Victor Schwab

Pride as proof element

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I was on a call with one of my coaching students recently. He had added some new features to his subscription offer. He was excited and enthusiastic about it, and so he wrote up one of his daily emails to announce it.

I thought this was great, and I told him so.

Not necessarily for the feature or even what it would do for his customers, though that was solid. But the real thing that was great was my student’s excitement and enthusiasm around the whole thing.

My very first big direct response copywriting client was Josh Dunlop. Josh hired me via Upwork in early 2016, some 6 months after I decided to work as freelance copywriter. Back then, Josh had a 7-figure site selling photography courses. I’m guessing it’s even bigger now.

I remember talking to Josh at some point and hearing him say he’s particularly proud of one of his courses. That stuck with me. I put it into an email that sold that course, and it did well. I guess it resonated with his readers too. I’ve been using it ever since.

In his book How to Write a Good Advertisement, Vic Schwab lists 17 types of proof. As far as I can see, “pride in your work” is not among them. But it should be.

People normally cannot judge the quality of your offer before they buy it. They might not be able to judge it even after. But they sure can judge your emotions around what you sell.

​​So if you are proud of what you sell, highlight that, so people know it, and so they have an easier time making up their own minds. Speaking of:

As I’ve said before, and as I’ll say again, I’m proud of my Copy Riddles course.

​​I’m proud of the initial concept for the course… I’m proud of the way I managed to carry it out and the learning experience I provided for people who get it… I’m proud of the feedback I’ve gotten, including from people whose jobs and careers have been positively impacted by this training.

Of course, pride is not the only proof element I have to show you that Copy Riddles is a worthwhile investment. For the full presentation, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Use the Force to avoid copy that’s too long

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A long, long time ago, in a galaxy that’s pretty much the one we live in, I was wasting time doing “research” (ie. not writing when I should have been). But at least I discovered the following curious fact:

George Lucas’s early drafts for the Star Wars script talked about “the Force of Others.”

These early drafts gave detailed explanations of what the Force of Others was, how it tied into a “Kyber crystal,” and how there was a “Bogan” side and an “Ashla” side of it.

Following his better instincts, Lucas stripped out all the explaining in the final draft. He got rid of the crystal and the Bogan nonsense, and dropped “the Others” and simply called it “the Force.” Star Wars went on to become a pretty, pretty big hit.

There’s a copywriting lesson here. But first, here’s another illustration:

Back in 1982, Darryl Hall was writing the prototype of a song called Maneater. He was stumbling on the last line of the chorus. “Oh here she comes… She’s a maneater and a …”

Hall can’t remember the original final line, because his girlfriend told him to “drop that shit at the end.” So he did. Maneater went to the top of the charts ​and stayed there longer than any other Hall & Oates song. Hall said that cutting down the last line made all the difference.

Conventional direct response wisdom says that longer copy outperforms shorter copy. It’s been proven over and over in many tests.

Copywriter Victor Schwab, who wrote How to Write a Good Advertisement, definitely supported the use of longer copy. But Schwab also wrote the following:

“Some ads don’t need much factual under-pinning… The copy about some products can soar successfully — without ‘coming a cropper.’ An abundance of factual material merely inhibits its flight. If too explicit about the “why” and “hows,” such copy pulls the reader’s imagination up short.” ​​

I can’t give you a recipe for when you should take out the “whys” and “hows” of your copy. I think it’s a matter of having a good feel for your market and your product, and knowing what they need to hear — and what not — in order to make the sale.

In other words, trust your intuition. Or use the Force. The Bogan Force. Of Others. And stop yourself if you say too much.

I should have stopped there. But I have one final thing to say. I write a daily email newsletter. If you’d like to get my emails, much like what you just read, you can sign up here.

WIIFM and other powerful persuasion frequencies

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Two days ago I was in Barajas, an outskirt of Madrid where the airport lies.

Next to my hotel, on a wall separating the parking lot from a dirt field, was a very fancy mural.

It showed a life-sized football player dribbling a ball… and the logo of the local club, Club Deportivo Barajas.

Here’s what got to me:

CD Barajas is not a major Spanish football club. They are not very good at all, and they would probabaly lose if they had to play with the under-16 squad of a La Liga team.

And yet, some patriotic Barajas resident was willing to put in the time and effort to make this mural on an ugly and dirty wall next to an airport hotel.

This connects to an idea that weaves through much of persuasion… but that few places talk about explicitly.

You’ve probably heard of WIIFM, what’s in it for me. That’s the mental radio station that’s playing whenever your prospects hear your sales pitch.

