Copyright Notices © 2001 Instant Profits Marketing, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted for resale or use by any party other than the individual purchaser who is the sole authorized user of this information. Purchaser is authorized to use any of the information in this publication for his or her own use only. All other reproduction or transmission, or any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any informational storage or retrieval system, is prohibited without express written permission from the publisher. LEGAL NOTICES: While all attempts have been made to provide effective, verifiable information in this Book, neither the Author nor Publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, inaccuracies, or omissions. Any slights of people or organizations are unintentional. If advice concerning tax, legal, compliance, or related matters is needed, the services of a qualified professional should be sought. This Book is not a source of legal, regulatory compliance, or accounting information, and it should not be regarded as such. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Due to the nature of direct response marketing, copywriting and varying rules regulating business activities in many fields, some practices proposed in this Book may be deemed unlawful in certain circumstances and locations. Since federal and local laws differ widely, as do codes of conduct for members of professional organizations and agencies, Reader, Customer or Licensee must accept full responsibility for determining the legality and/or ethical character of any and all business transactions and/or practices adopted and enacted in his or her particular field and geographic location, whether or not those transactions and/or practices are suggested, either directly or indirectly, in this Book. As with any business advice, the reader is strongly encouraged to seek professional counsel before taking action. NOTE: No guarantees of income or profits are intended by this book. Many variables affect each individual's results. Your results will vary from the examples given. Instant Profits Marketing, Inc. cannot and will not promise your personal success. Instant Profits Marketing, Inc. has no control over what you may do or not do with this copywriting success program, and therefore cannot accept the responsibility for your results. You are the only one who can initiate the action, in order to reap your own rewards! Any and all references to persons or businesses, whether living or dead, existing or defunct, is purely coincidental. Published by Success Strategies Inc, 34950 Hwy 58,Eugene,Oregon 97405 CREATED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA DISTRIBUTED WORLD-WIDE.
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Table of Contents Table of Contents ......................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction: Welcome To Killer Copywriting ........................................................................... 4 Chapter 1: Conventional Advertising Wisdom Myths Blown To Bits! The Advertising Industry's Lies Exposed! .............................................................................................................. 6 Chapter 2: Everything You've Been Taught About Writing Copy That Sells Is Wrong! The Shocking Truth Revealed! ........................................................................................................... 9 Chapter 3: Here's The REAL Definition Of Advertising You'll Never Learn Anywhere Else! 11 Chapter 4: Secrets Of Getting Ready To Write Killer Advertising Copy! ................................ 14 Chapter 5: What You MUST Know About Human Nature In Order To Transform Your Ordinary Copy.Into Killer Copy That SELLS!..........................................................................16 Chapter 6: Do You Have A Damn Good Answer To These Four Questions? If Not, You Won't Sell Anything To Anyone! ......................................................................................... 39 Chapter 7: The Hidden, Buried Secrets Of Killer Advertising Copy From The Old Time Advertising Masters! ............................................................................................................... 45 Chapter 8: The Jealously Guarded, Secret Killer Advertising Formulas That Work Over And Over! .......................................................................................................................................... 67 Chapter 9: The Single Most Important Part Of Killer Copy! Mess This Up, And Your Advertising Will Always Fail!................................................................................................... 70 Chapter 10: Little Known Headline Writing Shortcuts And Tips!.......................................... 83 Chapter 11: How To Write Copy So Good... You Could Sell Sand In The Desert! ............... 101 Chapter 12: 37 More Killer Copy Secrets................................................................................ 118 Chapter 13: The Final Word .................................................................................................... 132 Appendix 1............................................................................................................................... 134 Appendix 2............................................................................................................................... 137 Appendix 3............................................................................................................................... 142
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Introduction: Welcome To Killer Copywriting Hello, I'm Jim Fleck, author, publisher, copywriter, entrepreneur. I think there's been about a couple dozen other titles and occupations in the last 20 years, but the ones above will suffice for now. Oh yeah, I'm also Jeff Paul's partner in Instant Profits Marketing, Inc. I thought you might want to know a little about how this program came about and us before you dive in for what I promise you will be an enlightening and *different* take on some master copywriting techniques and strategies. I met Jeff about 5 years ago while attending one of his "Killer Copywriting" seminars. Suffice it to say...I was never the same. At that time I had a thriving computer consulting company, #1 in its niche. I had also started a fledgling information business that I was running part-time in between flying 100,000 miles a year consulting business. I had been running classified ads, small space ads and following all the models. They weren't very profitable. Something was wrong. I can remember coming out of that 3 1/2 hour seminar with 23 pages of notes, mind numb, new ideas flying fast and furious. I knew what was wrong. To make a long story short, using what I learned from Jeff I've built 5 different information business. Sold a few, remain a minority partner (read passive income) in some, currently work some others. But let's forget about that. You probably are reading this because ultimately you're interested in income, right? Well, as you know from Jeff's salesletter he's been gut-wrenchingly broke. I myself have experienced bankruptcy. I know what it's like not to be able to go out to dinner with friends, buy nothing but generic foods at the double coupon discount grocery store...I mean less than broke. Not having zero money, that's easy to do, I'm talking negative where I didn't have a dime in my pocket and a mountain of debt too. I also know what it's like to take 4 or 5 vacations a year. Get up in the morning every single day and have breakfast with my two sons. Own the office building I worked from, have a loving beautiful wife, get up in the morning and meet Jeff at the club for a round of golf on a Tuesday with almost noone there because they're working. Best of all, I know what it's like to be my own boss. Work from home or occasionally from the office if I choose. Working a business that I'm in complete control of, well mostly, I let Jeff do a little.
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I don't tell you any of these things to impress you or to brag or any of that other crap. I tell you them to impress upon you what learning how to write copy has done for me. I'm no smarter than the next guy, some would argue I'm dumber (but brothers and sisters don't count). I've simply followed those notes I took 5 years ago almost point for point and it has made copywriting so much easier. It just flows now. That EXACT same information is in this course you've just acquired. I'll warn you know though, if you judge things by there size or looks, you'll miss the point. You'll miss the power. You'll miss the opportunity that many don't ever get. If you're smart enough not only add this to your reference library, but use it often, I can guarantee you that your copy will never be the same. So with that said, I want to welcome you to this journey you're beginning whether new or successful to this business world. So, let's go learn "The Jealously Guarded Secrets of Writing Copy So Good...You Could Sell Sand In The Desert!" Jim Fleck
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Chapter 1: Conventional Advertising Wisdom Myths Blown To Bits! The Advertising Industry's Lies Exposed! What we're going to do here is talk about the whole issue of writing copy that sells and gets people to buy. We have a wide variety of things to talk about. We'll cover a lot of areas so that hopefully at the end you'll have a much deeper understanding of what's involved in writing copy and how to make copy work for you to sell things online or offline that you want to sell, or just get leads or both. There are a lot of things I want to cover as far as the issue of writing copy whether it's for websites, emails, autoresponders, direct mail or whatever. The first thing I want to talk about is setting the stage. From my point of view, as far as the issue of writing copy and getting people to do things, one of the things I have to tell you as an overall starting point is... KC Secret #1: You have to not pay attention to anything that you've learned or that is conventional. You have to really change the way your mind works. One example was way back in the O.J. Simpson trial. I would imagine that just about everyone either saw it live, on tape delay, the evening news, heard about it on the radio or read about it. Conventional wisdom would tell you, if you looked at the facts, the reasoning and the logic behind the whole case, I don't care which side of the issue you are on, but in that particular instance you saw a perfect example of emotions completely overriding any logic or reason involved in the way the verdict went. Again, I'm not telling you or giving you my opinion saying that he should have been guilty or not guilty or whatever, because my opinion is meaningless in that regard. But my opinion isn't meaningless in the fact that if you really think about what happened there, the defense used very, very good emotional, what I would call direct response type copy, and the prosecution used a very professional, logical way of communicating with lots of reason and lots of scientific, analytical type of so-called copy, the way they spoke through the trial and on the closing arguments. If you compared Marcia Clark and Chris Darden's closing arguments to Johnny Cochran's, I think anybody would concur that there wasn't even a remote similarity to the way they were done. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit
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If you can't trust the messenger, you can't trust the message. Planting all kinds of psychological, very emotional seeds, which obviously worked pretty well because it only took the jury about 15 minutes. I think they were killing time just to make it look like they were in the room longer, but obviously it worked. The prosecution was very dismayed at the fact that their logic and reasoning didn't provide a guilty verdict. When I saw the closing arguments there was no doubt in my mind whatsoever of how that trial was going to go, no doubt whatsoever. People kept saying to me, "Everybody says he's guilty. The jury got done so fast." To me, I guessed he was not guilty just simply because the way things were done. If you really think about that in the context of what we're talking about here, it applies. Because quite frankly people's emotions will override reason and logic every time, usually 100% of the time. Conventional wisdom is usually meaningless Irrelevant and wrong in almost all cases. What you are supposed to be thinking or doing and what actually does end up working are usually far removed from each other. When I signed my son Alex up for second grade, his teacher needed somebody to come in for an hour to be a writing workshop helper, so I went in for my first writing workshop. These are 8-year-old kids, most of them in second grade, and I helped two of the kids with their stories. One of the stories was "My Dog" and it went into how he had three dogs and they all died and then he got this new dog that also was very sick and dying. My job, as told by the teacher, was to correct punctuation and grammar and I'm sitting there thinking "Oh my God." So I pulled the teacher aside and said, "Look, I have to explain something, I write for a living, but I didn't really know exactly what I was getting into and I don't know anything about grammar or punctuation. I don't even know what a preposition is, so I don't know if I end a sentence with one or not because I don't even know what it is." She said, "Oh, I'm sure you'll do fine." So I sat down with the kids. It was very difficult to try to teach them what they were doing wrong. I could figure out where periods and commas went, that part I could get down. I can't spell very gud but most of the words that were wrong I could figure out like "are" instead of "our" and "there" instead of "their", but it was an awakening experience for me realizing just how far away I am in the way I do things from what is conventional and what kids are taught in school. I had to be very careful not to get into certain areas I really wasn't sure of. My son Alex started a lot of his sentences with "and." Now, I start sentences with "and" all the time and I guess you're not supposed to.
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Vastly different worlds The thing you have to be aware of is that the way we're all taught...what you think the conventional wisdom is...and using writing to communicate and sell are just vastly different worlds. So that's the first thing I wanted to try to get into your mind. To realize that if you are going to have success with copy, you're going to have more success taking a chance on the way your mind works than wondering about whether things should or shouldn't be a certain way. There are no rules. Everything can be any way you want. But again, conventional wisdom and success have nothing to do with each other. Here's what you need to know...The Shocking Truth Revealed...
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Chapter 2: Everything You've Been Taught About Writing Copy That Sells Is Wrong! The Shocking Truth Revealed! The reason I wanted to put this chapter up front is because I see a lot of samples that people send us everyday. However, most people have a very difficult time changing the way they write salesletters and websites or what they say on video or audio tape or whatever the media is they're using to get a message across so that it isn't professional and boring. Most people are very, very caught up like my son learning in second grade and that's the way he'll be taught for the rest of his life in school, as all of us probably were. The handicap of an advanced degree Fortunately, I didn't graduate from college so I got out of it before it was too late. If any of you have the handicap of an advanced degree then you'll have a little more trouble because you were taught to be boring when communicating or relaying a story to somebody about a series of events. The logical train of thought has nothing to do with anything that's making the communication. If you're not communicating, you're not going to get any copy that's going to work. We see people all the time writing things that would be written the way you would write something for college. That's boring and it does NOT sell. I have a sister-in-law who is a nurse and she shows me things she gets for courses that she may want to take and they might be called the "Intradimensional Occupational Relationship Between Psychotherapy And The Pervasive Mindset of..." something or other. That's the title of the course. And then you read the course description and it's just as bad. I said, "I can't believe anybody signs up for this stuff." She said, "We have to sign up for some of these things." I guess they are forced to do it because they need continuing education, but the writer certainly isn't communicating anything even to my sister-in-law and the other nurses. The language is so professional and so wonderfully logical that it doesn't communicate anything to anybody. I do want to stress this very, very important point... KC Secret #2: If you are simply using an informational approach, you will probably get unsatisfactory and negative results.
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The issue is, that for somebody to respond or buy something, it's a different process than just relaying information because you are not just relaying information. You're getting them psychologically moved off the couch so to speak and over to pick up the phone or fill out something. You've got a lot of things you have to overcome.
Now I think it's time to reveal the real definition of advertising...
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Chapter 3: Here's The REAL Definition Of Advertising You'll Never Learn Anywhere Else! Are you familiar with John E. Kennedy and Albert Lasker and that whole crowd back from the early 1900's? That's where our next very important point first came about and there's a story that's probably fake, but it sounds good. And is a lesson in copywriting itself. It started when an unknown copywriter named John E. Kennedy sent a note to A.L. Thomas of the Lord & Thomas advertising agency. His note read: "I am in the saloon downstairs. I can tell you what advertising is. I know you don't know. It will mean much to me to have you know what it is and it will mean much to you. If you wish to know what advertising is, send the word 'yes' down by the bell boy."-- Signed, John E. Kennedy The note would have ended up in the trash if Albert Lasker had not been in the office. Unknown to Kennedy, Lasker had been searching for the answer to that question for 7 years. Lasker was the rising star at Lord & Thomas, the third largest ad agency in the world. It was 1904 when, at the age of 24, he was made a partner and was paid $52,000. Yet, he did not know, to his satisfaction, what advertising was. Neither could he find anyone else who knew. Lasker, starving for an answer, was quick to summon Kennedy to his office. In that historic meeting three words were whispered. Three words that changed the face of advertising forever. Those words were... KC Secret #3: "Salesmanship in Print" The concept was so basic and so effective that no one has since been able to improve upon it. After being exposed to this powerful concept, Lasker commissioned the brilliant Kennedy to write down the set of principles into a series of lessons which were then used to train Lasker and the Lord & Thomas copywriters.
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Soon, Lord & Thomas became the training center for the advertising world. Their copywriters were being paid $4000/year, a fantastic salary for the time. Yet, other agencies were hiring them away by offering salaries up to $15,000/year - just to get the magic of Salesmanship-in-Print into their agencies. And many Lord & Thomas people left to form their own agencies - John Orr Young, co-founder of Young & Rubicam was one. The lessons that were used to teach these copywriters are contained in this book. Were they successful? As David Ogilvy said, "Albert Lasker made more money than anyone in the history of the advertising business" - (Ogilvy On Advertising, 1985) Lord & Thomas, under Lasker's direction and by using Salesmanship-in-Print, became the most admired agency in the world. It helped to establish such wellknown brands as Quaker Puffed Rice and Puffed Wheat, Palmolive, Van Camp, Oldsmobile, Pepsodent and others. It quite literally created the orange juice market which put the California orange growers in business. But the real proof is found today in the fact that those who use these principles are among the most successful business people in the world. The world of business owes a debt of gratitude to John E. Kennedy. Perhaps Lasker said it best: "The history of advertising could never be written without first place being given to John E. Kennedy, for every copywriter throughout the length and breadth of this land is today being guided by the principles he laid down." Reason Why Advertising — PLUS — Intensive Advertising and a FREE BONUS chapter by Kennedy: "How Shall We Know Good Copy?". These two books teach the principles Kennedy laid down. You can get inexpensive copies by clicking here. Now in today's environment you have to say salesmanship in whatever media you're using whether it's Internet, TV, video, audio, whatever.
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I think everybody needs to think about that because even people who are in the business who do well and people who know better, still forget what the definition of advertising and marketing is. Salesmanship. These days you have to say salespersonship to be politically correct, either way it's the definition of advertising or marketing. Every word, paragraph, and line has to be leading towards a sale, lead generation or whatever the outcome is that's desired. The fact they like you or your writing or you have a nice business doesn't mean anything. We had a guy that couldn't sell anything face-to-face and when the customers left, we'd ask, "How'd you do? Did they buy anything?" "No. But they liked me." "That's good. We haven't been able to figure out how you spend that." A transaction has to occur. It's got to go from not occurring to occurring, or if it's lead generation they have to go from not responding to responding and leaving or giving you their information. You're selling from the first syllable, the first thing they see, everywhere, and you could lose them at any time by being boring or uninteresting or professional. I still make this mistake. Everybody does, you're never going to bat 1,000. When something isn't going right and it seems like it should be because of a previous experience or a test that worked or I just thought it was the right thing to do and the way to do it, I go back over the copy and find we can tweak it because we lost people right at a certain stage where we shouldn't because we got too professional. So keep this in mind, it's salesmanship, salesmanship, salesmanship all the way through. We'll talk about how you get to that point, but I just want to make sure we set the stage properly here so that everything we're talking about is in that context of selling, selling, selling, because that's why you're reading this. Whether that sale is a purchase, getting a lead, setting an appointment, that's what we're all trying to do. A lot of people are worried about what their peers might think or what their spouses or family or friends might think and again, all of that is something you have to overcome yourself because the reality is that none of that makes any difference. Like we mentioned before, don't worry about the professional look, sell, sell, sell. - 13 -
Chapter 4: Secrets Of Getting Ready To Write Killer Advertising Copy! I know this sounds kind of stupid and obvious, but I just want to explain it here. KC Secret #4: You Must Have A Good Product or Service. I'm not referring to what the conventional definition of a good product or service is by the way, I'm talking about one that people want to buy. I'm hoping that everybody has the integrity that your products are good, meaning that they do what they say they're going to do, or they deliver on their promises or even more than they promised. The definition of good, which I'm talking about here, is one that people want to buy. That's all. It doesn't have to be the best or anything like that. They just have to want to buy it. A lot of times we see people all the time that have products or services that people just don't want to buy. If they don't want to buy it, there isn't any copy in the world that can save it if nobody wants to buy it. We have some people that just keep going and going and going like the battery bunny and sometimes you may run out of energy and they still keep going because they are determined that they've got the product that people are going to buy. Again, my definitions are a lot different than other people because I have an understated intrinsic ethical way that everything has to be what it is, no misleading, and nothing exaggerated or undelivered promises. So with that foundation, you have to have a good product meaning that people want to buy it. The reason I'm saying this upfront is because when we get into all the details of writing copy and look at all the examples, nothing will help if your stuff is not interesting to the people that you want to sell it to or it's not interesting at the price you want to sell it or any number of other reasons why it may not work. Keep that in mind.
KC Secret #5: You Must Have A Plan For Your Effort. It's very important to operate from some sort of a plan when you start your testing and working on your copy because a lot of times if you just start winging it and just start doing things, your copy may end up all over the place, and believe me, the copy and the offer and all that can make a huge difference. Where you end up at and what you wanted your business to be like may be two different things.
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So it's very good to start from some sort of plan of attack of how you're going to get business and what you're going to do, one step marketing or two step marketing, triple hoop, whatever. Or, what prices you are going to try to offer, what costs you're going to have involved, so you can get an idea of whether your thing even has a chance of working from the starting place. Before you write, you really should have a product that people actually want. And secondly, you should have a plan. Now, if you don't have a product at this point and I know many of you won't, don't forget, you can resell this package. Click here to find out how to make money with this package. Also, since it's free, you MUST (if you haven't already) take this course on creating and selling your very own product. Click here and send a blank e-mail to receive The InfoProduct Masters course... It's an intensive 5-Day e-mail course on creating, producing and online-selling your very own infoproduct. If you want help creating your own product, then this is one of the resources for your library. The checklists that are included with this course is worth the price of admission. I refer to almost daily.
