Copywriting

4 quotes about the unimportance of sales copy

by

I was listening to the latest edition of the Copywriters Podcast, in which David Garfinkel interviews Brian Cassingena.

Brian used to be the head copywriter at Mindvalley, and now he seems to have gone rogue, helping individual businesses improve their sales funnels.

David asked Brian about the biggest mistake he sees with funnels. This was Brian’s response:

“[Businesses] are not split-testing enough. We assume — copywriters are the same — we assume we know what would work best.”

Isn’t that what you pay a copywriter for though?

A good copywriter — an A-lister like Brian — can be expected to get top-gun results much of the time, or at least drastically outperform some schmuck off the street.

Right?

Maybe not.

Here’s what Dan Ferrari, another big name who writes sales copy for the Motley Fool, has to say on the topic:

“The C-level marketers that test 50 promos per year will beat the A-list marketers that test 5.”

What?

Come on, Dan.

Seriously.

What about guys like Gary Bencivenga, whose copy never lost, always became the control, and made his clients millions of dollars without fail?

Well, here’s Gary Bencivenga himself, describing a part of his decision process on whether he would accept a project or not:

“What I really want to know about the advertising is whether or not I see an easy way for me to beat it. If the advertising was created by somebody like Clayton Makepeace, it’s an immediate turnoff.”

The fact is, Gary wasn’t “selling ice to eskimos.”

He would only take on “easy” projects where he had a great chance of succeeding right up front (no harm there, it’s a smart strategy).

And even then, he would spend months and months upon research, to ensure he would really get the best angle.

Which leads me to the final quote, this from Ben Settle (I’m paraphrasing):

“Copywriting isn’t hard if you know your market well.”

The thing is, copywriting isn’t some dark art where you either know the magic spell or you die.

Instead, it mainly comes down to two things:

1. Researching your market.

2. Testing to see which appeal works best.

If you want to see how this simple 2-step approach can successfully be used in practice (specifically, for selling health products such as supplements), you might like my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space.

It’s not out yet, but you can sign up to get it for free when I do finish it. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails

Woman cheats on fiancé with ghost, marries poltergeist

by

A UK woman by the name of Amethyst Realm claims to have had sex with a ghost.

In fact, this spectral affair caused the breakup of her flesh-and-blood engagement, after her fiancé caught her in bed with said ghoul.

“He saw the shape of a man through the window when he pulled up outside,” Amethyst said.

Amethyst went on a bit of a romp after the breakup, sleeping with over a dozen more ghosts.

Her promiscuous days are done, however. She is settling down and getting married to an Australian poltergeist.

“When I was in Australia taking a walk out in the bush, just suddenly it approached me. Just something you feel, an emotional physical presence,” she said.

How did the marriage proposal happen?

“There was no going down on one knee,” Amethyst explained. “He doesn’t have knees. But for the first time, I heard him speak.”

“I could actually hear his voice and it was beautiful. Deep, sexy and real.”

The couple are now planning a countryside wedding.

“I fell in love with it I guess. It’s the one,” Amethyst said.

It’s not Valentine’s day today, so why am I bringing up this romantic story?

Two reasons.

One, it’s pretty fascinating.

Two, I want to contrast it with some Halloween-themed emails I’ve been getting all day long.

These emails are all about the ghoulish and ghostly and creepy things that happen to copywriters, particularly when dealing with clients. The pitch is for some kind of copywriting product.

The trouble is, the emails are weak. The scenarios they describe are generic and simply not concrete or gruesome enough. It seems like the copywriter who wrote the emails just made these scenarios up.

To me, this just signals laziness.

After all, a bit of research will unearth a graveyard full of chilling or bizarre stories that readers won’t be able to ignore.

This is the kind of stuff that even the best writers cannot make up.

I’ve accepted this fact, and that’s why I don’t shy away from lurking on sex forums, tabloid websites, and conspiracy-theory Facebook groups.

That’s where you find the choicest treats, like the story of Amethyst Realm.

If this is the kind of copywriting you need for your business, you can contact me here.

How to succeed as a copywriter on Upwork

by

A guy named Nick Tubis interviewed me tonight for a product he’s making.

