Copywriting

The inspirational and brutal truth about copywriting

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I’m a tad exhausted and with good reason.

I’ve just handed in the VSL I’ve been working on for the past month.

It’s been a huge pile of work. In fact, an amazingly huge pile. Contributed in part by the fact it’s also the first project I’ve done while working with my copywriting coach, a copywriter himself, and somebody who’s much more successful (and better at writing copy) than I am. All of which is making me reminisce…

Specifically, to a moment about a year after I started writing copy.

At that point, I had read a couple of copywriting books. I had raised my rates to respectable levels. And I had done some small- and medium -sized projects for various clients, mostly with positive feedback (“Wow this looks great”) and even with some positive results (“We used your copy and it made 30% more sales than what we were using before”). And I remember thinking to myself then,

“Well, that’s it. I’ve arrived. I’ve read those two books. I’m making decent money. I have good feedback and results. And I guess I’ve mastered all there is to know about this copywriting thing.”

Well, it’s now about three years later. And I’m amazed by how complex and complicated copywriting really is.

When you read copy, that’s not obvious.

It seems simple or even simplistic. And if you have any pretensions to being a writer, you think to yourself, “Pff, I could do this myself easy.”

What you don’t see is all the hidden high-level work that goes into choosing exactly those arguments, presented in that order. You also don’t see all the hidden low-level work, polishing each sentence, and possibly each word, in a 30- or 50- or 80-page promo. In other words, what you don’t see are the hundreds of other permutations of this exact sales letter that existed either on paper or in the copywriter’s head.

Now depending on how you look at it, that can either be inspirational or brutal.

Brutal, because the fact is, copywriting continues to require a lot of work. As you get better, you just see different things (and more of them) that can be improved.

Inspirational, because if you’re looking for a craft that you can really work on for years to come, then this is it. Plus, it apparently pays royalties as well.

Master this 2-bit magic trick for a conversion boost

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I got a marketing email today with the subject line:

“Add THIS To Your Coffee For A Memory Boost”

The email explains: “It’s not sugar or cream, and it’s not anything that will affect the taste… But it’s clinically shown to improve your memory starting in just 1 hour.”

​​Hmmm… interesting.

Almost as interesting as a Penn and Teller magic trick I watched involving a disappearing chicken. Penn announces he will make the chicken disappear from its cage through the use of misdirection. “That’s a magical term,” Penn informs you, “a term of art. It’s a curating of attention… giving the audience a story they can tell themselves that lets them not really know they were distracted.”

Penn keeps explaining how he’s going to fool you as he lowers a velvet cloth over the soon-to-be-disappeared chicken. And then suddenly, a man in a gorilla suit jumps out from backstage, banging some cymbals. Meanwhile, Teller, the quiet half of the duo, sneaks behind the cage, takes the chicken out, and walks off.

Eventually, the commotion settles down. ​​

“How many of you saw the gorilla?” Penn asks the audience. Everybody raises their hand.

“And how many of you saw Teller take the chicken out?” Almost all hands go up again.

“Now, how many of you saw him sneak the gorilla into the cage?” Penn asks. And he strips away the velvet cloth to show the gorilla struggling in the cage, right where the chicken was only a few seconds ago.

Pretty impressive. But getting back to marketing… What is this non-sugar, non-cream coffee additive that will boost your memory in just one hour?

Well, if you click on the link, and have the patience to watch the VSL, you’ll find out it’s a run-of-the-mill supplement, specifically, a capsule containing some standard herbs that are supposed to make an old and tired mind sharper. It’s not in any way connected to coffee, though I guess you can plop it into your coffee, much like you could plop a pair of keys into your coffee so you don’t forget them.

Maybe you see my point.

​​Misdirection is a clever magic trick to use in copy. It works well to get attention, and probably, to increase sales as well. But be careful.

​​Unlike with a magic show, people won’t be pleased to be fooled like with the coffee/supplement example. Your misdirection should be subtle and, unlike in the marketing email I got, at least a little plausible. Nobody likes to feel like a gullible ass, and they probably won’t give you a second chance.

