Copywriters Podcast

These days, more and more people from more and more backgrounds are thinking about writing sales copy, or actually doing it. The main reason is the number of online business has exploded. This is due in part to all the people who spent so much time at home during the pandemic. But there are other reasons as well. One important one is, a lot of people who didn’t like to buy online in the past will only buy online now, if they possibly can. So, a much bigger market. Anyone who didn’t start out their career as a copywriter knows that it takes some adjustments. Writing copy is hardly like writing term papers at school or even writing weak-kneed prose at advertising agencies. Copy is muscular, and it has a job to do — it has to sell something. Today I thought we could take a look at what people from six specific backgrounds need to know and, just as important, need to change about their thinking in order to write copy that works. I asked myself the question, what are the most common categories of people I’ve

We are back with the unconventional and immensely creative marketer, John Williamson. Last week he went in-depth on his powerful technique called Emotional Lockpicking™, and we asked him to join us again, which he agreed to do. John lives in an undisclosed location on the side of a mountain in Scotland. Over the last 30 years he has generated millions of dollars in sales for himself and his clients with his own special brand of unique selling propositions. He’s also come up with some very interesting ideas about elevator pitches, unique selling propositions, and even how to close a deal with a stuffed tortoise. I find his ideas fascinating and he’ll share some more of them with us today. One of John’s favorite quotes is: “All things being equal, people buy on price. Which is why your number-one job as an entrepreneur is to ensure that ‘things’ aren’t equal.” Probably related to that idea is a speech he has given over 250 times called “How to Charge Higher Prices Than Your Competitors… and STILL Win the Busin

Here at Copywriters Podcast, we pride ourselves on having unconventional guests with unique marketing ideas, but our guest today, John Williamson, really takes “unconventional” to a whole new level. John lives in an undisclosed location on the side of a mountain in Scotland. Over the last 30 years he has generated millions of dollars in sales for himself and his clients with his own special brand of unique selling propositions. He’s also come up with an innovative copywriting concept he calls “Emotional Lockpicking.” I find it fascinating and he’ll share it with us today. Plus, he has loads of other money-making ideas I promise you haven’t heard anywhere else before. One of John’s favorite quotes is: “All things being equal, people buy on price. Which is why your number-one job as an entrepreneur is to ensure that ‘things’ aren’t equal.” Probably related to that idea is a speech he has given over 250 times called “How to Charge Higher Prices Than Your Competitors… and STILL Win the Business.” On the show, Jo

Our guest today is famous in digital marketing circles as an online advertising expert. His name is Justin Brooke and I’m so happy he can join us. Justin is the founder of Adskills, a great training company for online advertising. He’s also a super-experienced media buyer, having spent more than $10 million for lead generation as well as eCommerce campaigns. While Justin could give us super-valuable information on a lot of things, there’s one topic he knows a lot about where I’ve found it’s really hard to find any other expert who is also a good teacher. Justin is both – that is, an expert, and a really good teacher, and that topic is advertorials. It’s great that we get to talk to him about that today. Here’s what we ask him in today’s show: 1. For people who don't know -- What are advertorials, and how are they useful in marketing? 2. How did you get into writing, and teaching about, advertorials? 3. What are the key differences between an advertorial and... - content/articles - sales letters/ads? 4. Could

In just about every copywriter’s life, there comes a time when you ask yourself, “Why on God’s green Earth are all my clients making money hand over fist, day after day, month after month — and I just get paid just once?” It’s a fair question because, more often than not, as copywriters, we end up essentially inventing our clients’ businesses. With our copy. With our ideas. With our expert guidance. To create a money machine. Our guest today has a solution to this problem copywriters have. His name is Jason Moffatt, and his nickname is “profit Moffatt” for a reason. He’s figured out how to do profitable deals, both for his clients and for himself. He started his copywriting career reading books and courses while waiting in his spy van during private investigation stakeouts. After 17 years in Internet Marketing, Jason teaches digital marketers and copywriters how to get their slice of the pie by acquiring significant equity chunks on any project they work on. He spends most of his time on Hawaii’s fam

