Copywriting

A secret online resource to hone your copy chops

by

Gary Halbert once wrote an issue of his newsletter with the title, “Let’s do the twist!”

The issue was all about how to write sexy, money-sucking bullets. Bullets that get people so fascinated they have to buy the product.

You can still find Gary’s newsletter issue online. And it’s worth reading from start to finish.

But today, I want to focus on just one piece of advice that Gary shared about learning to write good bullets.

Gary said to first find a promotion with lots of good bullets. Then find the actual book/course/info product that the promo was selling… and reverse engineer how the copywriter wrote the bullet, based on the source material.

You need both halves — the copy and the source material — to really see the clever things the copywriter did. Otherwise, you might get fooled into thinking you too can write good bullets just by imitating the form, without getting the substance.

Anyways, I started following Gary’s advice a few days ago. And I think it’s been great practice — not just for writing bullets, but for copywriting in general. For example, as a result of this exercise, I already learned one obvious but clever copywriting trick, which I’ll share with you tomorrow.

But maybe you’re wondering how you can do this yourself, so you can hone your own copywriting chops.

Like Gary says, you’ll first need a promotion with lots of good bullets. I won’t advise you there — there are plenty of people and websites to supply you with swipe copy, both for free and for money.

Instead, I want to tell you about getting the other half… the original info product.

Of course, it might still be for sale, in which case you can just order it. And if not, you might be able to find it on eBay on Amazon.

But there’s a third place you can find original direct response info products…

… online…

… completely free…

… and completely legal (as far as I know).

And in my experience, you can find stuff at this place that you might not find anywhere else, including Amazon and eBay.

For example, that’s where I found one of Gary’s info products as well as several 90s Boardroom books.

Perhaps you’re wondering what this magical place is. Unfortunately, you missed the boat on that. Because it’s something I only revealed to subscribers of my free email newsletter.

After all, I have to reward people who read my writing each day… and I have to give other people, like you, a reason to subscribe by withholding information on this public blog.

If that kind of thing pisses you off, I can understand.

But if you can get over it, and if you want to sign up for my free email newsletter so you don’t miss out on any future “secrets” I reveal… then here’s where to sign up.

How to turn good copy into great copy

by

For the past several weeks I’ve been milking content ideas from a recent interview I heard with A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos. And I ain’t done yet. Here’s another valuable story from the same:

Once upon a time, while Parris was still getting his copy sea legs, he apprenticed under Clayton Makepeace.

Parris would write some copy. He’d submit it to Clayton. Clayton would fix it up, and the submit it to the client.

The clever thing Parris did was to ask Clayton for the final drafts. He’d go through and compare what Clayton had changed to the original he (Parris) had submitted.

As Parris got better and better through this process, there were fewer and fewer changes.

Until one time, there was only one change.

It was in a bit of copy that Parris had written about part-time jobs for people during retirement. One of these jobs was to be a mystery shopper. And it could earn you as much as $50,000 a year.

Pretty good, right?

Yes. Good. But then Clayton made it great, by adding a few words along the lines of:

“Imagine, $50,000 a year — just for going shopping!”

Parris said that Clayton was a natural-born persuader. And one powerful thing he did instinctively was help people “grasp the advantage.”

That’s a term from Vic Schwab’s book, How to Write a Good Advertisement. Schwab said you first show people an advantage… them you prove it… and then you help them grasp it.

You can do this grasping part in a bunch of different ways.

Clayton’s example above is of the form, “You’re doing X anyways, so why not get Y benefit?”

But there are many others. I spelled out a few of them to my email subscribers.

What? You’re not subscribed to my email newsletter? But you’re reading my stuff anyways, so why not get the full story, with all the lessons laid out on a platter for you? Here’s where to subscribe.

The round red balloon of sophistication and awareness

by

Imagine a round red balloon, filled tight with air and floating in the middle of a room.

Got that image in your mind?

Ok, then let me explain why it’s important.

You’ve probably heard of Gene Schwartz’s ideas of market sophistication and awareness.

These two ideas are critical in writing advertising that sells. That’s because they tell you how to 1) get your prospect’s attention and 2) have him believe you, at least for a bit.

In a nutshell, sophistication is how skeptical your prospect is. Awareness is how much time he has spent researching his problem.

But here’s the trouble. I learned about sophistication and awareness years ago. And today, I still don’t have a 100% intuitive grasp of these ideas. I always have to “count on my fingers” when it comes to adding up where my market is in terms of these two measures.

Maybe I’m just not very smart. Even so, there are other problems with sophistication and awareness.

For one thing, these are two separate dimensions. That’s complicated. One dimension is simpler and more elegant than two.

To muddle things more, sophistication and awareness are not orthogonal. If somebody has zero skepticism to your claims… odds are good he hasn’t spent much time researching the problem.

And also, parts of the awareness and sophistication scales are not relevant to most sales copy. You’re probably not getting hired to write to a stage 1 awareness market (“$4 off Safeway pork chops this Friday!”). And if you are, you’re not getting paid much for it.

Which brings us back to that round red balloon floating in the middle of a room.

That’s my image of the typical direct response market. It combines sophistication and awareness, at least the parts that are relevant to sales copy. And it forms one simple, easy-to-understand-and-visualize dimension.

And for people who are subscribed to my email newsletter, I went into detail about how the red balloon of sophistication and awareness works, and how it simplifies things. But it’s not something I am willing to put on my blog.

Why? Because it might scratch your itch a little too well. Because frankly, my goal with these blog posts is to get people onto my email lists, where I can have more direct and immediate contact with them.

If you don’t ever subscribe to anybody’s newsletters, I can understand. And fare well.

But if you do occasionally subscribe to newsletter’s, then consider subscribing to mine. If you do decide to try it, here’s where to go.

3 reasons to 3+ your prospect

by

Negotiation expert Jim Camp promoted a technique he called 3+. Camp said to cover each point of your negotiation at least 3 times in slightly different language.

“So you’re saying you want to subscribe to my email newsletter today. Is that right?”

“Are there any reasons you’d rather wait to subscribe?”

“And if you do get to the end of this post where the optin is, would you still be interested in subscribing? Are you sure?”

Camp did 3+ because he wanted to get to a decision that sticks, rather than just a flaky agreement.

But you can do something similar to get a click or a purchase from a prospect, even a flaky one. All you have to do is repeat your basic promise at least three times.

Don’t worry about annoying your reader. You won’t annoy him, as long as you surround your promise with new info. Phrase your promise in a new and surprising way. But keep hammering away at it.

Really? Yes. Because there are at least three reasons why this 3+ stuff works in sales copy.

One is that repetition creates belief. It shouldn’t, but it does. Just look at the stump speeches of politicians, or the headlines of the major news outlets. Repeat an outlandish idea one, two, three or more times, and people will adopt it as their own.

But that’s not all. Because repetition also creates desire. You’re greasing the groove.

Promise me something once, and I only hear your words. Promise me something twice, and I’m starting to imagine your promise being a reality. Make the same promise three or more times, and I’m getting impatient for the outcome.

But there’s a third and possibly most important reason to repeat your message over and over and over. And that’s the fact we’re living in a noisy world. Your reader doesn’t hear your whole message. He is distracted. He skims. He checks his phone. His mind is elsewhere.

You think you have his whole attention. You don’t. But you can still get your message across, if you keep repeating it. How many times? At least three. More is better.

None of this is new. Almost 300 years ago, Samuel Johnson said:

“Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.”

You might already know that quote. What few people know is that Johnson kept talking after the dictaphone stopped recording.

“Yes,” Johnson said, “promise is the soul of an advertisement. But repetition, constant repetition, is the body of an advertisement. So keep repeating your promise to make it more real. Even if you get tired of it. Over and over. Because eventually, your prospect will hear you. And then he will buy.”

By the way, remember that 3+ from the start of this post? About subscribing to my email newsletter? You do?

Well, I’m not sure if you’re still up for subscribing. In case you are, here’s where to go.

BEJ cage match: Derek Johanson vs. John Carlton

by

Over the past 24 hours, I got two interesting emails in conflict with each other.