How is your vagal tone?

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“Well I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?”
– Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah

Gary Halbert once wrote that if you’re in the marketing business, you always have to do two things:

1) Keep the fundamentals in mind
2) Keep an eye out for what’s working right now

Well, right now, one specific health offer seems to be working like crazy. I’m assuming this because I’ve gotten dozens of emails promoting this offer over the past two months.

Many of these emails came from various Agora health brands (the offer in question also seems to come from an Agora brand). Others came from 3rd party newsletters that I suppose are affiliates. And I’ve even seen email drops in Newsmax promoting this offer.

I’m listening to the VSL right now, and two things stick out as possible reasons why this offer is doing so well at the moment.

First, it has a unique “problem mechanism” (that’s a term that I first heard from top-flight copywriter Stefan Georgi). In this case, the problem mechanism is “low vagal tone,” which as the VSL will tell you, will do everything from shriveling your nuts to corroding your cells and even burning out your brain. Do you have a health problem right now? Maybe it’s time to get your vagal tone checked.

But how do you check your vagal tone? Well, the VSL has an answer for you. It’s even got a solution in case you find that your vagal tone is low.

And that’s the second possible reason why this VSL seems to be killing it right now. The “solution mechanism” (your run of the mill, Gene Schwartz mechanism) is not a pill, not a supplement, and not even a newsletter. instead, it’s a special sound, or as the VSL says, a “healing frequency discovered between 85-255 Hz.”

Maybe that’s the secret chord that David played to increase the vagal tone. Anyways, if you’re in the marketing business, and you’d like to see this offer that’s working so well right now, here’s the link:

https://pro.donovanhealth.com/p/OV6SSSPKG1I/EOV6VB48/

Dainty copy killer

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“Good afternoon?” the man asked me with a faint smile.

The normally busy cafe was empty except for one table. As soon as I walked in, the people around this one table stopped talking to each other and turned to face me.

There were five women and the one man with the smile. He seemed to be in charge. He repeated his greeting, which was really a question.

“Good afternoon?”

I looked around. There were plates of food laid out. No music was playing. The lights were dim.

“Is there a private event going on?” I asked. He nodded.

So I excused myself and stepped out of the cafe back into the rain. And then, on the door, I saw a dainty sign on a piece of A5 paper:

“Cafe Lav is closed to the public until 9pm today.”

A nice, clear message. But who has time to read all the notices, warnings, announcements, and advertisements out there?

Nobody.

And maybe that can be a lesson to all the copywriters out there. You might spend days and weeks and even months crafting your message perfectly. But if it doesn’t catch your prospect’s eye, he won’t read it, regardless of how good your copy is.

So how do you catch somebody’s eye graphically? I’m hardly an expert on direct response design, but here are some tips I’ve picked up along the way:

1. Don’t put crucial information in the pre-headline (aka “eyebrow”) because people will read that part of the headline complex last, if they read it at all

2. Don’t use reverse type (white letters on black background) unless you want to hide the message (“This is a paid advertisement”)

3. Don’t use highlights other than yellow

4. Use arrows, circles, and “handwritten” notes to draw attention to important elements

5. Use photos of faces looking at the viewer to draw attention

6. Use photos of faces looking in the direction of an important element you want to draw attention to (eg. an offer or headline)

7. Don’t be afraid to make your headline enormous even at the expense of cutting down body copy

Maybe this last one would have helped at Cafe Lav today. Or maybe they should have just locked the door.

Anyways, if you have other direct response tips, please send them my way. After a long layoff, I’m getting back in the groove of working on my own offers, and that means I act as designer as well as copywriter.

Breakthrough con artistry

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If you start sniffing around the copywriting cafeteria, you will soon discover that many top copywriting chefs revere one specific book. ​​It’s an old book, originally published 53 years ago. It wasn’t republished for many years, so resourceful people stole this book from public libraries, while less resourceful people bought used copies on eBay. This eventually drove the price for a single copy up to $600 or more.

It must be pretty amazing to be worth so much money, right?

