How to compete with & beat copywriting legends
Published: Sat, 01/11/20
One of my all-time favorite copywriters — and, frankly, one of the 3 best copywriting minds who ever walked this planet — was the late, great Jim Rutz, who was so good he got away with charging a fat $100k fee with some of his big clients. And, Kim not only competed and won against that great master of copywriting, but did so twice.
Here’s how she did it...
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elBENBO: When you competed against Jim Rutz, what was your exact approach, knowing the talent you were up against?
KIM KRAUSE SCHWALM: The company, KCI Communications, was one of the biggest financial publishers at the time (they've since changed their name to Investing Daily). Their flagship newsletter, probably the biggest in the industry at the time, was called Personal Finance.
I took on copywriting assignments for renewals, emails, and other promotions targeted to current subscribers. And I shined. One "price rise" renewal campaign for which I developed the strategy and wrote the copy became their best-performing one ever.
After seeing what I could do with these smaller assignments, they finally gave me my big break.
They hired me to write a front-end magalog to bring in new subscribers for Personal Finance.
I'd never written a financial magalog before. And guess who held the current control that I had to go up against?
None other than the late, legendary Jim Rutz. He of "Read This or Die" fame and many other highly-successful promotions that made him well worth his $100k copywriting fee.
His control promotion was brilliant. It featured an official-looking White House seal on the front (which later got him a "Cease and desist" letter from the White House...I'm still jealous to this day.)
So what did I do? I thought I'd take a "fresh" approach...and put a Godzilla-like dinosaur on my promo's front cover. Something about the "Change Monster that Ate the Economy" as the headline, as if anyone knows what the hell a "Change Monster" is.
The inside copy was pretty good. But that cover? It pains me just to think about it now.
However, my client approved this monstrosity anyway, and decided to fork over the dough to print and test it.
So what happened?
Ka-boom. BOMB!!!
Now, I could have hung my head in shame, packed it all up, and decided to move to an island in the Caribbean and make jewelry from shells I found on the beach (I still have that fantasy now and then, I admit...)
But my client was still talking to me. We talked about our risky test that went awry. And six months later, he hired me to write an all-new promo for Personal Finance, with an all-new copywriting fee with royalty potential.
Chastened by my earlier failure, this time I decided to go with a much more conservative, proven approach--a "faux issue" that looked similar to the actual newsletter. The copy was all marketing copy, but it had an editorial look that made it look valuable, instead of like "junk" mail.
So how it'd do?
It won!
It beat Jim Rutz's control (which he had had to change to a different cover, due to his receipt of the "Cease and desist" letter for the previous White House seal version).
I was very modest about even mentioning this to anyone else at the time. But word got out.
Brian Kurtz, who was Executive VP with Boardroom at the time, attended a Financial Roundtable meeting not long after I got this hot new control. When meeting with the other marketers and publishers there, he asked my client who wrote their latest control.
When he found out it was me--and that I had beat Jim Rutz--he couldn't call me fast enough.
He hired me to write a promotion for Tax Hotline, which went on to beat Parris Lampropoulus' 7-year control. (This also made me the first female copywriter to get a Boardroom control. Hear that glass ceiling shattering?)
I never would have gotten that chance at Boardroom at this early stage in my career if it wasn't for beating Jim Rutz and getting on the map as a copywriter.
There's a footnote to this story, which makes it even better. My Personal Finance control mailed strongly for another year or two. Each time it mailed, I came up with new headlines and leads to test to keep it alive, since even then timeliness was critical for financial promos like it is now.
Then the editor/"guru" of the newsletter, Stephen Leeb, decided to part ways with the publisher. They decided they needed to re-launch their flagship newsletter with a new editorial team. And for this re-launch, they re-hired Jim Rutz and paid him another $100k to write a whole new promo.
They mailed this initial promo without testing anything else against it. My previous control had been retired.
Make that prematurely retired. That's because the new re-launch promo wasn't performing as well as the publisher liked. So they hired me to completely rework my previous control (something they should have done in the first place, and that I only charged a fraction of Jim Rutz's fee to do).
I took my previous control and freshened up the copy and introduced the new editorial team. Guess what happened?
I beat Jim Rutz again!
After these big wins, I didn’t have to worry about breaking into some of the other direct response publishers and supplement companies that had ignored my previous advances. They came to me…ringing me up and booking up my schedule out months, if not a full year, in advance.
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve gone on to produce dozens of successful long-form direct mail magalogs, sales pages, and video sales letters for major (and smaller) companies ever since.
elBENBO: What do you and other A-list copywriters talk about with each other behind closed doors when it comes to copywriting?
