Copywriting Techniques

back to "Effective Marketing" Table of Contents Page Under Construction

Copywriting - the art and science of writing sales messages that sell (ads, letters, TV, web, etc.).

 

Here are my notes from John Carlton's short lecture on copyrighting (November 2003):

  • He who has the best story wins
  • Long copy sells
  • Nothing happens until the copy gets written. On the other hand, a great sales letter can sell a non-existing product.
  • If you know how to write your own copy - you become independent. Copy is the engine that drives everything else.
  • Four base requirements:
    • 1 - Understand salesmanship (a street hustler is better than English Ph.D.). Wake the inner salesman.
    • 2 - don't be apologetic. If the product is worth while - you owe it to your prospect to give him the best sales pitch. You can not beg or push. You have to find the emotional sweet spot.
    • 3 - just you and me talking style.
    • 4 - be a little edgy (personality, soul). You can not be "safe". you have to be one person who make your reader's blood going today. The world is asleep. You have to be more alive. You have to slap people a bit.
  • The marketing Rebel Appeal-O-Meter. Example - dieting. Cold reality: eat less, excercise more. Magic - a pill - take it today - wake up skinny tomorrow. Similar - financial market, bus. opportunity market, etc. People want buy a how-to book, put it under a pillow, wake up rich. Or with a gorgeous blond. etc. Or wake up looking like Schwarzenegger. etc.
  • Imagine a huge sumnambula creature completely immobile welded to the couch. You have to wake the creature and make it get up, pick up the phone, and give you its credit card.
  • Hook. The hook is the thing that reels the guy in. Usually is in the headline. How you find the hook. Be a sales' detective. Look for information to wake people up. National Enquirer: "Boy eats own head". Interview people. Find inside stories - looking for a hook - something unusial, provocative, intrigging. A story. "You gotta be kidding". Example - the one-legged golfer ad. Another ad - old overweight golfer, ... Ed Dale took the One-legged golfer ad - and used it in a different niche market.
  • Mysterious Arizona "Human Computer" humiliates Wall Street "Experts" For 21st Consecutive Year!
  • Power words - Humiliate, ... Words that care a story
  • Copy - powerful, intrigingly, with hooks, not borring (people will walk away if they are bored)
  • ad - The Astonishing Sex Secrets Of The Most Satisfied... Most Knowledgeable And Most Respected Lovers In The World!
  • ad- How A Skinny Little Golf Genius From California Accidentally Started Hitting 425-Yard Tee Shots!
  • Hard hitting hooks - a dollar bill, a nickel, etc.
  • Tell story. Learn how to tell a story. Tie a hook into a story.
  • More power words - outrage, crush, ...brbe, lier, meat, murder,... The words are not frequently used - but everybody knows their meaning.
  • "Dear Middle Manager of IBM" bus2Bus copy is the same as a copy for a consumer
  • Average person doesn't have anything interesting in hi/her everyday life. You make him alive
  • People respond to people. Personality matters. Personalizing letters increases response.
  • Operation money sack. If you are the person who brings in the money - you should not waste your time fixing a xerox machine.
  • Words that paint pictures in the reader's mind
  • picenenga ??
  • gun-to-the-head copywriting

 

 

Links:

 

xxx

© 2003 Selectorweb, Inc.