One reason it's hard to write copy is when you start out, you've got so much in front of you, it can seem overwhelming. Not only that, but just one you get in the groove for writing copy for one part of the letter or VSL, you have to shift gears. That's because different sections of what you're writing have different rhythms. Each one has a different feel. For example, a story needs to have good momentum to it. But it's not nearly as fast-paced as good closing copy is. Today we're going to talk about some ways you can overcome this problem, and it has to do with warming up to write each section. Just like if you were going to warm up to work out or go for a run, you can warm up to write each section of your copy differently. This will help you a lot, especially if you've got a big project and you feel like you're facing a brick wall. We talked about Gene Schwartz’s big concept of copywriting: That it’s not “writing,” but in fact is really “assembling.” He mentioned this at a talk he gave to people at Rodale,

Whether you’re running a business or running someone else’s Facebook advertising for them, it always seems like there are a million things to keep track of as far as advertising is concerned. No doubt about it; there are. But there are a few things that are truly make-or-break, day in and day out. A few crucial things that will define the line between profitability and losing money. A few things that determine sale or no sale. In other words, a few things that matter a lot more than the others. Nathan Fraser calls these few things “Advertising Cheat Codes.” Now don’t get him wrong, the other things are important, too. But I’m going to say the difference is, you can slip on the other things a little now and then and they won’t tank your business. But screw up regularly on the big things, and you could be in for some tough times ahead. Fortunately, once you know what these few, very important things are, you don’t ever have to screw up on them. Nathan told us about three of the most important Advertising Cheat

Today, let’s talk about staying with big copy projects, once you get started. You know, they say “begun is half done.” That’s true, but then there’s the other half, and that’s where we run into trouble sometimes. The half that’s not done yet, but still needs to get done. We’ve covered the steps of how to write a sales letter before and we’ll cover it again, but that’s not what I want to talk about today. This is more about how you need to prepare and what you need to do when you’re working to finish your project and have the best copy you can have. I’ll give you a hint as to where we’re going. I’ve invented something called the Frustration-Flow Scale. All the way to the left is frozen in frustration. All the way to the right on the scale is floating in flow. Effortless and fun. The trick is to get on the right side of the scale and stay there, for as long as possible, as often as possible. So all the things we’re going to talk about today are ways to get to and stay on the right side of the frustration-flow

We’re back with the legendary Bond Halbert, who I am proud to call my friend. On the last show, Bond talked about better ways to get started in copywriting. On today’s show, Bond will share with us some crucial insights about what working copywriters are doing wrong, and how to fix those problems. Bond’s father, of course, was the famous copywriter Gary Halbert, and Bond is among Gary’s first very successful students. In fact, Bond was closest to his dad in both a personal and professional relationship. More recently, after copy chiefing some of the largest financial promotions of our time, Bond pioneered many tactics for getting the highest email open rates in any industry. After Gary passed away, Bond and his brother Kevin took over TheGaryHalbertLetter.com and the brothers have put out great copywriting products, including the Halbert All-Star Audio Series, which I am proud to say I was invited to participate in. Bond and Kevin also have started the Gary Halbert Copy Club Facebook group, which has an astou

We’re so lucky to have Bond Halbert on the show today. Bond is my friend and has been a great supporter, professionally, for years. Bond’s father, of course, was the famous copywriter Gary Halbert, and Bond is among Gary’s first very successful students. In fact, Bond was closest to his dad in both a personal and professional relationship. More recently, after copy chiefing some of the largest financial promotions of our time, Bond pioneered many tactics for getting the highest email open rates in any industry. After Gary passed away, Bond and his brother Kevin took over TheGaryHalbertLetter.com and the brothers have put out great copywriting products, including the Halbert All-Star Audio Series, which I am proud to say I was invited to participate in. Bond and Kevin also have started the Gary Halbert Copy Club Facebook group, which has an astounding membership of more than 21,000, as of the day of our recording. That is HUGE for a copywriting group on Facebook! Bond mentors copywriters and we’ll give you