The first email is from Derek Johanson, the guy who created Copy Hour. Derek’s email is about how much of direct response copy is “over-the-top bad,” with claims of “effortless” results. Or as Derek puts it, “pop a pill, overnight success type stuff.”

Derek’s message is that we can and should do better.

Then there’s an email that John Carlton sent. Carlton probably needs no introduction. But if you’re new to direct response, then know that John Carlton is one of the most successful and influential copywriters of all time. He writes:

“Most humans are a walking shrink session, with all their deepest and most humiliating secrets just spewing off of them all the time. […] Most folks just stumble through life half-asleep. Too caught up inside their own heads to realize what’s actually going on at the meta-level. […] Knowing this, you automatically have an enormous advantage in all negotiations. Something to put in your tool kit, anyway.”

Of course, both Derek and John are right. Most direct response copy is pretty awful. And that’s because, if it works, it probably speaks to your prospect’s deepest and darkest insecurities.

Prod at somebody’s insecurities… and you’ll see him at his most grateful, passionate, engaged, hopeful, and willing to spend money.

But are you doing your prospect a service in this way?

You can claim you are. Obviously he responds intensely… and you might be able to help.

Or you can claim you are not. After all, you are poking into a wound and making sure it never heals.

So what’s the conclusion?

I think it’s a personal choice you have to make. And I think it runs deeper than just how ugly and hard-hitting you are willing to make your copy.

Should we look for acceptance and gratitude of what we have, like a cow on a pasture? Or is there value in endless striving, like a hamster in a wheel?

I have my own esoteric opinion on this matter. But that’s getting into quirky stuff… and it’s probably not why you signed up for these emails.

Still, this topic is something to keep in the back of your mind as you navigate your own career. If you come clean to yourself with your own feelings about it, you might find yourself both more successful and more at peace with what you’re doing. “Something to put in your tool kit, anyway.”

Anyways, maybe you want more stuff like this. Maybe you are afraid to miss out on good ideas. Or you just want to always improve, and are looking for any good way to do so.

In that case, you might like to subscribe to my email newsletter on persuasion and marketing. Here’s where you can do that.

Can this A-list advice replace your customer avatar?

by

You’ve probably heard the ancient advice to write your sales copy to a customer avatar.

In other words, rather than thinking of your market as a gassy cloud, without substance or a face… you come up with a real person to represent your ideal customer.

So you have their name… a little blurb of who they are and what they want and what their problems are… and maybe even a photo you can look at.

And the advice is to write to this one person. Because instead of writing something vague and unbelievable… you will write something specific and real.

Sounds good. Except:

Your target audience might not be one single type of person. It might be two or three or more. For example, this daily newsletter I write? It goes out to business owners, marketers, established copywriters, and newbie copywriters.

Also, even though a customer avatar should be based on research… I find that in practice, it’s often an invention of the marketer’s mind. Because of this, a customer avatar can be misleading rather than helpful.

And as a third problem, a customer avatar might focus on the wrong things. Demographic info is often not relevant to making your sale. On the other hand, an avatar might miss crucial information to making the sale that is relevant. Two people standing shoulder by shoulder in the same market can be very different from each other.

So should you take your avatar and set it on fire, like the “Año Viejo” doll that Colombians burn on New Year’s Eve?

I’m not saying that. But there is an alternative to a customer avatar for you to consider.

It’s something I heard during a recent binge of listening to interviews with A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos.

Parris said to find the top 3 psychographic characteristics of your list. For example, for the Boardroom offers Parris often wrote for, these three characteristics were:

1. Paranoid (typical angles: What your bank doesn’t want you to know, 12 smiling swindlers)

2. Looking for an “angle” (a secret, a loophole, a way to get over)

3. Like to brag about how smart they are

When you figure out these top 3 psychographic characteristics, you can use them to inform your offers, your headlines, and your body copy. Take a look at any Boardroom control ever, and you will see it in practice. Something like, “Money-saving secrets your CPA is too dumb to know about.”

