Copywriters Podcast

Among those of us who watch cable television, everyone’s favorite copywriter bad boy is Don Draper of the show ‘Mad Men.’ Along with his secretary who became a copywriter, Peggy Olson, Don Draper is the reason this is the first edition of the Fictional Old Masters Series. Yes, they are fictional characters. But a lot of factual research went into creating these characters, And I was able to pluck out a few gems from the hours and hours of dialogue they spoke on the show. My goal today is to make this useful as well as maybe a little entertaining. So to talk about ‘Mad Men,’ we really have to begin with Matt Weiner. The show was his brainchild. Now Weiner was not an ad man, much less a Mad Man. In fact, he was a cable TV drama writer. He wrote the pilot for ‘Mad Men,’ on spec, in 1999. David Chase, who was doing ‘The Sopranos’ for HBO at the time, was so impressed with the script that he hired Weiner to write and executive produce that show. Weiner joined ‘The Sopranos’ team and had a lot of success. Eight

I am thrilled to announce our returning champion, Ted Prodromou. Ted’s known as America’s Leading LinkedIn Coach. He’s the best-selling author of The Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Business, and the Ultimate Guide to Twitter for Business. We had Ted on the show not too long ago, and with all the changes going on over at LinkedIn, it was time to bring him back. He’s founder of Search Marketing Simplified, a social media marketing firm. Besides Copywriters Podcast, Ted has also been featured on Entrepreneur.com, The New York Times, CNBC and Forbes. I don’t see any reason to wait a minute longer, except to say this: Here’s what we asked him: Let’s start with you telling us what’s new on LinkedIn? How are people using marketing on LinkedIn these days, and what kind of results are they getting? What are some LinkedIn marketing techniques most people don’t know about, or don’t use, or are using wrong? If someone’s brand new to LinkedIn, what are the first steps? What are the most common problems your clients come

I’ve been reading a book called “Hackers and Painters” by Silicon Valley philosopher Paul Graham, who’s also a painter. He has a PhD from Harvard in computer science, and co-founded a startup that sold to Yahoo for about $50 million. Plus, plenty more accomplishments. Smmmmart guy. In the book, he makes a comment that really sounds simple-minded when you first hear it. But when you think about it for a little while, you realize it’s profound: “Nearly all great paintings are of people, because people are what people are interested in.” After all, the Mona Lisa wasn’t a painting of a BUILDING. Well, you might ask, what about copy? I would argue the same thing applies. The copy that sells the best is mostly about people. An obvious example is the Wall Street Journal sales letter, which has been tracked to sell more than $2 billion in newspaper subscriptions. No other copy has ever been tracked to come anywhere close. It starts out: On a beautiful late spring afternoon, twenty-five years ago, two young men gra

So, for today’s show, I’d like you to imagine you could get on the Copywriters Podcast Time Machine and travel back 31 years to 1990. Location: Key West, Florida. One of Gary Halbert’s legendary week-long seminars. Let’s take this one step further. After you get off the time machine and onto the ground, you find out you have been selected to write copy, on the spot, under Gary’s watchful eye, for people who attended the seminar. What an opportunity! Well, since all that is all imaginary, you’ll be happy to know we have someone who’s actually been there and done that… and is going to tell us all about. He’s our guest today — Richard Dennis. Richard’s going to share a lot of his experiences from those exciting early days for many of us in direct marketing copywriting. And at the end of the show, he’ll tell you about an intriguing offer where you can get use of some of his copy at no charge. Here’s the link he referred to in the show: www.LinkedLeg.com/Download.

Today we’re going to look at copywriting from an unusual angle. Not so much how to do it or what are the new developments, but what specifically does advertising do that makes it increase sales. This is part of our Old Masters Series. We’re taking from a book by the great copywriter James Webb Young, who also wrote the classic “A technique for Producing ideas,” which we’ve talked about on other shows. The book we’re talking about today is called “How to Become an Advertising Man,” originally published in the Mad Men era, in 1963. About one-third of the book is about the five ways advertising increases sales, and that’s what we’ll talk about today. I’d like to point out that this book was written for people who create paid advertising, including direct response copywriters. And though in some ways it is a more general advertising book, the author looked at what we do from a direct marketing perspective. Now, you can use one or more of these five ways that advertising increases sales in any piece of copy you