Every year, between 20 and 30 lucky people get a phone call that goes something like this: "Congratulations! The MacArthur Foundation has determined that you are a GENIUS, and we'd like to send you some Mo-NAY! Unlike my parody of the actual phone call, the money is serious — these days, $625,000, paid over five years. To use however they want. Now that's great for them, but so what? How does this have anything to do with copywriting? It's simple. These people get the award because the foundation gives it to them explicitly because of their creativity and originality. Something every good copywriter wants to get better at, too. Now… stay with me here… What if you could travel around the country interviewing these people and coaxing from them their creativity secrets? Well, maybe you could. But someone already did. And she wrote a great book about it. Denise Shekerjian interviewed 40 MacArthur fellows, as they are officially called. The book she wrote is titled "Uncommon Genius: How Great Ideas Are Born." I ch

We don’t usually give out formulas on this show, but today I’m going to start with one: Empathy = $80 million. I got that -- actually, I created it -- from looking at the work of our guest today, Emily McGuire. She’s a big-time specialist in email marketing. And her email campaigns have earned clients over $80 million in revenue. The reason I put empathy in the formula is that Emily says her guiding principle is “Leading with empathy… figuring out where your prospects and repeat customers are in their buying cycle, or customer journey… and re-engaging them when they start to cool off.” In her business, Flourish and Grit, Emily has worked with consumer brands, health and wellness businesses, and Software-as-a-Service companies in the tech space. Her most famous client is probably Adam & Eve, the adult toy store. She used the empathy approach to increase their profits by 36%. Here’s what I asked her: 1. Emily, I’m just betting you polarize audiences when you tell them that if they want to sell more with the

Today’s show is part of our popular Old Masters series, and we’ve got some unusual info and ideas from a copywriter of old, John Starr Hewitt. This comes from a book we’re pulled from before, from 1925, called “Masters of Advertising Copy.” From everything I’ve seen in this book, Hewitt is the only contributor who gets down to cases when it comes to what it takes to become a master in copywriting. His ideas are decidedly different, even for today. He talks about the subtle skills a copywriter needs to develop, and the subtle changes that occur as you get better and better. I agreed with most of what he said. I didn’t have an issue with any of it. Some of it was a little hard to understand and apply for copywriting today, but most of it translates very easily. And all of is interesting. More than how to structure an ad or how to do your research, this chapter by Hewitt focuses on awareness. What you need to pay attention to both with your product and regarding the world at large. Since this is new information,

So, with the year 2021 just days behind us, I thought it would be fun to reminisce about my early days as a copywriter. It was definitely a second career for me. I had started out as a business journalist. Of course, not knowing anything about copywriting when I first started, I assumed writing copy couldn’t be all that different from writing news and feature stories, right? I was about as wrong as I could be. And, of course, I found out. I learned the hard way. I seem to have developed a knack for learning that way. I don’t know if I can save any new copywriters from the painful lessons I had to learn the hard way, but hope springs eternal. And who knows, even experienced copywriters might remember something they had forgotten, or, get some new ideas from hearing the old truths. Each of these things I talk about on today’s show are now like iron laws that I remember, observe and respect every time I sit down to write copy myself, or critique copy for my clients. Resource: Copywriters Podcast Episode 174: Bel

Our guest today, Chris Haddad, sent shock waves through the copywriting world a couple weeks ago, with the launch of his much-awaited online training program called “The P.I.G. Method.” “P.I.G.” stands for “Punch in the gut” and I would say that’s a fairly universal description of how Chris’s copy in his video sales letters affects viewers. When you watch one of Chris’s promotions, or read his copy, you go on an emotional roller coaster ride that’s right up there with what you experience with a blockbuster Hollywood thriller. Chris does have a background in theatre and film. But his greatest accomplishments, I would argue, have come in the digital marketing space. Chris has created products and promotions for them which have brought in millions of dollars and caused quite a stir in the marketplace. However, The P.I.G. Method is the first time, as far as I can tell, that Chris has revealed his secrets of how he puts the promotions together. Which is something a lot of people have wanted to know for quite a whi

