Copywriters Podcast

Join John Carlton, a legendary copywriter and former partner of Gary Halbert, as he shares insights from decades in the industry. He reveals the one book that changed his career, emphasizing an unconventional approach to reading. Carlton argues that successful copywriting isn't just about intellectual knowledge; it's about taking action and practical experience. He also discusses the importance of understanding psychology in marketing and the ethical responsibilities that come with the craft. This episode is a goldmine for aspiring copywriters!

Learn how to become a subject matter expert in record time! The speaker shares strategies from their time covering technical fields, emphasizing rapid research and confidence. Discover the importance of understanding audience mindset and the delicate balance between emotional and factual elements in copywriting. Explore how recognizing client values and identifying external villains can empower your marketing strategies while reframing narratives for growth. Unlock the secrets to creating compelling headlines that resonate across various industries!

Our guest today, Adam Gilad, is a prolific entrepreneur, author, speaker, film producer and global teacher. He’s also a skilled copywriter, and that’s how he’s made a lot of his ventures grow. For example, The Higher Game and The Bold Life Brotherhood. He’s co-founder of this business-in-a-box curriculum of transformational games evenings and weekends that build visibility, revenue, community and customer bases. But wait, there’s more: Adam’s also a former Co-Founder and Programming Director of National Lampoon Radio and an Emmy- Nominated Executive Producer. His award-winning films have appeared on USA Networks, Lifetime and TNT, and has written for Disney, CBS, ABC and elsewhere. Over the last 10 years, he has built a dating, personal development and coaching business that has reached hundreds of thousands of people. And he’s used copywriting for that, too. Adam’s also got a strong background a creativity consultant for major companies. On the show, he gave us important, valuable details about his own double transformation. He went from screenwriter… to copywriter… and then, surprise, back to screenwriter, with some turbochargers attached to his brain and fingers.Download.

Copywriter Kyle Milligan discusses the four emotions of copywriting: new, easy, safe, and big. He shares valuable insights on the language of copywriting, his inspiration for the four emotions, and the significance of simplicity and novelty. Kyle also talks about his YouTube channel and his book 'Take Their Money' available on his website.

Kyle Milligan is a successful copywriter with a very unusual view of the world. Lucky for us, it’s a way of seeing things that lets him create copy that makes a lot of money. And let’s see if what you hear from him today can do the same thing for you. Kyle is on the staff of Agora financial and won a coveted award for the performance of his copy: What looks like a giant gold record. This is for bringing in 51,000 new names to the company in 2018. If you think that’s easy because Agora is a giant company, take it from me. It isn’t easy. It takes skill, perseverance, and a certain special something I haven’t been able to identify yet. Now Kyle, he has identified something unique and very valuable that I’ve never heard about from anyone else: The four emotions of copywriting. He’s agreed to talk about them today on the Copywriters Podcast, and for that, I thank you in advance, Kyle. Here are the questions we discussed: We had a wide-ranging discussion of valuable nuggets for copywriters and business builders. Here are some of the questions we discussed: What is the language of copywriting? Where did it come from? Can you tell me a little bit about your big 4 emotions? How did you come up with those? What made you decide to start a YouTube channel? What is your end goal? So you've put all this into a book- can you talk about that? Kyle's Website Download.