He actually hired me on the online freelance platform Upwork, to talk about how I became successful as a copywriter, on Upwork.

So Nick and I talked for an hour, and I gave him the full story of my Upwork experience so far.

In the end, he asked me, “Do you have one hack you would recommend to anyone getting started?”

I told him the truth:

Anybody can compete for any copywriting job on Upwork.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how much copywriting experience you have.

How much Upwork history you have.

What your background is.

All you do need are a few pieces of relevant previous work.

In fact, even one piece of relevant sample work can set you above the rest of the hungry crowd of freelancers crawling over each other to get a job.

Don’t believe me?

Let’s say a client just posted a job ad titled “Looking for 10-part email sequence to promote new supplement.”

My “application” for a job like this would simply be:

“I specialize in email marketing and I’ve written a lot about supplements.
Here are a few relevant samples:
sample1
sample2
sample3
Take a look, and if you like what you see, let’s talk in more detail.”

I regularly get 4-figure copywriting projects — and I even got Nick to pay me for talking about my Upwork expertise. And the stupid-simple template above is the only way I ever apply for a job.

“That’s great for you, John,” you might say. “But where am I supposed to get those relevant samples? Nobody’s hired me, so I can’t build a portfolio, and therefore nobody will hire me!”

Easy, friend.

You don’t need any previous paying clients to build a small but highly targeted portfolio.

Simply find a job you would like to get.

Then write a sample that’s very close to what they are looking for.

For example, in the hypothetical job I invented above, you would just write one email  promoting a supplement.

Slap this into your application, send it over to the client, and you’re off to the races.

Will it work every time? No. But if you do this every day, I would expect you would have a paying client by the end of the week.

By the way, even though I’ve had a lot of success on Upwork, I’m actively looking to move off the platform for various reasons.

That’s why, if you are interested in hiring me to do your copy, don’t  go to Upwork. Instead, get in touch with me here.

Bejako suffers from sirocco

by

“It’s a punishment in itself, the mind becomes exhausted, the joy of living seeps out through blurred eyes and darkened faces. You cannot even love yourself during sirocco, so how to make reasoned decisions about others!”
— Tereza Buconić Gović

Legend says that in medieval Dubrovnik, on the Croatian coast, a law decreed that no political decisions could ever be made during times of sirocco, a kind of nasty, hot, southerly wind that seems to disturb the mind.

Sirocco is happening right now, and I can seriously feel it. It’s hot and humid outside like it’s the middle of May. I’m not sleeping well, I’m tired, and my head hurts. I keep looking towards the horizon and hoping for a storm that will clear this evil wind away.

So what’s the point of this?

Well, sirocco.

It’s an interesting and clear concept. Plus I can tie it into a personal story.

In other words, it makes for a great opening for a bit of copy, most likely a sales email.

The thing is, these kinds of personal, clear, interesting concepts are lying around in plain sight, every day. They just need to be noticed and (most probably) written down — and then, when the time comes, used as a great idea to open an email with.

4 examples of shameless headline swiping

by

“Learning how to artfully swipe is probably the most important skill a copywriter can have.”
— Harlan Kilstein

I have a big swipe file of complete sales letters, but more than anything, I like to swipe headlines
After all, each headline is really an angle, a hook in itself. If you get the headline right, much of the copy writes itself.

My favorite source for headlines to swipe is not direct response copy
As I’ve mentioned before, I regularly go to Hacker News, a nerd bulletin board, and I pay attention to which general interest articles I click on. I write all these headlines down on an index card and put them in a growing stack under my pillow.

When it’s time to write copy, I go to my swiped headlines stack
And I force myself to write at least 10 or so headlines, using entirely different templates. Here are 4 such shamelessly swiped headlines, and the reasoning behind each:

1. Dog bites Trump -> The content is in the list

The original headline is brilliant, and it might seem that the second headline has nothing to do with it. But what’s really going on? The first headline is simply a modification of saying that’s popular among a specific audience (journalists: “Man bites dog”). Unfortunately, I couldn’t work the uber-clickable “Trump” into my own headline, but I could tweak an existing popular saying (direct marketers: “The money is in the list”).

