The Top 5 Mistakes Intermediate Copywriters Make Most Often
1. Trying to be funny. If you’re in the copy game, you are likely speaking on something your customer is VERY serious about. Less humor = you sounding MORE important
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2. Sounding too “hyped up”.
If you use too many exclamation points, then you won’t be able to make it POP when you need a big one. Limit yourself to 1 per page
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3. Describing scenarios that are TOO specific.
E.g. if selling a dating advice product to men, saying “Have you ever been at a bar and met a hot blonde, got her number, she was so into you… then she didn’t call back?”
Well, if your prospect is into brunettes & meets women on Tinder & only talks via text message, you just lost them.
Instead:
“Have you ever met a girl and it seemed like things were going GREAT… but then she stopped responding… and you couldn’t figure out why?”
Any hetero man can fill in the blanks there, and make your statement their own.
4. Telling stories with too many plot twists. You’re not Aaron Sorkin. Keep it simple.
“Bill had a problem. He couldn’t fix it, no matter how hard he tried. Then he found this…”
5. Sounding like a copywriter, and not a friend.
You’ll notice most of the big social media stars don’t use “hooks” and “headlines” and “grabbers” and “closes”. Yet they get more engagement and conversion than most writers will only dream about.
Their secret?
Being vulnerable, open, and human.
For a great example of this, check out @ KnoxFrost on instagram. It’s a FAKE, CGI CARTOON account! But it gets insane engagement. Because “he” keeps it real.
If you enjoyed this thread, I don't have a course or newsletter to sell you. But, I just had the idea that it would be cool if we all donated to a random GoFundMe. I found this one for an EMT who passed that looked meaningful. Who's in? gofundme.com/f/Melissa-Lame…
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Getting inside the head of your prospect is the *most* critical marketing skill.
Here's an unorthodox way to do it:
1/ I once heard Bob Pittman, founder of MTV, say “You cannot 'sell' anyone anything. You can only show them why your solution is the best fit for their problem”
2/ I thought this was the best explanation of marketing & copywriting I had ever heard.
Think of your prospect as sitting their with a big checklist of what they are looking for. Your job is to answer each concern.
Here’s the issue though:
3/ Unless you have their attention, you will never get so far as to ease their concerns.
And your customer is seeing about 4,000 ads a day.
Do you want people to pay attention when you have something to say? Or get more views and shares on your posts and videos?
I used to constantly struggle with this. I’d write what I thought was a great blog and no one would read it. Or I’d make a great video & no one would watch
2/ That all changed when I discovered a secret that master storytellers - the ones who win competitions for telling the best story - used to grab the attention of a crowd. I broke it down into 4 parts and now I use it just about everywhere
3/ I’m going to share it with you right now, the same formula I recently shared at Sean Stephenson’s speaker training event. Write it down - you’ll be able to use it in blogs, videos, Instagram posts, speeches, you name it