Today we’re going to talk about an emotion that gets short shrift in copywriting, but I believe is the most powerful of all when it comes to motivating people. That emotion is: Envy. It’s controversial, because there are so many prohibitions against it. We’ll talk about those today. But it’s also widespread, from solopreneurs to marketing from the largest corporations in the world. Some observers have suggested, for example, that Apple is expert in making its products objects of aspirational des...
Feb 26, 2024
How do you put together a seven, eight or even nine-figure promotion? (Just in case you weren’t sure, “nine figures” means north of 100 million dollars. And yes, you’re about to meet someone who has written a promotion that took in more than $100 million.) But in fact, there are precious few copywriters who have done all this and will tell you how. However, our special guest today is one of the few who can, and will—and he’s Henry Bingaman. All told, Henry’s copy has generated well over $300 mil...
Feb 19, 2024
You can have the greatest product, the greatest headline, the greatest targeting, the greatest offer, and the greatest price. But you know what’s going to torpedo your entire promotion in a New York minute? It’s: if your prospect doesn’t believe you. We covered one aspect of believability last week, but we have some fresh tips today. Because believability is the pass/fail test every ad must pass in order to work. Period. But that’s not the end of the story. In today’s Old Masters Series episode,...
Feb 12, 2024
You can have the greatest product, the greatest headline, the greatest targeting, the greatest offer, and the greatest price. But you know what’s going to torpedo your entire promotion in a New York minute? It’s: if your prospect doesn’t believe you. Believability is the pass/fail test every ad must pass in order to work. Period. But that’s not the end of the story. In today’s Old Masters Series episode, we draw on the considerable wisdom of the great John Caples, and a new book recommended on t...
Feb 05, 2024
What do the world’s most experienced, successful copywriters really think? What if I could get them all together in one room and ask them to share their best ideas and techniques on specific copywriting topics they know most about? If you’ve ever wondered those things, you’re not alone. Our special guest today, Jack Turk, wondered the same thing. And next week, he’s going to give you an answer, at no cost to you, to hear what some of the world’s top copywriters have to say. Including David Deuts...
Jan 29, 2024
When you’ve got to make a pitch to a prospect, whether in person or in writing, you face a weird paradox: The more successful the prospect, the less time they have for you. Cramming a ton of benefits into a short pitch tends to work against you. Who can process all that data in such a short period of time. Lucky for you, there’s another way. It’s called “stacking microstories.” Today I’ll show you how to put together a complete pitch that takes less than five minutes to deliver. You can use this...
Jan 22, 2024
If you’re thinking hiring a copywriter OR you’re considering getting a coach, you might be wondering: What can a copywriter do for me that a coach can’t? And vice-versa: What can a coach do for me that a copywriter can’t? Coaching and copywriting are two professions that have grown impressively over the last 20 years. The Internet and a fast-changing world have a lot to do with it. But a lot of people are unclear on what they do and what kind of results they provide. Because while both copywrite...
Jan 15, 2024
When you start a launch, do ripples of fear tie your stomach up in knots, because you feel like you’re starting from zero and you feel you’ve got way too far to go, and not enough time to get there? It’s a common problem, and one today’s guest set out to solve. Brenna McGowan is a launch strategist, copywriter and the creator of what she calls “Anticipation Marketing.” She’s developed a system so the water is warm even before you jump in to start your launch. She has a complete pre-launch strate...
Jan 08, 2024
When you sit down to write an email, you are presented with a barrage of questions and problems. Not only how to get it opened, but how to get click-throughs. An even bigger problem which most people don’t deal with is, how does your subject line affect the number of sales you ultimately make? Our guest today, returning champion Donnie Bryant, has spent a lot of time thinking about these questions—and a lot of time rigorously testing different approaches to come up with some definitive answers. ...
Jan 01, 2024
What do you do when copy is coming in fits and starts… or, worse than that, you are staring at a blank page, which is staring back at you? Our returning champion today, Dr. Doug Pew, has some answers for you. What he has to say is information and specific steps you’ve probably heard nowhere else before. And Doug should know. He’s written music performed at Carnegie Hall and an opera that was featured at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. He’s also written a lot of other sophisticated music. A...