Well, once you start reading this book, odds are good you will soon be frustrated. That’s because the book, while written by a top-level copywriter who knew how to write simply and clearly in sales letters, is complex and complicated and hard to read and contains new and unfamiliar ideas. But this last bit is why so many expert copywriters revere this one particular book.

The book in question was written by the great Eugene Schwartz, and is called Breakthrough Advertising. The reason it’s so revered is that, in the first 3 chapters alone, it gives an unrivaled explanation of how marketing evolves in different markets, and how businesses, marketers, and copywriters can use this to their profit.

The gist is that you always want to differentiate yourself. Of course, that summary is a little too general to be useful. If you want more detail, you have two options.

Option one is to get a copy of Breakthrough Advertising yourself and to push through it, or through the first three chapters at least. The book is available now for the ridiculously low price of $125, and if you really do read it and apply what it teaches, it will be well worth your money and brain power.

Option two is free and will only take 3 minutes and 4 seconds of your life. It might even make you laugh. I’m talking about a new Key & Peele video that a friend just sent me, titled (entitled?) “You Can’t Con a Con Artist If You’re Also a Con Artist.”

​​This short sketch is not nearly as detailed of a guide as Breakthrough Advertising, but it presents many of the same ideas, in a condensed, entertaining package. If you want to give it a looksee, and try to unravel the marketing messages hidden within, here is the link:

Yet another clickbait subject line

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“I was furious…”

“Did you get a chance to see this?”

“I almost forgot to tell you!”

I’ve seen an uptick recently in flat-out clickbait subject lines like these. And by “clickbait,” I mean subject lines that have little (or nothing) to do with the actual content of the email. They are simply tacked on as an afterthought, and could work just as well with any other content.

But what’s the problem? The more the merrier, right? People can’t read your message unless they click on it, and if a subject line gets them to click, then it’s done its job.

Perhaps. But like salt, curiosity rarely makes a filling meal on its own. That’s not my conclusion. Instead, it comes from one of the greatest copywriters of the last century, John Caples, who wrote about headlines:

“Avoid headlines that merely provoke curiosity. Curiosity combined with news or self-interest is an excellent aid to the pulling power of your headline, but curiosity by itself is seldom enough. This fundamental rule is violated more often than any other.”

And then then we get to the very other extreme. You might call this “the fewer the merrier.” It’s an idea promoted by the likes of marketing expert Travis Sago, who has made himself and his clients millions of dollars, often solely through email. Travis advises that you “write your subject lines like you have to pay for every open.”

So what to do? Who’s right?

Well, I think there’s actually no single right answer. There might be situations where clickbait headlines (“Whoa!”) make sense and make sales. Cold emails to businesses might be one example. Personally, I don’t like these kinds of subject lines, but that’s just a matter of artisanal pride.

I also think that if you’re looking to play the long game with your marketing, meaning you want an ongoing relationship with your readers, then it makes sense not to piss those readers off. Will they click on your email and feel like they’ve been scammed into reading something irrelevant? Then maybe it’s time to consider making your subject line less clickbaity, more transparent, and more specific.

Don’t play it again, Sam

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“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world,” says Rick while looking into his glass, “she walks into mine.”

Rick’s piano player Sam is there in the back of the darkened room, softly rolling out some hokey-pokey tune.

“What’s that you’re playing?” Ricks asks him.

“Just a little something of my own,” says Sam over his shoulder.

“Well stop it,” Rick tells him. “You know what I wanna hear. You played it for her, you can play it for me.”

Sam stops playing. He turns around carefully. “Oh, I don’t think I can remember.”

“If she can stand it, I can,” barks Rick. “PLAY IT!”

You probably recognize this as one of the most dramatic of all the scenes from all the films in all the Hollywood. It’s from Casablanca, and it’s one of a couple of scenes that gets close to using the famous line “Play it again, Sam,” which doesn’t actually appear anywhere in the movie.

To my mind, this scene is a great illustration of 1) an important point about writing and 2) something more.

