Last week, while snooping on marketers who sell copywriting courses, I landed on the page of a well-known guy in this space.
He’s got a copywriting course for sale normally. But right now, you can’t buy it.
Instead, you have to sign up with your email for a free mini-course. Which I did, in the hope of getting to see the actual course sales letter.
Instead, I got a bunch of lessons, telling me to do stuff. Videos to watch, and checklists to read, and templates to fill out.
“I don’t have the time,” I tried to argue, “and I really just want to see the sales page.”
No matter. Each day, the emails kept coming. More well-meaning teaching in my inbox, which I didn’t have the time or willpower to absorb.
Eventually I stopped opening them. And then today, I got a follow up:
“I have another free mini-course for you…”
I felt like Lauren Hill when she sings, “I prayed that he would finish… but he just kept right on.”
Now in all fairness, I was never really a prospect for this copywriting course. But even so, I think the following still holds:
A free course, and in general, any free “hard teaching,” is like an earthquake. One is kind of exciting, if it’s small and only happens rarely.
But two or more? Especially if they’re big? You start to wake up in the middle of the night, sweating and panting, because you’re still having flashbacks from the last one, when you felt powerless and out of time.
So if you are trying to shake up your prospects with well-meaning content, full of specific steps they have to read and do… stop it. Be a little kinder.
Send them some other stuff. Which won’t overwhelm or cause PTSD.
What kind of other stuff?
That’s a good question.
But you know. I won’t bother you with that here. However, I might talk about it, at some future time, in my email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.