Dec 25, 2023
When you’re writing a long-form sales letter, you’ve got to cover a lot of info, and some of it is quite detailed. The problem is, how do you keep your reader engaged and keep the excitement building all the way through? And suppose you know you need to use stories but you are so tired of worn-out hero’s journey stories? Our returning champion today, Joshua Lee Henry, recently solved those problems and wrote a home-run promo featuring a very exciting expert, a veteran of high-level military inte...
Dec 18, 2023
Have you ever written a really good sales page or video sales letter script, and you’re sure you’ve done everything right, but it’s still not converting the way you know it should? Sometimes it all boils down to that final push. More than a call to action, the final push is a collection of simple but crucial elements to help your prospect get across the finish line. These tips were discovered from rigorous testing and study by an old Master, Clyde Bedell. We’re going to share some of his best on...
Dec 11, 2023
Have you ever been working for a client on a project where you know exactly what hook and offer will convert in the market, but your client has a different opinion and is strongly opposed to what you want to do? By the same token, have you ever had a client urging you to promote their product a certain way, when you have strong evidence or knowledge that it’s not what the market wants? Every experienced copywriter has faced one of these problems, or both of them at the same time. It’s very frust...
Dec 04, 2023
If you’re haunted by low open rates, dismal click-through rates, miserable engagement and pathetic conversions, there’s almost certainly something you’re not doing enough of—or maybe not doing at all—that could increase your numbers dramatically at every turn. And that’s writing in a much more visual way. Picture copywriting, we call it. Which is not as hard to do as you might think it is. The best visual storytellers in the world are comic book artists and filmmakers, and today we’re going to t...
Nov 27, 2023
The confused mind buys nothing. So if you are confusing the reader, they’re not going to buy. How does this play out? When you are selling a course, a technology, or a health supplement, you often run into a familiar brick wall: This thing is so complicated. I know it works, but how do I explain it so the average consumer can quickly grasp it? Today we kick around some little-known (yet completely common-sense) techniques to go from “incompressible” to “I want it!” Resource: My new book, The Per...
Nov 20, 2023
Whenever you’re about to roll out a huge campaign on Facebook or Youtube, you’re facing a huge risk. How do you know your ad is optimized in the four most important ways to get you the biggest bang for your buck? For most people, it’s a roll of the dice. Or time to call in an expert in statistics. Because optimizing is so complicated that most people don’t know how to do it—or get it right without taking weeks and weeks and spending hundreds of dollars in ad spend, just to test and get it right....
Nov 13, 2023
We’ve talked about the path of mastery in copywriting before, and a key part of moving ahead in your skills as a copywriter is regular practice. But how do you practice your skills if you don’t already have lots of work to keep you busy? Today’s guest, Wendy Ann Jones, confronted that important question herself when she first started writing copy. She couldn’t find a good answer in anything available, so, created the solution herself. It’s a terrific book called The Copywriter’s Workout and Wend...
Nov 06, 2023
What does testing your online ads at a nine-figure level look like, and how do you think about it? Our special guest today, Walter Burch, is CEO of Envoy Media Group, a performance-based marketing company. Envoy has spent many, many millions of dollars of its own money on Facebook, Google and YouTube ads over the last 18 years. His company has generated more than $1 billion in sales for national clients, using their own money and developing their own methods through imagination, testing, refinin...
Oct 30, 2023
It’s a common mistake copywriters make, but it’s one you MUST not make, because it can be fatal. And that’s: writing copy that’s boring. Sometimes copywriters make the mistake of trying to put something funny in the copy that draws attention away from what you’re trying to sell. You definitely want to keep the tension going while you focus on the problem you’re promising to solve. But there are ways to do it that don’t detract from the sales appeal of the offer itself, and that’s what we talk ab...
Oct 23, 2023
Online education is growing faster than you can keep up with. That’s great news if you’re riding the boom wave yourself. The problem, though, is that as the space gets more saturated, course creators need ways to stand out. How do you become known as the go-to expert in your niche? Our returning champion today, Doug Pew, has some answers for you. Besides writing blockbuster copy for course creators, Doug also coaches people to put together powerful courses and ramp up their sales growth. Doug be...