We’re back with the Sherlock Holmes of marketing, Meron Bareket. He’s put the recent and planned future actions of Apple through a “Marketing MRI” and all I can say at this point is, fasten your seat belts. Big curves in the road ahead! I’ve known Meron for a few years, since he became my mentoring client. His powers of observation and analysis have always impressed me, and there have been times where I’ve had to really concentrate and think deeply just to keep up with what he’s saying… as I have told him myself. He’s a delightful and very perceptive person — and quite an effective copywriter and marketer. As our returning champion, Meron revealed: - Just exactly what Apple is doing that’s having such a big effect on Facebook ads - The difference between what you can do now and what you won’t be able to do in the future, on Facebook - What Google’s doing that will reduce advertising options even further - What mistakes you should avoid at all costs (as a result of the changes) - What you CAN do to remain pr

Today’s show is a new chapter in our Old Masters Series, with wisdom from someone who people I know knew and knew about. Brian Kurtz wrote an intro to this Old Master’s book, and Denny Hatch raved about the book in his newsletter, which was called “Who’s Mailing What.” Now one of the great things about the kind of copywriting we cover on this podcast is that, unlike with a lot of other forms of advertising, with direct response copywriting you can measure sales results. You can’t do that accurately with a billboard or a Superbowl ad. As direct marketers, we determine our results through testing. And the dean of testing is not as well known as famous copywriters of his era, like Gene Schwartz and David Ogilvy – but he was just as important. His name was Dick Benson, and we’re going to cover some of his best testing secrets. He wrote an excellent book, Secrets of Successful Direct Mail. But lucky for you, I also had access to something I call The Private Direct Marketing Archive adjacent to Lincoln Center in

Our guest today is Troy Steine, and what he has to say will be of interest to every copywriter! He’s going to tell us how to close more copywriting deals. Now Troy is a soft-spoken guy, but make no mistake — he is a sales powerhouse. He has sold and helped others to sell hundreds of millions of dollars of offers and products. Today, Troy specializes in working consultants, coaches, copywriters and online entrepreneurs. He’s the head sales advisor at PeacefulProfits.com and works with people who are looking to launch, grow and scale their businesses. Full disclosure: Troy is a former mentoring client of mine, and that’s one reason he understands the business of copywriting so well. On our show today, Troy covered: • What he has discovered speaking to dozens of copywriters and business owners over the last 12 months • How his experience in many types of sales has led him to what he’s doing today • This one’s especially important! The big reason people who have a conversation with prospects never end up getti

I met Josh Rosenberg in Las Vegas a few years ago at Mark Ling’s mastermind. We had a very animated conversation at dinner, and then all of us headed over to one of the wildest and most memorable parties of my life. It’s a fitting memory, because Josh takes a bold approach to copywriting and marketing, and he’s going to share some highlights today. Josh got into copywriting in 2008. He had a corporate job he hated. He learned copywriting and web marketing from the ground up, and as his career took off like a rocket, he became a much happier camper. But he’s about as unconventional as you get. For example, when he’s working on a piece of copy and he asks his friends to review it, if they tell him it’s “good,” he’ll tear it up and rewrite from scratch. He won’t actually start to use the copy until his friends stop complimenting him and start demanding to buy the product. Josh’s work has generated over $100 million for businesses in almost 60 industries. And he prides himself on getting paid far more than most

We recorded today’s show a few days after the Superbowl, and I’d like to talk about the most admired and most hated athlete in America, Tom Brady. People seem to run very hot or very cold on him. Personally, I like him. He lived in my part of the country earlier in his life; he graduated from the same college I did; and he used to come back here summers to work with Tom Martinez as a personal quarterback coach. Martinez was also the football coach at the College of San Mateo, where legendary coach Bill Walsh once played. Football royalty. So, you have every right to ask, what in the WORLD does this have to do with copywriting? Well, I know about Tom Brady’s secret frustration. And what I know is not from any inside information, but just from a fact of life which also affects copywriters. Tom Brady’s work ethic is not the only reason for his incredible success. It’s also his patience, when he worked and worked and worked and worked and worked without seeing any progress. And then one day - shazaam - a breakt

Today we’re back at it in the Old Masters Series. We’re going to talk about how to make a fortune during a recession. Now a lot of people think now is the worst time to make a lot of money, but it all depends on your perspective. People who are good at spotting opportunities learn how to adjust the way they look at things depending upon the environment. When the storm clouds of recession and depression show up, they use it to their advantage. Not to take advantage of helpless people, but to recognize the opportunities in the changed circumstances. Bill Benton was such a man. He was 30 years old when the Great Depression hit in 1929, but he didn’t let that get in his way of becoming a millionaire by age 35. He saved companies with his unique ad strategies. And he even bought one for peanuts that later was earning him $2 million a year. Now let’s talk about you. Times are tough and you have to make a choice — do you want to go along with the doom and gloom thinking of the naysayers, or see this as a legitimat

Rocky is an entrepreneur, coach, consultant, and the creator of a program called Platinum Path, where he helps people reinvent their expertise and shift into a high-priced, lifestyle-friendly business model. Over the last 20 years Rocky has helped his clients bring over 100 million dollars in training and info products to the market. He's consulted on over 3000 projects for clients ranging from billion-dollar brands like Pearson, Wiley, and Macmillan, to experts, authors, and entrepreneurs in 7 countries and over a hundred different markets. But he’s accessible. You can hang out with him every day in his free Facebook group, called The Power Persona Project. Rocky talked about how and when personal branding is a plus for a copywriter, and some inside secrets you can use for yourself or your clients. Effective branding requires inner and outer work, Rocky says. He gave some great tips and benchmarks to give you a fuller working understanding about personal branding. Rocky’s Facebook Group: https://www.face

We are back with another show in the Old Masters series. Today it’s How I Learned The Secrets of Success in Advertising, by G. Lynn Sumner. Guy Sumner originally published the book in 1952, and it was recently reissued. You can get it on Amazon now. We’ll put a link in the show notes. I only heard about this book from friend of the podcast Don Hauptman. The author Sumner was really an Old Master -- here’s an article about him from the New York Times of May 15, 1940, announcing he was re-elected as president of the Advertising Club of New York. That was 81 years ago! There’s one secret that’s particularly important, as important today as it was when the book was written. It has to do with the one thing that separates ordinary copy from blockbuster copy, and that’s imagination. Sumner has some great ideas about how to develop it, and that’s what we’ll talk about today. A lot of people believe that imagination in advertising is just coming up with some wild and crazy idea… throwing it up against the wall… and

We all need a lawyer sometimes. But haven’t you ever thought: “Wouldn’t it be great if there were a lawyer devoted to copywriters and other creative professionals -- not only that, but she put together customizable contracts especially for people like us?” Well I’ve got two pieces of good news for you: There is such a person. Her name is Amy Nesheim. Secondly, she is our special guest today and she will give us some important information about Copywriting and the Law. Amy explains some things you might never find out about otherwise, unless it’s too late: The kind of mistakes copywriters make all the time that puts them at legal risk (so you’ll know not to make them) Do copywriters need to worry about whether their copy is legally compliant? Or is that all on the client’s shoulders? What kind of claims should copywriters worry about in their copy? Do you see anything frequently on sales pages that you think could be problematic? What can a copywriter do to protect themselves from potential liability? What A

Our guest today has a curious connection to copywriting. Though he is not a copywriter or even a traditional entrepreneur by trade, he is one hell of a copywriter anyway. His name is Dickie Bush and he describes himself as a macro investor. I’m not sure what that means but I think it has to do with hedge funds and numbers with lots of commas in them. Dickie caught my eye on Twitter because of an online writing program he has called “Ship30for30,” which gets people from all walks of life to write something every day, for 30 days. It’s a paid program he had to learn how to write copy to sell it. He did, and he told me yesterday he’s getting 10% conversion on his sales page. That’s a skilled copywriter, no matter how you look at it. Dickie is a keen student of, and I would say expert in, growth of all kinds. How people grow, how systems grow, how businesses grow. This of course is very closely related to what we do as copywriters, since a good copywriter will help a business grow tremendously. There’s more, an

