry and danger. We automatically revert towards the negative. This default response is built in to protect us. ° For the purpose of creating your winning problem-solution headline, consider this: Every complaint you hear is the expression of a problem in search of a solution. ° Again, the language people most commonly use in their complaints, or in descriptions of their worries and their problems, is the language you want to make careful note of. (Yes, that means “write it down.”) °As a business owner or copywriter or marketing pro, you may have worked hard to keep your thinking and even all your languaging very positive. Understand – this is a learned and added skill. And that most people are not like that. Even people who are very positive most of the time are not always so positive when it comes to how they think and feel about problems. ° The key to problem-solution headlines – as with so much of copywriting – is to really understand at a very specific level how your customers actually think, feel, and talk about the problem or problems you can help them solve. ° The point of greatest pain and urgency is always a good bet on where to start, and what to talk about in your headline. It’s the itch they cannot scratch. • How to create a great problem-solution headline for your next promotion ° Here’s a classic problem-solution headline most people already know: They laughed when I sat down at the piano. But when I began to play… (John Caples) ° Why is this a “problem-solution” headline? And why is it good? ° Well-known fear of most people is public speaking. Seinfeld joke. Playing the piano in front of others has got to be right up there with public speaking. ° So what’s the problem with public speaking? People will laugh at you. You’ll be embarrassed. ° Same thing with playing the piano in front of a group. ° In this headline, the implied solution is that they weren’t ridiculing… they were impressed. Appreciative. ° WARNING: This is a very hard kind of headline to write from in many instances. Writing first person copy can be tough until you have enough experience. It requires more advanced skills than second person (you) or third person (he, she) copy. Easy and acceptable solution: Write it in third person. This way: They laughed when he sat down at the piano… but when he began to play… ° The key thing is to focus on the problem / fear of problem / your prospect has… and promise, or at least strongly hint at, a solution. Here are a few templates to get you started on your problem/solution headline: People Who Used To __(have problem)__ Now __(have arrived at this solution)__ Finally… A Way To __(solve a problem)__ Once You Know This, You’ll Laugh At __(problem)__ Famous European Secret For __(solving the problem)__ Now Available In America Why This __(someone like your prospect)__ never worries about __(problem)__ anymoreDownload.

In the late 1970s, famous copywriter Joe Karbo rocked the direct marketing world with his full-page newspaper ads. The headline was: “The Lazy Man’s Way To Riches.” Many people thought this was revolutionary. But actually, he wasn’t onto a new concept. You see, people had already been appealing to prospects’ laziness for decades. For example, in 1923, the legendary dancer and dance instructor Arthur Murray ran an ad in Popular Science magazine with this headline: “See How Easily You Can Learn To Dance This New Way.” So, it’s a time-tested technique. But can you use laziness headlines yourself? Absolutely! Even If your prospects are the hardest-working people on planet Earth, they’ll be more inclined to order your product when you use a laziness headline in the right way. We’ve got a lot to cover so you’ll really understand this and know how to do it. And we’ll have some fun along the way. First, though, fair warning: Copy is powerful. You’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims… and/or if you’re writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity… you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. OK. Now that we have that out of the way and my lawyer can go off and invent other things to do for me, let’s dig into laziness headlines. • How laziness is just part of human nature (even though many people go to great lengths to hide their laziness from you). “Life is hard and then you die” - may be true, but that is not a valid sales proposition :-> - everything has an easy part and a hard part. Start by emphasizing the easy part. - human brain. Frontal cerebral cortex – ego – “hard work.” Brain stem – old mammalian brain – busy enough keeping you alive and running your emotions – they like simple, easy. And they decide what you buy. -Just because someone works hard at one thing doesn’t mean they want to, or even are willing to, work hard at everything. - Look at how many advances have been commercial advances. No-iron shirts. I don’t know much about women’s clothes, but I imagine no-iron blouses, too. Automatic dishwasher. How much easier is it to use an iPad than a vintage 1995 Windows computer? Progress favors laziness. - People are so busy these days. Who wants to add one more difficult, time-consuming activity to their schedule? • People will pay you their hard-earned money for the opportunity to be lazy The 7 reasons people buy: 1. Make money 2. Save money 3. Save time 4. Reduce effort 5. Increase pleasure 6. Reduce or eliminate pain 7. Improve health 4 of these reasons appeal directly or indirectly to laziness ◆ (1) Save time – time is work (in prospect’s mind). Less time = less work ◆ (2) Save effort – very direct appeal to laziness ◆ (3,4)Increase pleasure, reduce pain – Hard work, no fun; pleasure is fun. Hard work – pain. Less pain = less hard work. - Garfinkel’s Law of Work > applies to how easy or hard it is for people to read your copy (not whether or not you talk about laziness in your copy) > “He who works, gets paid.” (“She who works, gets paid.”) > When they work hard trying to understand what you’re saying in your copy – they get paid (by keeping the money that you were supposed to get) > When you do the work necessary to make it easy for them to read and understand, they read easy, and you get paid. When you’re the one looking out for them (and their time, and their energy, and their peace of mind) – and you show it – you are much, much more likely to get the order. • The steps to putting together a great laziness headline 1. Think about what your product or service will do for your prospect – or how it will take the burden of doing something off their shoulders 2. In what way does that make it - easier - faster - less painful - more enjoyable - or in some other way, “less hard?” 3. From that, try one of these templates How Would You Like To ____ The Easy Way To ____ Save Up To ____ With ____ What If You Could ____ What Our Customers Love Most Is How _____Download.