Mastering Copywriting: Newsletter Guide

• First newsletter's purpose is to help readers:
  • Intuit good copy
  • Think critically about gurus, marketing, and businesses
  • Use the newsletter as a reference guide
• The core mission is to write with honesty, transparency, and integrity, which creates compelling copy and successful business
• Intuiting good copy requires detactifying it by removing salesy-ness, selling psychology, and persuasion
• Present products like an expert tour guide by knowing where to start, guide, and finish the tour
• Order is crucial in copy for a step-by-step sequence, as the message whether spoken or written, works best when it follows a clear outline with a start, middle and end
• Order benefits copywriters by helping them write and customers by helping them understand the product
• Focus on good writing by being direct
• Focus on good speaking rhythm if the copy is meant to be spoken
• Meaning, curiosity, and creativity come with copy sense
• No secret order exists, as it depends on the requirements and testing of new ideas
• One order has been effective for about 110 years and can be used as a spoken pitch, text sales letter, partial outline or entire outline
• Example of aforementioned outline is the Claude Hopkins 5 Mistakes Palmolive ads

Problem Diagnosis and Solution

• Most sales letters overwhelm customers with sales tactics like hooks, customer language, emotional pain points, unique selling propositions, mechanism promises, open-loops, pattern-interrupts, attention attempts AIDA, story selling, and bold promises
• Overuse of tactics destroys the sequence, akin to speakers who love to hear themselves talk
• Newer writers lean on tactics from a copy course

Copywriter Manic State

• Occurs when copywriters treat sales pages like entrance exams to a copywriters guild, which doesn't exist
• Copywriters puke newfound persuasion knowledge, forgetting customers
• Business owners may also half-heartedly use sales tactics to avoid cheapening their brand, resulting in clunky and confusing copy
• Common issue is the writer is not stating who they are until 1,000 or more words into the copy

Copywriting Problems

• Arise from learning copywriting
• New copywriters often look to formulas to know what and how to write to make money
• Copywriters read books, buy courses, get critiques, and join Facebook groups
• Varied formulas are available, like RMBC Method by Stefan Georgi, Agora Formula, Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy, and techniques taught in sales books
• Formulas provide guidance and a reference as experience is gained

Formula Trap

• A tactic lexicon occurs, as formulas are often seen as benchmarks due to claims of generating millions/billions in sales
• Mirroring formulas dogmatically occurs to help with copy conversion
• Obsessing is likely to happen over customer language by researching how to make huge promises, like:
  • Excel spreadsheets
  • 5 Stages Of Sophistication
  • Finding a mechanism to make a promise
  • Obsessing on when to initiate a product reveal
  • Checking psychology against Maslow's Hierarchy
  • Ensuring the use of the right emotional pain points
  • Making sure the product awareness stage has the right hook
• Course homework distracts from presenting the product and marketplace knowledge, distracting writers

Effective Formulas

• Formulas work best as an outline when writers blend valuable insights with product, market, and competition knowledge
• Courses like the RMBC Method may teach sales letters that work best in Cash Grab Scheme or Product Launch business models for one-time-transactions, fabricate stories/lies, or make outrageous claims, and promise miracles

Perishable Formulas

• Customers of Cash Grab Scheme business or Product Launch businesses leave quickly, which requires an enormous ad spend or aggressive affiliate email marketing
• Using a particular sales formula in hopes of an immediate conversion is a "Categorical Mistake"
• Mistakenly inferring that properties that made one sales letter sell in one market will work in another
• Formulas taught in copy courses are often bought by crowds of copywriters/business owners
• Formula imitations lead to "me too" advertising, canceling out effort through overuse
• Popular formulas have a short shelf-life/heavy-tactic

Claude Hopkins General Structure

• Used for selling software, diets, cars, pants, shaving cream, and workouts
• Inject appropriate properties for the sell
• Know the business and how to sell the product
• Copy courses and sales books are guides and flawed

Customer Thoughts

• Customers may ask themselves:
  • Why should I care
  • How is this any different/better/worse than what I currently or have used/tried
  • What's in it for me: How can I get a better-than-average reward
  • Why you: How can I trust you to give me a fair deal
• Clarity answers the questions and salesmanship makes things harder

Claude Hopkins Advertisement

• Contains no sales tactics and communicates using enthusiastic, confident tones tied to Palmolive's discovery and customer raves
• Good writing and word choice inspire confident tone

Headline Analysis of Samples

• "5 Mistakes Corrected for you in a shaving cream" & "Learn why thousands of men are flocking to this new shaving creation" are declarative statements
• "Happy Faces – Men tell us this makes shaving a morning joy" is a headline with journalistic flair Each headline hints at what the ad will reveal with confidence and clarity
• Statement-style headlines raise curiosity by being direct and blunt
• Good statement headlines should confidently state just short of a brag

Big Idea Concept

• Loosens customer mental grip on current use and raises curiosity, has 3 parts:
  • Meet them where they are
  • Imply issues with current offerings
  • What you do and what the letter/pitch involves
• Do it between 200 words and be quick, poignant, and direct
• Does not promise but presents the entire idea and creates curiosity

Expertise

• Lay out expertise early
• Story resides in the expertise
• State who you are, how long you've been doing it, number of clients, results, and what you do

Problems And Buyers Formula

• Hopkins ties theme of how Palmolive discovered a way to solve common shaving mistakes
• Know the market, best to pick the most common, or one that is less known to educate your reader
• Refrain from speaking like the customer, be matter-of-fact when describing and providing a solution via your product
• Detail product problems, why they manifest, and how to handle them
• Avoid emotional pain points

Qualify Close

• Sage Closer: Pushes it on the customer's decision to try out the product
• Qualify Close: Warm: "hey you might like it, you might not, who knows. But give it a shot and see for yourself" opposed to trying to hammer close

The Sales Letter Outline

• Headline should be direct and catchy
• Big Idea (under 200 words)
  • Part 1: Meet them where they are at or address current offerings
  • Part 2: Winter is coming; address current issues they face
  • Part 3: What you do and what the ad is about
• Who you are and what you do
• Problems and how you solve it
• Qualify Close
• Next steps: Where to buy, what to expect, time frame
• Fill in each section and write as direct as possible

Tone

• Use the simplest language possible.
• Warmth and enthusiasm can be achieved with short phrases and good verbs
• Avoid plain phrasing

Copy Outline

• Work solely on a section and then the next
• The Big Idea is usually the starting point
• Best to read Rudolf Flesch's, On Business Communications for tone

Research Notes

• Research spans beyond knowing the product as it makes you a professional, fixes flops, and captures luck
• Wisdom, experience, and gut instinct are sharpened by it
• Overcome Sales Success Noise
• See the game, spot basic nuts and bolts, and move units like players do
• Avoid generic and taught methods that teach you to promise hunt
• Don't focus on competition
• Biggest Mistake: Researching Like A Salesman.

Modus Operandi Leads

• Drives copywriter to perceive product benefits
• Find a difference
• Differentiate product from those of competitors
• Understand what makes the product and its appeal
• Sense interactions people have with the product