Copywriters Podcast

Stephen Covey famously said "seek first to understand, then to be understood." Too bad most copywriters skim over this important part of selling.
For many copywriters, market research is just too difficult. For others, they just don't know where to start. In this episode, David covers those bases, and more.
Many years ago, a golf ball company was running a successful mail-order ad in a golfing magazine. The company owner decided to update the ad, and brought in a top designer from New York to redesign it.
To everyone’s horror, response to the ad dropped to zero. No one could figure out why. The copy had not been changed. The market was still hot and growing. There was no bad news about the golf ball company that anyone was aware of.
Turned out, the top designer had redone the coupon in the ad to be solid black, with white lettering and white blanks to fill in. This caused a problem for customers, because to fill out the coupon, they would have needed a pen that wrote in white ink!
The business owner ordered the coupon to be changed back to white, with black lettering. Once the ad published with the normal coupon, response shot right back up.
What’s important here is that the company could figure out what was wrong until they did hands-on research, step by step, to determine what the customer would have to do to order.
This episode is all about copywriting research, which makes a huge and measurable difference in the profitability of your advertising.
But first, my friendly reminder for you:
Copy is powerful. You’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims... and/or if you’re writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity... you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time.
• How to research your customers: what they want, and what they need to read or hear in order to buy
1. Basic research – talk to them
o Don’t ask them about your product – ask them about their problems
o Ask questions like:
■ What’s the one problem with __ you’re having trouble finding a solution for
■ What happens or will happen when you don’t solve this problem?
■ Do you have an idea of what caused this problem?
o Conversationally, ask them what specific solution to a specific problem, that’s important to them, they would like... that they can’t find anywhere right now
o Or, if they can find a solution, ask them about what they don’t like, or they wish they had, that they don’t, in that solution
o Pay close attention to the words they use. The exact words. Don’t try to “help” them, or to correct them. Just listen and keep ’em talking. The way they talk about problems and solutions, the exact words they use, are very important in the crafting of your copy.
2. Read reviews. Especially on Amazon and social media. Pay less attention to what they gush about (positive) than what they complain about (negative)
o One review doesn’t make a trend. Multiple similar complaints do
o The same languaging for the same complaint in different locations (ie on Amazon, in a forum, in a blog post) is a sure sign that you’re onto something you can use in your copy.
o A reminder: You don’t just want to repeat their complaints. You want to also offer a unique, valuable solution that SOLVES their complaints!
3. If you have a product going and a customer service department, listen in on the customer service calls – make sure it’s legal – or, better yet, do a shift or two on customer service. You’ll learn tons.
o People never have a hesitancy to complain.
o Just listen at first. Don’t try to fix it right away.
o Sometimes, the REAL complaint is “below the surface.” That’s why you want to give people time to get to it. The REAL complaint is the one charged with emotion. Sometimes it will come out of nowhere. Cherish that information... it is gold.
o Example: Someone is talking about dry skin... then it gets to wrinkles... finally the REAL complaint comes out: “I just don’t want to look that OLD!”
• What to research about your competition – especially, how to determine what’s missing in their products, and what you can do better and/or differently to make them prefer you over your competition
1. The simplest thing you can do with the highest probability of success is find out what complaints are about WINNERS – and fix the biggest complaints in your offer – and trumpet it loudly.
o The first place to start is to look at successful competing ads from present day. Just look around; opt-in to lists of competitors; watch your Facebook account. You’ll start getting related ads remarkably quickly.
o The second place to look is successful ads in different fields from present ...

