I’ll give it to you in a word:
Promise.
“Promise, large promise,” as Samuel Johnson wrote a million and four years ago, “is the soul of an advertisement.”
So obvious, right? You know how to make a promise, no?
Of course you do. You just tell people, “Here’s what you’ll get,” and you lay out what’s in it for them. You try to juice it up a bit with some John Carlton adjectives like “astonishing” or “accidental.” As garnish, you put “How to” in front of it.
Except, if this is all there is to making a promise, then why isn’t every offer, even every good offer, flying off the shelves? And why isn’t every copywriter who supposedly knows how to make a promise getting paid in heavy sacks of gold?
I’d like to propose to you that the most basic and most important skill in copywriting — making a promise — is more subtle and more involved than you might at first believe.
And as proof of that, take A-list copywriter Mel Martin.
Martin specialized in writing sales letters packed with sexy, intriguing, promise-heavy bullets.
But Martin was agonizingly slow in writing copy. It took him three to four months to write a sales letter. He could get stuck for a month on a letter opening.
Even at this snail’s pace, Mel Martin was almost singlehandedly responsible for growing Boardroom, one of the biggest direct response publishers, to $125 million a year, back in 1990s money.
Maybe you’ve seen some of Martin’s famous ads for Boardroom. I wonder what you thought?
If you’re anything like me, you might look at Martin’s copy and think, “Pff, I can do the same. So simple. So basic. Just promises and how-to’s.”
Except, there was clearly something magical and mysterious going on during those months that Mel Martin was agonizing over his copy.
That’s why his sales letters pulled in millions of dollars year after year, and that’s why he beat out all competing copywriters he was pitted against.
Maybe your promises are as good as Mel Martin’s. But if you have some doubts, if you suspect you could write better, more magical and mysterious promises, then I got two free bonuses I’d like to offer you:
#1. Copy Riddles Lite (price last sold at: $97)
Copy Riddles Lite includes one of the 20 rounds included in my full Copy Riddles program. The round is composed of two parts, in which you practice writing sales bullets, and compare what you wrote to what Mel Martin (as well as several other A-list copywriters) wrote starting with the same prompt.
Do this, and you very quickly realize how much skill went into Mel Martin’s bullets. Fortunately, you also very quickly manage to leech some of that skill from Mel Martin, without spending the months and years of agony it took him.
And once you get a taste for Martin’s skill, then the next step is natural:
#2. “How to Turn Fascinations into Fortunes: Copywriting Secrets To Fascinate, Captivate, And Dominate” (price last sold at: $97)
Lawrence Bernstein, “the world’s most obsessed ad archivist,” once hunted down a collection of all of Mel Martin’s million-dollar ads for Boardroom, along with other control-beating ads Martin had written for the New York Times book division.
Lawrence then printed out the ads, stuffed them in an envelope, and mailed the collection to Marty Edelston, the founder and CEO of Boardroom.
Would Edelston get a kick out of seeing those old ads that helped build up Boardroom? He sure did.
Marty Edelston was so grateful for these ads that he sent Lawrence a thank-you note, along with a check for $2,000.
If you’d like to see these ads yourself, and study them, and model them for selling your own products, then Lawrence put them together into a collection he called “Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes.”
Lawrence got $2,000 as a thank you for putting together this collection of ads. He then sold this collection for $97.
But you don’t have to pay $2,000, or even $97 for “Fascinations Into Fortunes.”
I’ve made a special deal with Lawrence so you can get “Fascinations Into Fortunes” free, along with Copy Riddles Lite, as part of the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle.
If you’ve already taken me up on my offer from yesterday, check the bonus area, and you’ll find how to get your hands on these two new bonuses.
And if you have not yet taken me up on my offer from yesterday, the offer is this:
1. Get five (5) paperback copies of my original 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.
2. Forward me your Amazon receipt.
I will then set you up with Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle. It includes Copy Riddles Lite and Fascinations Into Fortunes from above, plus four other bonuses I wrote about yesterday, for a total of $386 in real-world value, counting just what these offers sold for previously.
If you’d like to take me up on this now, here’s where to go: