A few dozen key things you’ll learn in Copywriting Night School
Note: you’ll read a lot about “Sam” in this post. This is the name I give to your ideal prospect. It helps to remind you that he is a human being — and it is a lot less clunky than “your ideal prospect.”
Look, this is not really a post — it’s a list of bullets. I make no apology. Bullets — “fascinations” — are one of the most powerful techniques you can learn in copywriting, and something I devote extensive time to in week 3. But part of internalizing the technique of bullet-writing is simply reading good bullets from good copywriters.
So without further ado, here’s a list of a few dozen things I want to teach you — bullet style:
The “4C Cipher” that ties together every technique in every successful headline, sales page, email sequence or marketing campaign. Everything can be reduced to just these 4 straightforward building-blocks — 4 common threads that run through all effective marketing efforts...even when they are wildly different
Why marketing doesn’t really happen on web pages or in emails — and once you grasp where it actually takes place, you almost can’t fail
Why it isn’t enough to offer Sam what he wants — and the missing piece that most marketers fail to teach
Why Eugene Schwartz’s concept of gradualization is slightly incomplete when applied to the web (plus the missing component, obvs)
10 practical examples of how to connect yourself to Sam in ways he won’t allow most marketers to
Practical examples of how the same value proposition can be expressed in ways that make it seem lifeless and lame, or vibrant and alive — exactly what Sam wants
A simple method for making Sam “see” what you’re saying, so that it becomes more real to him, and hard to let go of
Why shorter is better — except when it’s not...and how to tell when that is (again, featuring plenty of real life examples)
Why criticizing your competition may not be as silly as it sounds...if you can do it without breaking the golden rule (you can)
A particularly scary way to not only bond with your prospect, but push you way up in his estimation and interest (yes, most entrepreneurs find this even scarier than criticizing their competition, yet it is the key to my business success)
A simple way to psychologically force Sam to read the next sentence...and the next...and the next...
Real life examples of emails that had nothing to do with the product I was selling — but which successfully sold it anyway
Why using a strong guarantee can (sometimes) turn your offer from a juicy steak into a steaming pile of horse manure — and how you can turn this surprising fact to your advantage
6 particular kinds of people we are all hardwired to want in our lives, and can’t help being attracted to...and why this is crucial to the first few seconds of interaction with your prospect
Why good marketing is actually no different to the mind-control used by cults — except for a small but important detail
The one seemingly simple thing you need to add to attention to totally master influencing people
A key feature of theology which, strangely enough, reflects a fundamental human need that can easily be fulfilled in your marketing (thus making Sam religiously attracted to you)
A genuine headline from a Great War propaganda piece that may be the most masterful 9 words of copy ever written
2 common examples — selling the product in emails, and selling the author in article bios — of how people market the wrong thing and thus don’t engage with their prospect’s natural thought sequence
The only thing most emails should be selling (instead of the product)
4 examples (two right and two wrong) that illustrate precisely how you can muck this up, or do it perfectly
Why your website might be getting a high bounce rate, and how to easily remedy it just by changing a couple of words
Why sales is not the process of getting your customers to buy — and what it actually is instead
The only thing you should try to control in a sales “conversation” (this includes any web-page, but it goes against every instinct we have. Yet once you’ve mastered it, selling becomes much easier and more enjoyable)
A shortcut mechanism built into our brains that unfortunately destroys many sales without our even realizing — and how to consciously avoid it
Why email is so supremely suited to the ideal sales process that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t created for that exact purpose
The 2 things that absolutely must happen for your prospect to opt in to your list (these seem so obvious that I’m embarrassed to mention them, yet going by the averages I’m willing to bet you’re not doing at least one of them)
An unusual way to kick your opt-in rates into orbit that is used by only one person I know of
4 big reasons why I believe email micro-courses are the best way to entice people onto a list (if you can’t beat these reasons, throw out whitepapers, special reports and videos)
10 practical tips for creating a high-converting opt-in form on your own website
How often you should email your list, and why conventional wisdom on list fatigue is just garbage
The secret technique even email marketing genius Ben Settle doesn’t know — or doesn’t use at any rate — that creates a powerful bond between you and your prospect (it has another very counter-intuitive benefit too)
Exact figures showing why advice from experts like Bob Bly about sending 80% “content” emails and 20% “sales” emails can cut your revenue by 400% or more
Why a high unsubscribe rate is a good thing (in fact, it’s such a good thing that I’ve even sent emails telling people to get off my list!)
