Copywriters Podcast

The number one thing you’ve got to do as a copywriter is first, get people’s attention. Sounds obvious, I know. But how many times have you had to write a headline and you spent hours, not knowing where to start? It happens to all of us. I found an old book in my personal library that can help you out. It’s called “The Magic Power of Emotional Appeal,” by Roy Garn. It was a best-seller, way back in 1960. And so this is part of our Old Masters series. And it turns out the author boiled it all down to four specific ways that get attention. After doing a lot of research and field testing. We will reveal all four ways today and give you some ideas on how to weave these emotional appeals into your copy. This is a book about what makes people tick. And once you have deeper insights into what makes people tick, it’s one hell of a lot easier to figure out how to get their attention. Here’s an important quote from the book: “The people with whom you live, work, and interact rarely want to think; they emotionally enm

Our guest today has lived the kind of life most of us only see on TV and movies. He worked as a specialized contractor in Iraq in PsyOps, which in a way is like the military version of persuasion or direct marketing. Of course, much of what he did is classified, but he’ll share some insights that don’t compromise sensitive information today. He’s also worked at the heartbeat of world media, as an editor for CNN, NBC, Sky, CNBC and MTV. Our guest is Christian Dixon, and these days, he’s pursuing copywriting with a ferocity I see only in the most obsessed practitioners of the craft, and I would include Nathan and myself in that group. We invited Christian to come on the show to talk about what he learned in his other professions that would be interesting insights for copywriters. And while this is NOT the most interesting insight, what I am about to say IS nonetheless important. And that is this: Copy is powerful. You’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sens

I’m in a book discussion group with a client and two of his friends. The only problem is, both of his friends are also podcasters, so you can imagine how hard it is to get a word in edgewise. The book we were discussing last time was Jonathan Haidt’s A Righteous Mind. This is an especially important book because it offers some concrete ways to bridge the big political divide going on in America and really much of the rest of the world right now. I want to focus on something else in the book that’s not political, though. Several times the author makes a point of emphasizing that people are very concerned with what other people think about them. We talk about that idea and break it down in today’s show. For now, I want to say this is something that a lot of copywriters and marketers miss the mark on. Which is a shame, because it’s a powerful selling tool. You could hardly say it’s unknown, but it’s not very well understood, either. Once you see what I’m going to show you, I think you’ll understand it a lot be

I was watching TV last Sunday, and since we record a few episodes ahead, I was watching TV on the last Sunday of May. The show was “Meet the Press,” and it always starts with the announcer starting by pointing out that this is the longest-running show on TV. Of any show. From a marketing point of view, that’s an enviable place to be. Usually, when you’ve been on the air since 1947, that lasting power alone simply radiates trust. People tend to trust anything that’s been around a long time. So it really caught my attention when in the waning seconds of the show, the moderator, Chuck Todd, said something I’ve never heard him, or anyone else on TV, say before: “Thank you for trusting us.” The reason this caught my attention really doesn’t have much to do with Meet the Press, which is by far not one of my favorite shows, nor what it might have said about Chuck Todd, who, to be honest with you, is not my favorite TV personality. I was a little stunned by the words “thank you for trusting us” because I don’t thin

We’re back with another show in our Old Masters series. A return visit for the ideas of Claude Hopkins, but completely different material since last time, when we pulled out some key points from his book Scientific Advertising. As I said before, and it’s worth repeating, When I first started learning how to write copy, everybody told me “read Scientific Advertising.” It’s a book written in the first part of the 20th century, over 100 years ago, by Claude Hopkins, who many consider the father of direct-response copywriting. I did read the book. I read it again. In fact, I read it 15 times. But for today’s show, on the advice of my friend and previous Copywriters Podcast guest Don Hauptman, I looked into an excellent book from long ago called “Masters of Advertising Copy.” The book has 25 chapters, and each is written by a different copywriter. I knew we had to start with the one by Claude Hopkins. His chapter is humbly titled, “Some Lessons I Have Learned In Advertising.” But to give you an idea of how eter

