Copywriters Podcast

Our guest today is Harlan Kilstein. He’s a copywriter, an entrepreneur, and a whole lot more. Here are 7 facts you probably didn't know Harlan. 1. John Carlton and I took turns humiliating his copy when he got started. Unlike most people, he took the feedback and turned himself into a great copywriter. 2. He's an ordained rabbi. 3. His sidekick, who we hope you don't hear in the background is named Kalba. She's a Pomeranian. He name means Bitch in Hebrew. 4. He lost over 60 pounds doing Keto practicing what he preaches. 5. His office is a mega shrine to the singer Meat Loaf. 6. He has nearly 2 million followers on social media. 7. He would do anything for love but he won't do that. I don’t know what “that” is, and hopefully we won’t find out on today’s show. Harlan, welcome. And Kalba, please keep it down. Here are the questions I brought to Harlan: 1. Big-picture, what are you doing for business on Facebook? 2. When did you first learn about Facebook compliance rules, and how did you find out? 3. What difference does it make — that is, how much more latitude do you have in your marketing — when you’re posting or advertising inside your own group? 4. What would you say are the two-three most important changes you’ve made in copy, both on and off Facebook — as a results of compliance rules? Could you give at least one before-after example? 5. What would you say are the biggest mistakes you see other people making regarding Facebook compliance? 6. Tell us about the Keto project I helped you with. 7. What additional advice do you have for copywriters and marketers, especially re: Facebook compliance? If you're having issues with Facebook compliance and you can't figure out if it's your ad, your landing page or just that Mark Zuckerberg doesn't like you, just send Harlan a message on FB. Harlan on FacebookDownload.

If you’ve noticed that your copy isn’t converting recently as well as it used to, maybe it’s too complicated to read. Now, copywriting experts have been saying what I just said since the time of Claude Hopkins, more than 100 years ago. Which is since the dawn of time, as far as direct-response copywriting goes. But in the last few years, things have changed. Simply writing less complicated copy isn’t good enough, because the way people read has been altered. People now read by text messages. By Facebook. By Instagram. By Youtube. Some people I find worth listening to are saying that people’s brains have changed. It’s not my original idea, and I’ll get into this in more detail in just a little bit. But the way we’re spending so much time with our screens is literally rewiring our neural pathways, and this changes our brains. Which changes the way we read. I’m gonna say that, as marketers and copywriters, we have been living in a world that is not as literate as it used to be, and this is by a wide margin. Since we can’t customize our copy for every individual reader, we have to pick one person to represent all of them. And I think the reality is, in a lot of cases, that one person, that avatar, is someone I would call post-literate. Post-literate. Not illiterate. Post-literate means they can read, but they don’t want to. Maybe not the way that you do. They don’t want to have to focus very much at all. They don’t have patience for anything too complicated. So, the market is not the same level of literate that we used to think we could write to and sell. On average. Of course, there are some 15-year-olds who sound like Oxford professors when they speak. But I’m talking about the market in general, the broad swath of people who might buy your offer. The target prospect you are trying to reach, for most businesses. We’ll look at what’s happening and why. I’m also going to suggest three simple, powerful things you can do in the way you write your copy that will reach the increasing post-literate portion of your market, and will work just as well with the literate members of your market as it always did. Here are some of the many topics we covered in today’s show: Multitasking The shrinking percentage of the market that can still read Something Gene Schwartz said (long before the current situation arrived) that could be very helpful now How farm animals think (and why that matters to marketers and copywriters) Our genetic need for storytelling — a key to reaching “non-readers” Three easy changes you can make to your copy to reach more prospects. One article and three books mentioned on today’s show: Adam Garfinkle article: https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-erosion-of-deep-literacy The Brilliance Breakthrough, by Gene Schwartz: https://brilliancebreakthroughbook.com Thinking in Pictures, by Temple Grandin: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001ODEQS4 Wired for Story, by Lisa Cron https://www.amazon.com/Wired-Story-Writers-Science-Sentence-ebook/dp/B005X0JTGIDownload.