Ask any experienced, successful salesperson what the single best form of selling is, and you’ll nearly always get back the same answer: “Demonstration.”
That’s why savvy car dealers let customers take a new car home for the weekend before they actually buy the car. It’s the same reason Internet marketers offer a $1 trial for the first month, on products or services that are billed for far more than that every month. They know that when people get to try what they’re selling, a lot more of those people will buy it.
That’s why pet stores let people take a puppy they’re interested in, home for the weekend. In sales, there’s even a term for this kind of hands-on (paw’s on?) demonstration – “the puppy dog close.”
Oddly enough, you can get your prospect to demonstrate your products for themselves without ever letting the touch the product! How? By telling them what I call “demonstration” stories. Prospects get to try out your product in their imaginations.
How to create and use stories is known by some of the best marketers and salespeople—but virtually unknown by everyone else. If you don’t know what they are, we’ll turn that around now.
Now for my friendly reminder:
Copy is powerful. That’s why I’m going to give you some really powerful new strategies today. And then, you’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Now, most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims... and/or if you’re writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity... you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time.
OK, back to demonstration stories, and other tiny little stories that really pack a wallop! And by that I mean, for the small number of words in these stories, you’ll get a disproportionate payoff.
How? In advancing the sale in your copy. In getting your customers to want to learn about and then buy what you are selling, more than they did before they heard the tiny little story.
• How to get your prospect to imagine experiencing the benefit of your product, without ever having the product yet
So the great artist Pablo Picasso said: “Everything you can imagine is real.”
Easy for him to say. When he died in 1973, he had an estimated net worth of $500 million – which would be $2.8 billion today. And on June 21, 2016, his 1909 painting “Femme Assise,” which means “Woman Sitting Down,” sold at an auction in London for $63 million and change.
I’m not bringing up all these numbers to make the point that he was a great artist.
I’m just saying, when someone can dream up images, put them on canvas, and sell them for big bucks, it’s easy for him to say, “Everything you can imagine is real.”
But Picasso was right. In this way. If you imagine doing something or seeing something or hearing something vividly enough, your mind really cannot tell the difference between what you imagined and what actually happened (or never happened). It seems that real.
This is important with the kind of stories we’re going to talk about today.
Because these stories are designed to get your prospect imagining enjoying one or more of the benefits of what you are selling. In such a vivid way that they actually feel like they experienced it.
Then, when they realize they don’t really have what they just imagined having, they will want it all the more!
We’ll come back to that point and explore it in depth in a few minutes. For right now, let’s look at some very short stories that get the customer imagining benefits.
These are from a full-page ad in the National Enquirer that’s been running for at least a year and a half. The ad is for a product called “Jitterbug,” and it’s a cell phone designed especially for seniors who do not want complicated, sophisticated smart phones like an iPhone or an Android phone.
Each one of these paragraphs appears in the ad, and each one of them, by itself, is a story that gets the prospect to not only experience the benefit of the Jitterbug.
They also tell a wonderful mini before-and-after story – contrasting the storyteller’s frustration with the old, difficult phone to the delights and ease of the new, easy Jitterbug phone.
FIRST ONE: In quotes – “Cell phones have gotten so small, I can barely dial mine.” Close quotes. That first sentence was from a person like the prospect, talking to the prospect, and it’s in quotes. The next three sentences are from the company that makes Jitterbug. All part of the same paragraph:
Not the Jitterbug Flip. It features a large keypad for easy dialing. It even has a larger display and a powerful, hearing aid-compatible speaker, so it’s easy to see and conversations are clear.
That’s it. WOW! Incredible story there. I had this problem – so small, I could barely dial it. Jitterbug offers this solution: large keypad, large...

If your tank is empty and you’re looking for inspiration, you could do worse than to watch a little WWE wrestling. ¬ Our special guest today, Todd Jones, is quite a fan and an expert. He’s written a terrific article called “5 Lessons I Learned About Storytelling From Pro Wrestling.” Yesterday I read it. Because it’s online, it has videos to illustrate his excellent points, and I watched about half an hour of high points in the sport, dating back all the way to 1981. Most of the clips are much more recent, though. Todd is known as “the about page guy” and specializes in working with small and medium businesses with their content and copywriting. He’s a prolific writer with a unique point of view and lots of talents and skills he uses to help his clients. Todd has experience in a wide variety of things, from retail, grocery, vending, tech journalism and ministry. He’s great at building online communities. So we’re going to talk about all that and more today. Todd’s coaching: https://www.copyflight.com/coaching/ Todd’s article on the WWE and storytelling: https://www.copyflight.com/5-lessons-storytelling-professional-wrestling/
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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 what he talked about today: - The ad strategy that got his company 50,000 registrants and 7,500 attendees from Google ads over 12 months. As I mentioned, Peter says, “These are ‘zero-claim’ ads, so they always pass compliance.” Peter got a return on ad spend of 3 to 4 times—even when show-up rate was very low (which is a typical problem with webinars). - The “Pitchless Event”: How his company put on 20 webinars in 12 months that generated six figures apiece, without a sales pitch during the webinar. An important point for follow-up sales that were initiated after the webinars: Peter got more than 100 five-star reviews on Trustpilot. I’ve never heard of anyone doing an online education business quite this way, so I was very eager to have Peter come on and break this down for us. Peter and his partners also offer a program for traders to start their own online education businesses, not reselling his courses but based on their own experience and expertise. To find out more, go to: https://cashwithcourses.com/yes To contact Peter, use this email address: peter at cashwithcourses dot com
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You can’t go a day in copywriting without someone bringing up AI. It may not have taken over copywriting yet, but it has definitely taken over the conversation. In case you haven’t gotten your feet wet yet with GPT 4, Jasper, Copy AI or any other one of the handful of AIs people are currently using, I can tell you, people ARE using it, in predictable and unpredictable ways. Today Nathan and I discussed what we’re hearing and what we’re doing. We started with a really interesting discovery Nathan made that not only saves massive amounts of time on a project, but also slashes the learning curve on how to get AI to do exactly what you want it to do. I shared what I’ve heard from two clients who have an unusual amount of expert knowledge about AI... as well as being top-notch copywriters on their own. You’ll be surprised about one expert’s prediction on who will thrive and who will suffer in copywriting, thanks to AI. Different probably than what you’ve heard before. And another expert solved a tough business problem of his own... in about 10 minutes! Beyond that, a little bit of AI news that may surprise, scare or delight you!
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