Our guest today is Roy Furr, a top copywriter and one of the best thinkers about copywriting I know. Roy’s been at the top of the game for over a decade. Perhaps he’s best known for writing the sales letter for Brian Kurtz’s legendary Titans of Direct Response event. He’s done many seven-figure promotions for clients and coached, trained, and mentored other copywriters. Glad to have a great copywriting coach on the show! Roy has also published his daily Breakthrough Marketing Secrets newsletter since 2014. Today he’s going to tell us about “The #1 Most Underrated Copywriting Skill.” I agreed with Roy about this skill and I couldn’t wait to hear what he has to say about it. His point was important: You can have … the best headline … the best hook … the best stories … the best bullets … the best offer … and the best all-the-rest, but if you don’t have a solid, sense-making, easy-to-follow structure to put it all in, then, it’s all for nothing. He’s right, of course. What’s great about what Roy says is he giv

I don’t know how controversial what we say on Copywriters Podcast is, because I don’t have much data or gut feel on the subject, one way or the other. But I think I can say with great certainty something that nearly everyone would agree on. And that is this: The single hardest part of writing copy is getting started. The terror of the blank page. Where do you start, anyway? I mean, after you’ve done all your customer research, your product research… after you’ve written all your bullets… after you’ve brainstormed and schemed and planned… you’ve got to finally grab the beast by its lapels and get started. And you know what’s really hard about getting started? Finding your hook. Now, I can’t do that for you here today. But what I can do is offer some guidance and a few trampolines to get you going. I’ll give you three specific ways to create a hook… and tell you about the one way too many people default to, way too often, that really doesn’t work. So here’s the deal. Whatever you say in the beginning of your

So, I’ll start with this question: If you had the most powerful persuasion method ever developed at your fingertips and you didn’t use it to persuade yourself to live the life you really want -- what’s up with that? I saw a quote on Twitter that said: The problem with the rat race is if you win, you’re still a rat. It’s a real problem for a lot of us. Not the rat race so much as trying to fit in and do what we perceive everyone else thinks of as “normal” -- as opposed to going for what you really want. Now, to be sure, you’ve still got to make a living and if you’re the breadwinner in a household, provide for others. But I think it’s tragic if you believe you have to torture yourself to do it. One way to stack the odds a little more in your favor is to take the tools of copywriting and turn them on yourself. Use copy skills to “sell” yourself on getting what you want. That’s what today’s show is about. Now, a quick note: This is not a sermon about the Law of Attraction. Too many people put way too much foc

As we’re recording this in December, one of my heroes died just a few days ago. The great test pilot Chuck Yeager. The whole idea, and the book and movie, called “The Right Stuff” was pretty much inspired by him… his courage… his innovations… his incredible skill. Here’s something from an obituary of sorts in the New York Times. “In his memoir, General Yeager said he was annoyed when people asked him if he had the right stuff, since he felt it implied a talent he was born with. “ ‘ All I know is I worked my tail off learning how to fly, and worked hard at it all the way,’ he wrote [in his memoir]. ‘The secret to my success was that somehow I managed to live to fly another day.’ ” It sounds folksy and simple-minded, doesn’t it? Don’t let it fool you. What he said there was profound. The Chuck Yeager story brought to mind a book called “Mastery” by George Leonard. One of my all-time favorites. It’s not about copywriting, but Leonard was a very good and successful magazine writer and author, among many other t

I saw this article on the Slate.com website: “Whatever Happened to the National Enquirer?” For years, the Enquirer was a go-to resource for many copywriters, including me. Quoting from the article: “For decades, the Enquirers’s circulation was in the millions.” But in recent times, the article says, quoting journalist Lloyd Grove, “its circulation consistently plunged, year after year.” Grove blames the Internet for the Enquirer’s death spiral. It couldn’t speed up to adjust to the rhythm of the Internet, among other things. There’s a lot of political intrigue behind what happened, too. What’s most interesting to me, though, is the Enquirer before its fall. What I learned from it back in the day… and how those lessons apply so powerfully to copywriting, even today. One reason I liked the Enquirer so much was because they published a story about me. The headline for that story was particularly interesting. They quoted me saying something I never actually said: “I owe my success to the Enquirer… says leading