Copywriters Podcast

Three weeks ago we did a selection from my half of the no-longer-available Guerrilla Copywriting audiobook. It was so popular, we thought we’d do it again. Here’s some background: Sixteen years ago, in 2007, I produced an audiobook with my friend and mentor Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the bestselling Guerrilla Marketing series. Jay and I originally thought about doing a book together, but that never happened. However, we did do an audiobook. It was called Guerrilla Copywriting. Unlike a lot of things he did and I lot of things I’ve done, this one didn’t sell that well. I don’t think either of us had the bandwidth to promote it, but there may have been another problem -- we tried to jam too much good information into too little time. We had sixty really powerful tips for writing copy. Jay would do one, then I would do one. It ended up being 60 tips in 60 minutes. Plenty of value, but maybe we would have been better off slowing down and taking some time to talk about each tip. Well… the audiobook is

People outside of marketing and copywriting might think “swiping” is something you do on your phone with a dating app, or maybe that it’s slang for shoplifting. Not wrong, but today we’re talking about what copywriters and marketing strategists mean when they say “swiping.” And that is, taking a proven form (whether that’s actual words or something a little more conceptual) and finding a way to use it yourself. It could be word-substitution in a headline. For example, we’ve seen countless examples of headlines that have swiped the originals: Who Else Wants A Whiter Wash? and Who Else Wants A Beach Body? Swipes would be Who Else Wants A Six-Pack That Gets Admiring Stares? Who Else Wants More Free Time Than You Ever Dreamed Of? Our guest today has a much broader and, I would say, more profitable vision of what swiping is and what it can be. His name is Corey Haines and he has a lot of experience in SaaS marketing. In case you’re not familiar with the term, SaaS stands for “Software-as-a-Service.” He

We’ve got a very special episode today in our Old Masters series—featuring some wisdom from David Ogilvy. He was legendary in advertising during the Mad Men days. Kenneth Roman wrote a book about Ogilvy called “The King of Madison Avenue.” I believe his book “Ogilvy on Advertising” was the only book on the subject to reach widespread bestseller status, far outside the reaches of the industry. Over 100,000 copies sold. For a business book, that’s like over 1 million sold for a novel or general-interest book. Ogilvy was more of a team leader and team builder than a solo operator. More like a Joe Schriefer or a James Patterson—Patterson was an executive for J. Walter Thompson before he became a best-selling novelist—Ogilvy was more like those guys than like a Gene Schwartz or a Gary Halbert. But don’t get me wrong. Ogilvy was also a terrific copywriter. He started out in direct response and understood the principles of that kind of copywriting inside out. I found something the other day, paging through Ogi

Sixteen years ago I produced an audiobook with my friend and mentor Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the bestselling Guerrilla Marketing series. Jay and I originally thought about doing a book together, but that never happened. The audiobook was called Guerrilla Copywriting. Unlike a lot of things he did and I lot of things I’ve done, it didn’t sell that well. I don’t think either of us had the bandwidth to promote it, but there may have been another problem -- we tried to jam too much good information into too little time. We had sixty really powerful tips for writing copy. Jay would do one, then I would do one. It ended up being 60 tips in 60 minutes. Plenty of value, but maybe we would have been better off slowing down and taking some time to talk about each tip. Well… the audiobook is out of print now, so I’m free to share my half of the material. I took a look at it the other day and, I gotta admit, it’s pretty good. A couple things needed to be updated -- a lot has happened in 16 years. But for the m

Today we took a new look at an old question: What does it take to become a really, really good copywriter? I wanted to answer this question by zeroing-in on the path of mastery. I’ve been learning about the path of mastery for a long time. What I found out goes against what I learned in school and what I see on TV and in the movies. Our culture celebrates achievers but it does NOT respect the path of mastery very much. I’m lucky in that I know a number of copywriters who are well along this path, including a few who are personal friends and a few more who are my mentoring clients. To prepare for this show, I went back to the books I’ve been reading since 2009 to flesh out my ideas and observations. A few surprises, some new information. But nothing that goes against anything I’ve noticed and concluded up until now. So what I did was pick some key points from great books about mastery, and weave all that together with some practical, down-to-earth tactics and approaches for getting really, really good

