Copywriters Podcast

By popular demand, we’re back with the always surprising John Williamson today. He’s going to talk about a serious problem every business faces, and some ready-made solutions to this problem. John is coming to us from an undisclosed location on the side of a mountain in Scotland. Over the last 30 years he has generated millions of dollars in sales for himself and his clients with his own special brand of unique selling propositions. The problem, of course, is getting and keeping the attention of customers. In a way that leads to sales, and repeat sales after that. John says, “Right at the heart of your attention getting should be your brand.” A lot of us direct marketers don’t pay a whole lot of attention to branding these days, but John argues that we should. All the time. But not just any kind of brand. One that pulls its weight in getting attention and adding new customers. How do you do that, and how to you make it pay off if you don’t have a huge budget to establish this brand in the way a big corporati

People start out writing copy all kinds of different ways. But how many times have you heard, “It all started with beer?” I’m not talking about drinking a beer. I’m talking about brewing your own beer! That’s how our guest today, Billy Broas, got started in online marketing: He launched a website for his fellow home beer brewers. That was in 2010. His online course sales from the site got to the point where Billy was able to leave his job and become an entrepreneur. He hired me as a copywriting mentor in 2015, and his since gone on to do great things helping people launch online courses. Especially the new wave of instruction called cohort-based courses. Now, course creators are very often not copywriters, which makes sense. But Billy is, and, as a teacher, he needed to find ways to get some important copywriting concepts across to them quickly and meaningfully. On today’s show, we talked about what I consider a brilliant construct to do just that, called The 5 Lightbulbs, today. Billy told us how he came

Just like Tom Hanks knows how to make movies, Kevin Rogers knows how to navigate comedy. Really. He spent years as a professional stand-up comedian, sharing the stage with other great comics like Chris Rock, Billy Gardell, and many others. You may be more familiar with Kevin as a superstar copywriter and copywriting educator, which is how he spends most of his working time now. He has created Copy Chief, a community-based forum and training center for copywriters. This was after he had reached the top echelon of pro copywriters himself. Kevin’s also the Amazon best-selling author of The 60-Second Sales Hook, where he shows how to use a proven joke formula to create a powerful marketing hook. Kevin has many, many more credits to his name. But as you can see by now, Kevin is the perfect person to come on the show to talk about an increasingly high-wire act for copywriters, and really anyone in business who has a sense of humor: What you can get away with, and what should you avoid at all costs, when it com

These days, more and more people from more and more backgrounds are thinking about writing sales copy, or actually doing it. The main reason is the number of online business has exploded. This is due in part to all the people who spent so much time at home during the pandemic. But there are other reasons as well. One important one is, a lot of people who didn’t like to buy online in the past will only buy online now, if they possibly can. So, a much bigger market. Anyone who didn’t start out their career as a copywriter knows that it takes some adjustments. Writing copy is hardly like writing term papers at school or even writing weak-kneed prose at advertising agencies. Copy is muscular, and it has a job to do — it has to sell something. Today I thought we could take a look at what people from six specific backgrounds need to know and, just as important, need to change about their thinking in order to write copy that works. I asked myself the question, what are the most common categories of people I’ve

We are back with the unconventional and immensely creative marketer, John Williamson. Last week he went in-depth on his powerful technique called Emotional Lockpicking™, and we asked him to join us again, which he agreed to do. John lives in an undisclosed location on the side of a mountain in Scotland. Over the last 30 years he has generated millions of dollars in sales for himself and his clients with his own special brand of unique selling propositions. He’s also come up with some very interesting ideas about elevator pitches, unique selling propositions, and even how to close a deal with a stuffed tortoise. I find his ideas fascinating and he’ll share some more of them with us today. One of John’s favorite quotes is: “All things being equal, people buy on price. Which is why your number-one job as an entrepreneur is to ensure that ‘things’ aren’t equal.” Probably related to that idea is a speech he has given over 250 times called “How to Charge Higher Prices Than Your Competitors… and STILL Win the Busin