Our guest today, Chris Haddad, sent shock waves through the copywriting world 10 days ago with the launch of his much-awaited online training program called “The P.I.G. Method.” “P.I.G.” stands for “Punch in the gut” and I would say that’s a fairly universal description of how Chris’s copy in his video sales letters affects viewers. When you watch one of Chris’s promotions, or read his copy, you go on an emotional roller coaster ride that’s right up there with what you experience with a blockbuster Hollywood thriller. Chris does have a background in theatre and film. But his greatest accomplishments, I would argue, have come in the digital marketing space. Chris has created products and promotions for them which have brought in millions of dollars and caused quite a stir in the marketplace. However, The P.I.G. Method is the first time, as far as I can tell, that Chris has revealed his secrets of how he puts the promotions together. Which is something a lot of people have wanted to know for quite a while. On t

Today's podcast comes from a handful of idea generators I found in "The Copy Book —How Some of the Best Advertisers in the World Write Their Advertising." I found out about this book from our friend Sean Vosler, who's been on the show before. It's over 500 pages long, and while it's interesting, most of it does not really apply to direct response copywriting, which, after all, is what this show is about. Nevertheless, there were a few gems I found that are great idea generators for all copywriters. So that's what we're going to focus on today. We've got seven idea-generators, coming from four different copywriters. I'll mention their names as we get to each one. Obviously these are people who know their way around writing advertising. And, like I said, I carefully selected each idea generator because I can see how you can apply this to what you're doing when you're writing copy yourself. The Copy Book https://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/graphic_design/all/43914/facts.dad_the_copy_book.htm Download.

We have an extra-special guest today, and I will tell you about him after I tell you about his book. Nine years ago, someone -- and I’m sorry I can’t remember who it was -- told me about this amazing book called “The Micro-Script Rules.” I went crazy when I got it and have been recommending it to people ever since. Fast forward to earlier this fall. My client Billy Broas emailed me, having recently spoken with the author of that book, Bill Schley. He wanted to introduce the two of us. Long story short, Bill is what I would call an expert in branding that sells. In fact, he’s the only person I know who has a pretty foolproof system for creating branding that rockets companies to the top of their niche. He’s been doing that for about 30 years -- companies of all kinds. I was able to get him to come on the podcast and talk about that. Normally we direct marketers are a little hesitant to listen when anyone talks about branding, but I promise this. You’ll want to hear what Bill has to say. That’s because he’s wor

We’ve got a very special guest today, Kenneth Yu. I really want to thank him for staying up very late to join us. As we’re recording this, it’s the middle of the night in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where Ken is based. He’s going to tell us about what he calls “the most persuasive story structure on Earth,” and he has a point. He calls it “the scalable parable,” and this refers to the way religious stories are structured. Now, from a sales point of view, the Holy Bible had sold five billion copies, according to the Guinness Book of world records, and that was 1995. More than any other book in the English language, and almost certainly more than any other book in the world. Scalable parables are great in religious texts, but what about in copy? We’ll find out today. Ken is going to tell how he used this religious story structure to get the number one biz-op Clickbank offer last year. More important, he’s going to tell you what you need to do to use this same structure in your own copy. Ken’s got some amazing copyw

We’re back with an episode in the Old Masters series -- four Old Masters, in fact. These four people are the co-authors of the book “The Principles Of Advertising,” first published in 1915. I ran across it while tracking down something else I had learned about from Copywriting Historian Sean Vosler, who has been on this show before. The authors are: Harry Tipper, Harry L. Hollingsworth, George Burton Hotchkiss, and Frank Alvah Parsons. It’s interesting to see how much has changed and how little has changed in the last 100 years. Of course the world has changed and the channels of communication are different. But people are pretty much motivated by the same things they always have been. And what works in ads hasn’t changed that much, either. So the book we’re going to look at today was published over 100 years ago. It was written as a textbook and that should scare anyone off. But the good news is, two of the authors are ad professionals, and two are professors. The language is a little old-fashioned, but the