22 'Nearly Fine' Insights For New Copywriters To Complete The Puzzle
If you're a pro copywriter, then I can't share
anything new with you.
But if you're starting out, this might help...
In my work offline, I've amassed a few insights in
a book and decided to bring some value in by
whipping some of them out here...
That might sound ridiculous, but I really don't have
anything to lose... Since copywriters tend to avoid
competing with other copywriters of the same
level in the same niche, right?
I know what it's like to start out - and I'd like to
demystify it for the newer-to-the-art guys (and
ladies).
Just plain tips on writing copy effortlessly...
I have no website, no portfolio, no business card
and not even over 100 posts in the WF CW forum..
... No reputation, no A-listing, no talk about me...
But my clients continue to come after me even
after I've quit... So surely these tidbits should have
a little "magic" in them?
No opt-in, no sales pitch, no self-promotion...
Here they are.
"Chaos Theory" Shows How One Flap At The
Start Of The Letter Causes A Tornado Of Sales
Right At The End...
This theory is exactly why things at the initial state
can bring about huge distortions at the back of
your letter when closing the sale...
And this is the quickest way to not be believed,
says Gary Halbert...
But the problem is, too many faux copywriters think
they can "squeeze" the sale out of someone.
.... "Believe me damnit!"....
Not really. You see...
... Candor and words bring about huge changes for
goodness knows what reasons.
Change "repair" to "misalignment"...
Remove the word "Sell", "Buy"...
Understate the claims...
Over-charged headlines backfire...
I mean, telling someone that he has a "solution" has
a positive charge in itself.
No need to get extremely worked up about it.
If you have a pulse, you're going to be revolted by
the way some people bring their good news to you.
If you have a good offer, then just tell the good
news. Don't sell something the market doesn't
want... Or worse... Lie and over-hype.
The 650 Million Dollar Secret
Here's why it's worth 650 million dollars...
It's because this secret drew in over 650 million
dollars. Simple as that.
Gary Halbert made the most successfully mailed
letter of all time... in under 400 words.
No headlines, subheads or freaking bullets.
That's a skeleton for you. Zero meat.
And the hungry crowd ripped the bones from that
letter, pounded them into calcium and drank it all
up like it's milk.
If the crowd is hungry, they will eat.
If the crowd is starving, they will just eat. Nothing
hard or emotional about that.
Use a hammer for a nail, a screwdriver for a
screw and a teacher for a class.
Nothing too complex, this one.
Too many people go for "attention" instead of just
hitting it on the head.
The newer copywriters go...
"Attention!!! You Are About To Discover How To
Make Enough Money To Go Around The World With
These Secret Tactics When You Are Still Young..."
Perhaps, a better copywriter will go...
"How To Go Around The World By 25 With Your
Current Day Job"
Well, something that hits the nail on the head on
where the prospect is, rather than where they need
to go...
The Use Of Maths To Achieve Maximum Mastery
In Minimum Copy Split-Testing
... Who ever said maths had to go the moment you
left school?
Here's a geeky solution to "predict the future" of
your copy's conversions with surprisingly few tests.
Google up "Chi Square Test".
This is a statistical method which allows you to
predict the probabilities of an outcome through small
samples.
Well, if you don't like maths... Just leave this point
alone.
Don't sell the hype - sell ideas
If everyone is using a certain copywriting technique,
the market gets tired of it. Do something else.
Get there faster... Thriving on the mistakes and
corpses of others.
Sounds like a horrible scene, but this is one of the
fastest ways to "Build experience".
A weekly visit to WhichTestWon.com for 30 days or
a subscription to it will give you a chunk of tests
other people have carried out.
Change the traffic before changing the copy.
House list, subscriber list, ezine list, business lists,
forum traffic, type-in traffic, banner ads from a site,
referrals...
They can indeed triple conversions.
Build your swipe file on your computer...
Use the "Snipping Tool" on your computer. Drag the
rectangle around a headline you want to keep.
Then keep it forever.
Forget about bookmarks, or saving webpages. This
is probably the fastest and most efficient way to
keep online swipes intact.
Don't underestimate tempo...
This is what makes dancers hooked on
choreographies, coffee lovers hooked on coffee and
audiophiles hooked on music for days, months and
years...
Short paragraphs.
Short sentences.
Bucket Brigade phrases.
Remove unnecessary phrases.
Adhere to the Sugarman's Fog Index.
Don't assume people know their market jargon.
Write for the 8 to 10th grade level.
Vary your sentences, don't kill widows.
Change from short sentences to medium, then med
to long... Just vary it around a lot. You see, attention
thrives on contrast.
The more outstanding something is, the more it is to
attract attention and hold it in.
There's nothing a human can do to stop it unless he
or she voluntarily resists it.
Widows are good.
They help people read more easily, because this is
going to make the paragraph look less like The Great
Wall of China.
Direct mail is where the real money lies... But
Don't underestimate internet products either.
Test headlines with short body copy.
Find winners by testing different headlines on squeeze
pages, for example.
Not too sure if many will agree with me here, but I
strongly believe in this.
What you do in a story...
The story can be a major portion of the copy, or just
a tiny small scene that acts as a "transformation"
or a metaphor for your point.
In fact, the two types of stories you need to write are
mostly along these lines...
... And you really can't go wrong with this. If I'm not
wrong, these tips were from David Garfinkel himself...
1) The Story can "Ice Break". It must strum the guitars
of "knowing, liking and trusting".
2) The Story can "Dissolve". Remove common objections
or the most blatant objection by addressing it through a
story, ending off with a moonlighted experience.
Joseph Campbell also expressed the journey of a "role"
in better steps than Stephen King can...