But your market might be different. Maybe they are gullible rather than skeptical. Maybe they need more proof than promises. Maybe they want a push-button solution, or maybe they have been trained to believe only hard work produces good results.

You can find all this out. Just look at what they’ve bought before… the copy that worked to sell them… and the copy that bombed.

Odds are, you will see patterns, unique insights, which might be different from standard copywriting dogma about what buttons you should push.

Write to these characteristics instead of to a made-up customer avatar… and you might develop magical persuasion powers, by tapping in to your prospect’s deep and unconscious triggers.

And for more information like this:

I have an email un-newsletter, full of age-old wisdom like what you just read. If you’d like to subscribe, click here and follow the simple instructions.

Slow readers of the world, unite and take over

by

It’s one of the most upsetting ideas I’ve read recently:

James Altucher wrote a few weeks ago that we each have maybe 1000 books left in us to read, for the rest of our lives.

The math checks out: 20-30 books per year, for about 40-50 years more of living and reading.

That’s a depressing thought to me. Books are one of the main ways I get any ideas and insights. But it gets worse:

Because when I read, I’m as slow as a tortoise after lunch.

Last year, I read only 10 non-work related books (“Le Morte D’Arthur” took me 5 months to finish) and maybe another 7 work related books (some of which I was reading for the second time). And that’s in spite of taking time out to read every day.

By Altucher’s calculation, at this rate, I will only read 799 more books by the time I croak at my pre-appointed moment of 87 years young.

That’s depressing.

But wait, you might say, surely there are ways to learn to read faster?

I guess there are. But I am resistant to them. For a long time, my only justification was stubbornness.

But then I thought about why I rarely get any value out of “Cliff’s notes” summaries of books, even ones I’ve put together myself.

And that’s why I want to leave you with a throwaway (but valuable) idea that Dan Kennedy shared once during a seminar.

This idea might make you feel better if you too are a slow reader like me.

And if you are not, and you whiz through text, or you have clever hacks to condense and speed up content so you can consume more of it faster, it might make you consider slowing down.

Anyways, here’s the idea. At the start of a seminar DK once gave on being a more successful copywriter, he said not to worry about taking notes.

Kennedy said that if you come away from the seminar with 20 pages of notes, then he has failed. But if you come away with three or four things you are determined to change, then he has succeeded. And he summed it up with the following insight, which I want to leave you with:

“You don’t get value out of what I say, but out of what you think of when I say it.”

Here’s a final warning:

If you are focused on getting the most quality reading done for the rest of your life, it probably makes no sense to read much stuff on the Internet.

But if you don’t heed this warning, then you might like to read the email newsletter I write each day. Think about it carefully… and if you so choose, go here to sign up.

This bit of advice made an A-lister’s career

by

During a recent interview, A-list copywriter Parris Lampropolous shared a story from early in his career.

Back then, Parris was writing his first magalog.

A magalog, as you might know, is a format for sales copy that mimics a magazine. It was a popular way to sell newsletter subscriptions back in the 90s and 2000s, before the Internet started to have its finest hour.

A typical magalog had a main “message from the editor” that ran the length of the “magazine.” It also had a dozen sidebar articles on individual topics.

How to write all this shit? It seems like a huge amount of work, and it’s hard to know where to even start. And that’s how it seemed to Parris back when he had to write his first magalog.

So Parris asked his mentor, Clayton Makepeace, for advice. And Clayton told Parris writing a magalog was simple:

You start by writing a bunch of fascinations, aka bullets, based on the content you are selling.

Some of these fascinations will have weak payoffs. In other words, there’s a good chance the reader will be disappointed when he finds out the “secret.”

So those weak fascinations stay “blind” fascinations, and just go into the sales pitch that is the message from the editor.

But some fascinations will have great payoffs, real forehead-slapping stuff. Those fascinations become sidebar articles, and reveal the secret.

And Clayton also told Parris the following:

The first few pages of the magalog are all good content… then it shifts to being 50/50 sales and content… and by the end it’s all sales pitch.

That’s all it takes to write a magalog.

So that’s what Parris started to do, with great success. He went on to have magalog controls at major publishers like Boardroom… and some of those magalogs earned him $1M+ in royalties. In the interview, Parris said this bit of advice on how to write a magalog made his career.

