A couple days ago, A-list copywriter Dan Ferrari, who was my copywriting coach once upon a time, sent one of his once-every-ice-age emails.
I’ll tell you an idea from that email that caught my eye. But first, a quick story to set it up:
I was talking to my friend Marci a few days ago. Marci has started a quick, daily, general-interest AI newsletter. He asked me if I had any suggestions for him.
I told him to consider picking a specific audience and niching down to writing about AI for that audience.
Marci’s brother Krisz was in the room and listening to the conversation. At this point he jumped in and said, “For me the newsletter is perfect as it is. It’s short, it’s interesting, it keeps me in the loop even if I’m not so much into AI.”
So who’s right? Should Marci niche down his newsletter? Should he keep it broad?
Or more relevant to you:
Should you go with one product name or a second product name? One segment of the market or another? One headline or a second one?
To answer that, let’s go back to that Dan Ferrari email from a couple days ago. In it, Dan wrote the following:
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Something that none of the gurus will ever say publicly… direct response is largely dictated by luck.
No one knows exactly which offers are going to work and more importantly, how successful they will be.
No one.
Some of us are better at guessing than others but make no mistake, we’re still guessing. There are too many variables at play. Many of them are not within your control or even the business’ control. They are external and completely unknowable.
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That might sound discouraging. And it’s true that “testing” AKA regular failure is an essential part of the direct response game.
But as Dan says in the same email, you can improve your luck by upping your skills.
Better skills help you come up with better ideas that are more likely to work… and they give you access to better opportunities that are more likely to succeed a priori.
And now, let me ease into my sales pitch.
There’s a third thing Dan said, not in this email, but on one of those exclusive coaching calls, talking to a small number of copywriting mentees, me among them:
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You can use a fascination/bullet midway through a story to get people to stick… or in a lead… or anywhere in the copy.
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Dan wasn’t talking about jamming in actual (*) sales bullets anywhere or everywhere in your copy. He was simply saying, if a bit of copy would make for a great sales bullet, it can work as an exciting, surprising, momentum-building sentence of copy, anywhere you need it.
So that’s one reason to learn sales bullets. Here are a few others:
Email marketer Ben Settle has said that, “when written correct everything ‘comes’ from the bullets, including non-bullet copy or ads where there are no bullets.”
Copywriting legend John Carlton has said that the sale often comes down to a single bullet.
And Stefan Georgi, who charges something like $50k for a single sales letter, has said that one of the biggest jumps he made as a copywriter came when he discovered bullets.
Ok, so much for the sales pitch.
Now, here’s my offer:
If you’d like to up your copywriting skills… double or triple your chances of success… put yourself in the path of better opportunities… and make your own luck long-term… then get Copy Riddles, my training that forces you write A-list sales bullets that are so important to all kinds of copy. You can find it here: