Copywriters Podcast

Dynasty quote How does that square with the reality about wealth? What does this mean for copywriters? 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. What the numbers say about billionaires. What the numbers say about the wealthy. What about copywriters and direct-response company entrepreneurs? Most successful copywriter/business owner 2 founders Top Copywriters Going to college / not going to college What all successful people I know have in common Taking responsibility for your own education – college or not What I did Don’t buy into the rebellions teenager/cowboy myth But don’t expect degrees or past successes to carry your bags for you The market-proven secret of successDownload.

The folly of trying to get better at “copywriting.” “Inch by Inch, life’s a cinch. Yard by yard, life’s hard.” Nobody but a fool would honestly claim that copywriting’s a cinch. But the way a lot of people go about learning it, they make it a lot harder than they need to. Today we’ll take a look at all the things people do that just too hard. Things that take much longer than they need to. Then, we look at what’s faster, easier, and works SO much better. 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. Muscle memory for copywriters. - what it is - why all the top copywriters have it. Most don’t realize it. I’ve never heard anyone talk about it before. Not taboo; just like, not a lot of awareness. But I see it all the time with the other A-Listers I know and talk to. Typical ways people go about trying to get better at copywriting: - Just read and study: learn everything - Handwrite sales letters - Just do it – “natural” Only one problem. If all you do is any one of them, that won’t work. If you do all three together, they work – but it’s a tremendous amount of work, and you reach a point of diminishing returns pretty soon. What works better - Muscle memory technique 3 ways to go 1. Begin at the top of a sales letter and work your way down. 2. Start with your weakest copywriting skill. 3. Start with your strongest copywriting skill. -So which one do you choose? -Additional benefits: Besides skill development, there’s another great advantage. Download.

Our guest today is Tim Burt, who’s going to give you the inside story about writing copy for radio and TV commercials. In the last 26 years, Tim has written, recorded and/or produced more than 30,000 commercials worldwide. His clients range from small businesses to global corporations to presidential campaigns He’s the founder of TimBurtMedia.com and has created programs including Broadcast Ad Secrets, The Restaurant Marketing Series, and Broadcast Ad Secrets. Among the publications where Tim has been featured are: Radio Ink, Huffington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. Before we get into the good stuff, I have to tell you something that you’ll almost certainly never hear on the radio: 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. 1) Could you explain the difference, on radio and TV, between top-of-mind advertising and direct response advertising. 2) What’s the biggest mistake you see retailers make with their advertising? 3) Please explain your concept of using a “gateway drug” on an ad. 4) On a radio or TV ad you’ve only got 60 or even 30 seconds to say something to get someone to go to a store. What are the key parts of message? Could you give a couple examples, where you break down the message and label the parts? 5) What are some of the most interesting reasons business owners give you for NOT doing what you suggest? (Could you mention the top two or three?) 6) How do you answer each reason (assuming the business owner is not a lost cause and it’s worth the effort to answer a reasonable objection) 7) What advice do you have for business owners who are interested in advertising on radio and TV, but aren’t ready yet? 8) What would you suggest for copywriters who’d like to branch out into working with retailers this way? TimBurtMediaDownload.

Ted Nicholas: You can go broke selling people what they need. But you can make a fortune selling people what they want. What did he mean? How do we apply this into what we do as direct marketers? But first… here’s something I want to tell 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. • A fatal mistake of many marketers (hopefully not you): Trying to sell people something you want to sell them, that they don’t want themselves (i.e. Something you assume they need, or hope they will want). • What works better: Selling people something they are actively aware that they already want. Just offering them a better version. • How to find out what people want, so you’ll know what to sell them. • Two things that get in the way of doing this: - Lack of Marketing Realism - Lack of Marketing Maturity Put the odds on your side! Start out selling people what they want!Download.

Dr. Henry Heimlich story. When I first heard about this, what prompted me to research it more and get all the details? Insatiable curiosity. What insatiable curiosity is, and why it’s so important for copywriters – what we’ll talk about today. Now, you might be curious about what comes next. Well, the suspense is over. Because… 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. • Curiosity is how you get motivated to find the interesting tidbits that make your copy shine, and keeps your readers reading. • Three types of people – and, depending on which kind you are, here’s how you should approach your own sense of curiosity. • What insatiable curiosity looks like for a copywriter. • How to ask questions that people will be willing to answer. • The #1 driver of innovation is curiosity. • Why thinking about stuff after you find out is such a big part of curiosity. Stay curious! Download.