Originally Posted by http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/smc/journey/ref/summary.html Departure The Call to AdventureInititation The Road of TrialsReturn Refusal of the Return |
I think I picked this one tip up from Rick Duris as well...
Get "The Synonym Finder" from Nancy LaRoche
(non-affiliate LINK )
Shows you the slang, the informal... Certainly
indispensable.
Get "lost" when researching.
Mistakes are great because they help you embed horrible
things in your head... Great lessons.
Get so lost, you're "desperate" about finding your way
out of the maze of your market and product.
Where's the train? (And start imagining you have a
language barrier....)
Exploit Logical Fallacies.
You need to get an education in logical fallacies, if you
haven't already.
It's similar - if you want to learn how to stand out, you
need to learn how to camouflage.
Here's the point...
People are full of logical fallacies, and they are more
susceptible to it than you'd think.
My favorites:
"Accident" used by Plato...There are more, certainly... Over 90 of them.
eg. "You say you have never met this person. Can you
be sure he was never near you in a sports crowd, for
example?"
"Consequential affirmation" (Placing the cart before
the horse)..
eg. "If I drop an egg, it breaks. This egg is broken, so
I must have dropped it."
"Bifurcation" (Black and White)...
eg. "There are two types of people in this world: the
rich and the suckers. Do you want to get rich, or are
you happy to remain a sucker?"
"Plurium Interrogationum" (The one-answer qns)...
eg. "Have you stopped stealing the cookies?"
If you answer "yes", you admit stealing the cookies.
If you answer "no", you still admit the same thing.
People often function off logical fallacies anyway,
unless you have an extremely intellectual and logical
crowd.
Psychology is manipulation...
... So are sales. In fact, the fact that we trade in logic,
emotions and principles every single day proves one
thing:
We manipulate others just as much as they manipulate
you.
Or more precisely, others influence us to manipulate
ourselves... And we influence others to manipulate
themselves.
That's why NLP copywriters do so well - they've
mastered the art of influencing others to do their own
self-persuasion.
Well, some non-so-NLPish insights:
1) Use your customer's voice
2) Use contrast to keep attention. Humor is born out
of ridiculous contrast. So is shock. Fear. Surprise.
Pattern interrupts.
3) You cannot attach an emotion to a word. The
emotion is already attached. You can only
amplify it, pile it and combine their inherent meanings
with others.
4) Good value acts like a movie trailer. Smashing
scenes, and you can't wait to see the full movie.
But if you think about it, most trailers show about 80%
of the whole movie anyway.
5) Imagination is something that can go wild in your
prospect. This is the "Dual Reality" principle.
Sometimes, you can go crazy explaining to a person
about something extremely obvious to you.
However, the other person is "imagining" the reality
you've presented to him. It's different, and according
to chaos theory... It creates two different
intepretations of what you're trying to bring across.
Exploit this tiny trick to rate your copy.
Well, Gary called this the "reframing" method.
He told me that if you needed to ask your wife or
husband for a headline critique...
OR needed a buddy or fellow hobbyist to feedback on
your copy.... Use this trick.
It works like a tiny bit of magic.
If you're talking to someone who likes golf, change the
subject of your headline to golf. For example...
"How to get out of debts" can be changed to
"How to get out of bunkers" in the golf context.
It works similar to that swipe technique one of the WF
members shared a few days ago about basic swiping
from magazine headlines.
Oh, and about magazines, grab anything you can
from Cosmo, National Inquirer and Men's Health.
And who said you would be limited to magazines?
Swipe from movies as well. Those that gross over $100
million in box offices have a secret that makes people
NEED to see it.
Swipe desires. "Sex" is almost an evergreen desire
market. Swipe it and reframe it.
Writing Fiction In Non-fiction Copy...
This is similar to the previous point above just now.
Grab Stephen King's On Writing book and get yourself
a solid education on writing fiction.
Lateral, story-like information is far more impactful
and memorable than bulleted, linear information.
When you're starting out, don't be a smartass..
Creativity doesn't work when you have little
experience. It's like playing poker. You're gambling, but
you're still going to lose to a professional poker player.
Benefits beat the daylights out of curiosity.
Unless you have that rare 1% curiosity ad...
Benefits are not the benefits you think they are...
Benefits have to "specialize", to be "spiced up" and
carved out without wax.
I bet you've heard once, twice or even eighteen times
about not to use features and to use benefits.
Actually, if you're selling computers and TV... You're
going to need a lot of features and bang hard on one
emotional USP appeal.
Most of the time though, you're going to use benefits.
And benefits do not mean generic, non-actionable
clouds in the air. Be more specific in them, and make
sure it is of something that makes their life easier,
faster, more convenient etc.
Objections are not the objections you think they
are...
These are the real objections.
1) No Time
2) No Interest
3) No Difference
4) No Belief
5) No Decision
You need to amplify your targeted context to make
them stop and give you their time.
You need to amplify your headline to perk their
interest.
You need to amplify the difference in your promise to
make it more unique.
You need to amplify the proof to the point of
"undeniable".
You need to amplify the ease of payment and risk
reversal to grease them down the purchase tube.
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Alright, I contributed... I hope there wasn't anything
too objective or controversial for you.
If you're new... Eat it up.
If you're a veteran, well, nothing very new up there.
That's about 10% of my insights right there - a
complete giveaway without monetization. I must be
crazy. Bonkers. Off my rocker. Losing my marbles.
A nutcase.
Take it, rip it, shred it, do whatever you want with it.
I don't even know if I'm going to leave it on the thread,
even if it's just around 10%.
Good luck.
Oh, I almost forgot - Here's the link to the third post,
or just scroll down...
How To Write Your First Copy Without Experience
Kind Regards,
Grain.
Kind Regards,
Grain.
Kind Regards,
Grain.
Kind Regards,
Grain.