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Chapter 5: What You MUST Know About Human Nature In Order To Transform Your Ordinary Copy.Into Killer Copy That SELLS! So now let's talk about some unwavering rules of writing copy and some things I've discovered over the years, and I've been doing this for quite a few years now. A lot of things that I'm going to be telling you come from experience. I'm not giving you any opinions on things here, I'm just giving you information that has been proven by results and facts and empirical evidence. I'm really big on empirical evidence because opinions are cheap. We all saw everybody's opinion on the OJ thing, and how much that counted for. Opinions don't really count for much in direct response, information and/or Internet marketing. Your opinions and everybody else's opinions are all basically meaningless. So the whole thing we're going to cover here is straight from empirical evidence and facts that we've discovered. KC Secret #6: The Market is First and Foremost...Always. This is another area where people have a lot of trouble. We see it all the time. People have a product or service that they've developed and they think they understand who they're going to sell this to and what the market is, and it's not even anything close. We see this kind of thing all the time. In fact, if you see any courses on Internet Marketing and they talk about the first step, or the #1 thing, or the beginning of the blueprint is "Finding or creating a product," shut your connection down immediately. They don't get it and all they're doing is trying to sell you something they've copied from someone else, or better yet, they don't even understand what it is that may have made them successful...in spite of themselves. If you don't understand the market that you're going after or you don't have somebody with you, a partner or associate or consultant, in some capacity who understands the market very, very intimately, you're not going to have success in almost every case. KC Secret #7: Actually, something to avoid...Usually, almost everybody starts out with a product and then they try to find somebody to sell it to. Find somebody to sell to...then create what they want.
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When you write your copy if your product is designed that way, usually your copy won't make much difference, again because they're not going to be interested in buying it. The more successful way to go and the way it's been done forever by the most experienced and successful is to pick a market or markets and then develop your product or service based on what that market is telling you that it wants or think that it wants, and then if you can't come up with it, move to another market. Everything I do in several different businesses is focused on always looking at the market first and then seeing if the product will fit. Occasionally, and maybe by a rare circumstance you can get lucky where you develop a product and then you put it into a market and it's right for the market. That might happen once out of a thousand times. The other 999 times you get a fail if you don't develop a deep understanding of the market first, product second. That's a very, very difficult thing and most people make a lot of mistakes on. I've done it myself, and I'll probably do it again even though I know better. You really have to focus in on this. That is something that is a very fundamental part of success and again, your copy won't make any difference if your product or service isn't designed for that market and very intimately understood. How To Create Products I can't stress enough that if you don't currently have a product and need help creating one, the most cost effective and easiest way to get a TON of help is the book my Monique Harris on exactly that, creating products. I urge you to add it to your library. Not only was it used to create this product but the marketing we learned in it is selling tons of copies of this book. Again, here is the info: If you want help creating your own product, then this is one of the resources for your library. The checklists that are included with this course is worth the price of admission. I refer to almost daily.
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KC Secret #8: Never ask the copy to do more than it should be doing.
Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. I get lots of mail and email, but I got a letter in the mail the other day, by the way, for writing copy you should get on every mailing list possible. Just buy all the little books these vendors have for $9.95 or $27.95 and get on every ezine and mailing list you can because you learn a lot about copy and what people are doing. I got one yesterday from a guy whose name I won't mention, some of you might know him. He is into a new thing right now where he is jumping on the health band wagon and it seems like the last year or so I've been seeing an incredible increase in the amount of mail I get for health related newsletters, products, vitamins and all these substances that are going to cure your body. This guy wrote this letter and talked about a family member of his that was cured by this amazing product. Now, I usually skip around when I get the letters and glance at them just to see the techniques. A lot of people look at letters differently than the way you think they'll look at them. So, I'm going through this thing quickly and as I read the whole thing, he was trying to offer two things with the letter. He had an offer to call his office to discuss something with him about this product and he also was trying to get you to be in the business opportunity of selling this product that he was talking about in the letter. Now, I couldn't figure out what he was doing. I couldn't figure out why I should be calling him and I couldn't figure out what he was really offering. He mixed two things into this piece. He mixed the business opportunity stuff which was part of it and then he mixed in the "using it for yourself or your family" type of stuff, but there was no direct offer of the product in the pitch. There was no explanation of the business opportunity in any way, and then you were just
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supposed to call him. In my opinion, this piece will fail; most likely there's a 99% chance this piece will fail. He tried to get the piece to do more than it should be expected to do. Now let me give you another example which is lead generation. I'm sure most of you have seen examples of lead generation we do or others do for different companies where they simply get you to call for a free report, sign up for an ezine, or give your email address to get a free ebook, that type of stuff. It's designed to do just one thing. When we do lead generation, we're not trying to do anything else except get the person to leave at bare minimum their email address, maybe their name also or pick up the phone and call and leave a message on a recorded message line. We don't mix up anything else with that. When you get our email offer or are redirected to our salesletter page or get a sales letter in the mail, we offer one direct offer and if we have other offers or subsequent sales or other things, we don't mix that in the sales letter. I'm not interested at that point in getting them to think about other things, I'm only interested in making that first sale. So, whatever you do, don't do like a lot of people trying to lead generate and sell in the same piece. Like this example where this guy sent this letter to me that wasn't lead generated where it was so mixed up as far as what he was talking about that I didn't know what he was talking about. Now I'm reading these things from a different perspective because I'm reading them from a scientific, analytical point of view of what other people are doing. A typical prospect isn't going to take that kind of time. If they can't figure out what's going on, it's over. He got me to read it because of my professional interest in it. I'm sure 99% of the people getting his letter aren't even getting a quarter of the way through it before it's gone. If you don't get that succinct focus on what you're trying to do with that particular effort, you're going to have a lot of trouble. Paul Hartunian at http://prprofits.com the great marketer and info product producer on getting FREE Publicity always talks about public relations and when most people use press releases, they try and mix several attempts into one thing and he can show you why that doesn't work there either.
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So, whatever you do, don't do like a lot of people trying to lead generate and sell in the same piece. Like this example where this guy sent this letter to me that wasn't lead generated where it was so mixed up as far as what he was talking about that I didn't know what he was talking about. Now I'm reading these things from a different perspective because I'm reading them from a scientific, analytical point of view of what other people are doing. Lead Generation Example (connect to the Internet and click here to see the example)
Here's a guy who knows what he's doing, and is one of the best copywriters ever to have put a hand on a keyboard! Let's look at what Dan's done here on this piece. First of all, he's got a killer headline, and goes IMMEDIATELY into curiosity provoking and "meaty" points that come out with all guns blazing! Dan doesn't hold back on what benefits you might realize if you do whatever he's going to teach you! You know right from the start what's what.and why you should keep reading! This is very, very important technique, and a BIG MISTAKE that new people, and amateurs make. They hold back on revealing BIG benefits, saving them for later, for some unknown reason. It's something I see all the time. As Dan, the master, does here.always come out with all your guns blazing! Next, you'll notice that Dan is using a "lead generation" model here. What do I mean by that? Well, you see that Dan isn't trying to make a sale here on this first contact with a prospect. For whatever reason, Dan's found out that with his offer, he's better off getting people "hooked" and interested enough to want more free information.instead of trying to make a sale on the spot. He will follow up with all the leads numerous times, as you see he's telling you he's going to do in the lead generation copy. It is often better to get leads that you generate on your own, as opposed to buying a mailing list and trying to make sales right off the first contact. If you think your offer might be more successful by being less pushy, and trying to generate your own mailing list of leads.this piece is a must study for you! Let's go to the next page to find out what area can cause you to go broke if you don't get this one...
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KC Secret #9: The offer must be what they want, not what they need. This is another area where people have a lot of trouble and I can't stress to you enough that if you try to write copy to people's needs, you will most likely end up broke. You can't sell things in general to people based on need. It has to be on what they want. There are some basic staples in life like people who own razor blade companies probably can continue to sell razor blades without a lot of good direct response copy because most men and women have some shaving needs and there are only 5 billion people on the planet and most of them shave something or other, so you don't necessary have to be a good copy writer to sell razor blades. If you are selling something a little different or that's not a basic need of human life, which I don't imagine most of you reading this book are selling food or other basic needs, then you better start thinking about what they want and not what they need. I can't tell you how many things that I have had that have failed because I thought people needed it or how many samples of things we see all the time where the writer thinks everybody needs this or that. We hear this all the time... "Everybody needs this. Why isn't this working?" Well, the reason it isn't working is because nobody needs much of anything except some basic staples of life. Actually, all we need really is some molecules of oxygen and certain proteins and things to keep your blood going. Beyond that, everything else is really a want. So change your thinking to want and get rid of the word "need". Fill a need and that sort of thing is a terrible way to think about things. Fill a want and you'll be okay, but fill a need is always going to be trouble for you and your copy. When we go over the examples; you'll see that we are always trying to focus on what people want. One question we get is "Is a need more logical and is a want more emotional?" Usually yes. Because, for example, I drive a Land Cruiser and I really don't need a Land Cruiser. I could be driving a different vehicle that could get me where I need to go. I wanted it because the winters in Chicago can be bad and I wanted a four-
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wheel drive, but I didn't necessarily need to have that particular vehicle. You didn't necessarily have to buy this book. You wanted to buy it. I bet all of you could have lived and survived physically speaking without buying this book, but you wanted to buy it. "Everything that's happened has happened... because of people wanting to do things..." So again, wants are basically driving every emotion, all progress man has made, good or bad progress, everything that's happened has happened because of people wanting to do things. People didn't need to expand society or take over other geographic areas or civilizations. They wanted to. So everything that happens is because people want to do things and there's a huge difference between needing and wanting. On the next page I'll show you the "Secret" behind how people buy...
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KC Secret #10: Prospects have to justify their decision to buy after making the purchase from an emotional basis. Now this is very similar to what happened in the OJ thing. Do you remember seeing the jurors on TV? One juror said she first voted guilty, and then she was convinced by the others to go for an acquittal. One juror said she knew he was innocent from the beginning and the whole court case was a wasted exercise. Another one said that the verdict was clear because the prosecution didn't bring up anything that would have taken them to a reasonable conclusion that he did it. Then they began rationalizing, every juror began logically rationalizing their emotional decision they made. They are rationally explaining to themselves and to others the justification of what they did from an emotional basis. Because... People will always make a decision based on emotion and then justify it logically. Now I'll hear this a lot, "That might be true in whatever, but in my industry that's not true because I sell things to computer engineers or whatever and those people won't buy things. They are analytical and they're going to buy things based on specs and statistical data and that sort of thing." That's not true. A lot of pharmaceutical companies sell directly to physicians. This doesn't happen as much these days, but I used to know a couple of women that were pharmaceutical salespeople and in the old days they would (and I'm not saying this because I agree with this, I'm just telling you what they did) usually hire very attractive women to go out to see doctors when the doctors were mostly men to sell these pharmaceutical supplies and medicines. Now is it right or wrong? That's not the issue. What I'm talking about is that the doctors would prescribe these medicines because they had this very attractive woman coming in every month to say hello and dropping off samples. Again, right or wrong isn't the issue. The issue is that these doctors who were supposed to be analytical scientists are recommending a certain drug to all their patients because Leslie's really cute. Now we can all disagree with that all we want, but that is the reality of how those things were done.
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Now these days, you don't see that as much in this much better "politically correct" society that we live in. But the reality is that's what happened. Now the doctor would say, "Well, this is really a good medicine" and then rationalize it to themselves in their head. The real reason they did it was they wanted to see Leslie every month in the office, an emotional decision. With doctors, the big companies would give them trips and things, they'd fly them down to the Turks and Curacaos Islands for a weekend, that sort of thing. Does that have anything to do with the quality of the medicine? Probably not, but they'll recommend and prescribe the medicine because they just got back from Aruba. These are emotional decisions that end up being justified logically and that is how everybody makes decisions. So if you start out appealing to their logic upfront, you're going to miss the real reasons and hot buttons that cause them to make their initial decision. Now let's look at a tried and true formula for putting all this together...
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KC Secret #11: You must get their attention, interest, desire and action. This is the formula AIDA. I'm sure you've heard of it. This formula was first arrived at in 1906 by a professor of psychology when he was analyzing advertising. He wrote a book in 1906 called "How To Make Advertising Work" or something like that and he was the first one to come up with these four articulated steps of attention, interest, desire and action. We're going to talk more about them in a later Chapter. But at this stage, it is an unwavering rule. Number one you've got to get their attention. If you don't get their attention, you have no chance of making anything work. You must get their attention. This is something that people miss when they're marketing or copywriting, we'll talk about headlines later also, because this is what they do, get attention. Once you've got their attention... Number two you've got to grab and hold their interest instantaneously. In everything you do, you have to realize that if you bore them for one sentence, you have the chance of them mouse-clicking away. Or throwing your piece out, or just tuning out all together. You've got to hold their interest. Number three that interest has to lead to a desire. You have to move them through the interested in what you are
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talking about phase of your copy into the desire to have whatever it is you're offering phase. That desire has to be triggered emotionally and that's where the emotional trigger really has to kick in because if you don't, you're not going to get them to do the last thing, which is the part we like... Number four the action part. We all like that action part and that's the part where they either click and fill out your order form, send the check in or call you up or whatever it is you're trying to get them to do, or if it's lead generation, to opt-in to your ezine or request the free information. We'll talk about a mentor and good friend of mine Dan Kennedy's version of that formula which is a simpler way to think about it, but it ends up being exactly the same. By the way, if you don't know who Dan Kennedy is and you're trying to improve in business, you're losing out big time. If you do know who Dan is and don't have everything he offers...why not? Anyway, you can read about some of Dan's stuff by clicking here. The formula will never, ever fail you. Any copy you write will never fail you if you're lost and you don't know where you're going with your copy, come right back to AIDA and then you'll see if you're lost maybe because you varied from this formula. If you're off just a little with the Secret on the next page you might as well forget it...
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KC Secret #12: There must be a complete message to market match made through the empathy of the target's mindset, wants and desires
What I mean by the above Secret is that if you're off just a little on the message that you're communicating, just a little off, you might as well be off by a million miles because it doesn't matter. You have to be exactly on the psychology of your prospect. One of the fascinating things about writing copy to me is and I'm sure some of you get the same kick out of it (and if you don't, you will), when you write something and then people see it or read it or hear it and they act upon it, I still get a kick out of it. I like the money part of it too, don't get me wrong, but I'm sure you will agree knowing that you were able to think through your prospects so completely and so deeply that you are exactly in tune with that prospect. They say in courtrooms now "if it don't fit, you must acquit." I'm saying in copywriting "If it don't fit, they ain't going to buy nothing." I know that doesn't rhyme, but that's basically what we're talking about. I don't mean that you have to be sort of close to your prospect's mindset. You've got to be IN your prospect's mindset. Writing copy is all psychology. It's all human behavior. It has nothing to do with what you're selling. It has nothing to do with anything like that. A good copywriter could write copy about any topic or any subject. I take an occasional consulting project and when I do if I'm not entirely familiar with the target market, I have a very simple set of questions I ask the person I'm working with to make sure I understand.
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"Tell me about your prospect. Identify your prospect." And we'll talk about that in a minute too, but I want to see this person. I want to see Elizabeth sitting in front of me, or John, and I want to see them as a person and I want to understand everything they think about and feel completely. If you don't get that market to message match, you're not going to get them to do what you want at least in big enough numbers to make things work. So does that make sense? This whole thing is psychology and human behavior. If you want to become the best copywriter in the world, read and study things that are only involved with how people think, psychology and human behavior and ignore other things that are business related and you'll be a very, very wealthy business person. If you look at anything that's an area you really need to focus in on it's this human behavior and psychology of your prospect's mindset. The word I like to use is empathy and that's a quality that most people don't get in their marketing or whatever they're doing. Empathy is defined basically as the understanding or a sympathy with your prospect or your target or your customer. Most people don't really get the empathy across that they need to make the prospect feel so deeply connected to the copy. You can't explain empathy in your marketing. You can't say I empathize with you and get them to like this and believe that and move into your mental state. You have to demonstrate empathy through your copy. It has to seem immediately to them as if this person, whoever wrote this, whoever this is, is writing directly to me. This person knows me and understands me and what I'm all about.
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Every person reading this right now is a little bit different and all of you might be from all different walks of life and all different parts of the country, yet you're all reading this because you have a similar mindset of either wanting to be or in the business of writing better copy in one way or another. So when we write to you, we know exactly what we're doing. If I was writing to another target market that I didn't understand, I think I'm a pretty good copywriter, I would not be able to succeed as well without studying the prospect's mindset and creating empathy. So this is a very, very important point.
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KC Secret #13: You Must Tell The Whole Story This is an area where I had a question asked already the other day about whether this person's copy was too long? We hear this over and over. There is no such thing as copy that is too long. You must tell the whole story. If you tell 97% of the story, you're not going to succeed, you have to tell everything. Everything has to be explained. Still to this date, although it's not working like it used to, but at one point the best letter I had was a 66-page letter. It had the highest response rate of orders, we had close to a 15-1/2% order ratio for a period of time on a $500 to $700 product with a 66 page sales letter. Nobody is going to tell me that there is such a thing as copy that is too long. I just read yesterday that one of the big publishing companies that sends out all those magalogs, and you probably know who they are, they have financial newsletters. They have been testing a 128-page paperback book sales letter and it's beating the magalog enough that they are rolling out 600,000 of them on this one particular newsletter. They tested 25,000 and the 128-page book beat the 20-page magalog. You guys have all seen those magalogs, they're like fake magazines that people used to think were real magazines, but now everybody knows they're not anymore. I wasn't surprised to read that. A 30-minute spot will usually do better than a 1-minute spot on TV. So keep that in mind. You have to tell the whole story.
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Now sometimes there are reasons that you need to reduce the copy. When our long letter stopped working as well as it was, in the particular case we're talking about, there was a change in the market that was an outside influence that had nothing to do with what we were doing, but it affected the market. So I had to change the letter to reflect the new reality of that marketplace and I didn't have as much to say about the new reality as I did about the old reality. I don't make things longer or shorter just to make them longer or shorter. I just try to get it as complete as I can. A lot of things I was saying in the old letter weren't relevant anymore because things had changed to the point where the relevance was gone in a lot of the copy. It didn't make sense anymore. So don't write long copy just to write long copy, simply tell the whole story. On the next page is the one Secret that sounds stupid and seems self-explanatory but sometimes we need reminded of it...
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KC Secret #14: You Must Be Believable and You Must Tell The Truth I know this sounds a little stupid, but you have to tell the truth. Without going into too much detail, I think it's pretty selfexplanatory. But sometimes I think I need to remind people of that. Believability and the truth are not necessarily the same. You could tell the truth and be unbelievable. Or you could be believable and not be telling the truth. So, to sum up that point, you must be believable. We'll have people tell us they talked to a prospect yesterday and they said "this sounds too good to be true." We hear this quite often. Now, we're telling the truth, but it's a big clue to me that maybe the copy needs changed because they're thinking it's too good to be true. It's not believable, and if you're not believable, you won't have any success. Basically if you're not believable and you're telling the truth that means your copy has to be changed. You don't change your truth, you just change the copy which we'll talk about in a few minutes, you address that in your objections in the letter saying something like "Now a lot of you may think this is too good to be true, now let's explain why I understand why you would think that, but let's talk about why it is reality. Take a look at our testimonials that you'll see enclosed in the package." Or whatever it is and you can address that. Do you understand the difference between truth and believability because they really are two separate issues completely? On the next page I'll describe the hardest thing you have to overcome with your copy...
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KC Secret #15: You Must Overcome Inertia and Sloth This is a really hard one. Your prospects are sitting there not interested in what you have to say usually until you got their attention. And then even if you go through this whole exercise of getting their attention and then getting them interested and getting them desirous of whatever it is you have, you have to get them to take action.
inertia: noun: a property of matter by which it remains at rest or in uniform motion in the same straight line unless acted upon by some external force
Inertia is the scientific principle that a body at rest, a physical object at rest tends to remain at rest and an object in motion tends to remain in motion unless acted upon by some external force. It says "unless acted upon by some external force." You are the external force. So if this slothful, inertia filled person is sitting there on their couch and they get their mail and all of a sudden there's your letter in there that they asked for or they didn't ask for, you've got a lot of things you have to overcome. You have to get them to not throw out the envelope, which we'll get into a little bit later, they have to open the envelope, they have to actually unfold your letter if it's folded up, then they have to read it, they have to physically turn the page.
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This is tough stuff. A lot of people ask me "Why do you write 'go to the next page' at the end of the page or website?" I learned that from the great copywriter Gary Halbert years ago who only changed that and increased response. I do it because it works and because people need to be told to go to the next page. Now I had one lady tell me I insulted her intelligence. She called because she was so irritated that we had "go to next page" and to tell me how irritated we made her. I said "Well, I'm sorry. A lot of people don't know what to do at the end of the page, so we tell them what to do." Obviously she wasn't a good prospect for my product, but that is not something that you take lightly. You've got to overcome inertia and sloth and most people, I don't care what country you are in either, Australia, Canada, it doesn't matter where you go, people don't do anything unless some outside influence or external force moves them to do something. And you are it, the outside influence, that external force. Always keep in mind, is this going to get somebody to get off the couch. Here's what I taught the second graders by the way...
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KC Secret #16: Clarity Is More Important Than Vocabulary Now this is something I was teaching the kids that I told you about. We were talking about "I had three dogs. They died." And then he used the name "Lilly" or whatever, and I said "Well, who's Lilly?" He said, "That's my new dog." Then I said, "But in your story (copy) you need to say that my new dog is Lilly before you start talking about Lilly." And he said, "Everybody would know Lilly's my new dog." "No, everybody wouldn't know Lilly is your new dog because she was just introduced in your story without having any context." So even at the 8-year-old level, we have to explain this, and we have to explain this to people who are 58 and all ages. You must be precise and clear. You can't assume anybody knows anything. When I say clarity is more important than vocabulary, I'm going to give you an example. I wrote a letter to a guy about something and I said "In lieu of...." which probably most of you are familiar with the phrase "In lieu of" which also means "instead of" and I wrote the words and it didn't even phase me because I had used it so many times. I got a call from the person and the deal we were working on almost got killed, and then I explained what I meant when I was saying in lieu of, I explained what the in lieu of was and what I was proposing. Well he thought I was asking for both things in our deal because he didn't know what "in lieu of" meant. He was very upset when he called me because verbally we had discussed that I was not going to ask for the one thing and I was going to ask for the other thing and in my confirming memo I was confirming that "in lieu of this, I'm going to be asking for that". Well, that one word almost cost a deal. Fortunately, he called me up. He didn't have to call me up, he could have killed the deal.
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So, whenever you think you're being clear and precise, remember that you might not be so clear and precise. Take a look at what you're writing from a clarity standpoint, does everybody understand what this means and everybody meaning that you go down to maybe an 8 or 9-year-old level. If my sons can understand things, in fact here's a quick example. We were testing a headline for something that we were doing that was new. I wrote a few headlines and I showed them to my wife so that we could figure out which headlines to test, and my 11 year old saw the headlines laying out on the counter. Most of the time, I lay out all the headlines all over the place and we try to pick the right headlines to begin with. My 11 year old looked at a bunch of the headlines and said "These suck." He said, "This one's good right here." I asked why they sucked and he said, "I don't know what they mean. This one I understood exactly what it meant." I said, "Good, that's the one we'll start with." So don't take it for granted that you're being clear. I will never use "in lieu of" again in anything I ever do. I promise you that. Which ties into the next thing Killer Copy Secret...
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KC Secret #17: Writing Down Will Catch The Most Sales Lower yourself, lower yourself, lower yourself. Get down there. Get down to that 8th grade or less level of communication. If any of you watch an evening news show at 10:00 or 11:00, whenever your local news is, and the way they communicate, my little kids can understand the evening news, usually. Anything that is successful, and we'll show examples in a minute, you have to write down. That means you use very simple words. George Rowell was a guy who was into patent medicine, in the late 1800's and early 1900's, advertising really got its start from a lot of charlatans. There are no particular ads for this item, I'm just going to read this to you. Patent medicine, which some of you may or may not know, is herbal things, it was mostly alcohol with sugar water or whatever, but the advertising was pretty good. This guy in 1865 said... "You must write your advertisements to catch damn fools, not college professors. Then you'll catch as many college professors as you will with any other sort." Do you understand what he was saying over 100 years ago? That if you write your advertisements down and be clearly communicating, it will catch as many college professors as you will with any other sort. In other words, the college professor analytical type will get interested in lowbrow copy, but if you write highbrow copy you won't get anybody. This was back in 1865 and I just bring this up because I want to tell you there's nothing I'm telling you here that's new. And any other website, book or supposed "guru" that tries to tell you they came up with this or that is probably full of it. I didn't make any of this stuff up. I'm just repeating what I
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learned and hopefully you will be able to repeat it for yourselves. Believe me, I'm not that smart. And finally... KC Secret #18: Everyone is the same, we're all humans I still hear this from everybody, "you don't understand, my market is different." Now there could be a geographic difference of why the market's different, there could be a demographic difference. I have a company that I'm involved with in Australia where we're doing direct marketing and the techniques that we use in Australia selling information products are exactly like the copy we use here. They use different words. They spell things differently, but the formulas are the same. In Canada we're just starting something and we just signed a deal last week that we're going to be testing a new thing in England. People are people, even my wife will tell me, she's got a new project she's working on and she tells me, "You don't understand. The women are different. They won't respond to..." And of course, I never argue with my wife. I'm just going to let her learn on her own. Everybody's exactly the same. Exactly. Now within a wide range of parameters, specific details of your target audience will change, but not human behavior. Human behavior never changes. Keep reading to find the 4 questions you must have a damn good answer to...
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Chapter 6: Do You Have A Damn Good Answer To These Four Questions? If Not, You Won't Sell Anything To Anyone! This came from a guy named Maxwell Sackheim who was the fellow who invented the Book of the Month Club. You'll see a couple of his ads later. This guy was in direct marketing for 75 years. He passed away in the ‘80's. But he was in direct marketing for 75 years and he invented a lot of things that we all take as standard back before any of us were around. These are the questions that he always asked and I suggest that you take these four questions and put them up right in front of your desk or computer.
Question #1 Why Should Your Target Prospects Read or Listen to You? Can you answer that question? Why should your targeted prospects read or listen to you? That's a good question, because you think you have something that is of interest to them? I don't think so. Think about this very carefully.
Question #2 Why should your target prospects believe what you have to say? Now these days, and remember, he wrote these four rules back 50 years ago, can you think of a more skeptical society, there's no way that it can be more skeptical. This isn't just for the United States, it's the same in Australia. The guy in England I'm talking to says it's just as bad there. Everywhere, everybody is skeptical of everything, with good reason, because just
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about everything we've been taught is wrong, and everything we believed in has been proven to be untrustworthy and so forth. Why should anybody believe anything you have to say? Question #3 Why should your target or prospects do anything about what you are offering? Because you need the money? That's not usually a good reason. In financial businesses, people will make financial transactions because they have to make a car payment, but they have people's money they can move around. You guys don't have that luxury. If you want to get something, you should think why should they do anything about it. Question #4 Last, but not least... Why should they act now? One of the things about direct response is we set it up so have to respond and the sooner the better. We're still getting responses a year after people ask for information, that's fine, but if we had to wait a year for all the responses, we wouldn't be doing too good. So, what's going to get them off their butts? Ask yourself these questions. If you can't answer these questions, then the piece isn't ready to go yet.
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We often get the question "I put in an expiration date and as people are starting to recognize that the expiration date doesn't really mean a whole lot because you're going to send me another piece of mail later anyway or if I come back to your site, there'll be a new expiration date. Do you see the trend that we are losing that urgency to buy based on the expiration date?" All I can tell you is we've been doing it for years and since we started using the expiration dates the results have picked up. When we do subsequent contacts via email or regular mail we don't refer to the expiration date once it's passed, but in general we get a lot of people that call up and say "Today's October 6th and my deadline is today, I want to get this going because I don't want to miss out on the free gifts." You'd be amazed at how it pushes people up and it's giving them a reason to act. You can test your expiration dates, you can test it without the expiration dates and see what happens. Our tests without expiration dates don't work as good as the ones with expiration dates. So that's all I can tell you. Here's A Great Example of a Site That Answers All The 4 Questions (connect to the Internet and click here to see the example)
This excellent piece by a real pro Corey Rudl, uses one of the oldest, and most trusty techniques there is in writing killer copy, especially if your product or pitch relates to making money. Do you know what he's done? OK, I'll tell you. First of all, he's using the "discounted dollars" approach right off the bat in his headline. He makes a powerful, hard to ignore announcement.
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He tells you that you can make over $10 for every dollar you spend, which is a strong proposition, and by itself will get lots of prospects to stop and pay attention, which is the only point of a headline, right? But notice what else he does. He doesn't make the BIG mistake most amateurs would make. He doesn't assume you know that a 10 to 1 return is high or even good. No, Corey knows that you can never assume your prospect "gets" anything, or assume they understand what something means! See, Corey, very wisely, goes on to tell you that this 10 to 1 deal is the highest return on your marketing dollar. But Corey doesn't stop there. Nope. He still needs to make you even more interested and curious now that you know you can make a 10 to 1 return, and that it's a high margin. He now tells you that this amazing result has been made possible by the fall of the idiot dot.com companies that went bust. Why does Corey do this? Why add this fact to his headline? Well, it's very simple. His prospect knows that the dot.com morons went belly up, but what he knows the prospects don't likely know is just how, or why, this seemingly unrelated piece of news allows the results he's touting to become possible. Let me ask you. Do you know why the fall of the dot.com mental midgets allows YOU to make an obscenely high profit margin on your own marketing dollars? If you don't know why, which is highly probable, you'll want to know, won't you? And if you get "hooked" by the headline, and if you do only ONE thing after that..Corey's done the hardest job there is in marketing.getting someone to STOP DEAD and keep reading! The job is to get them to STOP whatever they were doing, and read the next sentence! That's it. All that headline is being asked to do is get you to STOP and read the very next sentence!
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And if you look at his next sentence, you'll see that it's another killer headline! Corey's not satisfied with just one killer headline! He wants you to get sucked in even more! Now he teases you with the possibility of a one man outfit doing over 5 million drachmas a year! If you got "hooked" by the first headline, and you read this next one, you should be properly "hooked" and will do the only job this second headline was trying to do.to get you to read his first sentence of his copy! And once you do that..if he can write any kind of decent copy, you're well on your way to taking money out of your pocket and making it Corey's money! Another key thing Corey does on this piece is PROVE that what he's saying, which is almost too good to be true sounding, by SHOWING you his checks and pictures of him being interviewed by Maury Povich and so on. Corey's very quickly dispelling your natural skepticism about how a "kid" like him can make so much dough with a one man operation. See, Corey knows you don't believe shit, especially about him making all this money. Since he knows you don't believe shit, he preempts your bullshit detector by immediately proving he's not lying, and proving it in an overwhelmingly convincing way! He SHOWS you the proof, because seeing is believing, right? What he's doing is handling the hidden objection you have in your brain, BEFORE you stop reading because of it. He's not making the amateur's mistake of NOT bringing up objections immediately, because of being afraid to point out a potential flaw. Amateurs wrongly assume if they don't point out problems with your message or product, that the prospect won't think of it him or herself. This is as naïve as the government assuming if they don't teach kids sex education, they won't think of sex themselves. (Hence, we have the HIGHEST teenage pregnancy rate in the free world, but that's another story for another time.)
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See, in a live sales presentation, you might hear the prospect voice the objection and be able to handle it. But since this isn't a live sales presentation, Corey's wisely brought it (the skepticism) right out in the open and annihilated it efficiently. (The only thing he might have done that could have made this a little stronger is to have said something like, "I know you don't believe anything I'm saying and think I'm full of shit. Well, let me tell you why...") Now let's step back in time...
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Chapter 7: The Hidden, Buried Secrets Of Killer Advertising Copy From The Old Time Advertising Masters! "Circa 1880's" and one of the most profound statements ever. A guy named Thomas J. Barrett of Pears Soap made what I think is probably the most profound statement about business there is...it's a Killer Copy Secret... KC Secret #19: Any fool can make soap, it takes a clever man to sell it Now today, we have to say a clever person, but I'm using his direct quote. I want you to really think about this because products are a dime a dozen. Ideas are a dime a dozen. To sell something, it takes cleverness and my definition of cleverness is understanding human psychology. This guy was very, very clever and Pears Soap at the time was the number one leading brand of soap until Ivory took over later on.
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Disclaimer: Many of the ads are old and not the best quality. When we get better versions we'll notify you on the Killer Copy Club page or via email. Most of the important elments are legible though.
Now we're going to start looking at some ads here. Click here to see sample ad This first one is an ad from 1903 and if you look at this here, this lady's name is Susannah Cochroft and her headline is, "Are you too thin? For only 15 minutes a day, practice in your own room upon special exercises I will give you, you can be round, plump, wholesome, rested and attractive." Does anybody think this would be a good appeal today? Would this work pretty good? Nature intended you to be, why should you not? The following are extracts from the weekly reports of my pupils. "Just think Ms. Cochroft, I gained 25 pounds." Now isn't that a great testimonial for today's environment? "Please don't even thank me for interesting my friends in your work. It is happiness to show my appreciation for restored health." Here's a good one,
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"My bust, neck and chest have filled out beautifully, and I carry myself like another woman." "You've done more for me than doctors have done in 20 years. My constipation is relieved. My nerves are so rested and indigestion is all gone." Pretty nice to talk about constipation in your marketing? I bring this up for a lot of reasons. We're going to go through a bunch of ads here by the way. First of all, the headline, in that marketplace at that time, guessing from reading the copy that she understood her market very closely, was that women wanted to be "round, plump, wholesome, rested and attractive." So "Are you too thin?" would be a headline that would fit into that, and if being thin was bad, like today, you would just simply say "Are you too fat?" Of course, you probably couldn't say that. You would say "Are you weight challenged" or something. It's got a headline that says, "Only 15 minutes a day practicing special exercises." The copy you can read through yourself. And at the end "I will cheerfully tell you about my work and if I cannot help your particular case I will tell you. My information and advice are entirely free." And then she wrote a book called Character As Expressed In The Body, Etc. I don't know what that book was about, but it sounds kind of interesting. But again, a couple of reasons I bring this up. Number one, we'll go into why these are good ads, but secondly, and much more importantly, you can see that she's targeting in on her message. She's got testimonials and she got your attention, "Are you too thin?", and she got your interest because in only 15 minutes a day I can make you "round, plump, wholesome, rested and attractive. Nature
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intended you to be, so why should you not?" Then she goes into the desire, the testimonials are building up believability in making you want her thing and that's she's built up thousands of them and why not you? You'll be so much more attractive and so much better satisfied with yourself. Then she tells you to act to contact her and that her information and advice are entirely free. So she's giving you a reason to act. Pretty good advertising for somebody who probably never studied advertising. On the next page is an all time classic ad...
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Click here to see sample ad Do you make these mistakes in English. This ad is one of the most famous ads. This was a Maxwell Sackheim ad. "Sherman Cody's remarkable invention has enabled more than 100,000 people to correct their mistakes in English. Only 15 minutes a day required to improve your speech and writing." It seems like the "15 minutes a day" thing was pretty popular back in the old days. I think this ad was around 1910 or during World War I. I'm not going to go over in detail all of these ads, you can look at all the ads later, but again, "Do you make these mistakes in English?" The headline is very, very catchy. By the way, any of these headlines or all of these headlines we're talking about can be used and modified for your own purposes. For example, if you were marketing to someone who is in the computer field, "Do you make these mistakes with your programming?" Or to somebody who is in exercise, "Do you make these mistakes with your diet or weight training?" One of the key things Maxwell Sackheim talked about was the words "these mistakes". This is very clever use of the headline because if you said "Do you make mistakes in English" it's not the same as "Do you make these mistakes in English?" Does anybody know why that's different? It's because the word "These" makes you go into the copy because you want to know what "These" are. If it just said "do you make mistakes?", it's a yes or no question.
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If you look at the, "Many persons use such expressions as 'leave them lay there' and 'Mary was invited as well as myself’. Still others say 'between you and I'". He's giving you these mistakes right at the beginning of his copy. He's trying to suck you into the copy and we'll talk more about that later. This ad ran for 40+ years before they pulled it. We're also going to talk a little bit about subheads, why most people make mistakes. "What Cody did at Gary" "100% self-correcting device" "Only 15 minutes a day" "Free book on English" We're going to talk a little later about the alternative readership path. If you read just the subheads, it will get you into the mindset or offer even if you didn't read one word of the copy. Remember, I was going to tell you about how people read things, a lot of people scan things, they don't' read them. When you scan, you better have subheads and we'll talk about that more. I just wanted to show you some examples of really good subheads. Now the picture of Sherman Cody may or may not add to the usefulness of the ad. I don't know. I tend to have found in a lot of cases pictures don't help in advertising unless it's about a demonstratable product or there's a specific reason why the picture's there to amplify. But in general, the ads I have had the best luck with do not have any graphics of any kind, pictures included. In this case, I don't know if that helps or not for the copy, but I just wanted to show you this. Now let's move on to the next classic ad...
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Click here to see sample ad "Would you give $1 for 16 dancing lessons if ..." The reason that was done, of course, was if what? I have to read it to find out. "Would you give $1 for 16 dancing lessons if learning to become a popular dancer made you so popular that everyone will be anxious for you to attend their social affairs and learning to dance the Murray way gave you poise, ease, self-confidence to help develop your personality, would you be willing to pay $1 for 16 dancing lessons from America's foremost authority on social dancing?" That's a long sentence, but it's got a message. I don't know if today this message would work. I don't know how many are interested in learning ballroom dancing from Arthur Murray.It's a single column of copy, a picture who I'm guessing is Arthur Murray. They don't have a caption. By the way, if you do use a picture, you have to have a caption or an illustration. The other one at least said Sherwin Cody. Don't assume people know what they're looking at or why it's there. We tested an ad for my course "How To Make $4,000 A Day From Your Kitchen Table Sitting In Your Underwear" with a picture successfully. It was a picture of me sitting at my kitchen table in my underwear and then the caption says "Jeff sitting at his kitchen table in his underwear making $4,000 a day". So we didn't leave it up to the readers' knowledge that they would know what that picture was. We put a caption there explaining what the picture was. And our test results came back, and in some cases it actually lifted the response by having the picture there versus not having the picture there. Let's move on to learn about "The Mysteries of Lovemaking"...