The writing bit is something that I read in a New Yorker article about big-name playwright, director, and screenwriter David Mamet. Mamet has written movies like “Glengarry Glenn Ross” (“Always be closing”) as well as The Spanish Prisoner, Wag the Dog, Ronin, and a bunch more. Anyways, here’s the Mamet quote I read today:

“The main question in drama, the way I was taught, is always what does the protagonist want… Do we see the protagonist’s wishes fulfilled or absolutely frustrated? That’s the structure of drama… People only speak to get something… They may use a language that seems revealing, but if so, it’s just coincidence, because what they’re trying to do is accomplish an objective.”

You can definitely see the protagonist’s “absolutely frustrated” wishes in the Casablanca scene. A few indirect words, mostly about what song to play, reveal the desperate psychological setup of Rick’s character in that moment.

You want to show, not tell. And you want to make the dialog about what the protagonist wants, whether he’s getting it or not.

That covers the first half of the Mamet quote above.

But like I said, there’s something more in that Casablanca scene and in that Mamet quote. It has to do with a really fundamental truth about human psychology. And it’s very useful to know if you are ever looking to influence people, or to understand them better.

But I can’t talk about this second thing today. Because I have a rule, “One post, one topic.” However, read my post tomorrow, and I’ll tell you all about this fundamental truth about the human mind, and how it fits into the Casablanca scene above.

Miracle Max’s copywriting masterclass

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There’s a scene in The Princess Bride that’s very instructive for copywriters.

(If you haven’t seen the movie, go and watch it. It’s wonderful.)

Anyways, the scene is set in the hovel of Miracle Max, a miracle man who can bring people back from the dead.

And that’s why the main hero, Westley, is lying there dead on Miracle Max’s table.

But Max isn’t convinced he should bring Westley back to life.

So he takes a magical bellows, sticks it Westley’s mouth, and puffs some air into Westley’s dead body.

“Heey? Hello in there?” Max yells at Westley’s corpse. “What’s so important? Whatcha got here that’s worth living for?”

He then presses down on Westley’s chest. And out comes the response:

“TR…OOOOO…LUV…”

I thought of this scene today because I got some feedback from my copywriting coach.

He said my copy needed to be more theatrical.

More dramatic.

More “spicy.”

But how do you copy spicy?

Well, one option is to raise the stakes.

Or like William Goldman, the author of The Princess Bride, puts it,

“Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Truths. Passion. Miracles.”

Of course, you shouldn’t literally add fencing and giants and torture into your copy.

But if you keep these Goldman ideas in mind, you’ll find the equivalent stories in your prospect’s life… or in the back story of your guru… or in what your competition is doing.

Just make sure you write clearly so your prospects can understand you.

Because (as you can see at the end of the Miracle Max scene in the Princess Bride) “TR…OOOOO…LUV…” can be misheard as “to blave,” which as everybody knows, means, “to bluff.”

And nobdoy’s gonna do what you ask them to do, if they think your only goal is to cheat them or make money at their expense.

A working witch’s broom for your Halloween?

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I read an article today about the scientific search for anti-gravity.

Anti-gravity is just what it sounds like:

A mysterious force that fights gravity and could be used by humans for levitating, sending slim jims into space, and possibly even saving suicidal walruses.

Before I lose you, let me say this article was completely serious, just like the search for anti-gravity.

In fact, some very smart and successful scientists, working around the middle of the 20th century, and sponsored by the U.S. government, thought that the discovery of anti-gravity was imminent. One such scientist, by the name of George S. Trimble, had this to say:

“I think we could do the job in about the time that it actually required to build the first atom bomb if enough trained scientific brainpower simultaneously began thinking about and working towards a solution. Actually, the biggest deterrent to scientific progress is a refusal of some people, including scientists, to believe that things which seem amazing can really happen…”

I bring this up because it’s Halloween today.

Imagine if Trimble and his colleagues had succeeded. Today we might have real-life witch’s brooms, which you could hop on and fly around from door to door, trick or treating.

Now maybe this whole thing sounds outlandish to you. And that’s kind of the point.

Because the fact is, we have lots of really outlandish technologies out there, but we take them for granted.

