Copywriters Podcast

When you’re being bold and aggressive with your copy, there’s a three-word question you really need to ask: “Is it legal?” That’s because, very simply, you’re putting your business at risk if it’s not. Today we have an expert who lives with this question all the time, and helps his clients get the best answers. Robert Freund is an experienced advertising attorney who focuses his practice on social media marketing and e-commerce issues. His clients include direct-to-consumer brands, marketing agencies, and individual creators. I am constantly impressed by Rob’s savvy posts on Twitter, and sometimes astounded by the stories and examples he comes up with. And I stand in the company of giants who are also impressed: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg Law, Vox and Forbes. They’ve all quoted him. Plus, he’s lectured about social media law at the University of Southern California and other major institutions, in the U.S. and in Europe. So as you can see, Rob really knows his way around the

One of the most powerful forms of stories for copywriters is the case study, and I think it’s fair to say most of us don’t use as many of them as we should. Today we’re going to talk to an expert who has vast and successful experience in this kind of marketing. Our guest today, Joel Klettke, is the founder of Case Study Buddy, a business that helps companies like HubSpot and Loom to scale up their case study production and include it in every segment of their marketing—from lead generation and upsells to outreach and nurturing. Overall his company has done more than 2,000 case studies for more than 300 clients. Joel’s also a copywriter and a proud dad of two. I believe his one regret in life is being a fan of the Calgary Flames hockey team. I don’t blame him one bit. The last time the Flames won the Stanley cup was in 1989, and I suppose we should just leave that there. But lucky for us, Joel knows a lot about case studies and he’s generously agreed to share some great tips and insights with us today. Her

We’ve been talking about AI on this show for a while, and today we’re going to roll up our sleeves. Well, Nathan is, anyway. I may ask a few questions or make some comments, but Nathan is center-stage today. That’s because he has figured out how to use ChatGPT to assist him with writing his emails. They key word is “assist.” It does require work and thought on the human’s part. But, the good news is, AI is helping him save time and become more productive. There are some caveats, which Nathan will cover. Meaning that you can’t just push a button and get fully-finished copy, ready to mail. Here are some notes Nathan prepared for the show, which includes an amazingly generous full set of working prompts to get an AI started writing emails for you. Nathan’s notes for today’s show: This is made for use with the FREE version of ChatGPT. There are paid tools out there that can get close to duplicating this process. I wanted to make this accessible to everyone. What you'll get at the end is a way to crank out

The question is: How do you bring your prospect right there when they are reading words you have written, maybe thousands of miles away? The answer was revealed 99 years ago, but it’s not widely talked about in copywriting. Until today. In this special episode of our Old Masters Series, we look at a book by George Hotchkiss published in 1924. He has some ideas about using techniques novelists and hypnotists use. But using them in your copy, to bring your offer to life. To get your prospect to see and experience the best of what you have to offer. All through the words you choose. The book is simply called Advertising Copy. To the best of my recollection, superstar copywriter David Deutsch told me about this book many years ago. So thanks, DD! Now the author, George Hotchkiss, was both a successful copywriter and a major educator in copywriting. He started out as a newspaperman, and then went on to become a copywriter for the George Batten Company, which later became the giant ad agency BBDO. Also, he j

In the great financial meltdown of 2009, Colin Chung lost his job with eBay. Despite having no experience in copywriting, he decided that was the next part of his career path. In 18 months, he doubled his eBay income and was earning six figures for the first time in his life. As a freelance copywriter. In one year, he doubled it. Before long after that, Colin was making really big bucks. Not only that. He ended up writing for major clients, including Jay Abraham, Clayton Makepeace, Mike Dillard, Agora, and even a Shark Tank investor! Also, from 2014 to 2020, Colin was the primary coach for John Carlton’s Simple Writing System, where he coached many freelancers, business owners, and other aspiring copywriters. After all this, Colin has decided to reveal his secrets. And I say “secrets” because his approach, as he describes it, is different from the approach any other successful copywriter I’ve ever talked to or heard of. Colin has coached individual copywriters and managed teams of copywriters for client