Our guest today is Harlan Kilstein. He’s a copywriter, an entrepreneur, and a whole lot more. Here are 7 facts you probably didn't know Harlan. 1. John Carlton and I took turns humiliating his copy when he got started. Unlike most people, he took the feedback and turned himself into a great copywriter. 2. He's an ordained rabbi. 3. His sidekick, who we hope you don't hear in the background is named Kalba. She's a Pomeranian. He name means Bitch in Hebrew. 4. He lost over 60 pounds doing Keto practicing what he preaches. 5. His office is a mega shrine to the singer Meat Loaf. 6. He has nearly 2 million followers on social media. 7. He would do anything for love but he won't do that. I don’t know what “that” is, and hopefully we won’t find out on today’s show. Harlan, welcome. And Kalba, please keep it down. Here are the questions I brought to Harlan: 1. Big-picture, what are you doing for business on Facebook? 2. When did you first learn about Facebook compliance rules, and how did you find out? 3. What diff

If you’ve noticed that your copy isn’t converting recently as well as it used to, maybe it’s too complicated to read. Now, copywriting experts have been saying what I just said since the time of Claude Hopkins, more than 100 years ago. Which is since the dawn of time, as far as direct-response copywriting goes. But in the last few years, things have changed. Simply writing less complicated copy isn’t good enough, because the way people read has been altered. People now read by text messages. By Facebook. By Instagram. By Youtube. Some people I find worth listening to are saying that people’s brains have changed. It’s not my original idea, and I’ll get into this in more detail in just a little bit. But the way we’re spending so much time with our screens is literally rewiring our neural pathways, and this changes our brains. Which changes the way we read. I’m gonna say that, as marketers and copywriters, we have been living in a world that is not as literate as it used to be, and this is by a wide margin. S

What is an offer - Not just what you’re selling, although that’s a big part of it - It’s how you sell it. How you present it. How you arrange it. - For testing, it’s one of the Big Three (besides headline/hook and pricing/payment plans) - Maybe you’ve heard: “The best product doesn’t win. The product with the best marketing wins. - Often, the product with the best marketing ends up being the product with the best offer - The conventional wisdom on what an offer is: - core product plus bonuses - dollar value, dropped to selling price - value stack: taking what’s in the offer and making it seem as valuable as possible Why most offers don’t work nearly as well as they could… or… don’t work at all - Sometimes they were just thrown up there like spaghetti against the wall, to see if it will stick - But often, the reason they don’t work is because - They’re what the business owner wants to sell the customer -or- - They’re what the business owner thinks the customer should want -rather than- - A watertight fit wi

On today’s show, we look at two very interesting questions: First, how do you market your business when you have a highly specialized business almost nobody has even heard of before? Second, how do you use copy in your business, when you’re not a copywriter yourself and you’ve never been able to find a copywriter that gets how to communicate what you do? Our guest today, Rick Harmon, will help us get the answers to both questions. And this information will be very useful to any business owner who writes copy, and lots of useful tips for most copywriters, too. Rick’s specialty, in a nutshell, is to make loans that help people straighten out messes with inherited property. Probate lawyers have a saying: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way. But when there’s no way in sight, Rick Harmon will find a way.” Actually, they don’t have that saying at all. I made it up for this show. But they should, because that’s what Rick does. He straightens out probate messes that no one else can straighten out. Now, sounds like

Last week I got this really intriguing email. It led to a website with this copy on it: “Look, I know everyone hates saxophones. And with good reason. Excluding Colin Stetson’s amazing work, and Tom Waits of course, I also tend toward hating on saxophones myself. “But is it really fair to judge an instrument by it's past misdemeanors ? Can the sax be rehabilitated and made sexy again ? “Here at Sound Dust we say HELL YES!” I’ll tell you more about this soon. For now, I want to point out that this was not just negative copy. Not just hater copy. This was a complaint. A complaint about saxophones. Now, whether you like saxes… hate ’em… or have no opinion at all about saxes, there’s a really good lesson in this copy. And it has to do with something we’ve never covered on this podcast, even though this technique is used all the time… and quite successfully, I’ll add. The technique is what I’m going to call “complaint copywriting.” Now, to be clear, we’re not talking about “compliant copywriting,” which is also

