How to Critique Your Own Copy, Part 1

One of the things people ask me for the most is copy critiques. Whether it’s an A-Lister with multiple controls for a big publisher… a B-Lister gunning to become an A-Lister… or a business owner who wrote their own copy, I look at the same things.
It’s interesting, because the better the copywriter, the harder I have to look. The guys who are really good make everything appear to be smooth and perfect. There’s usually a handful of tiny, almost hidden flaws. Once those flaws are fixed, the copy gets supercharged to a new level.
Even so, no matter who wrote the copy, I look for the same things. There are certain things that any piece of copy needs to have -- certain tests it needs to pass -- if it’s going to work in the marketplace.
Today I’m going to share five of those things, and show you how I look at them, so you can do the same for your own copy. I’ve got six more, but they’ll have to wait until we do another show.
So today’s episode is not about how to write a sales letter or a VSL. Either you already know that, or you can get my book, or Nathan’s book, or listen to a number of our other more than 200 podcasts for that. Plenty of good info out there on the writing phase.
Maybe you’ve heard the phrase: The total is greater than than the sum of its parts. It’s a powerful idea. Once you put copy together, you’ve got a number of moving parts, working together. If one or more of them gets out of true, you could end up with a big problem.
So this is not about how to write your copy. It’s how to go over it after it’s written. I made an effort to spell out my own thought process when I do a paid critique.
What I did was mentally walk through what I look at along the way. I came up with 11 necessary things that need to be right, to make sure the copy as written stands a good chance of making the maximum sales. We’d have to rush through all 11 to fit them into one show, so I’ve broken the list into two shows. Today’s list is of the first five, and we’ll do the remaining six on a future show.
To book me for a copy critique, go to:
http://www.garfinkelcoaching.com/copy-critiques/


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