Here at Copywriters Podcast, we pride ourselves on having unconventional guests with unique marketing ideas, but our guest today, John Williamson, really takes “unconventional” to a whole new level. John lives in an undisclosed location on the side of a mountain in Scotland. Over the last 30 years he has generated millions of dollars in sales for himself and his clients with his own special brand of unique selling propositions. He’s also come up with an innovative copywriting concept he calls “Emotional Lockpicking.” I find it fascinating and he’ll share it with us today. Plus, he has loads of other money-making ideas I promise you haven’t heard anywhere else before. One of John’s favorite quotes is: “All things being equal, people buy on price. Which is why your number-one job as an entrepreneur is to ensure that ‘things’ aren’t equal.” Probably related to that idea is a speech he has given over 250 times called “How to Charge Higher Prices Than Your Competitors… and STILL Win the Business.” On the show, Jo

Our guest today is famous in digital marketing circles as an online advertising expert. His name is Justin Brooke and I’m so happy he can join us. Justin is the founder of Adskills, a great training company for online advertising. He’s also a super-experienced media buyer, having spent more than $10 million for lead generation as well as eCommerce campaigns. While Justin could give us super-valuable information on a lot of things, there’s one topic he knows a lot about where I’ve found it’s really hard to find any other expert who is also a good teacher. Justin is both – that is, an expert, and a really good teacher, and that topic is advertorials. It’s great that we get to talk to him about that today. Here’s what we ask him in today’s show: 1. For people who don't know -- What are advertorials, and how are they useful in marketing? 2. How did you get into writing, and teaching about, advertorials? 3. What are the key differences between an advertorial and... - content/articles - sales letters/ads? 4. Could

In just about every copywriter’s life, there comes a time when you ask yourself, “Why on God’s green Earth are all my clients making money hand over fist, day after day, month after month — and I just get paid just once?” It’s a fair question because, more often than not, as copywriters, we end up essentially inventing our clients’ businesses. With our copy. With our ideas. With our expert guidance. To create a money machine. Our guest today has a solution to this problem copywriters have. His name is Jason Moffatt, and his nickname is “profit Moffatt” for a reason. He’s figured out how to do profitable deals, both for his clients and for himself. He started his copywriting career reading books and courses while waiting in his spy van during private investigation stakeouts. After 17 years in Internet Marketing, Jason teaches digital marketers and copywriters how to get their slice of the pie by acquiring significant equity chunks on any project they work on. He spends most of his time on Hawaii’s fam

One reason it's hard to write copy is when you start out, you've got so much in front of you, it can seem overwhelming. Not only that, but just one you get in the groove for writing copy for one part of the letter or VSL, you have to shift gears. That's because different sections of what you're writing have different rhythms. Each one has a different feel. For example, a story needs to have good momentum to it. But it's not nearly as fast-paced as good closing copy is. Today we're going to talk about some ways you can overcome this problem, and it has to do with warming up to write each section. Just like if you were going to warm up to work out or go for a run, you can warm up to write each section of your copy differently. This will help you a lot, especially if you've got a big project and you feel like you're facing a brick wall. We talked about Gene Schwartz’s big concept of copywriting: That it’s not “writing,” but in fact is really “assembling.” He mentioned this at a talk he gave to people at Rodale,

Whether you’re running a business or running someone else’s Facebook advertising for them, it always seems like there are a million things to keep track of as far as advertising is concerned. No doubt about it; there are. But there are a few things that are truly make-or-break, day in and day out. A few crucial things that will define the line between profitability and losing money. A few things that determine sale or no sale. In other words, a few things that matter a lot more than the others. Nathan Fraser calls these few things “Advertising Cheat Codes.” Now don’t get him wrong, the other things are important, too. But I’m going to say the difference is, you can slip on the other things a little now and then and they won’t tank your business. But screw up regularly on the big things, and you could be in for some tough times ahead. Fortunately, once you know what these few, very important things are, you don’t ever have to screw up on them. Nathan told us about three of the most important Advertising Cheat