Today we returned to the Old Masters Series, but with a twist. We used some secrets from one Old Master to look at the famous work of another. This all came about last week, when I was going over the chapter on Intensification in Breakthrough Advertising with a client. Breakthrough Advertising, of course, is Gene Schwartz’s masterwork on copywriting. Part 2 of the book is seven chapters on “the basic techniques of breakthrough advertising.” And the first of those seven sets of techniques is what Gene Schwartz calls “Intensification.” Basically, how to get your hands on your prospect’s feeling of desire, and push it through the roof. I was struggling with how to put this on a podcast. And then I had an idea: Why not take John Caples’s famous ad, “They Laughed When I Sat Down At The Piano… ” and see how Caples used the intensification techniques. You might not be surprised that, even though the ad was written nearly 40 years before the book was, Caples knew what he was doing and used a bunch of the techn

Today’s podcast is about a topic that is so important, we quote from three Old Masters, even though this is not an Old Masters Series show. The topic is: making your copy believable. Two of the Old Masters, right now. In his book “Ogilvy on Advertising,” David Ogilvy writes these words: “Says James Webb Young, one of the best copywriters in history: ‘every type of advertiser has the same problem: to be believed.’” And that only makes sense, when you think about it. Because no matter how good your copy is, if people don’t believe it, what good is it at all? We’re going a long way to solve that problem on today’s show. First, something from the third Old Master. We did a show on this topic a year and a half ago as part of our Old Masters Series. I’ll do a speed recap of the best of what we covered about believability then from a chapter A.O. Owen wrote in an old copy book about 100 years ago. His tips were: 1. Use exact numbers. Instead of “around 150,” use the actual amount, like, for example, 154—i

I’m excited that we’re finally doing a show on Artificial Intelligence and Copywriting. This has been a long time coming. Nathan has had quite a bit of experience finding out on real assignments what AI can do and can’t do. I have less experience, but I do have some. One thing is for certain: AI is here to stay, and it is slithering its way into copywriting. It’s not going to replace all of us tomorrow, but if your skills are limited as a copywriter, you may want to upgrade your skills, or become a real AI jockey, or both. Today we’re going to talk about what AI does well and how it can save you tons of time, once you learn to use it. Also, what it doesn’t do well yet… and may never really be able to do at all. We started with my unabashed opinion of what AI is when it comes to copywriting, and things could only get better from there. In fact, Nathan had a number of positive things to say, including the best uses for AI when you’re a copywriter—things I had not considered or heard before. However, go

Today we’ve got an urgent topic that everyone in copywriting has questions about—and we’ve got an expert to give us some much-needed guidance. The topic is content. What do you do with it. When does it replace copy… when is it inappropriate… and when does content blend with copy and actually enhance the selling power? And our expert is Scott Aughtmon, founder of Direct Response Content Marketing. Full disclosure: Scott and I have been friends for a while, and he invite me to speak at a marketing class he was teaching at UC Berkeley six years ago. These days, Scott does a lot of marketing work in the tech space. He’s also the author of the book “51 Content Marketing Hacks” and created an infographic called “21 Types Of Content We Crave.” That infographic has gone viral, and we’re going to talk about a few of those types today, and give you a link at the end to get the full list. Scott told us how and why he got into content marketing, and a little bit about the surprising history of the infographic. If

Our returning champion is Joshua Lee Henry, with a first: He came by to do a GUEST Old Master’s Series show. Joshua asked me if he take a new look at the work of John Caples, the great copywriter and author. I said OK, as long he talked about something different than we have talked about on the many shows we’ve already done on Caples. Joshua put together a collection of unique items that filled the bill. So I was really happy to bring him back for this special show! As you may remember, Joshua is a high-powered copywriter and copy chief for Agora. He started his career 13 years ago writing fundraising letters for victims of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Joshua has been pastor of a megachurch and as a freelancer, has written for such famous clients as Jay Abraham, Brian Tracy and the Zig Ziglar corporation. Today, we found out what he discovered, digging into the archives of John Caples. Joshua broke it down into six lessons: 1. 4 Ways to Profit by Removing The Guesswork 2. How to Secure Testimonials