About a month ago we did a selection from my half of the no-longer-available Guerrilla Copywriting audiobook. It was so popular, we thought we’d do it again. Here’s some background: Sixteen years ago, in 2007, I produced an audiobook with my friend and mentor Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the bestselling Guerrilla Marketing series. Jay and I originally thought about doing a book together, but that never happened. However, we did do an audiobook. It was called Guerrilla Copywriting. Unlike a lot of things he did and I lot of things I’ve done, this one didn’t sell that well. I don’t think either of us had the bandwidth to promote it, but there may have been another problem -- we tried to jam too much good information into too little time. We had sixty really powerful tips for writing copy. Jay would do one, then I would do one. It ended up being 60 tips in 60 minutes. Plenty of value, but maybe we would have been better off slowing down and taking some time to talk about each tip. Well… the audiobook is

You can’t go a day in copywriting without someone bringing up AI. It may not have taken over copywriting yet, but it has definitely taken over the conversation. In case you haven’t gotten your feet wet yet with GPT 4, Jasper, Copy AI or any other one of the handful of AIs people are currently using, I can tell you, people ARE using it, in predictable and unpredictable ways. Today Nathan and I discussed what we’re hearing and what we’re doing. We started with a really interesting discovery Nathan made that not only saves massive amounts of time on a project, but also slashes the learning curve on how to get AI to do exactly what you want it to do. I shared what I’ve heard from two clients who have an unusual amount of expert knowledge about AI… as well as being top-notch copywriters on their own. You’ll be surprised about one expert’s prediction on who will thrive and who will suffer in copywriting, thanks to AI. Different probably than what you’ve heard before. And another expert solved a tough business

Today we look at bullet points in an exciting new way. Now, in copy, bullet points in copy are specialized and different from bullet points everywhere else. Because in most forms of writing, bullet points condense facts and offer a summary. Not in copy, though. See, in copy, bullet points are condensed, emotionally driven, focused statements or promises that are sometimes powerful enough, by themselves, to make the sale. A few episodes ago, Nathan mentioned that when he’s looking at sales copy, he looks at the bullet points first. I’d never heard anyone say that before, and I thought it was interesting. I gave it some thought. I realized that bullet points do a lot more for Nathan—and for nearly everyone else reading copy—than most people realized. Then I went through three classic ads—one by Ted Nicholas, one by Gene Schwartz, and one by Mel Martin, all hall of fame copywriters. I hand-copied more than 60 of their bullet points onto a giant sheet of paper. That was quite an emotional roller-coaster ride

Today we return to Old Masters Series with a guy I’m going to call The Godfather of Creativity, Alex Osborn. He’s best known for inventing brainstorming, which was first used at his advertising agency BBDO (the O was for Osborn). But he has done a lot more than that. For example, in 1954 he co-founded the Creative Education Foundation. And he’s written a number of books. The best-known one was the bestseller Your Creative Power. However, a lesser-known book, Wake Up Your Mind: 101 Ways To Develop Your Creativeness, is what we’re going to use today to get into some really interesting, practical ideas about creativity and writing copy. First, we went over over a few things about creativity as we define it. First of all, creativity is not coming up with harebrained ideas like lizards that play golf to sell life insurance. Not in the way we’re talking about today. Creativity is finding better ways to get a prospect excited about and committed to buying what you are selling. No lizards required or desired. Se

Three weeks ago we did a selection from my half of the no-longer-available Guerrilla Copywriting audiobook. It was so popular, we thought we’d do it again. Here’s some background: Sixteen years ago, in 2007, I produced an audiobook with my friend and mentor Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the bestselling Guerrilla Marketing series. Jay and I originally thought about doing a book together, but that never happened. However, we did do an audiobook. It was called Guerrilla Copywriting. Unlike a lot of things he did and I lot of things I’ve done, this one didn’t sell that well. I don’t think either of us had the bandwidth to promote it, but there may have been another problem -- we tried to jam too much good information into too little time. We had sixty really powerful tips for writing copy. Jay would do one, then I would do one. It ended up being 60 tips in 60 minutes. Plenty of value, but maybe we would have been better off slowing down and taking some time to talk about each tip. Well… the audiobook is ou