“Great for Parris,” you might say. “But how am I supposed to use this info with today’s copy formats?”

I’m glad you ask. Because it seems to me the magalog advice maps neatly to writing emails to promote an information product.

​​Start with fascinations… write an email for each fascination… reveal the rare good payoff… keep the fascination with a weak payoff blind.

And if you run a campaign that’s got a deadline (and why wouldn’t you), you can even follow the magalog structure of keeping the first part of the sequence all good content… then 50/50 content and selling… and finally all teasing and pitch.

But that’s not all. You might be able to use this magalog advice for other copy formats too.

For example, tomorrow I’ll share how you can use it in a sales medium you’ve probably never heard about… the rare and elusive kindlealog.

If you’d like to read that article, you might like to sign up for my email list. It’s where my articles appear first, and with no fascinations kept blind, even the most underwhelming stuff. Click here if you’d like to sign up.

The breakthrough from the first time Parris Lampropoulos met Clayton Makepeace

by

Parris Lampropoulos once told a story about the first time he got to hang out with one of his mentors, Clayton Makepeace.

At this time, Clayton was one of the most successful freelance copywriters in the world. He had a list of controls longer than a giraffe’s tail. And he was pulling in over $1M a year, back when that was Hollywood money.

In part, Clayton did it by having a stable of talented junior copywriters, including Parris, working under him.

So at one point, Clayton invited the copywriters working for him out to Lake Tahoe. And it was a sight to see.

Clayton was staying there at the presidential suite at a ritzy hotel… getting pampered with massages and facials… eating out at the fanciest restaurants… and picking up the tab for his guests.

Generous.

And for Parris, a breakthrough.

Because at that time, Parris had already been a freelance copywriter for several years. He said he knew intellectually that a freelance copywriter could make Clayton-levels of money… but he still didn’t feel it deep inside.

He needed to see it with his own eyes, in order to make it a reality in his own life. Which is exactly what happened — in the months and years following that first in-person meeting with Clayton in Tahoe.

I bring this up because:

1) It might be useful to you if you are also hoping to reach Hollywood levels of success, and because

2) On a psychological level, your prospect is the same as Parris was back then.

Your prospect might know intellectually what you’re trying to convince him of… but odds are, he still doesn’t feel it deep down.

That’s why the most common writing advice is to show and not tell. And that’s why the most common copywriting advice is to use stories and demonstration. Because these are the most powerful tools you have to drive home a point — even one your prospect has heard a million times — and finally make it real.

And then, you can make your pitch. For example:

I have an email un-newsletter, where I talk about not new, but still valuable, fundamentals of persuasion and marketing. If you’d like to subscribe, here’s where to go.

How to get among the top 10% of all copywriters in one year

by

According to copywriter Victor Schwab, the three most expensive words in advertising are:

“My wife says.”

That might sound like an outdated notion. And no wonder.

Schwab wrote that observation in a book called How to Write a Good Advertisement, back in 1942. That was an eternity ago.

But Schwab’s book is still worth reading. And re-reading. In fact, I read it once last year and once more this year. And I will re-read it next year too.

That’s because I once heard A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos say to do it. Parris said that if you want to get among the top 10% of copywriters, the process is straightforward:

Just read his recommended list of 13 books 3 times each.

The first time, read them like beach reading. The second time. underline. The third time, copy out your notes by hand.

And Parris said that, if you want to, you can do this all in just one year. (I’m a slow reader so it’s taking longer.)

Anyways, Parris only shared his book list and the process above with his small group of copy cubs… and later, with people who heard him speak in one way or another.

I fell into the second group. So I never wrote about this list before because I figured it was one of Parris’s trade secrets.

And it was, until a few months ago. Because in a public interview that Parris gave then to The Copywriter Club people, he explained everything I just told you. And ever since, his list is up on the Copywriter Club website.

So do you have a year to spare? And would you like to improve your copywriting to the top 10% level? If so, here’s where to start:

https://thecopywriterclub.com/parris-book-list/