But WIIFM is part of a broader ownership instinct we all have. Because we all have a special receiver that’s tuned into frequencies that report on things that belong to us.

Victor Schwab wrote that given a fountain pen, 96% of college women wrote their own names. Shown a map of the USA, 447 men out of 500 looked first for the location of their home towns.

Think about the music you listened to as a teenager… towns you lived in in the past… the breed of dog you had as a kid… your own birthday… the year you were born.

If you hear these mentioned somewhere, odds are your ears perk up, and you tune in your mental receiver to hear more.

The same is true for your prospect. So start broadcasting on a frequency where your prospect feels some ownership. He will listen, and pay attention. Which is a huge part of what you need to sell him anything.

By the way, were you born in 1980? Or any time after? In that case, you might like to subscribe to my daily email newsletter.

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

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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/

A lesson in reality for lazy copywriters

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I blame my parents. They gave me a pleasant and carefree childhood. How selfish of them.

Had they been more forward-thinking, they would have put me to work early — washing dishes after dinner, taking out the trash for my allowance, maybe even a part-time job at the local shoe-shine stand.

As it is, I never had to work until after puberty had had its way with me and then left me alone. By that time, it was too late.

I grew up lazy.

In spite of my best adult efforts to become fluent in “work,” I find that whenever I try to speak that language, I have a heavy accent and the whole thing seems unnatural.

But this email is not about me. This email is about you. Because if you’re looking to become a successful copywriter, it will take work. As Victor Schwab wrote,

“My personal nomination for a heraldic shield for the advertising business would be an obese briefcase, rampant on a field of copy paper.”

Schwab advised young ad men to pack their briefcases full of client papers and take them home for extra work, after work. Because more than talent, more than knowledge of marketing and persuasion, success at copywriting requires work.

Perhaps that thought horrifies you. So let me leave you with something more positive, this from copywriter John Carlton:

Think of yourself as being in a movie — you may not have total control over everything, but you have a lot MORE control than you naturally believe you have.

Write your script the way you want, and then go for it.

Accept reality, but never accept your own lame excuses for not making things happen with as much input from you as you could muster.

The point being, if you don’t like working long hours, you can certainly organize your life in time to avoid that.

If you want to get paid better, you can get there too, and more quickly than you think.

And if, say, you hate working for clients, there are plenty of ways to make a good living today by writing for yourself.

Sure you have to work. That’s reality. But even if you never grow to love work, you can make your life much more like you want than you imagine right now.

By the way, if you want to work at reading a message like this from me, each day, you can subscribe to my daily email newsletter.

Use the Force to avoid copy that’s too long

by

George Lucas’s early drafts for the Star Wars script talked about “the Force of Others.”

These early drafts gave detailed explanations of what the Force of Others was, how it tied into a “Kyber crystal,” and how there was a “Bogan” side and an “Ashla” side of it.

Following his better instincts, Lucas stripped out all the explaining in the final draft. He got rid of the crystal and the Bogan nonsense, and dropped “the Others” and simply called it “the Force.” Star Wars went on to become a pretty, pretty big hit.

There’s a copywriting lesson here. But first, here’s another illustration:

Back in 1982, Darryl Hall was writing the prototype of a song called Maneater. He was stumbling on the last line of the chorus. “Oh here she comes… She’s a maneater and a …”

Hall can’t remember the original final line, because his girlfriend told him to “drop that shit at the end.” So he did. Maneater went to the top of the charts ​and stayed there longer than any other Hall & Oates song. Hall said that cutting down the last line made all the difference.

Conventional direct response wisdom says that longer copy outperforms shorter copy. It’s been proven over and over in many tests.

Copywriter Victor Schwab, who wrote How to Write a Good Advertisement, definitely supported the use of longer copy. But Schwab also wrote the following:

“Some ads don’t need much factual under-pinning… The copy about some products can soar successfully — without ‘coming a cropper.’ An abundance of factual material merely inhibits its flight. If too explicit about the “why” and “hows,” such copy pulls the reader’s imagination up short.” ​​

I can’t give you a recipe for when you should take out the “whys” and “hows” of your copy. I think it’s a matter of having a good feel for your market and your product, and knowing what they need to hear — and what not — in order to make the sale.

In other words, trust your intuition. Or use the Force. The Bogan Force. Of Others. And stop yourself if you say too much.

I should have stopped there. But I have one final thing to say. I write a daily email newsletter. If you’d like to get my emails, much like what you just read, you can sign up here.