Do you ever wonder why the superstars in copywriting, and in other fields, got there? A friend of mine, Dr. Ben Mack, told me about a book that has some unique insights on the subject. I’ve met a lot of outrageously successful people and I recognized them in every page of this book, even though their names weren’t in it. I can also say that I know many highly successful copywriters that don’t fit all the descriptions in this book, but I see enough similarities so I am convinced it’s the real deal. The book is called The Superman Syndrome: You are what you believe. By Dr. Gene N. Landrum. It’s not based on random magical thinking, but on documented facts and quotes from people who have, really, changed the world. It’s very imaginative and very practical, all at the same time. In case you’re a woman, don’t feel left out. You’re included. Half of the superstars the author writes about are women. He doesn’t call them Supermen; he calls them Wonder Women. I plucked five powerful ideas from the book so you can use them to notch your copywriting and your business up to the next level. A lot of these ideas are counter-intuitive, so get ready for a wild ride and some surprises. I think you’ll end up being more optimistic than you expected. Idea 1: Superstars are so dumb, they are smart Idea 2: Overachievers Use Insecurity for Empowerment Idea 3: Iconoclasts are Maniacs on a Mission to the Impossible Idea 4: Supermen are Weak enough to be Strong Idea 5: The Path to Empowerment is Paved with Myth and Paradox Amazon link for book: Superman Syndromehttps://www.amazon.com/dp/0595346979/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_Xa4sDbXBT42CA Download.

Justin Blackman of Pretty Fly Copy knows his way around marketing, branding, and copywriting. He’s worked with clients ranging from Red Bull and 5-Hour Energy to info-marketing guru Amy Porterfield and Rob Marsh of The Copywriter Club. In fact, all that Red Bull must be working. Last year he had more than 200 clients. However he summons the energy, this is a guy who gets things done! Justin’s talked about a much-needed but greatly overlooked topic: Writing in the client’s voice (or your own authentic voice). He’s an expert on that and we really enjoyed what he shared with us. Justin answered these questions: 1. What is “brand ventriloquism,” and how did you get into it? 2. Please share with us the example of a good brand voice you developed for a person or a business, and a tip or two for our listeners on how they can improve their own brand voice. 3. What does a bad brand voice sound like? How can we avoid making the mistakes that lead to a bad brand voice? 4. Why is brand voice so important? Do you think it will become even more important in the future? Justin’s website is PrettyFlyCopy dot com Download.