People use the term “control freak” like it’s a bad thing. And let’s be clear. Sometimes it is. But our guest today is obsessed about control and controls in the best possible way. He’s copywriter Brad Nickel, originally from Madison, Wisconsin and now living in Valencia, Spain with his girlfriend and their French Bulldog, named Renée. Disclosure: Brad’s a client of mine. He writes copy and manages email lists for 8-figures health companies. And this is where the conversation turns to control. Brad has written “control emails” that get used over and over again by his clients and their affiliates. His copy has brought in tens of thousands of leads and customers… and helped his clients make tens of millions of dollars. Today he’s going to tell us how he does this, and give you some tips you can use yourself. Here are the questions I’m going to ask him: What is a control? What is a control email? What are some examples, and why do you think they worked? Could you break down of the structure of a control email,

I have often wondered whether direct-response copy would work in large, more conventional businesses. Our guest today put my question to rest. Let me introduce you to my friend Jim Van Wyck. He’s been a direct marketer since the early 1990s. And because of businesses he built with direct-response copy, he’s had two seven-figure exits and one eight-figure exit. In case that jargon doesn’t mean anything to you, I’ll break it down. A seven-figure exit is where you sell the business for more than one million dollars. An eight-figure exit is where you sell the business for more than 10 million dollars. Jim opened an indoor tennis club in the early eights. He co-founded a bookstore in the early 90s. He had a small chain of weight loss centers in the late 90s in partnership with his wife. Jim worked closely with a regional insurance brokerage in the 2000s, which was sold to a Fortune 500 company. More recently, he co-founded another insurance agency selling health insurance nationwide, and he was the CEO of that b

I’ve been wanting to do a show on this topic for quite a while. I kept hitting a roadblock in my mind every time I started to prepare. Now, with the coronavirus keeping so many kids out of school and at home, I realized I needed to get past the roadblock. And, ironically, it was the stay-at-home order that cleared the mental roadblock out of the way. Here’s an outline of what I came up with. Since Nathan has a young person he helps with her homework, he had some real-world-inspired insights that are especially worth listening to. 1. What gets in the way (or would get in the way) of making copywriting a class in all elementary, middle, or high schools. 2. Who should teach kids copywriting, and who shouldn’t 3. Which kids should be taught copywriting, and which kids shouldn’t 4. What to teach, and what not to teach 5. What a typical copywriting assignment for a young student, might look like 6. The big idea about teaching and learning copywritingDownload.

When I first started writing copy, before there was an Internet, we had an old saying: “There’s no such thing as copy that’s too long. Only copy that’s too boring.” Great point back then. Because short copy was what you would see on wasteful print ads, and on tv commercials that were trying to convey a feeling, instead of trying to sell something. But try talking smack about short copy to someone who’s writing ads for Facebook or Google. Short copy is now part of the toolkit of hard-core direct-response copywriters. Today we take a look at short copy from this new point of view: 1. What is short copy that works for direct response in today’s environment? 2. Why did direct marketers oppose short copy in the past? 3. The concept of the “horizontal sales letter” (funnel). 4. The job short copy has to do in a direct response campaign. 5. How today’s short copy has changed the game as far as graphics and appearance go. 6.Two questions I used critiquing a client’s funnel the day before we recorded this show.Down

Have you ever given up on time management, because every technique and system you’ve tried just doesn’t work for you? If so, it’s not your fault. Time management systems don’t work for creative people in most cases. But in our second Old Masters show with Robert Updegraff, we’re going to show you an approach that does. It’s from a 1958 book “All the Time You Need” by Robert Updegraff. It’s out of print, but you might be able to find a copy on Amazon. Thanks to Copywriters Podcast guest expert, master copywriter David Deutsch, for telling me about this book many years ago. What’s great about this book is it shows you how to solve the biggest problems that rob you of time, and rob your time of its potential to be productive for you. I’ve used all of the ideas here, but I don’t use all of them all of the time. That would be impossible. You’d spend more time using his time-maximizing techniques than getting anything done. I can tell you: - they work, and - it’s better to use one or a few than to try to use al