What is an offer - Not just what you’re selling, although that’s a big part of it - It’s how you sell it. How you present it. How you arrange it. - For testing, it’s one of the Big Three (besides headline/hook and pricing/payment plans) - Maybe you’ve heard: “The best product doesn’t win. The product with the best marketing wins. - Often, the product with the best marketing ends up being the product with the best offer - The conventional wisdom on what an offer is: - core product plus bonuses - dollar value, dropped to selling price - value stack: taking what’s in the offer and making it seem as valuable as possible Why most offers don’t work nearly as well as they could… or… don’t work at all - Sometimes they were just thrown up there like spaghetti against the wall, to see if it will stick - But often, the reason they don’t work is because - They’re what the business owner wants to sell the customer -or- - They’re what the business owner thinks the customer should want -rather than- - A watertight fit with what the customer really wants How to go about building an offer that will work - For a product - special, high-value related bonuses, or discount - For service businesses - free initial consultation, but craft it to be valuable. Offer some specific, tangible-as possible outcomes for the prospect — no strings — that you can deliver in the course of a session - For digital subscription businesses or software: free first month. Don’t expect “free” to carry the offer by itself. Make sure they know what they’re getting ahead of time, in as much benefit-rich detail as possible Other factors - value, security (risk-reversal), and the “perfect fit” - the emotional wrapping paper on a solid, attractive offer Examples of great offers Infoproduct/software (easy to discount) - Carlton - Kick-Ass Copywriting Secrets of a Rebel Marketer - 80% off ($20) - Kirk Hunter Orchestra - Reg 500, on sale for 100. On the advice of my music teacher, I grabbed itDownload.

On today’s show, we look at two very interesting questions: First, how do you market your business when you have a highly specialized business almost nobody has even heard of before? Second, how do you use copy in your business, when you’re not a copywriter yourself and you’ve never been able to find a copywriter that gets how to communicate what you do? Our guest today, Rick Harmon, will help us get the answers to both questions. And this information will be very useful to any business owner who writes copy, and lots of useful tips for most copywriters, too. Rick’s specialty, in a nutshell, is to make loans that help people straighten out messes with inherited property. Probate lawyers have a saying: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way. But when there’s no way in sight, Rick Harmon will find a way.” Actually, they don’t have that saying at all. I made it up for this show. But they should, because that’s what Rick does. He straightens out probate messes that no one else can straighten out. Now, sounds like a great service, but as long as it’s a business, you need to get clients. And that’s where Rick’s unusual story comes in. We asked him these questions: 1. Can you give our listeners a little “slice-of-life” story that gives us a sense of how upside-down and inside-out things can go in your business? 2. Our mutual friend, the great sales trainer John Paul Mendocha, said something you have found incredibly useful in your marketing: “All sales is a process of disqualification.” What does that look like in real life? 3. Strategic Relationship Marketing We start with a quote from a Hollywood composer, Bear McCreary, who wrote scores for many shows and films, including Battlestar Galactica, The Walking Dead, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: “The kind of business skills that you need are really social skills. The smartest business move you can make is just being smart socially, politically. Understanding how to walk into a room and make everybody feel validated, make everybody feel like they’ve made a good decision in hiring you, or they should make a good decision hiring you. “These are things that are political skills and social skills, but they’re sort of necessary in any business. If you walk around with an ego, if you walk around making people feel like you deserve the job, then ultimately that’s a bad business decision because you will just quit getting hired, whether or not your work is good.” Rick, how does that square with your experience? 4. Finally, please talk about the lifetime value of a customer, and the value of the back-end, as it applies in your business.Download.

Last week I got this really intriguing email. It led to a website with this copy on it: “Look, I know everyone hates saxophones. And with good reason. Excluding Colin Stetson’s amazing work, and Tom Waits of course, I also tend toward hating on saxophones myself. “But is it really fair to judge an instrument by it's past misdemeanors ? Can the sax be rehabilitated and made sexy again ? “Here at Sound Dust we say HELL YES!” I’ll tell you more about this soon. For now, I want to point out that this was not just negative copy. Not just hater copy. This was a complaint. A complaint about saxophones. Now, whether you like saxes… hate ’em… or have no opinion at all about saxes, there’s a really good lesson in this copy. And it has to do with something we’ve never covered on this podcast, even though this technique is used all the time… and quite successfully, I’ll add. The technique is what I’m going to call “complaint copywriting.” Now, to be clear, we’re not talking about “compliant copywriting,” which is also important but an entirely different thing. Complaint copywriting is important because it is at the heart of what motivates customers deeply. Not all the time, but when it hits, it’s a home run. A grand slam. Big payoff. We talk about: 1. How complaints are different from ordinary objections, and why answering them in the right way is so much more powerful than merely overcoming objections 2. What complaint copywriting looks like in real life, and how people have used them or can use them to make a lot of money in their copy 3. How to put complaint copy together — a short (but complete) step-by-step process 4. Three unique things about complaints, and why you should seek them out (even though, it’s true, it’s not always all that much fun to listen to them).Download.