It’s September, and at least when I was a kid, this was back to school month. Now, if you could do it all over again, what would you want to learn that they never taught you in school? Me, I would have liked a way to know what other people believed to be true, so I could persuade them starting with what was true for them. And, I would have liked some skills for making good decisions. Learning these things in school would have been especially valuable for me as a copywriter and as an entrepreneur. What about you? Well, along comes Napoleon Hill with a new book, out just last year. Napoleon Hill, the author of the classic Think and Grow Rich, is no longer with us, of course. He died 49 years ago. But the Napoleon Hill Foundation released a new book of his, “Success Habits,” last year. And just in time for the new school year, we have just the perfect material for this podcast. So the question that was never answered in school for me, is: How do I better understand what other people believe… and how do I make better decisions for myself? The answer is: Accurate thinking. Now here’s the most important reason you, as a copywriter, want to develop your accurate thinking skills: You’ll know a lot more about how to take a prospect from where they are to where you want them to be. And that means, more sales. But there’s more. A lot more. Like this: 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. Looking ahead So today we’re going to talk about what accurate thinking is, and how to get better at it. I want you to realize that accurate thinking isn’t about always being right and winning every argument. It’s also not about stripping emotion from your life. Those would not be helpful to a copywriter or a business owner. Accurate thinking is about knowing the difference between fact and opinion, and being able to figure things out better in a way that serves you and your clients and customers. It’s about being able to write copy that’s compliant, which is rapidly becoming a necessity if you want to do business online. And it’s about being clear-headed rather than uncertain and confused. What is accurate thinking? In a nutshell, accurate thinking is about getting from point A to point B, first in your mind, in the most efficient and most powerful way. It involves a set of skills that we’ll go over today. It’s very real-world. I know a number of top copywriters — people responsible for hundreds of millions of sales with their copy and the copywriters they honcho — who I would absolutely call accurate thinkers. Now, nobody would ever mistake any of these copywriters for Mr. Spock on Star Trek. That’s not what accurate thinking is all about. But I’ve had spirited discussions in person with each of them. And I’ve seen them solve problems in a systematic, intelligent way. I admire each of them quite a lot. And if we were to look at their own track records, you can’t argue with success. I am certain that their ability to think accurately has a lot to do with their success. Why this is important, and how you can use what you hear today Now, in typical Napoleon Hill style, the writing in this book is not dry, academic, or abstract. If you ever took a class in logic or critical thinking, you might recognize some of the things we’re going to talk about. But this is a world apart from the programmed boredom of high school and college. Remember: The way we think pretty much determines the actions we take, and therefore, the course of our lives. So you can “think positive” all you want. But if you’re not thinking accurately as well, you’re going to propel yourself down the wrong road and positively end up at a different destination than the one you had hoped for. Look at accurate thinking like cooking or playing golf. You can’t master the whole activity from what you hear in one podcast. After all, the book is called “Success Habits,” and habits take a while to develop. You create habits through repetition and intention. Accurate thinking is a habit worth developing, because it will help you with your goal-setting, your decisions, your communications, and, for this podcast, most important, the quality and effectiveness of your copy. What Napoleon Hill said about Accurate Thinking According to Napoleon Hill, there are three parts to accurate thinking: 1) Inductive reasoning - starting out with an idea that may not even exist in reality, and developing it to a conclusion 2) Deductive thinking - starting out with a fact you know to be true, or believe to be true, and developing it to a conclusion 3) Logic - looking at a current situation or problem, and comparing it to something similar you’ve experienced in the past. Of all of these, the third one is probably the most valuable. You can use it in a number of ways. First, to see if something makes sense. If someone tells you they have a new car engine that uses gasoline and gets 250 miles to the gallon, logic alone will tell you that’s not very likely. You would be skeptical. Anyone would, who knows anything about cars. Why? Because your previous experience tells you that cars that run on gas, or petrol, get up to 30 miles per gallon, and some hybrid cars get upwards of 130 miles per gallon. So a car that would get nearly twice that on gas alone doesn’t seem logical, on the face of it. You would need to use your deductive reasoning to ask questions and determine if what the person was saying, makes sense. How this plays out as a copywriter and business owner As a copywriter, you need to reverse-engineer the process. When you have a claim you’re making in your copy, you want to put yourself in your prospect’s shoes, looking at their thinking as the same way yours would be with the mileage on the engine. As you get better at accurate thinking, you can predict what kind of analogies you can use that will track with your customers’ own experience, and what kind of thought process they would need to go through to believe you and want to buy your product. What Napoleon Hill Said About How to Think Accurately He said there are two steps you need to take to be an accurate thinker: First, learn how to separate fact from fiction Second, take the facts and divide them: Into important facts, and unimportant facts So, what’s an important fact? Napoleon Hill says it’s any fact you can use to achieve your goal… or… any fact you can use to fulfill a desire that leads to your goal. This is so good. You see people make a mistake with this all the time when they’re looking at statistics. There are maybe 50 or 100 numbers you can look at with the performance of an online campaign, but maybe only 5 or 6 that are going to make a difference. For example, open rates usually don’t matter. If you have a huge open rate and a non-existent clickthrough rate, then what difference does the open rate make? But if you have a low open rate and a high enough clickthrough rate to make the campaign very, very profitable… again, what difference does the open rate make? It’s an unimportant fact. Knowing the difference between important facts and unimportant facts will save you a lot of time and frustration, and help you get more of what you want, more often. How to test facts Suppose someone says something to you. How can you evaluate how accurate what that person said, is? Here are three of Napoleon Hill’s best questions on the subject: 1. Is that person a recognized authority on the subject? 2. Does the person have a profit-motive that could cause them to give you inaccurate information for their benefit? 3. What is the person’s reputation for being honest? Here’s Why You Want to Get Better at Accurate Thinking As Napoleon Hill said, “The only thing you have complete control over is the power of thought. “Don’t give that up to anyone else.” And the only way to have maximum control over your thoughts is to get better and better at accurate thinking. You can find out more in the book “Success Habits” by Napoleon Hill. Get the Book Here Download.

Our guest today, Brian Basilico, is the very reason this episode is called “Content Marketing That Brings Home The Bacon.” That’s not only because he’s an expert on content marketing and he has helped a lot of people make a lot of money.. It’s also because he’s the host of “The Bacon Podcast.” In fact, bacon seems to pretty much have taken over his life. His business life, anyway. Brian has a best-selling book called “It’s Not About You, It’s About Bacon.” His Bacon Podcast was voted by Inc. Magazine as one of the top 35 business podcasts.. He’s been around a long time, and he’s a pioneer. For example, when LinkedIn started up 15 years ago, he was one of the first 1000 people to join.. Brian, thanks for coming on, and welcome! 1. So Brian, give us the Express Tour of how you got to where you are today, and especially how you discovered what you are going to tell us about content marketing.. 2. Let’s start with some basic definitions. What is content marketing… how do most people use it… and what are some misconceptions about how to use it to make money? 3. What are some of your favorite techniques to use content marketing to make money. Please give us some examples either from your own business, or from clients you’ve helped. (Or both!). 4. Do you think the ability to create profitable content marketing will become more important over time? Why?. 5. Please give us some additional tips on what to do, what not to do, and where to find great examples of profitable content marketing.. 6. So I’m going to guess that if people want to contact you, they should not go to the bacon section of Whole Foods. If that’s right, what can people get from you and what’s your contact info?.Download.

