I watched a video just now with Looney Toons director Chuck Jones demonstrating how to draw Bugs Bunny.
“Start with a pear-shaped body,” says Jones. “A circle for the head… a little nose…”
So far so good. I’m following along as Jones draws 2 bubbles on the page and one dark triangle for the nose.
“Then you extend the angle of the nose in a V above the head. That shows you where to put the ears.”
Hold on, how do I draw the ears like that?
“… the eyes go on those same lines as the ears… depending on what our budget is, we can use 2 or 3 whiskers.”
At this point, just about 4-5 seconds after drawing those initial two bubbles, Jones has drawn a cheeky, perfect, live Bugs Bunny. But I have no idea how he did it. So he explains:
“If you’re gonna draw Bugs, the best way is to learn how to draw a carrot. Then you can hook a rabbit onto it. Simplicity itself.”
Fact is, just because somebody is an amazing practitioner, like Chuck Jones, that doesn’t mean they can explain their method well. And even if they can explain their method well, maybe they just don’t want to, not to every Joe Schmoe off the street. The same happens in every field, including marketing and copywriting circles.
Maybe you’re following some expert’s paint-by-numbers, plug-and-play approach to writing sales copy. But if you’re not getting the results you want… if you’re not making sales you expected to make… if you’re not impressing clients…
Then it’s probably not your fault. There’s just a gap in the education. Maybe the expert can’t explain their method well… or maybe they are saving it all up for a higher-priced product.
The long-term answer is to keep searching for other experts to learn from. In the meantime, if you are looking to get better at writing sales copy, here are a few things that are guaranteed to sharpen your chops:
1) Write something every day — even if it’s a short email like this
2) Read some good ads
3) Read one of the proven books about direct response advertising. Most of the secrets in this business were discovered 50 or 60 years ago, and you can get access to almost all this wisdom for a few dollars on Amazon.
I can’t help you with 1). But if you want some pointers for where to track down good ads for 2) or if you want my suggestions for books in 3) write me an email and I will share my recommendations.