Our guest today is Meg Casebolt, founder of Love at First Search and host of the Social Slowdown podcast. I think the key words are “love” and “slow,” and let’s see if I’m right. Meg’s been very successful with a long-term search-engine optimization strategy she uses for her clients. One example that you should find interesting: Meg’s client Sara Frandina showed up third for the keywords “conversion copywriter” -- and this was organic, not an ad -- yesterday when I searched for that term on Google. Third on the first page of organic search for “conversion copywriter.” Not too shabby! You may remember legendary copywriter Gary Bencivenga had a huge success with the headline “Get Rich Slowly.” Well, Meg’s approach is similar. She doesn’t go for the black-hat tricks and other gimmicks popular among some marketers. “We don’t believe in quick-fix formulas that promise the world—but break your heart when you see they don’t work,” she says. One key element of Meg’s long-term, long-lasting approach: The strate

Now that it’s late January, you should be well into your New Years Resolutions or goals for the year, or maybe decided, “Ah… I’ll wait till next year.” What I’d like to do is niche down to just copywriting. Do you have copywriting goals? I’ve got five skills or skill sets that are worth improving this year, and I want to give you a peek under the hood. Every one of these can put more power in your copy and more profit in your pocket. They’re not flashy but they are high-octane. And I’ve found the most successful people never stop improving, so it’s worth at least considering these and see if they feel like a fit. So there are the five skills. You probably have most or all of them already. The idea is that by getting better at any one of them, you copy improves in multiples. Skill #1: Research We talked about three kinds of research: fact research, emotional research, and situational research. Most people know what fact research is, and even getting better at this could really help anyone’s copywritin

We’re back from last week with Joshua Lee Henry, who shared the first five of his 10 Commandments of Compelling Offers. As you may remember, they were great. To refresh your memory, Joshua is a high-powered copywriter and copy chief. His first appearance on Copywriters Podcast was a few months ago, when he gave us a great interview on putting together compelling leads. And, like I said earlier, today, he’s back with part two of The 10 Commandments of Compelling Offers. It’s not surprising that Joshua would be sharing his own copywriting version of the 10 Commandments, since 12 years ago, Joshua was a pastor for a megachurch with more than 5,000 members. It was at that time he began is copywriting career, writing fundraising letters for victims of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Fast forward to 2018, when Joshua started freelancing and wrote for big names including Jay Abraham, Brian Tracy and the Zig Ziglar corporation. Like a lot of high-performing copywriters, Joshua moved under the umbrella of Agora, w

Our returning champion is Joshua Lee Henry, the high-powered copywriter and copy chief. You might remember him from a few months ago when he gave a tremendous interview on putting together compelling leads. Today, he’s back with The 10 Commandments of Compelling Offers. Not surprising, since 12 years ago, Joshua was a pastor for a megachurch with more than 5,000 members. It was at that time he began is copywriting career, writing fundraising letters for victims of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Fast forward to 2018, when Joshua started freelancing and wrote for big names including Jay Abraham, Brian Tracy and the Zig Ziglar corporation. Like a lot of high-performing copywriters, Joshua moved under the umbrella of Agora, where he has written promotions that have made millions. These days, he is copy chief for Money & Markets, an imprint of Agora’s Banyan Hill company. The last time he was here, after he gave us great information about leads, I asked Joshua if he had more that he’d like to share. He ha

If you’ve ever wondered what a metaphor is and how to use metaphors in your copy, today you will get your questions answered. Because we have a guest who I consider to be the reigning expert on the question, Anne Miller. She’s author of “The Tall Lady With The Iceberg.” For my money, it is the best book ever written on how to use metaphors to sell, to explain, and to win people over. Anne understands and teaches this information better than anyone else I’ve ever seen. She’s also a coach, speaker and seminar leader. Her huge client list ranges from Columbia University and The Wall Street Journal to Revlon, Citibank and Yahoo. As well as clients in Australia, South America, Europe and Asia. Dozens and dozens of household names and major niche organizations. For us in the copywriting world, Anne’s expertise in creating and using metaphors is what excites me the most. Many copywriters and business owners use metaphors, but not too many people do it all that well. And that’s about to change today. Anne cover