This show is especially for service business owners and copywriters who write for service business owners. I have reason to believe that this includes 68% of our audience. If that’s not you, stick around, because I think you’ll find a few tips that you can use for other types of copywriting and marketing. It all started a few weeks ago when I did critiques on lead-generation sales letters for two business owners. They were on opposite sides of the country and in very different businesses. But in both cases, they had remarkably similar problems with their copy. What’s more, I ended up using the same method, more or less, to help them turn what they sent me into powerful, response-getting sales letters. Then I was reading an interview with the great songwriter Suzanne Vega. She’s best known for the hit song “Luka” many years ago. She said something about the puzzle pieces falling into place. Then I went back to the interview and I couldn’t find it, but she did say a lot of things close to that. Anyway, that’s how it is with copy. At a certain point you’ve done enough work so the pieces fall into place. Today I want to share what the five most important pieces are for service business owners, and how they fit together. In a way, there’s a sixth piece of the puzzle, too. It’s this: OK. So here’s what we’re going to do. Of course I can’t reveal any details about either of the clients, but I don’t need to for this show. What we’ll do is, I’ll share what each piece is and give you some questions you can ask to make sure you’ve got this piece as good as possible. The first piece is the hook/headline/opening. This is where most people get it very, very wrong. A couple of reasons: First, it’s not catchy. Second, and this one’s easier to spot but sometimes harder to fix: It asks the prospect to meet the business owner where they are, mentally, rather than reaching and stretching to meet the prospect where they are. I’ll give you a simple example. Let’s say you do Facebook campaigns. A typical marketer might start out with, “Are you getting the best roi possible with your Facebook ads?” Reasonable enough question, but that’s the problem: It’s too reasonable. The prospect is thinking, “Help! My Facebook ads aren’t working. How am I going to get new business?” So a good hook would be built around what is emotionally troubling the prospect, that you can solve. Not around the end result of your solution, which would be better roi for Facebook ads. Here are some questions you can use on this puzzle piece yourself: Whose point of view does the opening of my copy speak to? If you overheard the words in a conversation, would you want to eavesdrop on the rest of the conversation? How well do your hook and opening open up the prospect’s awareness of an emotionally troubling problem they already know about, that you can help them solve? The second puzzle piece is: staying on the problem and expanding it… in an empathetic, understanding way… while you point out the increasingly negative real-life implications to the prospect of the problem. In simpler terms, this is called skillful agitation of the problem. Like with our facebook ads marketer, you put together a sequence of events that leads to spending more and more money and getting less and less business from it. A couple of problems I see when I critique copy: First, the “nice guy” syndrome. People don’t want their prospects to get upset, so they don’t do this at all. Second, the “lunge and plunge” syndrome. People who go for the throat all at once, rather than building up to it at a more digestible pace. So the prospect can digest this. Some questions to help you hone this puzzle piece: Are your statements and questions about emotions rather than facts? Is it easy for the prospect to understand that you care about their situation? Can the prospect readily relate to what you’re talking about? The third puzzle piece is a lot easier. Yet many, many business people leave it out or are very shy about including it. This puzzle piece is identifying yourself and your relevant credentials. “Relevant” means something your prospect would care about and see as making you qualified to do what you do, or maybe even seeing you as the best choice. So, having a certification from your local community college for online advertising might not be a good credential for the facebook ads expert to include. Having added profits to 11 businesses would be a very good credential. Because that’s what the prospect your facebook ads expert wants, is looking for. Some questions to help you get this puzzle piece right: Are you telling your prospects what they need to know to feel assured that you can do the job? Is it easy to understand how the credentials you give make you qualified? Are you leaving out things that will impress people without convincing them that you’re a good choice? The fourth puzzle piece is credibility and believability all the way through. This is simple but not always easy. You need to write the way you would talk, if you were actually meeting a prospect and you were relaxed and confident. I find sometimes people get too far down into technical details, or too hypey to seem genuine and authentic. I have often said that copy is the spoken language in written form. That’s worth remembering. So the facebook person might not want to say, “If you are using the facebook pixel to retarget customers who are more than one standard deviation away from your target market, that could cause unacceptable shrinkage.” Even if someone knows what it means, it makes people feel uncomfortable. You’d be better off saying something like this in your sales letter: “You want your ads to reach as many targeted prospects as possible, and avoid getting clicks from people who would never buy from you in the first place.” See the difference? Here are some questions for puzzle piece number 4: How easy is it for people to read what you’ve written and feel you know what you’re talking about? Are you keeping everything as simple as possible? Are you sounding like someone your prospect would like to have a conversation with? The fifth puzzle piece is your offer. Many people have the wrong idea that simply asking a prospect to call them is going to get them business. That’s rarely the case. What you need to do instead is offer some kind of risk-free piece of information, like a report, or a quick phone conversation, that offers specific, valuable benefits. So that if your prospect never ends up doing business with you, it wasn’t a waste of their time. People are often scared to do this. They think they’ll be giving away the store. But if you are a service business owner and you don’t have enough information and skills to give something valuable away to start the relationship, then you may not have a store for very long anyway. You could go out of business in a hurry. So, for the facebook guy, don’t say, “Need to improve your Facebook advertising? Call me at 1-800-I’m-an-idiot” Instead, say, “If you’d like to improve your Facebook advertising, I can probably help you. Let’s set up a 10-minute phone call and I’ll tell you 3 things you can do that 99% of facebook advertisers never think of, that can start to get you more business right away. And if you like what you hear, we can talk about working together.” That’ll work a lot better. So here are three questions to get the fifth puzzle piece in good shape: Are you making an enticing offer to get a qualified prospect to call you? Is the offer truly risk-free and beneficial to the prospect? Will the prospect get information or some other value from the offer that will make them more likely to work with you? Before we sum up, I realize this will be a lot easier for some people to implement than it will for others. That’s why I’m leaving all of the questions on the show notes page. And, if you would like a critique, I’m leaving the link to the critiques page on my coaching site on show notes page on copywriters podcast.com The link is to the page on my coaching site: http://www.garfinkelcoaching.com/copy-critiques/ Now, here are the five puzzle pieces again: 1. Hook/headline opening 2. Staying on the problem and expanding it in an empathetic, understanding way 3. Identifying yourself and your relevant credentials 4. Credibility and believability all the way through 5. An offer that provides risk-free benefit to your qualified prospect.Download.