What a songwriting teacher says about how much writers hate to rewrite. It’s not just songwriters. And this reluctance is probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest, copywriters never make it to the next level in their writing and in their career. We’re going to fix that today! -- 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. -- - The two seemingly opposite puzzle pieces of putting together a magical story for your copy. When creativity meets implementation. Why they are like oil and water — they don’t mix, but most cars need both in order to operate. - What usually happens when a writer sits down to write a sales story for copy. Why faster is NOT better. What happens to make sure a good story never gets done fast with this approach. - What works so much better than the usual approach: Two stages of variation. These tricks come from world-famous writers, but they work just great for every copywriter who uses them. This could be just as fast, or faster, but it doesn’t seem that way until you actually try it. - Why writers normally do what they do — and what they miss, doing things this “normal” way. There’s a very good psychological reason for it. Too bad that, despite the good reason, doing things in this “normal” way leads to self-sabotage. - Why writers resist rewriting, and the heavy cost of this resistance. How totally understandable emotions work against writing good stories. - What to do instead of what people usually do. How to get past typical work-habit blocks to create great stories!Download.

We had Joshua Killingsworth on a few weeks ago, when he talked about how his divorce and child-custody requirements virtually “forced” him to move quickly from another business to copywriting. We got a lot of response and appreciative comments on that show. Joshua also shared his empathy-map process, which gets the copywriter very much in tune with the prospect’s thinking and feeling. Something all copywriters need to do, but, sad to say, not all actually do. Today, Joshua’s going to talk about something completely different. Something that should make him the envy of every freelancer listening to today’s show: How he closes 80% of the prospects he talks to. I’m really excited to hear what he has to say. But everyone should also be excited, as I remind you, that… -- 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. -- 1. One thing you do in your process that seems very smart to me is you make sure your prospect has an offer that makes sense by itself before you’re willing to consider them as a client. This makes sense to me because, without a compelling offer, no client can be successful, no matter how good the copywriter is. Could you talk about how you evaluate their offer and what you look for? 2. Then there’s the client – the person you’ll be working with. We’ve all made the mistake of jumping into a project, only to discover we can’t actually work with the person on the client side. How do you evaluate a prospective client? 3. You have an intermediate step after they make it over your offer and can-I-work-with this client hurdles, and before you take them on as a client. Could you describe that step, how it works, and why you do it? 4. OK, you have a step called “ask the right questions.” Of course, anyone would want to do that. But you have a special purpose in mind. Could explain that? 5. Once you close the deal, you don’t wait – you get right on it. Not everybody does. What’s your thinking on that? 6. And finally, you have a follow-up step that is brilliant. And simple. Yet so many people just don’t take this step themselves. Want to talk about that? Download.

Justin Goff has created from scratch three multi-million dollar direct response companies. His last one was a supplement company that him and his partners scaled from 0 to 23 million in sales in just under 3 years. Justin sold his stake in that company last year, took a year off, and is now helping the biggest direct response companies to boost their response and increase their average order size on their offers. He lives in Austin Texas with his 2 Great Danes, George and Dempsey 1. Justin, you seem to have a very different view of emails for marketing from just about anyone else I know. I remember once on a webinar I heard you say you would pay $5000 for a good email. Could you tell us, how do you look at emails differently than most people do. 2. How did you use emails in the companies you built? Could you talk about some individual emails and the kind of results you saw? 3. The way you do emails – how do you decide what information to put in the email itself, and what to save for the sales page it leads to? 4. If you or someone working for you is doing daily emails, how often are they pitch emails, compared to “content” emails? Is the tone usually the same with both kinds of emails? 5. Effective subject lines in emails – How similar, or different, are they to headlines that work on a sales page? 6. Your emails go into a lot of depth and do a lot of selling. How does a sales letter it leads to, work, with the way you do things? Shorter sales letters? Repeat the info in sales letter? Or straight to an order page? 7. You’re doing some work for a small group of clients with emails. Want to talk about it? 8. How can someone get in touch with you?Download.

Justin Goff has created from scratch three multi-million dollar direct response companies. His last one was a supplement company that him and his partners scaled from 0->23 million in sales in just under 3 years. Justin sold his stake in that company last year, took a year off, and is now helping the biggest direct response companies to boost their response and increase their average order size on their offers. He lives in Austin Texas with his 2 Great Danes, George and Dempsey. 1. Many of our listeners know all about controls, but some don’t. So let’s start with this question: What is “a control? 2. Why do you need to try to beat a control? 3. How do most people typically go about trying to be a control? 4. What do you see as wrong with, or missing from, this approach? And what do you do differently instead? (Justin – here, could you go through the theory/process of working on the whole funnel? If you can and you’re willing to, mention some super-simple math. Like 2 or 3 actual or potential gains you’ve seen, that most people would miss entirely, using the more conventional, limited approach of just looking at the sales letter.) 5. Are there other things you can do that usually work to beat a control? 6. What happens when a control starts to fatigue and you can’t beat it anymore? 7. What should a copywriter expect to charge for this kind of work? 8. What should business owners expect to pay for this kind of work? 9. How can someone get in touch with you? Find Justin on Facebook.Download.

In this podcast, the host discusses how copywriters can go from good to great by focusing on confidence, targeting the right audience, and creating engaging headlines. They also emphasize the importance of thorough research and knowledge in crafting compelling copy. The episode offers valuable insights on mastering headline writing, killer bullets, and essential skills for copywriters.