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Click here to see sample ad Now, you don't need big ads to get good response. You see here a smaller third of a page ad. This ad is from the late 1800's. This is out of a book I have, so ignore the text. "The mysteries of love making solved or an easy road to marriage." That's a good headline. This was over 120 years ago when this ad was run. There have been people like the infomercial guy, Gary Smalley, he has basically the same pitch 120 years later and Barbara De Angelis who has had a top infomercial "Making Love Work." The Mysteries of Lovemaking Solved Any similarity to her pitch? Again, you can read the copy if you want. Now there's a picture where it does help the ad probably because that image of this wonderful, blissful couple hugging each other and smiling, that probably adds to the impact of the ad. In this case, I would probably say it did help, although I don't have any idea if they tested it without pictures. "The Secrets of Lovemaking." By the way, in this time frame, lovemaking didn't mean what it means today. It actually meant being in love with somebody and I'll show you some stuff later that is a little different. It's a different meaning, but it still has the same overall affect. Now "The Mystery of Lovemaking Solved" or "An Easy Road To Marriage" were 120 years ago. In the next classic ad you'll fin out how they "They make pale folks pink and thin folks plump..."
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Click here to see sample ad A lot of why I'm showing you this ad is because I really want you to understand that nothing I'm talking to you about in this book is anything new or different, and I want to demonstrate the unwavering nature of human beings. "Get Plump Loring's Fat-Ten-U and Corpula Foods Make The Thin Plump and Comely and impart Vim to the debilitated They Cool the Blood and Prevent Unpleasant Perspiration." Is that a headline or what? This ad was also from the late 1800's. Now this picture looks like she got beat up. This is not a great picture. I'm not sure what they are trying to do with that picture, maybe that's how people wanted to look in those days, I don't know. But if you look through here, "These foods curb nerve and brain exhaustion, which you know as general debility or nervous prostration." Does anybody even know what prostration is? "They make pale folks pink and thin folks plump and weak folks well and despairing folks happy." I won't go over all of it but you should read the rest of it. So Susan Powter and Richard Simmons wouldn't do good in the late 1800's. But again, look at this so you can see what the appeals are that work.
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Click here to see sample ad Now here's one that's an exact opposite from just a slight time after. In fact, it's the same company. "Reduce 33 pounds by Dr. Edison's Obesity Remedies. Dr. Edison's Obesity Pills, Food Salt, Reducing Compound and Band Will Make You Thin Before the Season Advances. They Improve the Health and Form." "Relief for the fat." That's a subhead under this rather corpulate looking person. Then a picture of the band with a caption to the left of it: "Dr. Edison's obesity and supporting band should be used by fleshy men and women: his supporting band by all women in a weak condition." Then the picture has a numerical thing on the side illustrating this band. Kind of what you might see in a patent application. This company is in Chicago, near me, I wonder if they are still in business, maybe I'll look them up. Notice at the bottom... Cut this out and send for our new 24-column paper, "How To Cure Obesity." Okay, lead generation from 1890. People understood. Even then. Now let's move on to the next classic ad...
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Click here to see sample ad Here's a good one. I think this is a John Caple's ad. "Here's an extra $50, Grace I'm making real money now." "Yes I've been keeping it a secret until payday came. I've been promoted with an increase of $50 a month. And the first extra money is yours. Just a little reward for urging me to study at home. The boss says my spare time training has made me a valuable man to the firm and there is more money coming soon. We're starting up easy street, Grace, thanks to you and I.C.S.!" ICS is still in business, it's International Correspondence Schools. They've been around way over 100 years. This ad is probably from around the World War I era, but again, this picture does kind of amplify the fact that he's handing her some cash. Today you might have to say "Here's an extra $5,000 Grace, I'm making real money now." But it still has the same basic concept. That was a lead generation ad. On the next page is one of the biggest successes ever...
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Click here to see sample ad Here's another great one with a illustration and caption at the top. "Can he really play!" a girl whispered. "Heavens no!" Arthur exclaimed. He never played a note in his life." You see this guy about to sit down to a piano and you see these people laughing at him with her whispering in his ear. That's an illustration that probably does very well to help the headline which is... "They Laughed When I Sat Down At The Piano But When I Started To Play" One of the best ads I ever ran was... "They laughed when I ran that little $40 ad, but when I got 81 leads..." Then it goes into a story about this guy who was tired of advertising that didn't work and he used the system that we teach and got 81 leads the first time, which was a true story one of our customers relayed. But again, there is a very important thing going on here with this ad, look at the subheads, if you just read these... • "Then I started to play" • "How I learned to play without a teacher" • "Play any instrument" • "Send for our free booklet and demonstration lesson"
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You can follow that path on the subheads. Also, I want to point out that this is written in the story form. Most people do not use stories in advertising. In the old days, they did a lot. I still use stories very, very frequently in advertising as opposed to an explanation ad. I have some ads that are pure stories. We have one headline that we used quite successfully. It was called... "The diary of a frustrated agent." That headline came from a 1903 headline that was "The diary of a lonely woman" and it had a story about this woman. I took the headline and changed it to what I was selling and the whole thing is a diary of this agent's life and it leads up to them asking for the free information. Stories are very, very important in copy. This was John Caple's biggest success by the way. On the next page is a "Classic 1947 Model..."
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Click here to see sample ad This is an ad from around 1947... "To People who want to write but can't get started. Do you have that constant urge to write, but the fear that a beginner hasn't a chance? Then listen to what the former editor of Liberty said on this subject: There's room for more newcomers in the field than ever before. And of course, the subheads... • Sells Four Articles at Beginning of Course • Writing Aptitude Test - Free! • Mail the coupon now. • Veteran's course approved for veteran's training." You'll notice it has all the right elements, attention, interest, desire, action and you'll notice in most of the older ads most of them had coupons. Now this was before 800 numbers or the Internet. These days, some people test coupons versus no coupons and find that there isn't much of a difference. With 800 numbers, you can sometimes eliminate the coupon. Then of course you can drive them to your website. Again, a time-tested method you should study. The reason I'm giving you all of these is I want you to study them very closely.
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Click here to see sample ad "10,000 Helps To Be Your Own Boss In This Big Book. And then there's a picture of the book and caption that says... 10,000 Ideas Secrets Formulas If It's Results You Want - Get Action Quickly With These Practical Ideas." The copy is kind of small, you probably can't read it but it says... "Fortunes made from a single idea." And this was a direct sale for a $3.50 book from Adam Brown Company in Massachusetts. "Included PITCHMAN'S GUIDE - Easily made big profit items that go fast with crowds at fairs, carnivals, $25.00 net daily, not exceptional." Do you think the biz-op market has changed much? In fact if you want to find out... "How you can build a mighty body" or "Big money now in liquid marble"
Check out the next page...
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Click here to see sample ads "How you can build a mighty body" "Big money now in liquid marble" Does anybody want to get into the liquid marble biz-op? • • • • • • • • •
Stammer? Start home mail order business Books found free" Atomic power in war and peace Secrets of locksmithing Learn at home how to mount birds (interesting?) Patent and trademarks Get into good paying auto body and fender work Learn profitable profession in 90 days at home
We're showing you these because this is from the ‘40's and just look at all the headlines. I did this so you have an entire reference guide here of body copy and headlines to use forever. This is what I do. I study these, I buy books, click to see some from my personal library. I have people look for books for me, I have a mountain of old marketing and advertising stuff and I selected different things I thought were the best ones for you because if you just copy these ideas in your own stuff, you'll probably have a great deal of success. Like this example here alone is more valuable to me than a four year college education.
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Click here to see sample ad "Self-mastery, the key to life's riches" Here they've got an illustration I think helps explain what the conscious mind does what the subconscious mind does. "If you are one of the many who suffer from nervousness, selfconsciousness, fear, worry, emotional conflicts, etc. - here is a vital message for you." Anybody hear of Tony Robbins? This is somewhere in the 1940's. "How to acquire vigorous hair and a healthy scalp..quickly" Shades of spray paint sold by Popeil. "Fear no man! Become a jujitsu expert" The self-mastery, the key to life's riches, I mostly wanted to show you the subhead's... • The cause of nervousness and mental conflicts • Remarkable new course points the way to happiness and success. Interesting isn't it? Think about most of the advertising you see today. This older stuff, this is how advertising was in general. What do you see today? People have lost it.
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Click here to see sample ad 1 Click here to see sample ad 2 Here's two more pages, "mail order, piano tuning, spray painting, criminology, carpentry lessons, how to make money writing, the human body, handyman's encyclopedia, complete slide rule manual." Some of you may be a little younger than me. I still remember using a slide rule. When I was in college, everybody had slide rules hanging from their belt. Well, not everybody, the engineers. These are more samples to study for headlines. Keep reading to find out about...
1944's Sex Discoveries...
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Click here to see sample ad "Don't be Old fashioned 1944's SEX Discoveries now Revealed! The sexual study of the male and female Human body in Color pictures With subheads... • This book will Open your eyes • Partial contents of free book! I hope you aren't offended, but I put it in for a specific reason. I wanted to show you there is nothing new under the sun and all this was just as commonplace in 1944 and 1924, 1904 as it is now. Have you read "The First $100 million" by E. Julius Haldeman? You should. Not just because we recommend it, but the reason is he had a business that just sold books by titles. He had ads that would have 30, 40, 50, 100 titles of books and it was five books for a $1. The only way you could choose the books was by the title. He did a scientific study and kept track of everything. The difference between one word in a title versus another word. A different word in the title would have four times the response sometimes. This book is unbelievable. He tracked the number one selling titles from 1904 to 1920 when he did this. Does anybody want to take a guess what the topic was? Sex. Yes, that's right. Sex was number one in those days. Now I'm not suggesting that you get into the selling of sex business but nothing ever changes. Keep reading to find out why...Betsy Compton says, "I like being with a guy who knows what he's doing"
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Click here to see sample ad I get a real kick out of this one. This was from a magazine from 1962. Betsy Compton says: ‘ I like being with a guy who knows what he's doing' She goes on to explain in this story type ad, and again, I didn't do this to offend anybody, I just wanted you to see a very, very good ad that lead to a conclusion and it let's you must be over 21. "Hurry and get the book today and I know you'll be as enthusiastic about it in your new sex life as I am" Whoever wrote this did pretty good. The illustration is a little dated I guess, but it probably helped attract the reader to the ad. It's kind of an interesting headline. On the next page... See an ad that ran for decades...
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Click here to see sample ad Now we're going to look at a guy named GM Turk. You know his name because right below his picture, it says GM Turk. I don't know how long this ad ran, but it was a long time. The company's called Mail Order Associates in Montvale New Jersey. I think they've been around forever. I don't know for sure, but I know I remember seeing this ad when I was a kid I think. That was a long time ago, unfortunately. All they did was change John Caple's headline... Does this headline look familiar? "They laughed when I said I was going to start my own business." By the way, if you ever don't know what headline to use, just use "They laughed whenever...but when I..." and you pretty much can't lose. I see it all over in magazines and on the Internet. I want you to look at the subheads too. Cash by Mail $100,000 Proof The Secret Start Now Free Book Great ad for scanning. Great for the "alternate readership path." You don't have to read anything else in the ad if you don't want to.
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That's very scientifically done this way. The use of subheads is a critical element in copywriting. This ad has not changed in I don't know how long, 20, 30 years, some ridiculously long period of time. He hasn't changed a syllable. I'm sure GM Turk doesn't even look like this anymore, I don't even know if he's alive. The point is that when something's good and the copy's right, you don't have to change it much. This particular biz-op is very well done and that ad is an excellent ad especially with the subheads. Ok, now I want to ship gears and get back into some other areas. So click next below to go to...The Jealously Guarded, Secret Killer Advertising Formulas That Work Over And Over!
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Chapter 8: The Jealously Guarded, Secret Killer Advertising Formulas That Work Over And Over! Okay, now we're going to walk through these formulas now and kind of in the context of what we've seen already. We're just going to walk through the formulas and we'll come back to the headlines a bit later on. Although old, this one is still time tested and true... KC Secret #20: Always run your copy through the old tried and true AIDA formula
AIDA Attention - Interest - Desire - Action When you saw the ads we just went over, every single one of them was chosen for two reasons 1. To demonstrate the timelessness of the human spirit and, 2. also the fact that they all had attention, interest, they get you desirous and they get you to take action. Attention, "I like being with a guy who knows what he's doing" that gets the attention. "They all laughed when I said I was going to start my own business" gets your attention and then you go through it. Look at the ads, study them, and use them as models. I'm being honest with you, when I start a new project and new ads, I go back through all this material and I sit down and re-read this and look at things. I've got a whole section in my messy office where I keep
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all the headlines and ads. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. You need to change specifics of what you're doing, but there's absolutely no need to change the generalities of all of this. You need to apply the AIDA formula against all of your marketing pieces to help make them better. Here's the nuts and bolts of the formula: A = Attention: You must get their attention. That's why we spent so much time looking at headlines and there's still more. It doesn't matter how good the copy is if you don't get their attention. It has to snare them into stopping and taking a look. You already have a bunch that you can use to model and come up with one. I = Interest: Here's where you start listing benefits or telling them why your "thing" will make their life better. D = Desire: There's many ways to build desire, but one of the best is by making them an irresistible offer. This is why we throw tons of bonuses in to our packages that they get to keep even if they return the product. This is the reason for a great guarantee. A = Action: And of course the part we like, getting them to take action. So many pieces we see actually forget to ASK for the order or whatever action is wanted. You need to tell them exactly what you want them to do and why they must do it NOW. If you've successfully put together the other parts of this formula but forget this one, it was all for nothing. You also want to make it easy for them to take action. If you can set it up on your web order forms, give them a fax option or a phone ordering option too. Give them as many payment options as possible, all major credit cards, check, paypal, whatever. That's it. It's a short formula, but easy and powerful. If you just use this formula, you'll better off than when you started reading this book. On the next page I'll cover Dan Kennedy's Formula...
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The next formula is from Dan Kennedy. I have everything he's created and it's all great. Click here to check out his stuff. KC Secret #21: Dan Kennedy's: State the Problem, Agitate the Problem and Solve the Problem formula Now it's a sub formula of the AIDA formula. If you look at any of these, they do that also. "I like a guy who knows what he's doing" for example is stating the problem. It's implying that you're a guy who doesn't know what you're doing. Then next is agitate the problem and if you read the copy here she talks about the problems guys don't know what they are doing have and then she solves the problem, which is of course, buying her book or whatever the solution is. If you look through the copy, when we look at some of my stuff you'll see it's always following these formulas. They are very simple. In most marketing and advertising, it won't work unless you're solving a problem. We're going to talk about John Caple's rules in a few minutes and you'll see what I mean. You're basically hitting on a human problem and then trying to solve the problem. The agitate is Dan's part and is very important. You don't want to just state the problem, that's not enough. You really have to get them stirred up and that's usually right at the beginning where you really want to agitate them. click here to check out Dan Kennedy's incredible stuff!
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Chapter 9: The Single Most Important Part Of Killer Copy! Mess This Up, And Your Advertising Will Always Fail! In the first 8 chapters, I tried to build a foundation and now we'll go into specifics and a lot of additional things you can use. KC Secret #22: Headlines are more important than anything I said that in big bold headline-type because it's a headline about headlines and headlines are more important than anything. We talked about the fact that headlines must stop your prospect cold. If you don't stop your prospects cold, if you don't whack them in the head, stop them from page turning or web or channel surfing, you will lose them and then they will never see your ad. There are a lot of things to know about headlines. That's why Jeff and I included an entirely separate book about them in your bonsuses. But in general, the headline is the most important part of your website, ad, letter or whatever you are doing. All the statistics people say that a headline is 70% or 80% or whatever, as far as I'm concerned, it's 100% of the ad because if they don't stop because of your headline, the rest of your copy makes zero difference. That's how I look at it. 100% of the effectiveness of whatever you're doing will directly relate to the effectiveness of the headline, at least initially. If your body copy sucks, you'll lose them at that point. If you don't have a good headline you won't get anywhere with them.
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KC Secret #23: The headline is the ad for your ad If you think about it, it is. When any of you read a publication in print, and the same is true for the Internet, TV, radio, although they're not really called headlines in TV or radio, it's just what they happen to be saying on TV or Radio. You might remember "Help I've fallen and can't get up" or other things along those lines on TV. That's basically a headline type thing. The ad for your ad concept is you've got to get somebody to stop and then want to read the ad. So really it's an ad for your ad. Headlines will make or break the success of your copy. I spend probably as much time on a two sentence or one sentence headline when I write something new, as I might spend on a whole ad itself. If I'm doing a full-page ad, in fact, sometimes I spend far greater time on a headline than I do on the body copy. In fact, sometimes I re-use body copy and don't change the body copy at all. I've had or seen 40%, 50% difference in response to ads just from changing the headline and not one thing else. I've seen a jump from 100 leads to 250-300 leads from an ad that just had a different headline. And if your conversion rate is pretty constant, an extra 150 leads might make an extra 15 sales and at $500 bucks a pop, that's nice extra money for adding three words to your headline or something. We had an experience with the "How To Make Money In Your Underwear" headline just to give you another story. One of the airline magazines wouldn't let us run the headline with "How To Make $4,000 A Day Sitting At Home At Your Kitchen Table In Your Underwear." The
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editor of the magazine finally told me that it was "In Your Underwear" that was the problem. So we took out the "In Your Underwear" and the ad bombed. This is a headline and ad that has worked pretty much everywhere we've run it, not always, but pretty much everywhere. We had a major bomb and airline magazines aren't cheap even the way we buy space. So changing just three words in my headline, did it make a difference? Yes, it made a big difference because maybe the "in your underwear" thing is just catchy enough or whatever that it gets people curious because they really have never seen that. I imagine at one time most of you hadn't seen headlines that talk about how to make money sitting at home in your underwear. Although now we see a lot of sitting at home in your underwear and sitting at home in your pajamas and sitting at home in your robe, and we see other variations on the theme at this point. Sitting at home naked, that would be in other types of magazines that we don't really get involved with. But yes, that would be another variation on that theme. We keep track of every headline we use for every ad. They are all coded in every business, and we always have several businesses going, but we keep track of all of that and we have exact tracking of the headline, the number of leads or sales, depending on what we're going for, usually leads in most cases. I cannot stress the importance of headlines enough. In fact, if you only have a little bit of money and you can only afford a little ad, make 90% of the ad headline and then just put "FREE report reveals...enter your email address or call for your free recorded message" or whatever. On the next page find out what every piece of copy you create must have.
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KC Secret #24: Everything Must Have A Headline A huge percentage of the things we see don't even have a headline. If you remember the site you bought this book from, it had a headline, our emails have headlines, all of the samples in this book have headlines. Everything has to have a headline. Do I mean every paragraph must have a headline? No. Every piece you use. If it's a website, it has to have a headline. If it's a business card, if you use business cards, they should have a headline. If it's an ad, it obviously has to have a headline. A sales letter, definitely. We'll see some ads that don't have headlines in a minute. Now, some headlines might seem really small to you. Those are sometimes called subheads. One headline "Are you frustrated with the money you've been making?" has worked for me for years. Another one an associate used to use is "How to put an end to prospecting while you earn a six-figure income with this amazing new profit center." If the pieces for these two items didn't have a headline, most people probably wouldn't read them. Want to know how to cheaply and quickly get a continuous supply of headline and copy tips?...