2. Poland was shockingly liberal during 13th century -> Antibiotics can be shockingly good at causing weight gain

I’m not crazy about power words like “shocking” because they’re overused — every wannabe viral article or video is either “jaw-dropping”, “shocking”, or “epic”. That doesn’t mean that power words cannot or do not work, particularly if the rest of the headline is actually interesting in itself. In both the original headline and my own version, the headline was an interesting fact (rather than a screaming benefit) and the “shocking” power word increased curiosity a notch or two.

3. Why you will marry the wrong person -> Why your kraut will develop mold

Ok, this one is straightforward: Why [major unspoken fear of your target audience]. (My version was a subject line for an email promoting a home fermenting product.)

4. “Close to tears, he left at intermission”: How Stanley Kubrick upset Arthur C. Clarke -> “Almost fell over at how bad I looked”: Essential oil adverse reaction report

This is a good example of a headline template that I never see in direct response copy — a dramatic quote followed by a curiosity-baiting description of the content. Even though it’s not common for direct response, it must work, because similar headlines have sucked millions of people into reading articles.

The sink-or-swim sales letter close

by

Yesterday, I was finishing up a sales letter and I got to my least favorite part, the close.

That’s when you’ve made your offer, and now make one final big push to get the reader to buy. Many times, this is where sales letters reiterate all the benefits of the thing they are selling. Other times, they paint a bleak picture of how lonely and sad your life will be if you don’t buy.

I decided to do something different. I used an idea that I got from a sales letter from Ben Settle, which he included along with his monthly print newsletter several months ago. The sales letter was for a new $279 product for freelance copywriters that Ben was selling. it wrapped up with the following:

“It’s sink or swim around here to encourage implementation. So if you don’t think you can make your $279 back, simply don’t buy it. Otherwise, go here before April 1st to grab it for $100 off:”

Ben’s sales letter had a bunch of curiosity-soaked bullet points, but none of them pulled me in or made me consider buying. However, this one final statement almost made me get my credit card right away and order right away. Here’s why this close is so good:

1. It’s a challenge. This close doesn’t try to convince you. It doesn’t say “Just imagine how much richer you will be with this information!” It does just the opposite — it tries to dismiss you. To me at least, this was a challenge that I wanted to rise up to.

2. It creates vision. When I read this, I immediately asked myself, “Could I make $279 from this information?” And I then started imagining different scenarios where that could happen. This is what negotiation expert Jim Camp called creating vision in your adversary’s mind.

3. It’s different. Again, most other sales letters try to close you with high-pressure sales tactics. This makes Ben’s approach stand out, and it creates curiosity and intrigue.

4. It’s non-needy. Again, no high-pressure tactics here. This signals you don’t need the sale (as you genuinely don’t). Ironically, this will make it more likely for you to get the sale.

5. It repels the buyers you don’t want to have. “Repulsion marketing” is another cornerstone of Ben’s philosophy, and this sales letter close embodies it perfectly.

6. It’s about consumption. This close isn’t about being a dick (though it might sound like that to some). It’s about what’s good for you and for your prospects, something that Sean D’Souza calls an emphasis on consumption. In other words, if some prospects won’t get value out of what you’re selling, why would you sell it to them?

Now I’m sure this approach probably goes back many thousands of years, back to when the first copywriters etched their sales letters in wet clay tablets.

But if it has a name yet, I haven’t heard it. And so, in honor and memory of Ben’s sales letter, where I first saw it, I will call it the “sink-or-swim close” from now on.

Marketing heresy from the world’s greatest living copywriter

by

A while back, I was writing a sales letter for a probiotic and I was stuck for a headline.

The unique thing about this probiotic was that the strains it contained were proven effective in clinical studies (unlike just about every other supplement out there).

But that’s a really ugly, non-benefit-oriented feature to highlight in a headline.

So I borrowed a technique that I’d heard of in copywriting legend Gary Bencivenga’s farewell seminar. The resulting headline went something like this:

“Announcing a doctor-formulated probiotic that’s been clinically proven in controlled human studies to…”

And then it went on to list the 7 or 8 separate proven benefits that this probiotic was actually proven to deliver.

