Research

How to succeed in copywriting more than the other guy

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Legend says that, as Wall Street titan Bernard Baruch was nearing the end of his long and influential life, somebody asked him how he did it.

How did he herd a bunch of U.S. presidents and countless other bull-sized egos, and get them to go where he would? Baruch’s answer was simple:

“Figure out what people want, and show them how to get it.”

Interesting. Except… Did Baruch really say it? Just like that?

That’s how the story was told once, in a closed-door session of top copywriters and rich and powerful direct marketing execs.

But I wanted to use this anecdote in a book I’m writing. So I decided to find some context and proof for this quote. And there went a morning, about two hours of work, straight out the window.

First, a random Google search… then more in-depth reading about Bernard Baruch… then searching through a database of old newspapers and magazines… and finally downloading several BB biographies.

Nothing. The closest I found was a similar Dale Carnegie quote, along with other blogs that refer to the same second-hand source (Gary Bencivenga’s farewell seminar) that I already knew about.

In the end, I gave up and told the anecdote much as I told it above. But I started it with, “Copywriter Gary Bencienga once told a story…” Because I couldn’t confirm that the damn story really was true, or that the quote really was as Gary B. said it was.

So were the two hours of fruitless research a waste?

Yes. But I don’t regret it. I enjoy researching and obsessively tracking down original sources. The fact I get to do it is a perk of how I make money.

But wait — there’s more!

Because I’ve long had a feeling that obsessive research can be a competitive advantage. It can surface gold where you’re only looking for silver.

And along these lines, I hit upon the following quote today. It’s by a man who took his obsessive copywriting research… and turned it into a Park Avenue penthouse and a world-class modern art collection. Take it away Gene Schwartz:

“This is what makes success. There’s nothing else in the world that makes success as much as this. I will take the best copywriter in the world who is sloppy and careless, and match him against a good copy cub, and two out of three times, the sloppiness of the great person will be beaten by the carefulness of the other person. […] The person who is the best prepared and the most knowledgeable makes the most money. It’s so simple!”

In case you want to be knowledgeable and prepared, at least when it comes to marketing and copywriting, you might like my daily email newsletter. Click here if you want to subscribe.

The less you write, the better your copy gets

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“You’re very good at writing in this conversational tone.”

I was getting some copy critiqued by a more experienced copywriter.

“Yeah, this opening story is great,” he said.

Fact is, i didn’t write any of it.

It was a story I found online. I cut it down, rearranged it a bit for emphasis, made it more readable. But most of the words were somebody else’s.

That’s because one of my mantras is that I should write as little copy as possible. The less I write, the better the final result tends to be.

That doesn’t mean to make my sales letters short.

It does mean that most of my copy, particularly the crucial bits like the lead and any stories inside, are not my own invention.

Instead, I dig them up online…

Or, if I have the luxury, I get them straight from the mouth of the guru behind the product, during an interview.

And that’s what I want to share with you today.

Because most people won’t give you the drama and the stories, even if you ask them nicely. They simply don’t understand what you’re after, or what makes for a good story or for exciting copy.

​​That’s why it’s your job to reach down their throat and pull that out.

It took me a while to get decent at doing so. I still mess up often. But I now have a bunch of little techniques I use now that help.

Such as the 3+ technique of negotiation coach Jim Camp. Camp advised covering each main point of a negotiation — or an interview — at least three separate times, using slightly different cues.

“So tell me about the time you first discovered this…”

“Let’s go back to time you first discovered this… where were you when it happened?”

“So wait. When you discovered this… what did you do right after?”

And like I said, I have a bunch of other little tricks. I even wrote them up once in a post on how to be a magnetic listener. If you want to see this post, so you can write write less copy… get better results… and have people like you better (because who doesn’t like a good listener)… then here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/10-steps-to-becoming-a-magnetic-listener/