TCC Podcast #66: A Formula for Winning Sales Pages with Henry Bingaman

Copy Chief (and copywriter) Henry Bingaman is in the studio for the 66th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. And he showed up with plenty to share—including his formula for writing great sales copy. Kira and Rob took the opportunity to ask Henry about: •  his path from fiction writer and flight attendant to copywriter and copy chief •  not wanting to write for clients and creating his own product (and the lessons he learned) •  how he landed his first client (and learned to write his first proposal) •  the critical copywriting skill he learned as a flight attendant •  what he does to connect with people at conferences •  when you should feel like you’ve “made it” (hint: you’re probably not there yet) •  what he teaches the copywriters he works with (and his role as copy chief) •  how he writes leads that catch attention and shift a customer’s paradigm •  the various copy blocks he includes in his sales pages •  what he learned from breaking down Jedd Canty’s sales pages •  what it takes to create a winning control •  the collaboration process he goes through on every sales promotion •  what separates the great copywriters from the good •  learning from failure (and some of his biggest failures) Plus we talked about where Henry thinks copywriting is going in the future (it doesn’t look good for some freelancers), how his Cross Fit habit is related to copywriting, and what he is doing to improve his own writing. You won’t want to miss this one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: AWAI Six Figure Copywriter Creative Writer’s Desk Wealthy Web Writer Rebecca Matter John Carlton Marcella Allison Boardroom Agora Parris Lampropolous David Deutch Mark Stockman Metabolic Living Jake Hoffberg Copy Chief Jedd Canty Clayton Makepeace Metabolic Renewal Scrivener Money Map Press Brian Kurtz Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 66 as we chat with creative director and copy chief Henry Bingaman on working and writing in direct response, how much effort it takes to get a winning control, persuasion architecture, and applying systems thinking to the feedback process and how Crossfit makes him a better writer. Kira: Welcome, Henry! Henry: Hey! Nice to be here. Rob: Hey, we’re glad to have you. Kira: Yeah, so Henry, a great place to start is with your path. I know you have a squiggly path, so where did you start? And where are you today? Henry: My kind of life path is just following the next interesting thing in front of me. (laughs) So, when I graduated in 2007 with a degree in fiction writing, which isn’t really a good degree for a job (laughs)... When I graduated, I went online and there was a job opening for flight attendants at United Airline. So I applied and started flying professionally for about a year. I was an international flight attendant, which was a lot of fun but it paid about $20,000 a year, and I was working up in First Class serving people that paid $20,000 for their seat, so I was a little jealous maybe? (laughs) But I had this writing ability. I’d been writing since I was early high school, just stories and whatnot. My dad actually owned a supplement company when I was growing up. He’d bought the AWAI six figure program at one point and he just gave it to me, he never really did anything with it, so he gave it to me and said, “Here, here’s a way you might be able to make money.” So that’s how I kind of discovered copywriting, and then I started writing on the side while I was flying and figured out I could make more money writing, staying at home and writing emails for people than I could flying. So I pretty much quit my job and started copywriting. Rob: So what were some of those first assignments that you took on, on the side, and how did you get them? Henry: Well, it was interesting... the first thing I did, I actually didn’t want to write for clients at first, I created my own product. The whole big thing back then was create an e-book and sell it on ClickBank or wherever. Kira: Right. Henry: So I created a little e-book about flying; I think it was called the Insider’s Guide to Stress-free Flying, and tried to sell it. I found out a lot, doing that. Mostly that you should really test if there’s a market for your product before you make a product and sales letter for it... (laughs) Kira: (laughs) Henry: Because there wasn’t a market for it. Well, I did all that work and it never really sold. But that was really the first thing I did and then I started a creative writer’s desk, so I think it’s still online; it was Site Build It, if you guys remember Site Build It back in the day. Rob: Long ago, yeah. Henry: So I started blogging and stuff on creative writing and then from there I went to... the way I got clients the first time was live events. So I went to AWAI’s Wealthy Web Writer event and I just started pitching ideas to Rebecca Matter who is one of the higher ups in that company—I think she’s a director. And she just bit on them. She’s like, sure! Send me a proposal! And I was like oh! Alright! And I just went back to my hotel room and I got out my computer and googled “how to write a proposal”! And I sent her a proposal and she goes, oh! Great! Send me an invoice and let’s get started! I was like oh! So I get my computer out again and I google, “How to write an invoice”. (laughs) I didn’t know anything about any of this. So that was my first client, and at the same time, my dad had some local friends in the health industry, so my first real sales letter was for an energy supplement for one of his friends. So I just used the contact I had and reached out to people and worked for really, really cheap and then used that to leverage more and more clients. Again, most of my big clients, I got at live events. You meet them in person. I know there’s a lot of people who do email prospecting and all that but I never had the skills, I guess, to ironically sell myself through email, but I could always talk somebody into hiring me when I’m sitting down face to face with them. Kira: So I want to definitely ask you about how you’re selling yourself at these live events but first, the flight attendant experience. What was one of the biggest lessons you took away from that time as a flight attendant that you use in business today? Henry: So I guess one of the cool things that you learn as a flight attendant is how to take really grumpy people and make them happy. (laughter) Henry: Because honestly, people are having a bad day a lot of times on a flight and you have to-You’re locked in a plane with them, in this metal tube in the air for five or six hours sometimes. So if you can’t make them happy, it’s going to be miserable for everybody. So a lot of times, it’s just a free drink, or a conversation or something, but I probably learned how to reframe people’s problems and shift their state of mind to being happier, which I guess in copy, you shift their state of mind to being more receptive to your message. So I don’t know if that answers the question. That’s an interesting thing—there’s not a lot of skills-building in flight attending. But I guess that would be one of them. Interpersonal skills—dealing with people—is something you learn to do. Rob: You’re probably an expert at handing out hot towels, I would imagine, as well. Henry: Oh. I will hot towel you like you won’t believe. (laughs) (laughter) Rob: So, let’s go back to Kira’s other question. Approaching people at conferences, or in meetings, talking them into hiring you... how does that work? Henry: I don’t know. I just sit down and talk with people about ideas, and eventually, they offer me work. That’s always just been how I kind of operate. I sit down and talk about what you’re doing or what’s interesting, or- talking to people about ideas is easier than selling them. But, if you become that source of ideas and they can see that you just keep bashing them with ideas, they eventually break down I think. I don’t know. I think that really is just networking more than selling at those things. And people, when they want to hire somebody, they reach out to people in their network, first. One of the best relationships I ever made was early, early on, like the second year I was a copywriter. I went to—I think—a John Carleton event in San Diego and I met Marcella Alison, and she has connected me to more people than... (laughs) She’s an a-list copywriter for those people who don’t know her. She has multiple controls with boardrooms, she writes for core divisions; she’s a really talented copywriter. But even more than copywriting, she’s talented at connecting people. So she introduced me really early on to people like Parris Lampropoulos and David Deutsch, who I just got to hang out with early on in my career, which was amazing. She’s the one that—I know this is fast forwarding a lot but—seven years later, introduced me to Mark Stockman, the CEO of Metabolic Living where I’m the creative director now. So, like, she’s just been huge. That one connection at an event, just from talking to people and sharing ideas, and she goes, “Oh, you know who YOU should talk to...” Finding that connector, because I’m not really a connector like that but I find them, and then just you know, being present and sharing ideas and people will help you along the way as long as you’re genuine. Kira: Yeah, so this is getting kind of in the weeds,