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KC Secret #25: An Easy Continuous Education Can Be Obtained from Tabloids and Magazines How many of you subscribe to things like the Globe or Enquirer? Come on, don't be shy, how many? Now, I know a lot more of you get these than will admit it. It doesn't come in a plain brown wrapper. Your mailman or mail person will know that you read the Enquirer or the Star. I'm here to tell you that if you want to get a continuous education in headline study, read all of those publications. I want to show you this Redbook one here (click here). Now, magazine headlines, the good magazines, the ones that sell a lot of copies, like when you are checking out at the grocery store, there are a sea of publications there, those magazines...they have great headlines. If you are at a magazine rack, there are a sea of publications there too. They have to stand out. On this current ad, they've put of course, Julia Roberts' face. Look at the headlines... • "Swimsuits that firm and flatter you" • "Better sex in seven days - the new technique everyone's talking about." • "Is stress spoiling your happy moments?"
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• "Hips, thighs, butt - six ways to tighten up." • "Danger at the drugstore - what you should never buy. • "How Olympic dreams killed her little girl." "The new technique everyone's talking about", psychologically, since you of course are the only person that doesn't know what this technique is because everyone else knows because they just said everyone's talking about it, you're compelled to flip through the magazine and find those pages and read that article. "Is stress spoiling your happy moments?" This magazine is obviously targeted at women. "Hips, thighs, butt - six ways to tighten up." There isn't much more you can say. It's not a long headline, but it gets right to the point. It's clear. By the way a number of whatever you're talking about in your headline is usually better than saying for intance, "Ways to tighten up", it's not as effective as "Six fast ways to tighten up" or eleven or three or 101 or whatever you have. Using a number for your "number" of things is good because it implies psychologically there are a number of things I can learn and maybe one of them will get this damn cellulite off my butt or whatever it is the woman is worried about. "Danger at the drugstore - what you should never buy." Whose going to go to the drugstore now without wanting to know what you should never buy. "How Olympic dreams killed her little girl." or "Quiz - are you too easy on your kids?" We all know the answer to that quiz. "Julia Roberts - No she's not fickle, here's the real reason she couldn't save her marriage."
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Any one or all of these headlines, and they put a lot of headlines on here, and this is just one magazine out of hundreds that you can pick up and it's better than any 4-year education that you'll ever get at any college, just by reading one cover of this magazine. You could take 4 years of advertising at college and you would not learn as much as you would learn from this cover right here. Cosmo is another beautiful example. Reader's Digest, it's not just the sleazy ones. Most women's magazines these days you'll notice some patterns. There is always a sex article in every single women's magazine and they almost always put it in the upper left hand corner on the front of the cover. If you see New Woman it will say "What does he really want in bed?" I'm just making that up, but I'm sure they've had that headline. They usually put that up there and once again, this is catering to a female audience most likely, but "Swimsuits that firm and flatter you" for example, again, the compelling curiosity, the interest there that stops you cold. A lot of people by the way buy Redbook. I don't know how long it's been in business, but I guess it's been in business for a long, long, long time. They are not in business because of the articles, they are in business because of these headlines. That's why they are in business. Dan Kennedy tells a story about how Cosmopolitan was failing until they switched their covers to these types of headlines. If you want to see some good examples of what not to do, keep reading.....
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Here are some examples of ads that don't have effective (if any) headlines. You can't see some of them very good, but pick up any magazine and you'll find these types of ads. These were just from a magazine in my office that I just grabbed and went through and picked out four or five because there are thousands of ads that suck that you can find anywhere. "Chrysler Cirrus LXI" that's the headline (Click here to see sample ad) A car. Production costs of an ad like this are probably $40,000 to $50,000. They have to have the catering for the crew. And then the inquiry device is in little, teeny, tiny print at the very, very, very bottom that nobody ever sees because nobody pays any attention to the ad because nobody is stopping. They're not getting knocked over by a headline. Here's one for Bose (Click here to see sample ad). "The first high fidelity system with a Napoleon complex." Everyone knows when you're reading the paper or a magazine, how do you read it, like this, you're turning the pages and you are scanning for a headline that stops you. That's how you read it. When you're channel surfing you sit and channel surf until something stops you. These things don't stop you. Here's an IBM ad (Click here to see sample ad). Now IBM is a multi-billion dollar company. IBM probably spends I'm guessing $300 to $500 million a year in advertising, maybe more.
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No headline. Now if you saw this ad, is this a weightlifting ad? You would probably, as you were going by this in your subconscious mind in the one second or less that you flipped past this ad that they spent probably $40,000 or $50,000 in production and God knows what a full page in U.S. News & World Report costs in four color brightness. In fact, there is no headline on this ad and you would subconsciously maybe think it had something to do with a weight training program or maybe you wouldn't even pay that much attention. Here's a clever one... "Life's not always a picnic but it can be a ride in the park." (Click here to see sample ad). Now the intention here of course, the car that they are selling is called their Park Avenue. The reason I put this one up here, it sucks and it was a good example of what sucks. But the other thing is, and this is the cleverness issue, there is somebody who went through some college and had a four year degree in advertising or business and got a job in advertising agency and was given this by the account rep whose job is to take the people that run this department of Buick out to lunch and golf and things and then they hand it over to the younger person. That younger person has to think of something clever then. In today's advertising society, and they had some of this in the old days , but now it's pervasive, cleverness equals quality from the advertisers point of view. Obviously, "but it can be a ride in the park" is a clever pun on the fact that it's a park Avenue and I'm sure the person probably got promoted to junior executive senior second assistant or something because of this clever ad, however this clever ad doesn't sell anything. It doesn't stop you and it just keeps you rolling right by.
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They've got the call 1-800 number in there, but I remember I talked to somebody once who was going through a magazine that was calling these big companies 800 numbers that they had, and one of them the lady said he was the first person that had called that whole week. He was doing some research to see if people were calling. Now they spent all this money, they have this person sitting there or they hired an answering service or whatever, and nobody calls. Yet do they discontinue this type of advertising? No they do not discontinue this type of advertising. They do more. A question I always had was, "..was there any big companies that do direct response?" I'll show you in a second. Here we have another wonderful ad. This is a financial product and the headline, which is only kind of a headline but we'll give it the benefit of the doubt. Templeton Developing Markets Trust (Click here to see sample ad) It looks like an ad. This is something very important too. The more your ad looks like an ad, the less it will work. This is very, very, very important. Maxwell Sackheim called it "addiness". KC Secret #26: The More Your Ad Looks Like an Ad, the Less It Will Work Because subconsciously you are bombarded with advertising messages every day and for most if not all of us, if it looks like an ad, even remotely looks like an ad, that means if you use reverse type instead of just plain black letters on a white background, if you put pictures like in this Templeton ad with the passports and stuff like
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that, this is an ad that looks like an ad and will be ignored. Even if you have some direct response elements to it which they have here, they have a phone number to call and they even have a code, so they are doing some tracking, the fact of the matter is most people will blow by this because there is nothing stopping them. It could even have a good headline, but it doesn't. But if it did, people would blow by it. This is very critical. If you look at the ads, again, I'm not saying I'm the only person that can write, but if you look at what I do, all my stuff, nothing ever remotely looks like an ad. They always look like articles. At the end of this current example, it says "A member of the $128 billion Franklin Templeton Group." This is very important that they got that on there because like George Costanza on Seinfeld would say, "Oh, I'm shaking in my boots. because of how great you are and you got $128 billion dollars here that nobody cares about." So, the question a few minutes ago, do any big companies do direct response advertising, real good direct response advertising? The answer is to my knowledge, NO! All of them are trying infomercials and they spend $400,000 or $500,000 and they don't even know if anybody's calling. In any case, this next one is an old ad. It's an old ad that is famous. I don't know who wrote it. I think it came out of Lasker's office or somewhere. The next one is a direct response ad for a Cadillac.
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"The Penalty of Leadership" (Click here to see sample ad) Now, this may not be the best headline in the world, but it worked because the Cadillac sales when this ad ran went up quite a bit even though it's not a true direct response ad, it doesn't ask for action. I just wanted to show you that at some point in their past history, they understood how to advertise and of course, completely lost it somewhere down the road. This ad doesn't have any pictures, it doesn't have a bull running through a field of wheat with the sun setting over the horizon with a Scottish castle in the background. They probably said "This isn't how we do advertising" so they never did it again. This probably worked so good for Cadillac that they stopped doing it and went to the picture ads and the other things that don't work. And the ad guy was probably fired because this ad doesn't have great pictures. Now they did throw the Cadillac logo in there and they have a little olive branch, I'm not sure exactly what that is, but it's in there. I just wanted to show you that back in those days these were the image advertisers. Now, since we're talking about big companies and whether they know how to do direct response, I thought I'd give you my definition. The best definition I can give you of anything that is direct response in orientation is that it goes through that formula, AIDA. It catches your attention, it gets your interest, it creates a desire and the last item is the action. The Cadillac ad they did AID, but they didn't do A. There's no action required or requested of the reader.
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How well would you be doing if you didn't have them taking action. Not very good. Direct response advertising is self-explanatory, it's response advertising. It's asking people to respond. It's the building a case for your product. It's the specifics that guarantees and makes it real easy for people to order and do business for you. The most powerful headline words are on the next page...
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Chapter 10: Little Known Headline Writing Shortcuts And Tips! I'm going to spend a few minutes talking about these headline words and some other shortcuts and tips to remember. I'm not going to read them all, but the two best headline words are FREE and YOU. Free (the most powerful word) Discover... Do You... Secrets Of... New Ways... Now Is... Atoning... Facts You Should... Breakthrough... At Last... Advice To... The Truth Of... Protect... Life... Here Is The... Introducing... Just Arrived... Improvement... Remarkable... Startling... Offer... Easy... Challenge The Truth About... Bargain...
You (the other most powerful word) Announcing... Last Chance... Bargains... Yes... Love... Hate... How Much... How Would... This Is... Only Way... Sale... Hurry-. How To... Suddenly... It's Here... important Development... Sensational... Revolutionary... Miracle .... Quick... Wanted... Advice To... Compare...
So we put those at the top. Have any of you seen Bottom Line Reports? Have you ever gotten anything from them? On their envelope sometimes they have the word FREE or in some of their
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full page ads where the entire top half of the ad is one word FREE set up in the boldest print you can imagine. I don't know what size the font is, it's like 190 or something. That's all it says is FREE. Then you have to read the copy to see what's free. Now they keep repeating this so it must work. There's nothing wrong with using FREE. The other top word is You. This is another hard one. In advertising or marketing you must talk about your prospect not about yourself. I hate to tell you this, I don't care about you. Your prospects don't care about you. Maybe your wife, kids or husband care about you. But your prospects or target market, they do care about themselves. Everybody's selfish and if you don't appeal to their basic selfinterest, you're not going to have results. I've given you a lot of headline words here, I use this myself. A lot of times when I'm trying to come up with a headline and I'm stuck, I go look at this list of words and I'll say "learn how to whatever..." and then I'll see "discover" and think that's a better word. Discover has a better connotation in English language than learn. Discover means you're finding something out that's exciting, new or different. Where learn doesn't have the same excitement to the word. I know these may sound like subtle differences, but they're not. They are very important. Amazing. We've thrown Amazing in headlines. Breakthrough has a connotation. Look at all the headline words.
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Don't listen to those who say this stuff doesn't work. It absolutely does. Some people teaching you how to create marketing on the Internet will tell you it doesn't work on the Internet. They're NUTS! It's still human beings reading and looking for things that appeal to their self-interest. "How to" is in the middle of our list. In fact, here's another tip. If you ever get stuck about knowing what to say in your headline or title of your course or your product, just start with "How To..." and say whatever it is you're teaching them how to do. If it's training ducks to fly backwards, then "How to train your duck to fly backwards" is a good title for that particular product. Go to the library and go to the card catalog, which you can't go to anymore, but the computerized card catalog and look up "how to" in any library. It's just endless. They never stop. KC Secret #27: If you ever get stuck about knowing what to say in your headline or title of your course or your product, just start with "how to" and say whatever it is you're teaching them "how to" do On the next page I'll tell you what you should almost never do when writing headlines...
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NEVER USE ALL UPPERCASE LETTERING We see a lot of people make this mistake. And it's becoming a little more pronounced of a mistake on the Internet where people associate it with YELLING! What we (and others) have found is that placing caps on each word in a headline makes them more noticeable. If you look at newspapers, they hardly ever use all caps, magazines hardly ever do either and if they do they mix it up a bit. The reason is that it's been proven they're more noticeable in mixed case than all caps. If you remember from the Redbook ad, there are caps at the beginning, and then they have an all cap one but then they mix them up. In general, you'll see that most newspapers in their headlines will use a mixture of upper case and lower case. Some newspapers and magazines like the Chicago Tribune do all their headlines with the first letter of the first word caps and everything else is lower case even the subsequent words, unless it's a proper name of somebody. Redbook sprinkled some all caps in there, but they still had the majority in upper and lower case. "Quotation marks around the headlines improves the response" Do not ask me why. The great copywriter Ted Nicholas told me to try that a few
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years ago and I did and it's worked and it's improved our response rates. Even if somebody's not saying something and it doesn't have the context of being a quote, it just works better and I don't know why. Ted Nicholas has an opinion that it might give it the look of a testimonial. One of the things I've discovered is... KC Secret #28: Not to question things that I find work well or if they don't work I get rid of them Sometimes you just don't know why exactly something works, but you just gotta stick with it. KC Secret #29: Your appeal needs to go at basic human needs The following list came from the Robert Collier letter book. • • • • • • • •
Making Money Saving Effort Impressing Others More leisure time Self-improvement The need to belong Security Getting something others can't
Some people don't realize impressing others is some people's main goal in life. This is a list of very, very important human emotions. Robert
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Collier wrote this back in 1931 when he wrote his book. But his ads and marketing go back to the early teens. Robert Collier's first copywriting assignment was selling coal by the train carload through direct mail. Something like coal, I think, a substance like that. Now if you have any thoughts that direct response doesn't work, now here's a guy that was selling coal by a train carload through direct mail. I just want you to keep in mind that you can sell anything with the right kind of copy. Robert Collier, as well as anybody else who has had success at this, will always tell you your copy is the difference. Keep this list in mind because if you're not sure when you're doing your headline or copy, if you're not sure where you're going, or you are thinking about a product for a target market, look at this list. This list is a very, very valuable list. KC Secret #30: First and foremost try to get self-interest in to every headline you write The great John Caples said you should first and foremost try to get self-interest into every headline you write. Make your headline suggest to the reader that this is something he wants. This rule is so fundamental, it would seem obvious yet the rule is violated everyday by scores of writers. Self-interest of the reader not of the writer. That $128 billion dollar thing you saw on the Templeton ad was the interest of the person who wrote the ad for Templeton. I assure you there isn't a single individual on this planet that gives two damns whether they have $128 billion or not under management.
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Caples also said that if you have news such as a new product or new use for an old product, be sure to get the news into your headline in a big way. People like news. That's why they call them newspapers because news is important. You can make something boring sound new. It's like the famous Schlitz story? I'll go over it very quickly. Schlitz Beer hired Claude Hopkins to help boost their lagging sales and loss of market share. Now at the time every beer manufacturer was saying the same thing... "PURE" this or that in their ads. Every company wanted "PURE" in their advertising. All this and nobody knew what they meant by 'pure'. That is until Claude Hopkins. The first thing he did was take a factory tour. He was shown plateglass rooms where beer was dripping over pipes. Hopkins asked what the purpose of this was and was told that the rooms were filled with filtered air allowing the beer to be cooled without any impurities. Then he saw these large expensive filters that were filled with white-wood pulp providing superior filtering. Hopkins was then told how every pump and pipe was cleaned twice daily to maintain the purity. He was told how each bottle was sterilized four times before
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being filled with beer, not just once or twice. Then, Hopkins got to see the 4,000 ft. deep artesian wells that had been dug to get the cleanest and purest water possible, even though the factory was right on the shore of the then unpolluted Lake Michigan. Hopkins next entered the laboratory to see the mother yeast cell, that was created after 1,200 experiments to finally provide the most robust flavor. Hopkins was then informed that all yeast used in making Schlitz beer came from that original yeast cell. Hopkins asked "Why don't you tell people these things?" The reply? Every beer manufacturer does it the same way. Hopkins reply..."But, others have never told this story..." He then went off to create a successful advertising campaign educating people on what made Schlitz beer pure. He told the same story every other brewer could have. But he now had a meaning for purity. Schlitz went from 5th place to a tie for 1st place in market share. It's just about educating. KC Secret #31: Educating prospects about the how's, the why's, the good, the bad and the ugly. You simply cannot over educate people. Now, think of what they could have done with direct response. I'm just saying just from the fact they took the information that every beer company makes beer the same way, they just took it and made it news. News will sell even if you think your thing is boring or run of the
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mill. A lot of people say "There's nothing interesting or different about what I do. It's just painting walls." You've got to come up with some spin on it so that it sounds new and exciting without lying or exaggerating, of course. John Caples Says... • Avoid headlines that merely provoke curiosity. Curiosity combined with news or self-interest is excellent, but just curiosity itself isn't enough. It's kind of analogous to yelling "fire" in a movie theater to get people's attention, but it's not going to be enough to get them to like you or do business with you. We see ads that say, "Free sex. Now that I've got your attention, I'd like to sell you this computer." That's not a really good way to use curiosity in a headline because you will probably get people curious about the free sex, but it's misleading and it also won't carry it through. • Avoid when possible headlines that paint a gloomy or negative side of the picture, take the cheerful positive angle. It usually works, but not always, usually, sometimes the negative slant will help you out, but not always. • Try to suggest in the headline there's a quick and easy way for the reader to get something he wants. This is John Caples way of saying what we call the magic pill. Everybody wants a magic pill. I don't care what you're selling. I don't care if it's weight loss or if it's information products or carpet cleaning, or if it's college funding, whatever you are selling or you want to sell, everybody wants the magic pill. They want to be able to achieve whatever it is they want.