When I first heard of this headline technique, it seemed weak to me. After all, isn’t all good copywriting focused on a single, overriding idea? It certainly seems to be the conventional wisdom, and even I’ve done my part in propagating this.

And yet, here we have Gary Bencivenga, widely acknowledged as the greatest living copywriter, somebody who’s won control after control, and who’s been privy to the results of tens of millions of dollars worth of advertising tests, saying that you can have a headline that’s effectively trumpeting a half dozen separate benefits.

“Our *three* benefits are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency”

And Gary doesn’t stop there. I was just re-reading an interview he’s done with another famous copywriter, Clayton Makepeace, and I came across the following:

“I know this sounds like heresy, but I’d much rather have in a good direct mail package three or four or 10 good reasons to buy, than to have to sacrifice nine of them in favor of the one USP. The USP really can be misapplied to direct marketing where you have the luxury of closing the sale on the spot and can give one dominant reason to buy but also seven or eight other reasons. You don’t have to abide so religiously to a single Unique Selling Proposition.”

So what to make of all of this?

Maybe Gary understands copywriting at such a deep level that he can afford to break rules that apply to the rest of us.

Maybe he’s just stating in a slightly stronger form what many copywriters already do (“give one dominant reason to buy but also seven or eight other reasons”).

But maybe, just maybe, the current emphasis on “The One Big Idea” is a bit of a fad, and maybe there are other effective ways to create a successful direct marketing promotion.

Stressing out at exam time in Copywriting High

by

Imagine you’re back in high school and you have an important exam coming up.

You know that if you don’t get at least a B, your parents will beat you, your dog will leave you, and nobody will go with you to prom.

So what do you do? Naturally, you refuse to study for your exam. Or rather, you put off studying until you only have time to cover about 30% of the material that’s likely to show up on the test.

Of course, on exam day, you’re panicking. Your mind races forward and sees how horrible life will be when you get an F: the beatings, the dog breakup, the lonely nights.

Your mind then jolts back to the past, and to all the time you could have spent studying. Anger mixed with guilt boil up inside of you.

As you’re cursing yourself, the teacher appears and hands out the exams. You look at the first question with disgust and find…

You know the answer.

Then the second question. It’s also something you studied.

And so on with the third and the fourth questions. Before you know it, you’ve finished the exam. The nightmare is over, and somehow you survived.

When the grades come out, it turns out you got an A. The parents put the bat away. Your dog doesn’t leave. And you find somebody nice to go to prom with.

So what’s the lesson?

Well personally, I think the lesson is you still should have studied, and you should study in the future. For one thing, you might not be so lucky next time. For another, all the stress and worry outweighed the joy of procrastination.

And here’s why I’m inventing this little allegory.

Since I’ve been working as a copywriter, I’ve gradually developed certain criteria for the kinds of clients I take on.

For example, I don’t accept rush jobs. I don’t enjoy the stress they bring. Plus, rush jobs tend to signal bad things about the client.

I also don’t work with clients who aren’t likely to get value out of my copy, regardless of how good I make it. That could be because they have a bad offer, or because they don’t have any traffic, or because they don’t know what they’re doing and they won’t even use my copy.

Well, recently I took on a client who failed to meet both of those common-sense criteria. The fault was mine — I accepted the job before I got the full information about the client and their situation. And because the promised pay was good, I refused to call off the project once I figured out what was going on.

Inevitably, the project caused me a lot of stress. All along the way, I was cursing myself for ever having accepted it. What’s more, the big money I was promised also became uncertain.

Long story short, the project finished. I managed to do a good job with the copy in spite of the rush. I delivered my work, the client paid me as agreed, it appears they are satisfied with the result, and they might even get their money’s worth, in spite of fundamental problems with their marketing efforts.

So what’s the lesson?

Well, just like in the allegory above, it would have been better to do the right thing and stick to my principles. It seems I got lucky this time, and the project worked out well. I might not be so lucky next time. And in retrospect, I don’t think the stress was worth it anyhow.

A classic Hollywood trick for stronger sales letter leads

by

Frank Capra was desperate.

He reached for a lighter, struck up a flame, and set fire to his new film.