Today, let’s talk about staying with big copy projects, once you get started. You know, they say “begun is half done.” That’s true, but then there’s the other half, and that’s where we run into trouble sometimes. The half that’s not done yet, but still needs to get done. We’ve covered the steps of how to write a sales letter before and we’ll cover it again, but that’s not what I want to talk about today. This is more about how you need to prepare and what you need to do when you’re working to finish your project and have the best copy you can have. I’ll give you a hint as to where we’re going. I’ve invented something called the Frustration-Flow Scale. All the way to the left is frozen in frustration. All the way to the right on the scale is floating in flow. Effortless and fun. The trick is to get on the right side of the scale and stay there, for as long as possible, as often as possible. So all the things we’re going to talk about today are ways to get to and stay on the right side of the frustration-flow

We’re back with the legendary Bond Halbert, who I am proud to call my friend. On the last show, Bond talked about better ways to get started in copywriting. On today’s show, Bond will share with us some crucial insights about what working copywriters are doing wrong, and how to fix those problems. Bond’s father, of course, was the famous copywriter Gary Halbert, and Bond is among Gary’s first very successful students. In fact, Bond was closest to his dad in both a personal and professional relationship. More recently, after copy chiefing some of the largest financial promotions of our time, Bond pioneered many tactics for getting the highest email open rates in any industry. After Gary passed away, Bond and his brother Kevin took over TheGaryHalbertLetter.com and the brothers have put out great copywriting products, including the Halbert All-Star Audio Series, which I am proud to say I was invited to participate in. Bond and Kevin also have started the Gary Halbert Copy Club Facebook group, which has an astou

We’re so lucky to have Bond Halbert on the show today. Bond is my friend and has been a great supporter, professionally, for years. Bond’s father, of course, was the famous copywriter Gary Halbert, and Bond is among Gary’s first very successful students. In fact, Bond was closest to his dad in both a personal and professional relationship. More recently, after copy chiefing some of the largest financial promotions of our time, Bond pioneered many tactics for getting the highest email open rates in any industry. After Gary passed away, Bond and his brother Kevin took over TheGaryHalbertLetter.com and the brothers have put out great copywriting products, including the Halbert All-Star Audio Series, which I am proud to say I was invited to participate in. Bond and Kevin also have started the Gary Halbert Copy Club Facebook group, which has an astounding membership of more than 21,000, as of the day of our recording. That is HUGE for a copywriting group on Facebook! Bond mentors copywriters and we’ll give you

Every year, between 20 and 30 lucky people get a phone call that goes something like this: "Congratulations! The MacArthur Foundation has determined that you are a GENIUS, and we'd like to send you some Mo-NAY! Unlike my parody of the actual phone call, the money is serious — these days, $625,000, paid over five years. To use however they want. Now that's great for them, but so what? How does this have anything to do with copywriting? It's simple. These people get the award because the foundation gives it to them explicitly because of their creativity and originality. Something every good copywriter wants to get better at, too. Now… stay with me here… What if you could travel around the country interviewing these people and coaxing from them their creativity secrets? Well, maybe you could. But someone already did. And she wrote a great book about it. Denise Shekerjian interviewed 40 MacArthur fellows, as they are officially called. The book she wrote is titled "Uncommon Genius: How Great Ideas Are Born." I ch

We don’t usually give out formulas on this show, but today I’m going to start with one: Empathy = $80 million. I got that -- actually, I created it -- from looking at the work of our guest today, Emily McGuire. She’s a big-time specialist in email marketing. And her email campaigns have earned clients over $80 million in revenue. The reason I put empathy in the formula is that Emily says her guiding principle is “Leading with empathy… figuring out where your prospects and repeat customers are in their buying cycle, or customer journey… and re-engaging them when they start to cool off.” In her business, Flourish and Grit, Emily has worked with consumer brands, health and wellness businesses, and Software-as-a-Service companies in the tech space. Her most famous client is probably Adam & Eve, the adult toy store. She used the empathy approach to increase their profits by 36%. Here’s what I asked her: 1. Emily, I’m just betting you polarize audiences when you tell them that if they want to sell more with the