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• The ads from earlier... the ones with all the headlines...they either want to make money or save effort or whatever. They want to get it with no effort, no money, no time, no cost. They want the magic pill. Now if you happen to have a magic pill or if you look in the tabloids, you'll see there used to be an ad for magic miracle diet pill. It showed a lady holding a giant pair of pants. "I took this pill and the next morning, I woke up like this." That's basically what the ad says. It's a full-page ad. They've run it for years. I've seen it for years and years and years. It must work in some way or another. It's literally advertising a magic pill. Now you may not have a magic pill, but if you keep that magic pill element in your marketing, you'll do much better in general. Again, it doesn't mean that you are lying or deceiving anybody, you have to have a magic pill element that is actually important. KC Secret #32: When testing, switch only the headline. The first thing whenever you are testing, the first element you are going to test is your headline. So if you think your body copy, which we'll talk about in a few minutes, is okay, and you're not getting great results from your first effort, try switching the headline but leave the body copy alone. Don't change both. When in doubt, use the 100 headline templates in the appendix as well as the ones in your bonus library. As you go through these 100 headlines, plus all the ads I gave you, and by the way, I'm telling you and I'm serious, you have everything you need here. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. These
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headlines are proven to work for instance number 70 on the list, "Thousands now play who never thought they could" for a carpet cleaner, "Thousands make a fortune cleaning carpets that never thought they could." For a college funding business, "Thousands send their kids to college that never thought they could." You can take any of these headlines. It's just a plug and chug and if you have a word processor, it's easy. You don't have to be that smart to write copy, you just have to follow the formulas. KC Secret #33: Always go with your best stuff first. Don't hold back I'm still guilty of this every now and then when something doesn't work. Go with your best stuff out of the box. Your headline should be your best benefit and your first sentence or paragraph if possible should be your next best. Don't hold back your good stuff until the end of the ad or the letter because if you do, there isn't going to be anybody reading it because they dropped out way before they got there. I'm sure you've heard this before, benefits, benefits, benefits. Features do not sell anything. Nobody cares that your whiz-bang do-hickey has a 4.7 ratio to aspect compression modulation. Nobody cares about any of that stuff. All they want to know is what's in it for them, what will this do for them. I'm going to repeat this again, benefits, benefits, benefits. IF you must talk about features in your copy, make sure they are in a spot where you're not going to lose the people or you talk about them in the context of your benefits. A benefit is losing weight. A feature is that it attaches to the oxidation level of your molecules and
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it reduces the metabolic intake of the whatever. That's the difference between a benefit and a feature. I read in a book "Ball Four" written by Jim Boughton when I was a kid, that they used to have a saying on the New York Yankees that nobody wants to hear about the labor pains, they just want to see the baby. That's kind of a crass way of saying it, but really that's what it is. Nobody cares. You want to get to your benefits and you want to have your benefits be what you play up. Keep 3 x 5 cards handy, or I get pieces of paper. I just write down all the benefits I can before I get started and I just think "what will this do for somebody." Usually, most of my material does not even contain any description of the labor pains because I usually just always talk about the babies. Usually that's copy that will work much better. Include some of the good hot headline words I gave you, second, write a dozens of headlines, and third, go advertise your chosen headline with some body copy. It's not uncommon for me to write 15, 20 or 100 headlines for something I'm doing. I may bring it to the office three, four or five of them for everybody to look at. We lay them out on the floor sometimes or at home on the counter and the same body copy underneath and you'd be amazed sometimes the first or second headline I wrote when compared to the 8th or 9th one that I wrote, and by the way, when I say write I mean I'm modeling from all the same stuff you guys have here in this course. I'm just saying it politely that I'm writing it, but
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it's just taking this stuff and cut and paste it. You'd be amazed how may times my 6th, 7th or 8th effort is the one I end up going with and it works because my initial thing that I thought was the best benefit upon hindsight ended up not even being remotely close to the best benefit. OK, on the next page you'll see some very recent samples and some of my biggest successes and the story behind them...
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"Financial Professional Goes From Less Than $100K Per Year To, $100K Per Month!" (Click here to see sample ad) This was a headline on an ad that worked well. Again, we have the subheads... • $100,000 Per Month! • Buys A $410,000 House For Cash! • Free Report Explains How To Legally Get Clients To Call You. If they don't read anything else, they read that. This ad did very well. The ad was done in courier type because we were testing courier type versus Times New Roman. The Times New Roman did better actually. "Financial Professional Goes From Less Than $100K Per Year To $100K Per Month." Now if you were a financial professional, that might peak your curiosity and it talks about them. It doesn't say, "Marketing firm has great marketing system." That's not the headline. The headline's talking directly to the prospect. You'll notice it's got quotation marks around it and it's in a bold type. Here is another version.
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Get the cold-call monkey off your back...
"How to get in front of interested Prospects with practically no work! Amazing NEW marketing system gets Clients iMMEDIATELY, while you Lounge about your home or office!" (Click here to see sample ad)
This is a test of a pure magic pill. All my headlines are not this magic pilly, but this is the magic pilliest one we've done (pilliest? I'm starting to be concerned about those 2nd graders Jeff). We got tons of leads. It has the subheads..."The most exciting prospecting news in years." And then it has some pullouts with quotes "Even the laziest planner will get appointments in spite of himself." This was more of an appeal to the magic pill element. "What you'll learn", "get leads and appointments the fast and easy way." You'll notice everything I do I try to have that double or alternate readership path throughout there because of the scanning issue. We're going to talk about body copy in a second. Here's another one that we tried a different format, "Here are the 17 steps to making more money! without making a cold-call or asking for names." (Click here to see sample ad) This was a little bit different concept. This ad did not work as well
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as others that we've done, so we canned it. But I am always trying different concepts to see if we can beat what's working the best. I often get the question, "Do testimonials help?" The answer is it depends. Some times I found that I have had testimonial type ads with different headlines that didn't work as good as other ads with a better headline and not the testimonial. So the headline was still the key. Here's another ad set up the same way with a different headline, "The 8 Characteristics Of $100,000 Plus Producers! What Do They Know That 99% Of Us Don't?" (Click here to see sample ad) This is my variation of the Redbook type of ad, "the new method everybody's talking about". The next headline or subhead is... "Here Are The 8 Characteristics That $100,000 Plus Financial Professionals Have In Common." What I was testing here were two headlines. I wanted to see if I could do better with two headlines with some testimonials in between. These didn't work bad, they were okay. But they weren't as good as the pure article. Here's one that worked very well...
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"Top Producers Don't Make Cold Calls... Prospects Call THEM!" (Click here to see sample ad) It had a lead-in head, testimonials on the side, then the article style... "Getting prospects is easy if you know the best kept marketing secret. Free book tells all. Anyone can be taught to get prospects to call you." This one did very, very well. It was a top-producing ad for us. We did test different headlines with the same thing here, and they didn't work as good as this headline. I tested this headline without the testimonials, it's done very well also. You can copy the idea, not the words, but you can copy the idea and see if it works for you. If you look at that headline, "Top producers don't make cold-calls, prospects call them" it gets them stopping. Now here's a pure article style one. This one did very, very well in many different industries.
"The Diary Of A Frustrated Agent!" (Click here to see sample ad) This is just a story and it has no subheads. I did that on purpose because I wanted it to be just a story and it did very, very well. In the beginning, "I just had another person tell me they just
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wanted to think about buying an annuity. They said they needed to talk to their banker" and then the middle of the ad it says, "My wife wants to go on vacation to Disney World with three kids and both of us. I told her when this case closes, we go for sure. She wasn't happy, but hey, what could I say, she'll have to wait." This industry is mostly male dominated, so I write these ads for males. When I wrote the same ads for the real estate industry, I changed the focus to have less sexist remarks and chauvinistic pigginess. I know who my market is here again. Don't jump to conclusions and criticize this style, but if I had a chauvinist pig market, I'm going to put some of those elements in my copy and I'm not doing it to offend anybody, that's how the market is. Let's move on to some essential things you need to know about your body copy...
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Chapter 11: How To Write Copy So Good... You Could Sell Sand In The Desert! Let's talk about body copy next. I'll start off immediately with one of the first questions I always get... What font do you use or what font works best? Actually in the old days I used courier and then I switched to Times Roman and I didn't find much of a difference in the sales letter. Some people swear courier font in the sales letter is better than the Times Roman. A lot of people tell you the Times Roman is better than the Courier font. I can tell you that when you are reading a newspaper or magazine, you're going to always see Times Roman font basically in the copy. Some of my headlines don't have Times Roman font on the headline, but the body copy of the ad is. You will see Courier type in reports frequently. Courier is a typewriter looking font-face, which nobody uses a typewriter anymore, it's what they used to look like. Ted Nicholas swears by the Courier font. Again that's something that's easy enough to test with a word processor. It's a couple of clicks on your mouse and you've got a whole new font. That's the kind of stuff you can test after you've got a killer ad, letter or website already working. I have found in the advertising part, the Times Roman still works the best for me. However, on the web, there are some font considerations. We've been using a Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif combinatin recently with good success. It meets most PC and Mac font specs and is easier to read.
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KC Secret #34: When writing body copy, write as you talk This is very, very important. We've all been taught to write different than we talk. Now I'm going to give you an example. The front page of your sales letter or website is the most important part of your sales letter. I do try to get as much as I can in the headline and subheads. It's like the old Star Trek thing, you remember the tractor beam that they would say, "We're caught in a tractor beam". It would be sucking them into the planet. Or if anybody saw Mel Brooks' movie Spaceballs, they had the giant vacuum cleaner in space and they say, "Suck, Suck." That whole movie sucked, but my kids liked it. In any case, the idea is you have to suck people into your piece. I've had people tell me that our headlines do that but obviously, that's not as important as the fact that we sold over 12,000 courses with these letters in four years. So somebody got sucked into the copy. Those words might not be the most elegant way of saying that, but that's what you are doing. I also say things like, "I mean, it's a jungle out there. If you ever remember when things were tougher..." or, "I mean, it's a jungle out there." I put "I mean" in there on purpose because that's the way I talk and that's the way most people talk. Or "Agents are dropping like flies. You have to discover the almost unheard of secrets of how to get clients immediately. Nowadays, the best marketer wins." Then after that I'd say, "See, we don't teach agents by traveling around trying to motivate you, making you our dunce cap, expect you to make 917 cold-calls in the cold-calling dungeons of hell, embarrass yourself by banging on doors or annoying FSBO's and expireds by begging them to let you list their home."
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Well, you get the idea. That's why I get nervous about doing this writing thing for the second graders. These poor kids are going to end up writing like this. I've got to be very careful or they're going to flunk. A quick digression but when I first moved back to Illinois from Philly and we started all of this, I had a kid next door that was in college and he used to come over and do some work around the house. He saw my stuff and I let him take some stuff to read and he told me he was writing a paper for college and he was going to use my style of writing because he said it makes so much sense. It is so easy to read. I said "No Brett. You can't use this style of writing. I promise you, do not use this as a model." He said, "No, I can. The Professor will like it." Well, he got an F on the paper. You can't do this like the stuff you do in school, but you've got to write like you talk. This is very, very important.
KC Secret #35: Don't worry about the correct grammar I have people tell me all the time and they're friendly people telling me about the typos and grammar mistakes. I appreciate it, but I've got news for you, when an ad or a letter is working, I don't change anything. Again, I don't even know what a preposition is to be able to tell whether I'm dangling a participle or whatever. I don't remember what any of it means, I never understood it, I don't care what it means. Now, you can have bad enough grammar where you sound illiterate and that's not good. KC Secret #36: Don't be concerned about the number of words Long copy is okay as long as it's not boring. Keep talking until you
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run out of things to say. Does anybody know what Abe Lincoln answered when asked how long should a man's legs be? Long enough to reach the ground. Dan Kennedy uses the analogy of when he was a kid they used to put bits in a horses mouth. He was a horse trainer. Somebody said how long should the bit be or whatever, he would say as long it takes to get to the back of the head. As long as it takes. I just told you about a 128-page book that Phillip's Publishing says is a proven beater of their control. So don't worry about the length.
KC Secret #37: Empathy is paramount In your body copy, you've got to have empathy. One of our healdines says "Getting a continuous stream of clients who have all called you, get qualified interested prospects to respond immediately, have 100% call-in business." The reason that I said "called you" and "call-in business", I put that up there because the empathy I understand these real estate agents in this case, and they all want to sit in their Lexus or whatever car they've leased to look good, and have their portable phone ring and have people say "I need you to help me sell my house." That's what they want. So we're giving them what they want. I have an empathy for the audience. On the next page find out ONE ABSOLUTE WAY TO KEEP THEM READING YOUR COPY WHETHER THEY WANT TO OR NOT....
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KC Secret #38: End each page if possible with a cliffhanger Now, every letter or website can't do that and I don't always accomplish it. What I mean by a cliffhanger, remember the old serials where the person is falling off the cliff and then the next episode is they're not on the cliff, but they are back where they were before they fell off, and then something changes. The cliffhanger is where you can end the first page with something along the lines of , "For example, have you ever been so" and then it stops and then they have to click to go to the next page or turn the page to whatever. Of course, then the friendly reminder "Click to read more" or "turn to the next page" and you'll see there are some situations where we can do it, sometimes I can't. Notice how we even try and do it at then of each chapter of this book. It's not the end of the world, but I found it does help especially on the first page. If you get them to click from or turn the first page, you're likely to get them to keep clicking or turning as long as you don't bore them. Ending on a cliffhanger is a very good technique. KC Secret #39: Speak your copy into a tape or a dictation machine or to a person Use the transcripts as the basis for your copy. I frequently write copy by just talking to somebody. I have a woman who can type 5,000 words a minute or something ridiculous like that and I do it over the phone. I have a headset and she has a headset and I just call her up and walk around my office and I clean up and I'm dictating copy and she's typing it. Then she emails or faxes it right back to me and I put it right into my word processor so I've got what I just said all ready to go and be edited. I've often said leave words in like "I said a few minutes ago" as
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opposed to "as I wrote a few pages ago." You'll notice a little bit when you read through some of my letters or even this book I'll say things like, "Like I just said a few seconds ago" or things that really don't make any sense in the letter and in fact, don't make sense in the context of it being in a letter. But they do make sense in the context of a person being talked to. So I always leave that stuff in there when I'm dictating this or even if I'm writing it. I type maybe 50 - 60 pages a week of copy and I still don't know how to type. So I started using the transcription method and it really worked well. I really do not know how to type. I use two fingers mostly and I have to look at the keyboard. I type pretty fast for doing that. KC Secret #40: Start out with bigger sized fonts and get smaller as you move along This may only apply for printed copy in ads or salesletters but can apply to websites also. I learned this from the tabloids. If you look at the copy on some of their ads, they might start out in a 10 or 11 size font and you look down and then all of a sudden it's down at the end and it gets a little smaller. Sometimes I have a 12, 11 or 10 and then I go down to an 11, 10, then a 9 or an 8. I might add on a size 7 font even, but I learned this from the tabloids. One day I was struck by the fact that the intro paragraphs are bigger fonts and then they move or suck the reader in. When you're doing an ad in print you often have a space problem, on websites if you want the page to load quickly you can have a space problem, letters can be as long as they can be. But ads you usually have a one page or two-page limit, or whatever you're going to buy. If you can't get everything in, shrink the subsequent copy, but make the beginning a decent size so they can see it.
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Another comment people say all the time is, and by the way, tens of thousands of people responded to my ads where the font size was a 7 or 6. You can almost get too small, like my word processor goes down to a 4. I tried 4 but you can't really read a 4, but you can sort of read a 6 if you look close. And a 7 and up size you read better. If you have a space problem, the common technique I use is to start out with a bigger font. My sales letters will sometimes start out with a 12 on the first page and if I have a space problem because I want to keep the letter down to 24 pages or something, I'll use a 10 or 11 size font later on in the letter to give myself more room. It makes no difference in the results, but it can save you sometimes on postage. One page might push it up to another weight category. Or if a website you can approach your page taking to long to load. So I may shorten this and shrink the size of the copy towards the end to keep it to a certain weight or web page size so I'm not increasing my postage or load time. I often even get questions about my smaller headline sizes. I don't do it all the time, but sometimes I make them smaller for space reasons. On one of our ads, I wrote a version of it and then Dan Kennedy wrote a version and then we kind of mixed up our versions. We had so much copy we could have easily filled two pages of a normal size font and we were both willing to sacrifice a little bit of the size on the headline hoping that the headline itself would be catchy enough and different enough to get people to read and of course, we sold about 20,000 copies of our book, so it did ok. I have had some small headlines before where space was a premium on ads. If I can, I will try to get the biggest headline
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possible. In the last case, we didn't know what to cut. We got to the point where there was nothing left to cut so we had to shrink the headline down a little bit to fit everything in. I'm longwinded, Dan's longwinded, and other people are longwinded. When you're longwinded it's hard to cut stuff. KC Secret #41: Don't edit yourself upfront, keep going until you have nothing left to say Just start writing. Don't worry about the headline, just keep going. Just go until there's nothing left. You can always edit later. But if you edit yourself beforehand, you may miss something. I had a guy on the phone once and he told me there was one phrase, one sentence that got him to call the office. I can't remember what the phrase was, but he told me there was something in the letter that was the reason he called. It was buried on page 28 or something of a 32 page letter. It was something about that phrase that struck a cord that resonated with his brain that got him to pick up the phone and call. He in fact ordered our product, which when I take the calls myself, doesn't happen very often. Now what if I had edited myself out in the initial writing when I first started writing that letter, what if I took that phrase out? I'd be $697 poorer right now from that one guy. You don't know what is going to get them. You just don't know. You give it your best shot, but don't edit yourself, especially not for space reasons, especially in a letter. That's absurd. KC Secret #42: Use the jargon of your target market as much as possible Now this is if you were writing to airplane pilots, you would use things like "flaps" or "elevator" or "altitude" or whatever words they
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use. I have a friend who markets to contractors and his wife said, "I don't want any part of this." But he sends sales letters out to people that work in the engineering plants of large companies because he does insulation contracting. This is a specialized field, it's not an information market, but I helped him, he's an old good friend of mine and I was also curious about how effective my techniques would be in this market. His headline and copy was full of the "F" word and other words that you're not supposed to put in a letter. And he gets calls. He landed some very big accounts, he's right now got a full-time account in a gigantic company in Chicago where the guy called him and thought the letter was hilarious and he wanted to know who had the guts to write this in a letter. His stories were all full of the things that contractors and engineers say. I won't repeat them because I'd run afoul of the censors, but I just want to point out to you that this letter was written to these people exactly the way they talk and think. It worked. Does that violate conventions? Yes. But does it create empathy? Yes. Does it communicate and get the response? Yes it does. So don't think that you have to be polite. In some of markets, we have people that are less than politically correct and if I was politically correct in my copy, which is something you have to be nowadays supposedly in this society, I wouldn't get as much business. KC Secret #43: Tell stories
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In your sales copy in particular, and even in the ads. I've had some ads where I've used the headline and had a descriptive ad and used the same headline with a story and the story out pulled the descriptive ad many times over. The stories have to be relevant to your audience and they should be written just like you would read a story in the Enquirer or the Star. Read those stories and those will be your model for how to write them.