The year was 1937, and Capra had just finished shooting a new movie, called Lost Horizon. At the time, Capra was already a huge Hollywood success, having won the Academy Award for best director twice. However, this new film was long (three and a half hours), confusing, and test audiences hated it.

The legend goes as follows:

After the first sneak preview, which was a complete failure, Capra started agonizing. How to fix this monster of a film?

In a moment of inspiration, he hit upon the shocking solution. Even though it was dangerous and possibly crazy, he burned the first two reels of his film. This eliminated the dull intro scenes, and put the audience smack in the middle of the action.

Problem solved.

I thought of this Hollywood legend because I’m currently writing a new sales letter. It’s for sun-protective clothing, and the angle for the sales letter is skin cancer. So I decided to open with a story of a wife whose husband has been diagnosed with melanoma.

While I was planning this, I kept hearing Chris Haddad’s “Talk dirty to me” VSL in my head. It literally opens up with the words “Talk dirty to me,” and then goes to tell the story of a woman whose boyfriend made that request.

That’s some Frank Capra stuff.

Unfortunately, I haven’t yet been able to sum up my audience’s fears in such a clear and powerful phrase.

But I do start the story immediately, with the husband in the hospital bed, his wife at his side, and the doctor delivering a horrible verdict. It’s much better than beginning with a sermon about how skin cancer is the most prevalent type of cancer.

So in short, if you want a stronger sales letter lead, look to cut out some filler. Make sure to get to the dramatic stuff right away, and capture your audiences attention in the very first sentence.

Talk dirty to me…

How to nail a wise old doctor’s voice

by

I’m currently working on an email sequence for a memory enhancement supplement.

The spokesperson for this supplement is a doctor — male, white, I estimate in his mid-60s, with a pleasant Southern drawl and a wise grandfatherly demeanor.

“I’ve always had a love of nature and natural remedies”

I wrote up the first batch of emails and delivered them to my client (the supplement company owner, not the doctor).

“The angles and topics are all good,” the client said, “but can you work on adopting the good doctor’s voice a little more?”

Honestly, I was a bit miffed at this, because I already had tried to adopt his voice (as I do with all copy that I write). I had gone through the transcripts of an interview I had with the doctor, as well as several videos he had done on YouTube where he talked about health and supplements.

The trouble was, while the doctor did have a characteristic “voice” while speaking, when written down, there wasn’t nearly as much there. He wasn’t really using any unique slang, or technical terms, or telling lots of personal stories.

What to do? I swallowed my pride and rewrote parts of the emails.  Here’s what I did:

1. Use some generic conversational patter

I always try to write in a conversational way. In this case, I amped it up even more using generic conversational fluff, such as:

“You know”
“Well, what I’m talking about here is”
“Now I’ve got to warn you”

2. Search more closely for stories and phrases

I went through all the transcripts a second time, and I did find some phrases that were subtly unique. I wrote them all down, and one by one, I made sure to find a place in the copy to add each of them in. Here are a few examples:

“I’ve had an awful lot of success”
“Boatloads of medicines”
“It’s a jewel” [when describing something valuable]

3. Add parenthetical remarks

These are simply moments to step back from a story, an explanation, or a pitch, and you talk one-on-one, give an opinion, a personal comment, or insert a tiny other story.

For example, when talking about one of the ingredients in this supplement, I took a step back to have the doctor say, “You see, since I was a youngster, I’ve always had a love for nature and natural remedies. That’s why…”

4. Insert consistent stories and illustrations

This is perhaps the most impactful of all of these techniques.

I decided to simply add in stories and illustrations and images that are consistent with the persona of the doctor, even if it’s stuff I never really heard him say, and even if it’s stuff he might not actually ever say.

For example, I told the story of a “beautiful and stately old tree” down the street from where the doctor lives, which happens to be a ginkgo tree, one of the ingredients in the supplement. And I used grandfatherly images like the following:

“His anger issues started disappearing like mist in the morning sun”
“She had a vice-like grip on her intelligence again”

So did all this work? Who knows. But the client was happy, and he wrote back right away to say I had nailed the doctor’s voice perfectly.