Have you heard of CRISPR, which can turn an elephant into a frog?

Or of quantum computing, where a mystery box spits out answers that no normal computer could ever calculate?

Or even something mundane like your cell phone, which allows you to receive cat memes and pictures of lattes that your friends are drinking right now, through some spooky jiggling at the atomic level?

We accept all of these technologies and we believe that they’re true.

But anti-gravity?

Come on, get real.

And this has real implications for direct response copywriting.

Because if you’ve got some breakthrough new solution, people might be intrigued, but they will quickly get skeptical as well.

For example, I’m writing a VSL right now to promote a system for making money in real estate…

Without owning any property, without taking out any loans, and without investing any money, yours or other people’s.

Sounds too good to be true, right?

And yet it’s real and it’s legit.

The question then becomes how to convince people of it. And the answer might be something else I found in the anti-gravity article, this time from physics professor Louis Witten:

“Some of them were very simple ideas. The simple ideas are always hard to combat. Suppose somebody comes to you and says ‘I have a rock of bismuth that demonstrates anti-gravity.’ What do you do?”

Keep this in mind if you’re writing your own VSLs. And if you’re not interested in writing VSLs, but you are interested in writing advertorials, then you might get a Halloween trick or treat by looking here:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

Rough and smooth copywriting sandpaper

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I believe it was Michelangelo who wrote:

“Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”

Similarly, every hairball of a first draft has a good piece of copy inside it. And it is the task of the copywriter to discover it.

Perhaps you think it’s grandiose to compare copywriting to fine art?

You’re probably right. But the fact remains, I’m currently writing the first draft of a video sales letter, and it is far from fine.

No matter. Because as soon as I wrap up this first draft, hopefully tonight, I will start to polish it. I’ve even got 7 separate grades of sandpaper of varying smoothity, which should help me discover that good piece of copy hiding inside.

#1. Tidbit sandpaper

With this sandpaper, I make a new loop through all my notes. Product research, customer research, testimonials… And I note good tidbits that I haven’t yet included in the sales letter. These tidbits could just be a good phrase, or a convincing argument, or anything. When I’ve made this list of tidbits, I go in, and I squeeze each one into my copy at some point.

#2. Vision sandpaper

Show, don’t tell. So “Jack was starting to give into the pressure” becomes…

“Jack was pounding away at an old typewriter. He had already typed up hundreds of pages, and each one repeated the same phrase over and over. ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.'”

#3. Grasp-the-advantage sandpaper

This is a must for good copy, and it comes from Victor Schwab’s book, How to Write a Good Advertisement. Throughout the copy, make sure you are bringing it back to the prospect, and making it clear why this matters to him.

“Our real estate investing system gets you all the hot leads you can handle for free.”

Yeah, so what?

“So you don’t have to spend any of your own money.”

Yeah, so what?

“So you can get started even if you’re dead broke right now.”

Hmmm…

#4. Midge sandpaper

Master copywriter David Deutsch has this thing he calls, “Hey Midge.” Basically, the copy should sound like something a guy would say to his wife (Midge?). In other words, this is where you focus on writing to just one person, your ideal avatar.

#5. Dumb sandpaper

There’s a website out there called the Hemingway Editor. You paste your copy in, and it tells you the reading level. It also tells you how to lower the reading level. I aim for grade 6.

#6. Intense sandpaper

David Garfinkel said on a recent episode of the Copywriters Podcast that the way to make copy “intense” is to write long copy, and then cut it down. So when I finish all the other steps above, I trim down my copy by 10%. I start by cutting out worthless adjectives and adverbs. Next are the complicated phrases that could be simpler. And then I will take out entire sentences or even paragraphs to meet my 10% quota.

#7. Boron sandpaper

I don’t know if Gary Halbert was the first to suggest reading your copy out loud. But his Boron Letters was the first place I saw this advice. And I still stick to it.

So there you go. Hopefully it can help you if you’ve got a hairball on your hands as well.

And if you need more ideas for pre-processing and post-processing your copy, maybe you will find some help here:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/