Killercopywriting by Jeff Paul and Jim Fleck Home Page

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© 2001 Instant Profits Marketing, Inc.
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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.
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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.
- 17 -
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
- 18 -
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.
- 19 -
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-
- 21 -
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.
- 23 -
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
- 25 -
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...
- 26 -
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.
- 27 -
"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.
- 28 -
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.
- 29 -
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.
- 30 -
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...
- 31 -
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...
- 32 -
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.
- 33 -
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...
- 34 -
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.
- 35 -
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...
- 36 -
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
- 37 -
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...
- 38 -
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
- 39 -
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.
- 40 -
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.
- 41 -
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!
- 42 -
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.)
- 43 -
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...
- 44 -
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.
- 45 -
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,
- 46 -
"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
- 47 -
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...
- 48 -
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.
- 49 -
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...
- 50 -
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"...
- 51 -
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..."
- 52 -
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.
- 53 -
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...
- 54 -
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...
- 55 -
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"
- 56 -
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..."
- 57 -
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.
- 58 -
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...
- 59 -
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.
- 60 -
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.
- 61 -
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...
- 62 -
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"
- 63 -
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...
- 64 -
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.
- 65 -
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."
- 75 -
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.....
- 76 -
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.
- 77 -
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.
- 78 -
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
- 79 -
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
- 83 -
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.
- 84 -
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...
- 85 -
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
- 86 -
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
- 87 -
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.
- 130 -
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...
- 131 -
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.
- 132 -
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!
- 133 -
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.
- 134 -
"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
- 135 -
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
- 136 -
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
- 137 -
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'
- 138 -
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
- 139 -
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
- 140 -
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)!
- 141 -
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
- 142 -
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
- 143 -
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