Switching off the copywriting seks robots
Published: Sat, 01/30/21
The most valuable gold in the late Gene Schwartz’s magnificent “Breakthrough Advertising” book ain’t the main content where it drills deep into the gold mines of headlines, market/product awareness & sophistication, image-building, verbally creating credibility for your offers, and all the other ingenious information inside.
I’d argue it’s in the preface & introduction.
Specifically, the 3 gleaming gems below.
On vision:
“This book is not about building better mousetraps. It is…about building larger mice, and then building terrifying fear of them into your customers.”
On swiping:
“That’s why memorizing theories won’t make you a market wizard, or rewriting somebody else’s headlines won’t make you a copy writer.”
And on… thinking:
“The correct solution, the right headline, the perfect ad lies buried in the problem itself. It has never been written before. It cannot be produced by rote, carbon copying or mutations. But it can be sprung to the surface — automatically — by asking the right question.”
Each one of those gems is worthy of hours of examination.
And of thinking deeply about how to apply them to your business.
In fact, that last part brings me to the February “Email Players” issue.
It’s not really “about” copywriting.
It’s about thinking.
And it does it not by giving a checklist of “do this, then this, and this…” but by showing you how I thought — via a word for word, precept upon precept analysis — and solved certain problems while writing one of my best sales letters selling a course on how to write sales letters, which is the most scrutinized kinds of sales letters there is. I believe anyone — even a raw & wriggling copywriting newbie fresh off the turnip truck — can take the info inside, apply it, and potentially see a fat rise in response in anything sales copy related (ads, emails, VSLs, whatever it is).
Here’s another thought:
Thinking is practically discouraged in copywriting these days.
Something about creativity being bad, the pioneers go home full of arrows, and other one-liners almost always being pushed on people who oh-so-ironically use creativity to the max and are often pioneers.
Thus, the rise in copywriting sex robots.
(i.e., software that supposedly writes copy for you)
Goo-roo fanboys blatantly swiping everything in sight.
And direct response copywriters so ignorant of their own industry they think split testing was invented on Facebook.
Whatever the case, here’s the point:
The one thing that separates the men from the boys when it comes to copywriting ain’t swipe file content, NLP wizardry, 90-year old headline formulas, or hacks.
It’s thinking.
He or she who thinks hardest wins.
It’s the only way to solve problems, after all.
And copywriting is nothing if not an ongoing exercise in problem solving.
If you don’t believe me, go ask any for real A-list copywriter like “Email Players” subscribers Kim Krause Schwalm & Gary Bencivenga, or copywriting superstars like Parris Lampropoulos & Carline Anglade Cole, or anyone else in the game who consistently wins controls for gigantic $100+ million direct marketing clients… if they got those wins by being lazy with their thinking, investing in copywriting sex robots, or chasing hacks & tricks.
All right, ‘nuff said.
The February "Email Players" issue can help with the thinking.
But you have to do the work.
If you aren't willing to think and work, it will do you zero good.
Neither will procrastination, either.
Which is why if you want this issue before tomorrow's deadline, go here immediately:
https://www.EmailPlayers.com
Ben Settle