People use the term “control freak” like it’s a bad thing. And let’s be clear. Sometimes it is. But our guest today is obsessed about control and controls in the best possible way. He’s copywriter Brad Nickel, originally from Madison, Wisconsin and now living in Valencia, Spain with his girlfriend and their French Bulldog, named Renée. Disclosure: Brad’s a client of mine. He writes copy and manages email lists for 8-figures health companies. And this is where the conversation turns to control. Brad has written “control emails” that get used over and over again by his clients and their affiliates. His copy has brought in tens of thousands of leads and customers… and helped his clients make tens of millions of dollars. Today he’s going to tell us how he does this, and give you some tips you can use yourself. Here are the questions I’m going to ask him: What is a control? What is a control email? What are some examples, and why do you think they worked? Could you break down of the structure of a control email, and what you think about when you’re putting together an email that could become a control? What are some do’s and don’ts? What’s counterintuitive about what usually works? Brad’s email: bradnickel@gmail.comDownload.

I have often wondered whether direct-response copy would work in large, more conventional businesses. Our guest today put my question to rest. Let me introduce you to my friend Jim Van Wyck. He’s been a direct marketer since the early 1990s. And because of businesses he built with direct-response copy, he’s had two seven-figure exits and one eight-figure exit. In case that jargon doesn’t mean anything to you, I’ll break it down. A seven-figure exit is where you sell the business for more than one million dollars. An eight-figure exit is where you sell the business for more than 10 million dollars. Jim opened an indoor tennis club in the early eights. He co-founded a bookstore in the early 90s. He had a small chain of weight loss centers in the late 90s in partnership with his wife. Jim worked closely with a regional insurance brokerage in the 2000s, which was sold to a Fortune 500 company. More recently, he co-founded another insurance agency selling health insurance nationwide, and he was the CEO of that business. He’s currently creating HealthAmigo.com, which is a national telemedicine and healthcare services company, and he’s the co-founder of that. A lot of businesses to keep track of, but I wanted to give you an idea of how prolific Jim is when it comes to business building. I asked him to come on the show today to talk about the vital role of copy in his businesses. Here are the questions Jim answered: 1. We have a famous disclaimer at the top of the show, which award-winning composer Dr. Doug Pew even set to music! But in a private conversation, you said most people have no idea what legal compliance is like until you set up an insurance company. Could you talk about that? 2. Now you have some copy, in story form, that will be used on a video for Health Amigo. Please read it out loud to us and then let’s talk about it. 3. How did you get started with copy? It was in the Yellow Pages, right? 4. Please share the ironic story about the scathing columnist for the Calgary Herald. 5. Any other stories about copy you’d like to tell us? 6. From a learning and knowledge perspective, what would you suggest to fellow business builder who want to write their own copy? 7. For business owners who don’t want to write copy themselves but plan to hire copywriters, what do they need to learn and/or know? 8. In your experience, what’s the difference between using copy for lead-generation (for brick & mortar and service businesses) compared to using copy to close the sale (for mail-order and online digital product businesses)?Download.

I’ve been wanting to do a show on this topic for quite a while. I kept hitting a roadblock in my mind every time I started to prepare. Now, with the coronavirus keeping so many kids out of school and at home, I realized I needed to get past the roadblock. And, ironically, it was the stay-at-home order that cleared the mental roadblock out of the way. Here’s an outline of what I came up with. Since Nathan has a young person he helps with her homework, he had some real-world-inspired insights that are especially worth listening to. 1. What gets in the way (or would get in the way) of making copywriting a class in all elementary, middle, or high schools. 2. Who should teach kids copywriting, and who shouldn’t 3. Which kids should be taught copywriting, and which kids shouldn’t 4. What to teach, and what not to teach 5. What a typical copywriting assignment for a young student, might look like 6. The big idea about teaching and learning copywritingDownload.

When I first started writing copy, before there was an Internet, we had an old saying: “There’s no such thing as copy that’s too long. Only copy that’s too boring.” Great point back then. Because short copy was what you would see on wasteful print ads, and on tv commercials that were trying to convey a feeling, instead of trying to sell something. But try talking smack about short copy to someone who’s writing ads for Facebook or Google. Short copy is now part of the toolkit of hard-core direct-response copywriters. Today we take a look at short copy from this new point of view: 1. What is short copy that works for direct response in today’s environment? 2. Why did direct marketers oppose short copy in the past? 3. The concept of the “horizontal sales letter” (funnel). 4. The job short copy has to do in a direct response campaign. 5. How today’s short copy has changed the game as far as graphics and appearance go. 6.Two questions I used critiquing a client’s funnel the day before we recorded this show.Download.