People outside of marketing and copywriting might think “swiping” is something you do on your phone with a dating app, or maybe that it’s slang for shoplifting. Not wrong, but today we’re talking about what copywriters and marketing strategists mean when they say “swiping.” And that is, taking a proven form (whether that’s actual words or something a little more conceptual) and finding a way to use it yourself. It could be word-substitution in a headline. For example, we’ve seen countless examples of headlines that have swiped the originals: Who Else Wants A Whiter Wash? and Who Else Wants A Beach Body? Swipes would be Who Else Wants A Six-Pack That Gets Admiring Stares? Who Else Wants More Free Time Than You Ever Dreamed Of? Our guest today has a much broader and, I would say, more profitable vision of what swiping is and what it can be. His name is Corey Haines and he has a lot of experience in SaaS marketing. In case you’re not familiar with the term, SaaS stands for “Software-as-a-Service.” He al

We’ve got a very special episode today in our Old Masters series—featuring some wisdom from David Ogilvy. He was legendary in advertising during the Mad Men days. Kenneth Roman wrote a book about Ogilvy called “The King of Madison Avenue.” I believe his book “Ogilvy on Advertising” was the only book on the subject to reach widespread bestseller status, far outside the reaches of the industry. Over 100,000 copies sold. For a business book, that’s like over 1 million sold for a novel or general-interest book. Ogilvy was more of a team leader and team builder than a solo operator. More like a Joe Schriefer or a James Patterson—Patterson was an executive for J. Walter Thompson before he became a best-selling novelist—Ogilvy was more like those guys than like a Gene Schwartz or a Gary Halbert. But don’t get me wrong. Ogilvy was also a terrific copywriter. He started out in direct response and understood the principles of that kind of copywriting inside out. I found something the other day, paging through Ogilv

Sixteen years ago I produced an audiobook with my friend and mentor Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the bestselling Guerrilla Marketing series. Jay and I originally thought about doing a book together, but that never happened. The audiobook was called Guerrilla Copywriting. Unlike a lot of things he did and I lot of things I’ve done, it didn’t sell that well. I don’t think either of us had the bandwidth to promote it, but there may have been another problem -- we tried to jam too much good information into too little time. We had sixty really powerful tips for writing copy. Jay would do one, then I would do one. It ended up being 60 tips in 60 minutes. Plenty of value, but maybe we would have been better off slowing down and taking some time to talk about each tip. Well… the audiobook is out of print now, so I’m free to share my half of the material. I took a look at it the other day and, I gotta admit, it’s pretty good. A couple things needed to be updated -- a lot has happened in 16 years. But for the mos

Today we took a new look at an old question: What does it take to become a really, really good copywriter? I wanted to answer this question by zeroing-in on the path of mastery. I’ve been learning about the path of mastery for a long time. What I found out goes against what I learned in school and what I see on TV and in the movies. Our culture celebrates achievers but it does NOT respect the path of mastery very much. I’m lucky in that I know a number of copywriters who are well along this path, including a few who are personal friends and a few more who are my mentoring clients. To prepare for this show, I went back to the books I’ve been reading since 2009 to flesh out my ideas and observations. A few surprises, some new information. But nothing that goes against anything I’ve noticed and concluded up until now. So what I did was pick some key points from great books about mastery, and weave all that together with some practical, down-to-earth tactics and approaches for getting really, really good at

Today we returned to the Old Masters Series, but with a twist. We used some secrets from one Old Master to look at the famous work of another. This all came about last week, when I was going over the chapter on Intensification in Breakthrough Advertising with a client. Breakthrough Advertising, of course, is Gene Schwartz’s masterwork on copywriting. Part 2 of the book is seven chapters on “the basic techniques of breakthrough advertising.” And the first of those seven sets of techniques is what Gene Schwartz calls “Intensification.” Basically, how to get your hands on your prospect’s feeling of desire, and push it through the roof. I was struggling with how to put this on a podcast. And then I had an idea: Why not take John Caples’s famous ad, “They Laughed When I Sat Down At The Piano… ” and see how Caples used the intensification techniques. You might not be surprised that, even though the ad was written nearly 40 years before the book was, Caples knew what he was doing and used a bunch of the techniq