Oct 16, 2023
How do you keep your prospect’s attention and even create unexpected moments of fascination throughout your copy? One of the greatest sure-fire solutions, that is, paradoxically, one of the least-well-known, is microstories. These little gems have all the power of stories with none of the heavy-lifting requirements of a hero’s journey story. You can easily sprinkle microstories throughout your copy, replacing interesting parts of your pitch with little gems that are truly intriguing. Not only th...
Oct 09, 2023
Sometimes when you’re doing a funnel or you only have a limited space or number of characters to start your sales process, you have no choice but to use short copy. We all run into that situation, even if we prefer long-form copy. But then we run into a brick wall–the time and difficulty of actually writing short copy that works. Why does it take longer to write a good Google ad for a powerful 280-character Twitter/X post than it takes to write a couple pages of copy? It’s maddening when it take...
Oct 02, 2023
When you sit down to write your copy, do you shake in fear because of the terror of the blank page? Or, maybe you’re not terrified, but you’re frustrated because you don’t know where to start? Today we talk about a game-changing method developed by one of our industry’s great Old Masters, Eugene Schwartz. He delivered a powerful secret in an obscure talk he gave in the early 1990s to Rodale Press. You won’t find this secret in either of his landmark books, Breakthrough Advertising or the Brillia...
Sep 25, 2023
If you’d like to know what goes on behind the scenes in the world of financial copywriting, our guest today has the inside story. Aaron Gentzler is the CMO of Mauldin Economics, a major financial publisher based in Northern Florida. He’s been in the business since 2006 and tells us about his own journey, as well as some of the experiences he’s had training and advocating for younger copywriters. Just as important, he’ll let you know what he has seen that spells bad news for people trying to get ...
Sep 18, 2023
Too many copywriters shoot themselves in the foot by not giving enough attention and energy to bullet points. Why? Because they don’t realize how valuable bullets are to increasing sales. In fact, many prospects would have stayed on the fence if not for a single bullet point that really zero’s in on what they were looking for in the first place. We’re going to give you a quick but thorough walk-through on how to get the most out of bullet points in your copy. Download....
Sep 11, 2023
The one part of your copy that kills more sales than anything else is your call to action. But this same part of your copy can boost your sales immeasurably if you do it right. The problem is, most copywriters are so obsessed with their headline and opening story that they don’t put enough juice into the call to action. They simply ignore it, when it is the most powerful and important last step before you make the sale. It’s understandable that people focus so much on the headline, when you hear...
Sep 04, 2023
Three things that can make a massive difference in the response you get to your copy are your headline, your hook, and your mechanism—if you have one. (Not every promotion has a mechanism.) When you get down to brass tacks, the big question for any one of these three things is: How do I come up with a new one? Because you know, as a copywriter, that a killer headline or a breakthrough mechanism can turn your promo from average or good to awesome and even spectacular. If there were a magic pill y...
Aug 28, 2023
Today’s show is important for everyone involved in copy. It’s especially important for the big thinkers, the visionaries, the big-picture people. We’re going to talk about a subject that makes some people quake in their boots. And that subject is details. They are not as easy to deal with for some people as they are for others. Details do not seem as important as The Big Idea to a lot of marketers and copywriters. And listen to what people say about details. The famous architect, Mies van Der Ro...
Aug 21, 2023
Let’s talk story. Experienced copywriters know that a story is the best way to introduce a product, bring a benefit to life, answer objections, and do a whole lot more. Why? Because stories galvanize the attention of your prospect. A story reaches deeper into the mind of someone, deeper than any other form of communication. But somewhere along the way, Hollywood got in the way, as it has a habit of doing. Because the hero’s journey is the go-to template for movies and other forms of fiction, a n...
Aug 14, 2023
When you are a copywriter, do you look at the world differently? Old Master Clyde Bedell emphatically says yes. Clyde Bedell is not all that well known these days. We featured his work last year in an episode where we talked about his seven keys to believability. Though he’s not all that well known today, decades ago Bedell was one of the top guys you would turn to if you want to learn how to write copy that works. Besides being a highly successful advertiser, he was also a prominent teacher. Fo...
Aug 07, 2023