6 very easy ways to quickly come up with campaigns that will hit exactly the right buttons, build rapport, and make sales
A simple, natural communication technique that real life salesmen use all the time to nail down deals — and how to apply it to email (most people don’t)
A technique from the direct-response mail industry that works like crazy in emails too (not all direct-response techniques do, but this one is very powerful)
My sneaky secret for quickly churning out emails even when my mind is totally blank and I can’t think of anything to say
Why I never (intentionally) use story arcs in emails — and what I use instead to drive engagement and interest
A detailed graph showing a timeline of each email I sent in a successful campaign, along with open and click rates
An explanation of 3 emails which several readers mocked me for sending — but which generated a 30% spike in sales
A PDF swipe file containing the complete content of each email in this campaign
2 reasons learning to write “well” is a useless waste of time
A skill you are so comfortable and proficient with, that you don’t even think of it as a skill at all — and how to “convert” it into great writing with zero talent required
The most important thing your writing must do to get a result...which 95% of copy out there never does
How to structure your writing to trigger an instinctive response in your prospect’s brain — whether you’re creating an email, a sales page, a business proposal, a video...whatever
Why the much-repeated definition of copywriting as “salesmanship in print” is at best misleading, if not downright wrong — and why thinking of copywriting like this will greatly handicap you (plus of course I give you the correct definition!)
The key to “safely” studying classic direct-response mailer copy — yes, despite their brilliance, people like John Caples and David Ogilvy can lead you astray, because there is literally no where on the web where you should use their style of copy without modification
How to accurately measure value, along with an illustration of something I call the Value Fallacy — a ground-level mistake that can scuttle even the most perfectly-written copy
The actual, step-by-step process I use to get from a blank page with a flashing cursor, all the way through to a complete piece of copy like this one
The only 3 types of copy you must be able to write to succeed online, and how they relate to each stage of Sam’s “journey” — if you can write these 3 types of copy (and they aren’t hard), you’ve got all your bases covered
A really simple, almost silly detail about writing headlines that has huge ramifications for the effectiveness of your entire page — although I hate how hypey the “little-known secret” verbiage is, this is literally a little-known secret about where and how to place certain words
The ideal length for a headline, and when to use a subhead
How the term “call to action” is responsible for millions of dollars of lost revenue, and why simply rephrasing your CTA copy (sometimes just changing a single word) is key to moving Sam forward into a sale
The only copywriting technique I know of that consistently beats even the most advanced persuasion strategies — you know, the ones top copywriters teach as the pinnacle of the art
A trick I learned from Gary Halbert that plays on our brains’ hardwired systems for tracking causality — this automatically makes Sam start subconsciously justifying his purchase (so you should only use it if you have qualified Sam, and know the purchase is in his best interest)
A single symbol on your keyboard that can almost force Sam to pay attention and reflect on his reasons to buy — without even realizing it
A little visual trick I use in all my copy, which you’ve probably never noticed, but helps keep you interested and reading
Why most of the magical hypnotic techniques spouted by the gurus will actually prevent your prospect from getting into a state of mind where he’ll buy — and one technique I learned from Igor Ledochowski that actually does work
How to trigger the attention center of Sam’s brain to almost force him to keep reading (this effect only lasts for about 20 minutes in most cases, but usually that’s more than enough)
How to name-drop without coming across like a brown-noser — plus how you can use even unknown names to boost your credibility
A bonus Mel Martin ad showing you how to write high-performing copy using nothing but bullets (yeap, just like this page)
Why studying classical plot archetypes will probably hurt your ability to write good copy
How short-form copy really does blow long-form copy away (but you have to use a very particular tactic to make it work)
Over a dozen archetypal features that create emotional resonance in your copy, along with why you definitely don’t need plots, conflict, or love to capture Sam’s interest — despite all the standard advice from the experts
How archetypal features drive most popular songs, and thus the multi-billion-dollar music industry itself — along with 14 songs that clearly illustrate the features I identify (don’t laugh; songs are incredibly useful teaching tools because they have to fit so much into just a few minutes)
Exactly why and how archetypal features will make your copy more persuasive — so you can also identify when they won’t work
2 more archetypal features that feature prominently in country songs (country artists are killing it right now, so it’s worth studying them) — plus why these contribute to their success. Included: links to 7 viral videos and 4 songs to illustrate exactly what I mean
How nearly all the seemingly-unrelated archetypal features I’ve identified boil down to just 4 “archetypal topics” (one of which is magic...not like marketing magic, literal magic)
5 “archetypal tactics” that appear over and over and over again in every single song, viral video, famous story, classic movie etc — and which are easy and self-explanatory to use in your own marketing
Still deciding? Give it a couple of days. Next post I’ll share some student reviews of this program to give you an idea of what folks like you think.