Have you ever given up on time management, because every technique and system you’ve tried just doesn’t work for you? If so, it’s not your fault. Time management systems don’t work for creative people in most cases. But in our second Old Masters show with Robert Updegraff, we’re going to show you an approach that does. It’s from a 1958 book “All the Time You Need” by Robert Updegraff. It’s out of print, but you might be able to find a copy on Amazon. Thanks to Copywriters Podcast guest expert, master copywriter David Deutsch, for telling me about this book many years ago. What’s great about this book is it shows you how to solve the biggest problems that rob you of time, and rob your time of its potential to be productive for you. I’ve used all of the ideas here, but I don’t use all of them all of the time. That would be impossible. You’d spend more time using his time-maximizing techniques than getting anything done. I can tell you: - they work, and - it’s better to use one or a few than to try to use all of them perfectly What’s good about them is these are all biased towards practical creative people, including of course copywriters and entrepreneurs. Four parts to what we’ll cover today - The two dimensions of time - The four enemies of clock time - The four enemies of energy - Using your unconscious mind to supercharge your creativity and productivity The two dimensions of time Productivity is about how much you can produce in any given amount of time. In one hour, if you are sleepy, distracted, pissed off and would rather be or be doing something or somewhere else, you probably won’t be all that productive. But… if you are focused, and excited – even on fire about something you’re doing, during that same period of 60 minutes you can get a lot better stuff done. Maybe even more than most people get done in a full day. Two dimensions: calendar/clock time energy The Four Enemies of Clock Time 1. Procrastination Updegraff’s method for overcoming procratination: - if you’re stalling on something, take a moment to visualize what it is that you need to do that you’ve been putting off. - then, decide: to do it later, or never to do it. And if you decide to do it later, set a specific time when you plan to do it, and stick to it. 2. “Sometime-itis” Saying you’ll do something “sometime” is usually no better than procrastination. 3. Condoning inaction This means being vague about when you’re going to do something you need to get done but don’t want to do right now. Updegraff says that some people will spend more time coming up with excuses why they didn’t do something than the time it would have taken to do the thing they’re making excuses about 4. Regretting Spending time dwelling on what might have been or what you might have done differently can really eat into your work productivity if you spend too much time on it. Updegraff says, “The person of mature mind knows every day spent in regretting is a day wasted. When an experience is passed, it is beyond recall. We can learn from it, but we cannot correct it.” Yes, there are lots of exceptions to these four assertions. Meaning, sometimes you won’t be able to make them work the way you’d like. But bringing them into your work process can help you be a LOT more productive when you’re writing or coming up with new ideas. Defeating the Four Enemies of Energy Energy is the second dimension of time, particularly when it comes to productivity, in Updegraff’s view of things. I happen to agree with him. Scott Adams talks about this in one of his books, too, but in a different way. Here are the four enemies Updegraff id’s: 1) Frustration “Our frustrations burn our energy three or four times faster than it is consumed by our work.” His point is not to avoid frustration, but just expect it. And don’t overreact. Don’t wallow in it. Sometimes, when you’re really frustrated, go do something else for a while. Come back to it and your unconscious mind may have solved the problem your frustration was causing. 2) Irritation “A brief flash of impatience, exasperation, or even anger is sometimes highly beneficial in that it stirs us to decision or action.” But again, wallowing in irritation does nobody any good. And it certainly hijacks your attention and your energy from creative productivity. 3) Impatience This is interesting. Updegraff sees impatience as being stalled, stuck, pinned to the wall. And slowly seething that something’s not ready or getting done fast enough. He says, “Keeping busy at something — almost anything — is a simple antidote for impatience.” 4) Worry My point of view is that some worry is good. Like with a launch, for example. You want to think of everything that reasonably could go wrong, and then take steps to prevent those things from happening. But then, be done with it. The kind of worry that Updegraff sees as an energy drain is obsessive worry. If you do that and you can find a way to stop doing that, you’ll probably see a dramatic increase in your creative productivity. He says, “Worry saps the spirit and drains the nervous system at an appalling rate.” Partnering up with your unconscious mind I’ve used this one a LOT. It always works, as long as you don’t rush it. In my experience. Updegraff suggests you use the unconscious mind for: - solving problems - developing ideas - formulating plan Here is how: - Write down the problem you want to solve, or the kind of idea you want to develop and how you’ll use it, or what you’ll be creating a plan for - Ask your unconscious mind for a solution. Give it a deadline. At least a few hours or overnight. - After you do this, forget about it for a while. Do something else. Don’t consciously think about the problem. Let the unconscious mind do its magic. - The idea will come to you. Possibly when you least expect it. Have some way to record it, whether audio or paper and pen, nearby as much as possible. - You get better at this, the more you do it. -- Summary: - Two dimensions of time: clock/calendar time, and energy - Four enemies of clock time: procrastination, sometime-itis, condoning inaction, regretting - Four enemies of energy: frustration, irritation, impatience, worry - Enlist your unconscious mind to help you with creative jobs All the Time You Need, by Robert R. Updegraff (used copies): https://www.amazon.com/All-time-you-need-greatest/dp/B0007E2IQ8Download.