Tell me if you’ve had this experience: You get up in the morning, and within a few minutes this sharp pang of confusion runs through your body as you wonder, “What world am I living in?” Yep. These are disorienting times, that’s for sure. We’re all doing the best we can to adjust to it. And based on my very limited view of what’s going on, most people are doing OK. I know some people are suffering terribly right now. I have one friend who had what he was pretty sure was coronavirus, and he got through it. I’m grateful for that. And I’m aware there are many others who are having a pretty tough time with it. What I want to talk about today is not the present, but the future. And not the general state of the world, but copywriting in what’s starting to be called “The New Normal.” Yes, it’s the doctors, nurses and first responders who will get the world at large through this. But copywriters can do a lot to help keep some businesses afloat and maybe, just maybe, increase the number of employees of those busines

Today in our Old Masters series, we have someone a little different whose work we’re going to look at. His name is Robert Updegraff. He wasn’t really a copywriter, but experienced copywriters and marketers know him. In today’s show, we’re going over a short book he published originally in 1916. It’s called Obvious Adams and it’s a story about a copywriter that took the business world by storm. Jack Trout, author of the modern marketing classic “Positioning,” wrote an article about Obvious Adams in Forbes. This is a guy who knows a thing or two about marketing, and he called Obvious Adams “the best book that I have ever read on marketing.” The hero of the story, Obvious Adams, had a knack for finding the simplest, most obvious idea. And his ideas led to great increases in sales. It turns out, that’s exactly what a viral idea is. Today, we’ll show you what to look for in an idea — whether it’s a positioning statement, or a headline, or a product idea — to see how likely it is to go viral. We’ll talk about the

You may know Nathan as the producer and my confabulation partner on Copywriters Podcast, and some of you know he’s an accomplished and profitable copywriter himself. But not everyone knows another aspect of Nathan’s public face, and that is as a very provocative Facebook poster. His posts trigger people in a way I’ve never seen before. A lot of them are funny and nearly all of his posts are thought-provoking. I asked him if he would share the story behind what he thinks and why he does what he does, and he readily agreed. So that’s what we did on today’s show. 1. You seem to thrive writing Facebook posts that polarize a lot of people. Some love these posts and some people really get triggered. Could you talk about why you do this? 2. Could you share some of your “greatest hits” — posts that you consider among your most controversial? 3. A lot of times your posts are ironic, or downright sarcastic. Do you find that some people miss the irony or sarcasm and take what you say literally? 4. I’ve noticed three k

We’re back with another episode in the Old Masters Series. Today we’re going to talk about Robert Collier. Most people know of him as the author of The Robert Collier Letter Book, which we’ll talk about in this show. But it’s important to know that besides being one of the best copywriters of the first half of the 20th Century, Collier was also a prolific and highly successful author. One of his other books, for example, sold 300,000 copies. We’re going to take some powerful ideas from just a couple pages of the Robert Collier Letter Book. It’s such a rich resource. My pal John Carlton, who has been on this podcast three times, says that book was one of the three books he referred to all the time when he was just starting out. Here are the seven topics we cover in the show: Word Pictures: After you get your reader’s attention, “your next problem is to put your ideas across, to make him see it as you see it — in short, to visualize it so clearly that he can build it, piece by piece in his own mind as a child

The online marketing world has gone crazy with targeting. It’s great for all the media buyers and traffic managers, since they can get paid work out of it. Targeting… like Chicken Man of old-time radio, targeting — It’s everywhere! But what good does all this targeting do copywriters… and the marketers they work for? Today I’d like to look at targeting from a copywriter’s point of view. Not how to do targeting, but how to make the most out of what the media buyers and traffic managers deliver to you. At the core, copywriting is about writing precisely to your qualified prospect’s state of mind. Targeting is the way, unless you know each prospect personally, to find out as precisely as possible what your qualified prospect’s state of mind is. Let’s look at two types of targeting and figure out how each one is useful — or not useful — for different kinds of offers, and how you can use it: Traditional and Tuning-Fork Targeting Traditional 1: Demographics and Geographic (measuring prospects: age, number of kids