Today we’re back with Peter Visser, who has developed an impressive business with partners. It’s an online education business that teaches people how to trade in the stock and Forex markets. What I found so interesting, and I think you will find it interesting too, is his marketing approach. While it seems typical at first glance, as you start to look into it a little further, it’s not typical at all. In last week’s show, we talked about how he sells to a webinar with ads he says are “‘zero-claim,’ so they always pass compliance.” The ads go to a webinar that has no sales pitch, as Peter describes it. The webinars have generated six figures a month for the last year. From there, he has a copy strategy using one-to-one emails, and a particular way of writing copy that doesn’t risk the wrath of the regulators. Today we’ll talk about the second part of his funnel -- the pitch his company uses to qualify leads, and his overall approach for writing highly persuasive copy without making any claims. Peter t

Today our guest is Peter Visser, who has developed an impressive business with partners. It’s an online education business that teaches people how to trade in the stock and Forex markets. What I found so interesting, and I think you will find it interesting too, is his marketing approach. While it seems typical at first glance, as you start to look into it a little further, it’s not typical at all. He sells to a webinar with ads he says are “‘zero-claim,’ so they always pass compliance.” The ads go to a webinar that has no sales pitch, as Peter describes it. The webinars have generated six figures a month for the last year. From there, he has a copy strategy using one-to-one emails, and a particular way of writing copy that doesn’t risk the wrath of the regulators. Today we’ll talk about the lead generation process, and the pitch-free webinars themselves. Peter has generously agreed to come back next week to tell us in detail about how he gets customers, once they’ve watched the webinar. Here is wha

We’re back with top copywriter Mike Pavlish for part two of his in-depth information on video sales letters that sell like crazy. And Mike should know. He’s written dozens of VSLs that have brought in 10 million dollars or more. In fact, over the last 30 years, Mike’s copy has brought in three-quarters of a billion dollars in sales. And his work is still bringing in the big bucks today. I want to share with you something from last week, because it’s well worth repeating. High-powered entrepreneur Alvin Huang says this: “We’ve tested Mike Pavlish’s copywriting agains 5 other A-list copywriters, including many of the top names in the world for sales letters and VSLs. Mike’s copy has won every single time. For us, Mike Pavlish has been the Steph Curry of copywriters.” But Mike may be an even better teacher than Steph. I know I learned a lot from him last week and have even used some of it for a VSL between then and today. To review, last week Mike gave us some great tips on doing research for a winning V

Our returning champion is superstar copywriter Mike Pavlish, and even though this is Copywriters Podcast, I’m not exaggerating when I say “superstar.” Mike’s been at it for over 30 years, and his copy has sold three-quarters of a billion dollars in products and services. Because Mike is going to give us some closely-held secrets about VSLs that sell like crazy, you ought to hear what one of his clients says about Mike. I happen to know this client, because he flew over from Singapore nearly 10 years ago to attend a seminar I had organized. His name is Alvin Huang and listen to what he has to say: “We’ve tested Mike Pavlish’s copywriting agains 5 other A-list copywriters, including many of the top names in the world for sales letters and VSLs. Mike’s copy has won every single time. For us, Mike Pavlish has been the Steph Curry of copywriters.” You know, there’s only one way to get a testimonial like that, and that way is to earn it with results. So we’ve talked Mike into sharing some ideas with us about

For a lot of us, the hardest part of writing copy is getting started. Today we’re going to dive into some very handy tips from Old Master John Caples. He is, of course, famous for his ad which has the headline, “They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano… but When I Began To Play… ” Caples was what we would call today a data-driven marketer. He made his choices based on test results as much as anything else. He was highly successful and author of some of the best books every written on direct response marketing. In “Tested Advertising Methods,” he has an entire chapter devoted to seven proven ways to start your copy. Imagine how much easier it will be to write if you have some sure-fire ways to get started. That’s what today’s show is about. Now, to come up with these seven techniques, John Caples didn’t brainstorm a bunch of ways to start copy. He didn’t even draw on his massive, successful experience as a copywriter and a copy chief for six of them. No, for this chapter, he did something better. He fo