“Meanwhile, back at the copywriting ranch…”

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“The longer [the evangelist] can hold interest, the more people he can convince — and the greater will be the number who will inevitably walk forward and ‘hit the sawdust trail.’ The less able he is to hold interest for a sufficient time, the greater will be the number who will inevitably walk out.”
Victor Schwab, How to Write a Good Advertisement

The most memorable lesson I learned from my former copywriting coach had to do with keeping the reader’s interest. It was most memorable because it made so much sense. And yet, it went against all my instincts for how I normally write.

It’s actually a well-known writing trick.

I’ve come across the same idea in an episode of Every Frame a Painting, the YouTube video essay series. The episode in question actually revealed behind-the-scenes secrets — the underlying structure that made each essay so interesting.

Among other tricks, there was something called “Meanwhile, back at the ranch.” In a nutshell, each episode would have multiple story lines. When one story reached a peak of interest, it would cut out.

“Meanwhile, back at the ranch…”

… and another story line would pick up. When that reached a new level of interest, it would cut out again, to switch to another story line. And so on.

This might seem silly simple when I lay it out like this. After all, that’s pretty much how every soap opera and TV show works.

But like I said, it’s not how most people write. At least that’s not how I naturally write. I usually want to express my point in a logical, linear — and boring — order.

Which brings me back to my former copywriting coach. He likened the structure of a sales message to a spiral that winds around the linear, logical skeleton of the points you need to make. The reader should never know for sure what you’re going to say next.

If you do create that winding spiral, you will keep your prospect interested. And like Vic Schwab wrote above, the longer you can keep your prospect interested, the greater the chance he will walk the sawdust trail. That means more conversions made… and more shekels in your collection box.

No collection box here at the moment. But if you want more of this kind of evangelical content, here’s where to sign up for my email newsletter.

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/

Copy is never too boring, only too irrelevant

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“Long novels often become best sellers, but even short books of logic rarely do.”
Victor Schwab, How to Write a Good Advertisement

True story I heard today:

Million Dollar Mike Morgan, an A-list copywriter I mentioned a couple of days ago, once wrote a 64-page sales letter.

Mike looked at his creation in horror and thought, “This really is too much. Who the hell would read 64 pages of promotion?”

Back then, Million Dollar Mike worked with copywriting coach David Garfinkel.

David read over the copy, and told Mike to run with it.

Which Mike did. The copy made sales. And afterwards, at an event where he was speaking, Mike actually got to talk to some people who bought the $1k product his sales letter promoted.

“Let me ask you something,” he asked all the folks who had bought. “Did you actually read that whole sales letter?”

All of the buyers did. The whole thing. One even read it twice.

It’s often said that a sales letter is never too long, only too boring. But here’s the problem with that:

If you’re writing to the wrong person, then no matter how long or short your sales letter, how entertaining or deadly dull, you won’t make the sale.

And if you’re not an actual prospect for what you’re selling, you can’t tell whether they will be bored or not.

So what do you do?

Well, you rely on the fundamental basics of direct response copywriting, which have been more or less proven over the last 100 years. And you apply them to your sales copy, blind if you have to.

If you need a primer on these fundamental basics of copywriting, specifically as applied to sales advertorials, then check out the following:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

For those who are less successful than they will be

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Several years ago, I was at a bar with a friend and we started talking to two Welsh sisters.

After a few minutes, one of the sisters stopped and turned to me. “Wait a minute,” she asked, “how old are you?

I had just turned 36 and I told her so.

“No way! I would have said you are 26, not 36!”

I shrugged it off. But it was cowin’ lush of her to say. However, if she had  instead told me,

“Pack it in! You are so much older than you look!”

… even though the content is basically the same, I probably wouldn’t have been as pleased. And I guess it’s not just me. Case in point:

In Victor Schwab’s How to Write a Good Advertisement, Vic goes over 100 successful headlines. One of these is,

“For The Woman Who Is Older Than She Looks”

This, says Vic, stopped thousands of women and got them to read the ad.

On the other hand, the more straightforward (though equivalent) “For The Woman Who Looks Younger Than She Is” didn’t perform nearly as well.

And there’s a fundamental rule of copywriting embedded in that short example. In case you don’t see it yet, let me give you a few more examples:

“71-Year-Old Man Has Sexual Congress Five Times a Day!”
“The Unique World of Gay Rodeo”
“Get Rich Slowly”

Of course, each of these headlines has multiple things going on. But I think you’ll agree they also have something in common.

I’ll spell this out another day in another post. (If you have a guess and you want to see if it’s what I have in mind, write me and I can confirm it for you.)

For now, if you have a business, and you want to be more successful with it by ramping up your sales copy, then you might get some value from the following:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/