KC Secret #44: Re-state your headline in your P.S. Try it in your PS's on your letters or websites. Restate one of your main benefits. Test different PS's. I'm also going to show you a little trick here. Most of the time, people will scan through a piece and it's been proven that for whatever reason they go to the PS. So the PS is used mainly as a headline to drive them back into the copy. You might say, "If you only get one client from over 100 secrets revealed in the system, you will recover the entire costs, your return on investment here is enormous. If you only get one or two clients per month..." Just try to get them sucked back into the copy. How am I going to get all these extra clients to try to get back into the frustration of their business? I've used some PS's that are exactly the same as the headline, that's how. Again, there are different things you can test. "If you'd like to end the frustration of ... then don't..." etc. Ted Nicholas and a lot of other people really swear that that makes a huge difference. In these really long websites, ads or letters, it's important. It may not makes as much of a difference in a short letter, but I do think it's important to
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test. Another trick. If you look at the very back page of some great letters, at the very top of the page it says, "More good news. You can use Visa, MasterCard, American Express, or you can use our convenient installment plans." The last page starts off like that on purpose because if somebody looks at the front, they get an idea of what's going on and if they just flip it over, which people do and I've been told this by people who do this, is they read they can get installment plans. Installment plans are a big selling point. We tested this and got a better response and now I try to always have the back page start with the convenient installment plans. KC Secret #45: Answer all their objections in the copy (Click to see an example of great objection handling) This is something we were talking about earlier. (notice I said "we were talking about" that's what I mean. You should do this in your copy, of course we weren't talking at all). Sometimes people think your offer is too good to be true. What I do is I make a list of all the objections I can think of that someone is going to have to our offer and I put this all in the letter. I do it through question and answer sessions. If I think someone is going to think this is too good to be true, I'll say "You know what? I know you're thinking hey Jeff this is too good to be true. This sounds like a bunch of garbage." I'll say it like that in the letter and if you do that, it disarms people and it really makes your copy really work better because if you admit things and you sound like you're telling the truth and then you deal with objections like it sounds too good to be true, you show the person and demonstrate that you have that
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empathy that you're thinking what they're thinking. I say in here and you'll read many places in my copy, "I know what you're thinking right now. You're saying ..." Or we will have question and answer sessions where we'll say "Question. I know this will work for some people, but I know my market is different. Why won't this work for me?" Or "I've heard all this stuff before. I've been burned by books and tapes all the time. Why should I buy your book or tape." All the things you're thinking or that you hear when you talk to leads, try to get that in there. A common objective is that when you have a brand new product and the prospect asks you for a reference on your product, what do you say to them? There are a couple of ways you can get around that. Number one, if you don't have any, you can say, "This is brand new. We just started doing this so we don't have any testimonials. But if you like what you've seen or how we've explained this, we do have a money back guarantee." When I first started with my first product, I didn't have any testimonials. That was my reply when they asked me about references. Later when we had lots of testimonials, which we still get all the time, we obviously include them and you'll see there are a lot of testimonials in my copy usually. Also, you should be truthful. Now, some people will tell you to include email addresses, websites, phone numbers, etc. If you want to do that, it's ok. We've had bad experiences where we've got such a great response to our websites, ads or letters that some of those people have been inundated with calls and emails. I often only include the minimal
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information and I have to explain why I'm only putting the person's first name and last initial and it says, "because when we did put in the full name and state, people were bombarded with calls of people wanting to talk to them, and I do mean bombarded. We get hundreds of inquiries each month and in order not to discourage testimonials, I promise everybody I will not give their full name out to the viewing public. I know how much you would love to get 8 or 10 unsolicited folks asking you how they like my products. As always I'm telling you the truth. I'm sure you can understand my desire to keep my clients' privacy as a primary consideration. However, here's what a bunch of them have to say." That's all true. I didn't have to make any of that up. That's exactly what happened. It's amazing how this truth stuff just seems to work the best. So again, if you don't have testimonials, just tell them that "It's brand new. But you've got the opportunity because I'm going to be charging more later and I'll give you a money back guarantee and if you like what you've seen, you don't have much risk by giving it a try. I'll provide great service to you." Yes, you'll lose some sales in the beginning because you don't have references or testimonials, but as soon as you get something going you have to ask for them and you'll get them. One quick point on testimonials. You can have a whole stack of them, but still especially in some marketplaces, they still want five references that they can call. They want to talk to people in their state or something. How do you handle that? We get people calling on a $14.95 book or $19.95 that still want to talk to somebody before they buy it. It doesn't matter what your price point is. There are several different ways you can handle it. My preference is that I don't like giving the names of anybody out and I tell them that. Because I don't want anybody being bombarded with
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calls. Plus if all this hasn't proven to you with everything you've seen and read and the fact that I want to remind you that you called me, I didn't call you. I go through all that. If that still doesn't get them, I just say, "Look, you're too skeptical for this. You probably shouldn't be buying this anyway. This isn't for you." Which pisses some of them off, but I don't really care because that type of person usually ends up being a bad customer or a refund. Normally, that's how we handle it. Now we have some people who disagree with me and send out testimonials from some people that have agreed to take calls and then we send them a $10 coupon or something for every call they take and that's o.k. we're starting to include websites and emails in some of our copy also. KC Secret #46: Use bullet points and possibly page number references if you actually have your product finished If you look at some copy, somewhere there will be a list of bullet points. The bullet points say things like: dozens of unheard of methods to get people to call you; little known technique of this or that; the secrets of this; how to do this or that; learn how to. I use a lot of bullet points. One bullet point may be the trigger for someone calling in or clicking on your order button. Bullet points can make or break things. Most of the things I have has bullet points an they are even stronger if you can reference a page number of your product (if it's an information product) where the customer will find the answer. You'll see this technique used often by Boardroom reports. I also get some little questions about which are more powerful, using the bullet point or checkmark or some other bullet character? I've actually tested different things, I've used checkmarks, I've used the round bullet points, I've used square boxes, and I've used
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square boxes with shadows. I've tried different things. I still think the easiest thing to read to me is the dots. I don't think it really matters though. We never saw much of a difference so we go with the common and easily recognizable. If you want to really, really get sophisticated in writing your copy, you must study this piece very closely.
Great Use of Bullets (Click here for great example of using bullets) Why? Well, because this guy, Paul Galloway, is a true copywriting pro, especially when it comes to making amazingly strong use of bullets! For example, Paul goes right into bullet points.instantly! Immediately after the headline (which is a great one, by the way) you see seven strong, interesting, curiosity provoking bullet points. Before he even gets into the sales message! This is a very powerful technique when done correctly! Like I said before, if you've ever been pitched, or bought anything form Boardroom Reports, you may have noticed their incredible use of sales letters that are nothing more than dozens and dozens of bullet points. Now, as you read down further, you'll see that Paul has a couple real short paragraphs, followed by more bullet points, followed by a real short amount of copy, followed by more bullet points ..... and so on! The whole piece is built on a skeletal structure of bullet points surrounded by a thin skin of copy! I have to stress that lots and lots of killer bullet points can work like crazy because all it takes is just one of them to hit the right chord with somebody, and boom.you got yourself a sale!
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KC Secret #47: Use A, B or C offers Our offers have proved to work better when we have a cheaper version, a more expensive version and sometimes an even more expensive version. Sometimes you can get an extra $200 for including $5 or $10 worth of stuff and making it more expensive. It can be even cheaper on the Internet. You include an additional PDF file or membership access for updates. KC Secret #48: Be honest, straightforward and candid I tend to be very honest, straightforward and candid much to some people's dislike or dismay, but that's just who I am. I think your best off in your copy if you just quit the hype game. KC Secret #49: Admit your flaws This is similar to the last one. So if you have a small company, you would say "Well, we may be a very small company. In fact, I'm the only person in the whole company. I can give you customized service and make it to your advantage." Admit your flaws or multiple flaws, "We might not be able to get back to you immediately, but I promise to get back to you within 24 hours" or whatever. Just tell them what they can expect, that way if they get what they were told they could expect, then they're usually going to be better buyers and customers. KC Secret #50: Fonts, don't get hung up on them. I won't go into much detail on that. Unless you're doing
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massive mailings you'll never really know which makes more of a difference. I've used both Times New roman and Courier. I know there are some issues with fonts being on everyone's computers and it's recommended by some that you should use a Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif combo and we do that in some places, use Arial in others and just Verdana in some others. Don't let it slow you down, pick one and go. KC Secret #51: Use bold, italics, underlines liberally, but not too often Some talk about not underlining because people will think it's a link. I don't know about you but when I see a black and white link I don't click on it and if it's not a link I sure don't get upset. KC Secret #52: Subheads are critically important both in the ads and the letters It provides a second readership path. The best subhead ad ever is that GM Turk one. If you want to see how to do subheads, go look at that one. He just says, "Poof. Cash by mail." You read that, it takes you right through. I try to do that in my copy, you'll see subheads sprinkled throughout. It might say, "Interested prospects that have called you." That might be enough to get them to keep reading or "You cannot build a steady, dependable, predictable stress-free profitable client base buying and selling all kinds of X from an occasional lead calling in here or there." The subheads may carry them through the whole piece. This is a very important copywriting technique. Most people don't understand it. Let's take a look at the final Killer Copy Secrets...
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Chapter 12: 37 More Killer Copy Secrets KC Secret #53: Premiums, they usually help and they usually help a lot A lot of times, you can have a premium where you give them an extra year of your newsletter free or a longer access time to your membership site as an inducement to buy the up-sell product. Premiums do help a lot. If you can create your own premiums, they are usually cheaper and better. Sometimes we buy premiums from other people. Premiums are really good. Premiums mean "and if you order now" or "if you order before the expiration date" or "the first 100 orders" or whatever. Premiums virtually, almost universally, make things work better. A premium would be a freebee gift of some sort or another. A good example is the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. They give you the NFL helmet telephone if you order the subscription. Free offer, you get multiple years. You get a free year of whatever. A premium is anything that's an addition to your main offer. I tend to have offers that have a lot of premiums. People will call after a deadline sometimes and say, "Can I still get all the free gifts?" Okay.
KC Secret #54: Inform and educate Tell them what benefits they'll get without telling them how to do it. I've seen copy where the person explained everything. In fact, the sales copy was their whole product. That's not good. They have to buy the product to get the info. You don't want to
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mislead anybody but you want to tell people what to do but not how to do it. That's what they have to buy your product for. This is very, very important. People tend to educate and over-educate. KC Secret #55: Never talk about you, always talk about them Again, very important. KC Secret #56: Give them a time limit or some other reason to act now, but don't make up things On the Simpsons T.V. show, Homer called up to order some hat that had the beer cups and hoses attached or whatever from an infomercial and they said "Call now. Supplies are limited." Homer calls up and there's only one guy answering the phone and Homer said "Are there any left?" And the guy turns around and there's like a warehouse full of these things. He says, "Oh, just a couple." "I want to place my order right now" Homer says. You don't want to be quite that bad.
KC Secret #57: Make it easy for people to buy Offer every credit card you can possibly take. Break up your payments. We've gone up to 4 to 6 months. We've increased the order rates. It does make a difference. Make it easy for people to buy. Don't make it difficult. I have some people that I deal with even in joint ventures and things where they don't like offering a longer service period or installments and they argue about it. I have a great idea, why don't
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we just cut all this stuff out and you won't have to worry about the servicing or any of that stuff or refunds because you won't have anybody to buy it in the first place. So you'll be in fine shape. Make it easy for people to do business with you. I still hear people tell me "I don't want to take American Express. They charge more than MasterCard or Visa." You're sick if you don't take American Express and Discover. If I could accept oil company credit cards I would. If I could accept JCPenney's cards I would. I can't but I would take any card I could take. Make it easy for people to buy. One guy started taking COD based on my advice, which actually worked. He went to a fourth letter with a four installment plan, which he was actually getting a 12% response off of the fourth mailing. He added one line to it, it's a 60-page letter and he got this idea off of Gary Halbert. He addresses the, "don't buy this program if you are any one of these people afraid of making money...if you're an unethical scumbag and you know in your heart that you're going to return my program, please take advantage of some other poor business person..." The four-installment thing works very well. So, make it easy for people to buy. Our bad debt ratio runs about annually 1% of sales or whatever. I haven't found any difference between two installments or four. It's about the same. You're going to get some deadbeats, but it overcomes so many other people's resistance. We keep extending the payments. One question that comes up is about whether you are in the startup phase or not, you might not have the cash flow to afford installments. I understand that, but again, going two payments is better than one. I started in the beginning with two payments and nobody could be more broke. I remember one day I first started doing this, I looked in this
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drawer and it had $6,000 in installment payments that were going to come in the next few months and I wanted to show my wife, Peggy, look at this drawer. This is cool. It didn't help solve all the problems upfront, but again, I wasn't that worried about making a profit in the beginning. I was worried about getting it going and that's a different issue. KC Secret #58: Ease off on the graphics unless they are necessary and add to the understanding and clarity This is extremely important on the Internet. You'll notice we don't have much (if any) graphics in our sales copy. The picture of the guy with his name underneath as a caption. I don't know, does that work? I have found in general, again, if you look at my more successful ads, the only graphic is a picture of me at the end and I do that because I found that it sells more when there's a picture of the person that wrote the letter at the end of the letter. Don't ask me why. It might be because of the way the copy talks, psychologically it adds to the whole ambiance for them seeing the person that was just talking to them. Because usually letters don't talk to you. If the copy talks to them it works. If it talks at them, like most marketing does, then I don't think it's going to make any difference because then they want to see who the jerk is who wrote the cpoy. I don't use any graphics, hardly ever in printed material and minimally on the Internet. I tested the one picture and the thinking
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was there that seeing me in my underwear, which is really gym shorts, because it's in the title (How To Make $4000K A Day Sitting At Your Kitchen Table In Your Underwear) we thought there was enough of a reason the picture might make a difference. But normally, other than that I don't use graphics. Just words. No pictures. No cartoons. I have proven through testing and I have a guy I do some things with who is really big on the cartoons and graphics and we've run A/B split tests with the non-graphic versions that killed the ones with cartoons and graphics just annihilated them in the results. Take that for what it's worth. KC Secret #59: Write as if your reader is your sole recipient Write to a person. You are not writing to people, you are writing to a person. KC Secret #60: Use internal repetition People WILL complain occasionally when they call up. "Your letter said the same stuff over and over again." I say, "There's a reason why we do that." Internal repetition is because most people don't get it. So we try to have different ways to say things. I might say the same thing eight different ways in my copy. Internal repetition is very, very important. The repetition, for
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whatever reason, it builds up your case. It kind of gets them into a trance and then they get led through the all your copy. If you're going for a sale you want them to take out their credit card and order. Like Homer. I love the Simpsons. It's my second or third favorite show. If you think of how to get Homer off the couch and you think of Homer as your prospect in just about anything you're doing, you will probably be very successful. Remember that quote from that guy in 1865, "Write as low as you can." Homer is your prospect and I don't care if Homer is the president of a Fortune 100 company, he's still Homer. He's still a person and he's still a human being. KC Secret #61: Clichés work great We are all told don't use clichés and this is my opinion and my testing. I will say things like "Aren't you sick as a dog listening to some boss telling you what to do" or "it makes your stomach turn" or Dan Kennedy uses "who does the bell toll for, it tolls for thee" or "He's as mad as a hatter" or whatever. I find they work great. Everybody knows what they mean for the most part. You do need to be conscious of the country your piece will be read in if on paper. On the Internet you have to be real careful. For instance if you ever go to Australia, don't say that you're rooting for somebody. That's very bad. I learned the hard way. Make sure if you go somewhere else that you have somebody local that knows the idiomatic expressions because in Australia that is a very,
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very bad thing. So again, use clichés, I think they work wonderfully and they have proven to work wonderfully and don't listen to what other people say, test them for yourselves. KC Secret #62: A question and answer session In my copy you will find a lot have question and answer sessions. They'll say something like, "Now you've read all this or you've listened to all this, you probably have a lot of questions, so let's go through a brief question and answer session. You can ask me some questions." It's written just like you'd be talking in front of a room and then you say "Here's Question #1..." etc. (Click here to see a great use of questions) Notice how they so expertly use the questioning technique to suck you into the copy. Throughout the entire piece, they continue to ask you questions that make you think, questions that they already know the answer to, and how you're likely to respond. This is a very good example of well crafted emotionally charged questions. Also, they use teaser copy extremely well. They show you little tidbits to get you thinking, wondering and wanting to know more. Notice how they build tremendous credibility through the explanation of their previous success, testimonials and endorsements. Credibility leads to believability, which leads to trust which leads to buying. There are also numerous calls to action throughout the piece, which is a skill that you can never get good enough at. Calls to actions
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are usually non-existent, or pretty weak if they are used. These folks KNOW how to get you to move ahead and keep moving into an inescapable buying decision. You should read this home page as it is a masterful job of combing killer headlines, credibility building, testimonials and endorsements; along with emotional, curiosity provoking headlines, subheads, calls to action and copy! KC Secret #63: Show them the value of comparisons to similar things or to individually priced items compared to the package price Dan Kennedy calls it comparing apples to oranges. "If you were to get this product in a seminar it would cost you whatever, but since we're selling this through a book and tapes, it's only this..." Dan likes the apples to oranges where you talk about if your thing is a written material product for instance, "...if you were to get this at a live seminar, we charge you $6,000, but it's only $495, or if you are selling tapes of the seminar, you can say if you were there it would cost you $$6,000, plus hotel and airfare, but tapes are only $195..." KC Secret #64: Never assume anyone knows what something means I noticed during the O.J. Simpson trial, the prosecution did that a lot where they would say, "Well, there he was and...it's obvious what this means." This is what Marcia Clark was saying to the jury. She would say "Anyone can see what this means." Marcia, wrong, wrong, wrong.
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She should have gone to copywriting school (or my seminar). They obviously didn't know what it meant. So don't assume. If you think you know your marketing, even if you think you know what they mean like our famous "in lieu of" story earlier, if I was going to use in lieu of, I should have said "or in other words you won't have to do this or that." I should have made it clearer. That again is going back to the clarity issue. KC Secret #65: Offer proof if you have it (testimonials, test results, etc.) Testimonials, results, tests if you've got a technical product "our thing has .72 less distortion than whatever". If you have some proof, use it. You can't use too much proof. KC Secret #66: Endorsements from others you know where trust is magic A really good example of that was the marketing consultant Jay Abraham mailing to the self help coach Tony Robbins' list with Tony Robbins doing the cover letter. They sold out a $5,000 seminar in a couple of hours or something. Endorsements are great if you can get them from people who mean something. Getting an endorsement if you were trying to sell a course on how to be a good prosecutor endorsed by Marcia Clark, may not be the right endorsement to get. Although, if you were selling a course on how to be a great defense attorney and Johnny Cochran wrote you the letter, you'd pay a lot more attention. If Johnny Cochran wrote that you should take a look at this because this person
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is just like me and he knows how to make good rhymes just like I do. KC Secret #67: Guarantees should be strong and not weasely A weasel guarantee is that you can return this IF you break your leg playing volleyball on a Tuesday before a full moon that came when the moon was in the seventh house and Jupiter was aligned with Mars. That's a weasely guarantee. My guarantees are pretty simple. Sometimes we have problems, but usually I really don't care. I still basically say that if you don't like it within a certain period of time, which is usually six months, a year or lifetime, we'll give you your money back. No hassles, whatever. I learned from somebody not to say, "no questions asked" to just say "no hassle" because that's even better than "no questions asked". Again, it's a subtle difference, but a big difference. Plus, you might want to "ask questions" to find out why they're returning it. (Click here to see a classic guarantee) Here's a classic illustration of using one of the most powerful ways to get people to give you money in any business.give them a way to try your wares without any risk! IN other words, give them a STRONG GUARANTEE! I am amazed at how many people still write copy and ignore one of the BIGGEST OBJECTIONS people have about buying things via mail order. (The internet, by the way, IS still a mail order medium just like direct mail, catalogs, infomercials, etc.) What is this heavy duty objection people have that predisposes them to NOT buy from mail order folks?