Today’s podcast is about a topic that is so important, we quote from three Old Masters, even though this is not an Old Masters Series show. The topic is: making your copy believable. Two of the Old Masters, right now. In his book “Ogilvy on Advertising,” David Ogilvy writes these words: “Says James Webb Young, one of the best copywriters in history: ‘every type of advertiser has the same problem: to be believed.’” And that only makes sense, when you think about it. Because no matter how good your copy is, if people don’t believe it, what good is it at all? We’re going a long way to solve that problem on today’s show. First, something from the third Old Master. We did a show on this topic a year and a half ago as part of our Old Masters Series. I’ll do a speed recap of the best of what we covered about believability then from a chapter A.O. Owen wrote in an old copy book about 100 years ago. His tips were: 1. Use exact numbers. Instead of “around 150,” use the actual amount, like, for example, 154—if

I’m excited that we’re finally doing a show on Artificial Intelligence and Copywriting. This has been a long time coming. Nathan has had quite a bit of experience finding out on real assignments what AI can do and can’t do. I have less experience, but I do have some. One thing is for certain: AI is here to stay, and it is slithering its way into copywriting. It’s not going to replace all of us tomorrow, but if your skills are limited as a copywriter, you may want to upgrade your skills, or become a real AI jockey, or both. Today we’re going to talk about what AI does well and how it can save you tons of time, once you learn to use it. Also, what it doesn’t do well yet… and may never really be able to do at all. We started with my unabashed opinion of what AI is when it comes to copywriting, and things could only get better from there. In fact, Nathan had a number of positive things to say, including the best uses for AI when you’re a copywriter—things I had not considered or heard before. However, good

Today we’ve got an urgent topic that everyone in copywriting has questions about—and we’ve got an expert to give us some much-needed guidance. The topic is content. What do you do with it. When does it replace copy… when is it inappropriate… and when does content blend with copy and actually enhance the selling power? And our expert is Scott Aughtmon, founder of Direct Response Content Marketing. Full disclosure: Scott and I have been friends for a while, and he invite me to speak at a marketing class he was teaching at UC Berkeley six years ago. These days, Scott does a lot of marketing work in the tech space. He’s also the author of the book “51 Content Marketing Hacks” and created an infographic called “21 Types Of Content We Crave.” That infographic has gone viral, and we’re going to talk about a few of those types today, and give you a link at the end to get the full list. Scott told us how and why he got into content marketing, and a little bit about the surprising history of the infographic. If y

Our returning champion is Joshua Lee Henry, with a first: He came by to do a GUEST Old Master’s Series show. Joshua asked me if he take a new look at the work of John Caples, the great copywriter and author. I said OK, as long he talked about something different than we have talked about on the many shows we’ve already done on Caples. Joshua put together a collection of unique items that filled the bill. So I was really happy to bring him back for this special show! As you may remember, Joshua is a high-powered copywriter and copy chief for Agora. He started his career 13 years ago writing fundraising letters for victims of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Joshua has been pastor of a megachurch and as a freelancer, has written for such famous clients as Jay Abraham, Brian Tracy and the Zig Ziglar corporation. Today, we found out what he discovered, digging into the archives of John Caples. Joshua broke it down into six lessons: 1. 4 Ways to Profit by Removing The Guesswork 2. How to Secure Testimonials

Our guest today is Meg Casebolt, founder of Love at First Search and host of the Social Slowdown podcast. I think the key words are “love” and “slow,” and let’s see if I’m right. Meg’s been very successful with a long-term search-engine optimization strategy she uses for her clients. One example that you should find interesting: Meg’s client Sara Frandina showed up third for the keywords “conversion copywriter” -- and this was organic, not an ad -- yesterday when I searched for that term on Google. Third on the first page of organic search for “conversion copywriter.” Not too shabby! You may remember legendary copywriter Gary Bencivenga had a huge success with the headline “Get Rich Slowly.” Well, Meg’s approach is similar. She doesn’t go for the black-hat tricks and other gimmicks popular among some marketers. “We don’t believe in quick-fix formulas that promise the world—but break your heart when you see they don’t work,” she says. One key element of Meg’s long-term, long-lasting approach: The strategi