Today’s show is part of our popular Old Masters series, and we’ve got some unusual info and ideas from a copywriter of old, John Starr Hewitt. This comes from a book we’re pulled from before, from 1925, called “Masters of Advertising Copy.” From everything I’ve seen in this book, Hewitt is the only contributor who gets down to cases when it comes to what it takes to become a master in copywriting. His ideas are decidedly different, even for today. He talks about the subtle skills a copywriter needs to develop, and the subtle changes that occur as you get better and better. I agreed with most of what he said. I didn’t have an issue with any of it. Some of it was a little hard to understand and apply for copywriting today, but most of it translates very easily. And all of is interesting. More than how to structure an ad or how to do your research, this chapter by Hewitt focuses on awareness. What you need to pay attention to both with your product and regarding the world at large. Since this is new information,

So, with the year 2021 just days behind us, I thought it would be fun to reminisce about my early days as a copywriter. It was definitely a second career for me. I had started out as a business journalist. Of course, not knowing anything about copywriting when I first started, I assumed writing copy couldn’t be all that different from writing news and feature stories, right? I was about as wrong as I could be. And, of course, I found out. I learned the hard way. I seem to have developed a knack for learning that way. I don’t know if I can save any new copywriters from the painful lessons I had to learn the hard way, but hope springs eternal. And who knows, even experienced copywriters might remember something they had forgotten, or, get some new ideas from hearing the old truths. Each of these things I talk about on today’s show are now like iron laws that I remember, observe and respect every time I sit down to write copy myself, or critique copy for my clients. Resource: Copywriters Podcast Episode 174: Bel

Our guest today, Chris Haddad, sent shock waves through the copywriting world a couple weeks ago, with the launch of his much-awaited online training program called “The P.I.G. Method.” “P.I.G.” stands for “Punch in the gut” and I would say that’s a fairly universal description of how Chris’s copy in his video sales letters affects viewers. When you watch one of Chris’s promotions, or read his copy, you go on an emotional roller coaster ride that’s right up there with what you experience with a blockbuster Hollywood thriller. Chris does have a background in theatre and film. But his greatest accomplishments, I would argue, have come in the digital marketing space. Chris has created products and promotions for them which have brought in millions of dollars and caused quite a stir in the marketplace. However, The P.I.G. Method is the first time, as far as I can tell, that Chris has revealed his secrets of how he puts the promotions together. Which is something a lot of people have wanted to know for quite a whi

Our guest today, Chris Haddad, sent shock waves through the copywriting world 10 days ago with the launch of his much-awaited online training program called “The P.I.G. Method.” “P.I.G.” stands for “Punch in the gut” and I would say that’s a fairly universal description of how Chris’s copy in his video sales letters affects viewers. When you watch one of Chris’s promotions, or read his copy, you go on an emotional roller coaster ride that’s right up there with what you experience with a blockbuster Hollywood thriller. Chris does have a background in theatre and film. But his greatest accomplishments, I would argue, have come in the digital marketing space. Chris has created products and promotions for them which have brought in millions of dollars and caused quite a stir in the marketplace. However, The P.I.G. Method is the first time, as far as I can tell, that Chris has revealed his secrets of how he puts the promotions together. Which is something a lot of people have wanted to know for quite a while. On t

Today's podcast comes from a handful of idea generators I found in "The Copy Book —How Some of the Best Advertisers in the World Write Their Advertising." I found out about this book from our friend Sean Vosler, who's been on the show before. It's over 500 pages long, and while it's interesting, most of it does not really apply to direct response copywriting, which, after all, is what this show is about. Nevertheless, there were a few gems I found that are great idea generators for all copywriters. So that's what we're going to focus on today. We've got seven idea-generators, coming from four different copywriters. I'll mention their names as we get to each one. Obviously these are people who know their way around writing advertising. And, like I said, I carefully selected each idea generator because I can see how you can apply this to what you're doing when you're writing copy yourself. The Copy Book https://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/graphic_design/all/43914/facts.dad_the_copy_book.htm Download.