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Here it is plain and simple.since they can't pick it up, eyeball it, play with it, look at it, hold it, try it..they are afraid that if they don't like it they will be stuck with it and be out the money they paid you! This is a HUGE problem that can only be overcome in most cases with a kick ass, no bullshit, no weanie roast, no weasel clause, no fine print statement that you STAND BEHIND your products.and give the boldest, strongest, most powerful guarantee you can! People want to feel comfortable that if they make that big decision to hand over their hard earned money to you, that it's a safe a smart thing to do. You should find ways to make your guarantees stand out from the crowd, and be so in your face.that people will instantly recognize that you are for real, that you are honest, and that you empathize with them by understanding their fear of buying sight unseen.and alleviating that fear! Please read through this entire piece and see how the guarantee is masterfully used to eliminate the prospects' fear of buying sight unseen. You'll learn a lot about how to do this make-it-or-break-it technique for your promotions! KC Secret #68: Offer and guarantee must be restated on your order device Your order form has to restate your whole offer and your guarantee because some people only read the order form. Usually your order form should be a nice concise restatement of your guarantee and your offer. KC Secret #69: Advocacy and friend against the enemy is a good copywriting technique I take that position often. In the financial market I say,
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"This isn't going to be popular with the home offices or whatever and this and that, but I don't really care what those people think. I'm only interested in you and helping you." A lot of people are afraid of that sentence, and my spouse to this day still says, "I wish you wouldn't say that." A guy in Australia we're working with he's trying to get into the corporate market so he has to carefully edit everything I send him that we use here because I frequently attack the corporate people very heavily because who I am trying to get is the individual person, not the home office. Now Dan Kennedy did a thing where he got some home office people and he became the advocate of the home office people and made the agents sound like they were the enemy. It's a very important copywriting technique. KC Secret #70: Sometimes you have to go past your comfort zone at the risk of offending some people who won't be customers to get the ones who will I'm not interested in the one lady who called and complained about me telling her to "go to the next page" or that I offended her. I'm only interested in the other 12,000 people who bought my product. The key is that you sometimes have to push yourself outside the comfort zone to take a position. Wishy-washy, weasely, mealy-mouth copy isn't going to sell anything. You need to be strong and sometimes by being strong you're going to get somebody who will call you up and say "I resent that you..." "I'm sorry you resent that. I'll take you off the list. Have a nice
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life. Good-bye." KC Secret #71: Have the copy be you and what your personality is If the copy is you and the stories are about you and how you talk and how you feel, then when they get your product and it's the same way, it makes it very congruent and I think it's very important not to be somebody else. KC Secret #72: All of this is true for any prospect, for example, business-to-business marketing, women marketing, and retirees, whatever I've heard them all. I disagree with them all. There's no such thing as somebody who's not a human that you're marketing to. I don't care what your market is whether it's business to business, and people tell us this will work in business, it won't work in consumer. Then I have people tell me that it will work in consumer, but not in business to business. Whatever it is, it is, and people are people. As soon as you just get over that, the better your copy will be. KC Secret #73: Pay zero attention to other's opinions Only pay attention to the market, that's a very important point. Many of the things I've done I've been told by people that know me and like me that "this won't work, you can't do this"...whatever.
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People have also told me that "That's really going to work." And it flops. I made the mistake of listening to people's opinions. The only things I care about are the results from the marketplace. I had one piece I changed and everyone in my office really like it a lot better. They said, "This is so much less offensive, so much better." The piece was a bomb. We got rid of it in two weeks. My whole staff liked it better, but it didn't work. The last thing... KC Secret #74: Use your imagination Have fun. You are allowed to. I got a about how letter, but technique.
letter from somebody in Australia who started off talking his wife disagreed with him and she didn't want to sign the he sent the letter anyway. It's an age-old copywriting But the guy had a lot of fun with what he was doing.
I try to have fun with what I'm doing in my copy. I'm not that funny of a person. I'm not Jerry Seinfeld but I still try to interject if humor seems to be appropriate in a spot, I'll try to throw a little dry humor in there. If I want to be a little bit or a lot tongue-in-cheek, I will. I just think that if you're more interesting, people will be more likely to read and buy. If you want to read "The Final Word" on Killer Copywriting then turn the page...
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Chapter 13: The Final Word Well, that's it then. Now you know everything about Killercopy right? Probably not. You'll make mistakes I'm sure. We all do. It's inevitable. But remember this, I made a lot of those mistakes. But I didn't have a book like this! You do! As long as you maintain the will to succeed and decide to do whatever it takes, it will happen. Maybe not today or tomorrow. But it will happen. Although I tried to think of everything I could about copywriting and what you need to know about it, there is still much, much more for you to learn. I learn new stuff about copywriting and direct response advertising every day! Now, we can't "get back" copies of this book whenever we need to update it so you have two options. 1. Go the rest of the way on your own or... 2. Occasionally check out the Killercopywriting page to see if there are any new updates. (monthly updates guaranteed). Think of this book as a seed. A seed in the fertile soil of your mind. How well it continues to grow (if at all) is up to you. It depends on how well you nurture it, feed it and tend to it. By reading this book over and over again, you will be continuing to grow that garden in your mind. If you want more than copywriting, you can always click here to stop by our Instant Profits site for The Internet's Hottest Money Making and Marketing Resource.
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Appendices Appendix 1 | Appendix 2 | Appendix 3
Sell This Book and Keep 50% of the Profits! AND... Have Everyone Person Who Buys Killercopywriting From You Entered Into Our Database as "Your" Customer! That Means Whenever They Buy *ANY* Product From Us In The Future...YOU GET THE COMMISSION! If you want to make money selling this book you can. Sell it and keep the lion's share of the profits. All you have to do is sign up at our partner page by clicking here now to make money selling Killer Copywriting. It's yours free! By setting up your reseller id you can begin marketing and selling this program. Good luck!
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Appendix 1 Appendix 1 | Appendix 2 | Appendix 3 |
RECOMMENDED BOOKS FROM MY PERSONAL LIBRARY Most of these books are available at amazon.com. Just click the book title link and you'll be instantly sent to amazon.com where you can get the book at a great price and have it for your library. Don't put it off, get these books AT A MINIMUM. I have many more but these are a must. I will continue to expand this in the Killercopywriting Club pages. In some cases there are links for hard to find books to TWI press. "Tested Advertising Methods" by John Caples. Absolute classic. I've read this book seven times. "The Ultimate Sales Letter" by Dan Kennedy. Superb book. My copy is dog-eared and heavily used. Perfect for helping you create your own powerful sales letter. "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini. This isn't a copywriting book but you must get this book. I've read it at least 7 times and it will help you understand the psychological triggers to a sale. Very Powerful!! "Scientific Advertising" by Claude Hopkins. Now in public domain read it online for free. "My life in Advertising/Scientific Advertising" by Claude Hopkins. "My life in Advertisng" is not public domain and worth reading. I've read both these books about 7 times.
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"The Robert Collier Letter Book" by Robert Collier. Out-of-print, but still available from TWI press. Well worth it. "How to Write a Good Advertisement" by Victor Schwab. One of the first books I ever read on advertising and still one of the best. "Triggers" by Joe Sugarman. One of the smartest direct-response legends. Joe was the first marketer to use toll-free 800#'s for credit card ordering in his ads. This is a "must have" book for copywriters. "Advertising Secrets of the Written Word" by Joe Sugarman. Sugarman has made millions for himself selling blu-blocker sunglasses. His copywriting book is a tremendous resource for any copywriter. Words That Sell by Richard Bayan. An easy to use thesaurus specifically for copywriters' use, with hundreds of alternative words and phrases for describing offers, guarantees, calls to action, etc. "2,239 TESTED SECRETS FOR DIRECT MARKETING SUCCESS" by Denny Hatch. A huge resource of thier "best advice" from the legends like Ogilvy, Peterman and nearly 200 other copywriters, direct marketers.
Doing Research Alas, I've only used these resources at the library so if anyone has links for any of these resources, please send them to
[email protected] Find these publications online or at your library. The Reader's Guide to Periodic Literature
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Encyclopedia of Associations The Cumulative Book Index Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia The Industrial Index Gale Research - http://www.galegroup.com/ Encyclopedia of Business Facts on File - indexed weekly world news digest Statistical Abstracts of the United States Direct Mail Resources: SRDS - http://www.srds.com/ Rental lists, market research. Go Leads - http://www.goleads.com/ Unlimited access to over 12 MILLION US Businesses for only $9.95/month InfoUsa - http://www.infousa.com/ Generate sales leads, find new customers, develop direct mail or telemarketing campaigns, conduct market research and a host of other business planning functions US Post Office
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Appendix 2 - 100 Headline Models Appendix 1 | Appendix 2 | Appendix 3 Use These 100 Headlines As Models 1. THE SECRET OF MAKING PEOPLE LIKE YOU 2. A LITTLE MISTAKE THAT COST A FARMER $3,000 A YEAR 3. ADVICE TO WIVES WHOSE HUSBANDS DON'T SAVE MONEY--BY A WIFE 4. THE CHILD WHO WON THE HEARTS OF ALL 5. ARE YOU EVER TONGUE-TIED AT A PARTY? 6. HOW A NEW DISCOVERY MADE A PLAIN GIRL BEAUTIFUL 7. HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE 8. THE LAST TWO HOURS ARE THE LONGEST-AND THOSE ARE THE TWO HOURS YOU SAVE 9. WHO ELSE WANTS A SCREEN STAR FIGURE? 10. DO YOU MAKE THESE MISTAKES IN ENGLISH? 11. WHY SOME FOODS EXPLODE IN YOUR STOMACH 12. HANDS THAT LOOK LOVELIER IN 24 HOURS-OR YOUR MONEY BACK 13. WHY SOME PEOPLE ALMOST ALWAYS MAKE MONEY IN THE STOCK MARKET 14. YOU CAN LAUGH AT MONEY WORRIES--IF YOU FOLLOW THIS SIMPLE PLAN 15. WHEN DOCTORS "FEEL ROTTEN", THIS IS WHAT THEY DO 16. IT SEEMS INCREDIBLE THAT YOU CAN OFFER THESE SIGNED ORIGINAL ETCHINGS-FOR ONLY $5 EACH 17. FIVE FAMILIAR SKIN TROUBLES-WHICH DO YOU WANT TO OVERCOME? 18. WHICH OF THESE $2.50 TO $5 BEST SELLERS DO YOU WANTFOR ONLY $1 EACH 19. WHO EVER HEARD OF A WOMAN LOSING WEIGHT--AND ENJOYING 3 DELICIOUS MEALS AT THE SAME TIME? 20. HOW I IMPROVED MY MEMORY IN ONE EVENING
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21. DISCOVER THE FORTUNE THAT LIES HIDDEN IN YOUR SALARY 22. DOCTORS PROVE TWO OUT OF THREE WOMEN CAN HAVE MORE BEAUTIFUL SKIN IN 14 DAYS. 23. HOW I MADE A FORTUNE WITH A "FOOL IDEA" 24. HOW OFTEN DO YOU HEAR YOURSELF SAYING: "NO, I HAVEN'T READ IT, I'VE BEEN MEANING TO" 25. THOUSANDS HAVE THIS PRICELESS GIFT--BUT NEVER DISCOVER IT! 26. WHOSE AT FAULT WHEN CHILDREN DISOBEY? 27. HOW A FOOL STUNT MADE ME A STAR SALESMAN 28. HAVE YOU THESE SYMPTOMS OF NERVE EXHAUSTION? 29. GUARANTEED TO GO THROUGH ICE. MUD, OR SNOW--OR WE PAY THE TOW! 30. HOW A NEW KIND OF CLAY IMPROVED MY COMPLEXION IN 30 MINUTES 31. 161 NEW WAYS TO A MAN'S HEART-IN THE FASCINATING BOOK FOR COOKS 32. PROFITS THAT LIE HIDDEN IN YOUR FARM 33. IS THE LIFE OF A CHILD WORTH $1 TO YOU? 34. EVERYWHERE WOMEN ARE RAVING ABOUT THIS AMAZING NEW SHAMPOO! 35. DO YOU DO ANY OF THESE TEN EMBARRASSING THINGS? 36. SIX TYPES OF INVESTORS-WHICH GROUP ARE YOU? 37. HOW TO TAKE OUT STAINS...USE (PRODUCT NAME) AND FOLLOW THESE EASY DIRECTIONS 38. TODAY...ADD $10,000 TO YOUR ESTATE-FOR THE PRICE OF A NEW HAT 39. DOES YOUR CHILD EVER EMBARRASS YOU? 40. IS YOUR HOME PICTURE-POOR? 41. HOW TO GIVE YOUR CHILDREN EXTRA IRON-THESE 3 DELICIOUS WAYS 42. TO PEOPLE WHO WANT TO WRITE-BUT CAN'T GET STARTED 43. THIS ALMOST-MAGICAL LAMP LIGHTS HIGHWAY TURNS BEFORE YOU MAKE THEM 44. THE CRIMES WE COMMIT AGAINST OUR STOMACHS 45. THE MAN WITH A 'GRASSHOPPER MIND'
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46. THEY LAUGHED WHEN I SAT DOWN AT THE PIANO-BUT WHEN I BEGAN TO PLAY! 47. THROW AWAY YOUR OARS! 48. HOW TO DO WONDERS WITH A LITTLE LAND! 49. WHO ELSE WANTS LIGHTER CAKE-IN HALF THE MIXING TIME? 50. LITTLE LEAKS THAT KEEP MEN POOR 51. PIERCED BY 301 NAILS...RETAINS FULL AIR PRESSURE 52. NO MORE BACK-BREAKING GARDEN CHORES FOR ME-YET OURS IS NOW THE SHOW-PLACE OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD! 53. OFTEN A BRIDESMAID, NEVER A BRIDE 54. HOW MUCH IS "WORKER TENSION" COSTING YOUR COMPANY? 55. TO MEN WHO WANT TO QUIT WORK SOMEDAY 56. HOW TO PAINT YOUR HOUSE TO SUIT YOURSELF 57. BUY NO DESK-UNTIL YOU'VE SEEN THIS SENSATION OF THE BUSINESS SHOW 58. CALL BACK THESE GREAT MOMENTS AT THE OPERA 59. "I LOST MY BULGES...AND SAVED MONEY TOO" 60. WHY (BRAND NAME) BULBS GIVE MORE LIGHT THIS YEAR 61. RIGHT AND WRONG FARMING METHODS--AND LITTLE POINTERS THAT WILL INCREASE YOUR PROFITS 62. NEW CAKE-IMPROVER GETS YOU COMPLIMENTS GALORE! 63. IMAGINE ME-HOLDING AN AUDIENCE SPELLBOUND FOR 30 MINUTES 64. THIS IS MARIE ANTOINETTE--RIDING TO HER DEATH 65. DID YOU EVER SEE A "TELEGRAM" FROM YOUR HEART? 66. NOW ANY AUTO REPAIR JOB CAN BE 'DUCK SOUP' FOR YOU 67. NEW SHAMPOO LEAVES YOUR HAIR SMOOTHER--EASIER TO MANAGE 68. IT'S A SHAME FOR YOU NOT TO MAKE GOOD MONEY--WHEN THESE MEN DO IT SO EASILY 69. YOU NEVER SAW SUCH LETTERS AS HARRY AND I GOT ABOUT OUR PEARS 70. THOUSANDS NOW PLAY WHO NEVER THOUGHT THEY COULD
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71. GREAT NEW DISCOVERY KILLS KITCHEN ODORS QUICK!MAKES INDOOR AIR "COUNTRY-FRESH" 72. MAKE THIS 1-MINUTE TEST--OF AN AMAZING NEW KIND OF SHAVING CREAM 73. ANNOUNCING...THE NEW EDITION OF THE ENCYCLOPEDIA THAT MAKES IT FUN TO LEARN THINGS 74. AGAIN SHE ORDERS..."A CHICKEN SALAD, PLEASE" 75. FOR THE WOMAN WHO IS OLDER THAN SHE LOOKS 76. CHECK THE KIND OF BODY YOU WANT 77. "YOU KILL THAT STORE-OR I'LL RUN YOU OUT OF THE STATE!" 78. HERE'S A QUICK WAY TO BREAK UP A COLD 79. THERE'S ANOTHER WOMAN WAITING FOR EVERY MAN-AND SHE'S TOO SMART TO HAVE "MORNING MOUTH" 80. THIS PEN "BURPS" BEFORE IT DRINKS-BUT NEVER AFTERWARDS! 81. IF YOU WERE GIVEN $200,000 TO SPEND-ISN'T THIS THE KIND OF (TYPE OF PRODUCT, BUT NOT BRAND NAME) YOU WOULD BUILD? 82. "LAST FRIDAY...WAS I SCARED!--MY BOSS ALMOST FIRED ME!" 83. 76 REASONS WHY IT WOULD HAVE PAID YOU TO ANSWER OUR AD A FEW MONTHS AGO 84. SUPPOSE THIS HAPPENED ON YOUR WEDDING DAY! 85. DON'T LET ATHLETE'S FOOT "LAY YOU UP" 86. ARE THEY BEING PROMOTED RIGHT OVER YOUR HEAD? 87. ARE WE A NATION OF LOW-BROWS? 88. A WONDERFUL TWO YEARS' TRIP AT FULL PAY--BUT ONLY MEN WITH IMAGINATION CAN TAKE IT 89. WHAT EVERYBODY OUGHT TO KNOW...ABOUT THIS STOCK AND BOND BUSINESS 90. MONEY-SAVING BARGAINS FROM AMERICA'S OLDEST DIAMOND DISCOUNT HOUSE 91. FORMER BARBER EARNS $8,000 IN FOUR MONTHS AS A REAL ESTATE SPECIALIST 92. FREE BOOK--TELLS YOU TWELVE SECRETS OF BETTER LAWN CARE
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93. GREATEST GOLD-MINE OF EASY "THINGS TO MAKE" EVER CRAMMED INTO ONE BIG BOOK 94. $80,000 IN PRIZES! HELP US FIND THE NAME FOR THESE NEW KITCHENS 95. NOW! OWN FLORIDA LAND THIS EASY WAY...$10 DOWN AND $10 A MONTH 96. TAKE ANY THREE OF THESE KITCHEN APPLIANCES--FOR ONLY $8.95 (VALUES UP TO 15.45) 97. SAVE TWENTY CENTS OFF TWO CANS OF CRANBERRY SAUCELIMITED OFFER 98. ONE PLACE-SETTING FREE FOR EVERY THREE YOU BUY! 99. HOW TO GET MORE CLIENTS IN A MONTH THAN YOU NOW GET ALL YEAR! 100. DIARY OF A FRUSTRATED (PROFESSION)!
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Appendix 3 Appendix 1 | Appendix 2 | Appendix 3
Affiliate/Reseller Rights Did you like Killer Copywriting? If so, why not offer it to your customers? You can become an affiliate/reseller of Killer Copywriting - Jealously Guarded Secrets of Writing Copy So Good...You Could Sell Sand In The Desert! by Jeff Paul and Jim Fleck. Here's what you get: The right to sell Killer Copywriting and keep the majority of the money. You'll get a link to a copy of the website that you bought the book from. • Everyone who buys killercopywriting from you that isn't in our database gets marked as "your" customer. Then, whatever they buy from us in the future, you get whatever the commission is for that product. Whether you offer it or not! • You can offer this $37 product make money on it as well as our growing line of products. Some of which are licensing deals that pay each and every month. Do the work once...get paid forever! We can only offer a limited number of Affiliate/Reseller opportunities in order to preserve the value of these rights. So you might want to get them now! Click Here To Get Yours
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The Ads Here is an index of all of the ad samples used in this book. They are in no particular order but you can't print them all off if it's easier to use. Be aware, some of these ads are very old and don't reproduce the greatest. If we find better versions we will post them in the Killer Copywriting Club. Are You Too Thin? Do You Make These Mistakes In English? Would You Give $1 For 16 Dance Lessons if... The Mysteries of Lovemaking Solved Get Plump Reduce 33 Pounds... Here's an Extra $50 Grace.... They Laughed When I Sat Down At The Piano... To People Who Want To Write... 10,000 Ideas, Secret Formulas... Mail Order Ads Self-mastery, the key to life's riches Mail Order Ads #2 Mail Order Ads #3 1944's Sex Discoveries... Betsy Compton says.... GM Turk - They All Laughed... Julia Roberts - Redbook Chrysler Bose IBM Park Avenue Templeton The Penalty of Leadership 100K Per Year To 100K Per Month Get the cold-call monkey off your back... Here are 17 steps to making more money... The 8 Characteristics... Top Producers Don't Make Cold-Calls... The Diary of a Frustrated Agent
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