KIM KRAUSE SCHWALM: We mostly gossip about clients…primarily ones that turn out to be nightmares (or, in one top copywriter’s words, “total shit shows”) to work with. So if you’re a client, you better treat us right and know that we’re talking behind your back.
Word does get around!
If you’re a great client, on the other hand, we sing your praises to each other…and get jealous or fight over gigs (kidding!) A lot of my top copywriter friends and I go way back, and have helped lift each other up over the years. What goes around, comes around in terms of generosity.
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That wraps up part 3 of my 4-part interview with the esteemed A-list copywriter Kim Krause Schwalm.
Her new Copywriting Velocity program is on sale until tomorrow at midnight EST for my Horde at a fat discount if’n you want to learn from one of the great masters of copywriting.
Here’s my affiliate link where you can get all this lovin’:
http://www.EmailPlayers.com/kim
Ben Settle
P.S. If you nab her Copywriting Velocity program by the deadline using my affiliate link, she will also send you (no need to send me your receipt, Chuckles) access to one of my new copywriting trainings:
“The Swiperoscope Saga: Part 2”
These videos contain over 2 hours of Yours Crotchety’s favorite private swipe file ads & sales letters analyzed & examined line-by-line under the proverbial “microscope.”
Some the tips & secrets in these videos include:
* The criminally underrated copywriting technique used by the late copywriting genius Jim Rutz to write copy so predictably responsive he worked on pure commission. (I once read an obscure interview with Jim Rutz — that is all but impossible to find, but good luck searching for it — where he admitted this is what allowed him to win controls so handily, even against the “best of the best” writers.)
* How to “sexy-up” ordinary 30-day guarantees and other standard offers so they sound exciting & urgent.
* A 2-minute seminar on how to structure your sales copy for maximum sales I learned directly (at a bar during an event I spoke at) from one of the greatest magalog copywriters who ever lived.
* An ingenious product design secret Steve Jobs applied to iPhones… that can be directly applied to your order forms & checkout pages to dramatically goose up sales.
* Why writing to fat people is a waste of time when selling weight loss offers… and who the exact “sweet spot” of the market actually is! (In a weight loss biz I once owned, we converted over 40% of the list into paying customers — and a big part of that was following this 100% ethical & legitimate tip I learned from a doctor shilling MLM.)
* And speaking of weight loss: A sneaky way of using your prospect’s bra size to ratchet up weight loss offer sales! (This is one of those “social engineering” type ideas guys like Gary Halbert used to talk, about that lesser copywriters would not have the courage to even write much less test.)
* A bizarre way to use your chin to “pre-test” sales copy. (It’s not only something the great John Carlton once taught, but I can tell you from experience, it can make all your sales copy exponentially more powerful, more persuasive, and more responsive.)
* A sleepy-sounding word that triggers people to reflexively & automatically “lean in” to read your copy more closely.
* Mysteriously effective ways to use the Bible to ramp up the sales & response of all your advertising. (Works for sinners and saints alike — and have been proven time & time again to work by multiple A-list copywriters and other high level marketing minds.)
* A real life example of how to “tweak” even sucky ad copy into being extremely profitable & responsive. (Yes, even if the copy doesn’t deserve it!)
* The case for 1-word headlines — and the outrageous copywriter who was the best in the game at writing them to study, model, and learn from.
* An “almost magic” word virtually guaranteed to instantly boost you and your product’s credibility. (Obviously, you don’t want to overuse this word — but slip it in to your next ad or email and watch what happens!)
* A clever way the Weekly World News used to help their advertisers be more successful and generate more advertising revenue. (If you sell ad space — on your website, in solo ads, via your podcast, or anywhere else — this can not only keep ad revenue flowing in for you from happy advertisers, but make those same advertisers a lot more successful, too.)
* A gloriously entertaining example of how the great Gary Halbert used trolling in his sales copy to make his competition irrelevant.
* How clients can tell if a copywriter sucks or not without even looking at their copy!
* Why being honest is not enough to protect you from government false advertising accusations… and how to protect your client (or yourself) from being shut down overnight even when your claims are 100% honest!
* Psychological insights into selecting the best testimonials to feature in your advertising.
* The burglar alarm secret for adding instant credibility to your offers — especially if you are new to your market and nobody knows who you are. (You might not always be able to use this… but when you do, it can potentially make your lack of experience, brand, or presence in the market far less an issue than it would be otherwise.)
* How to use “B-roll” copy to make your ads much more persuasive and credible.
* An FBI-approved negotiator’s secret for getting far more sales & response than you normally would by *lowering* the emotional state of your prospects.
* A Hollywood screenwriting method that can make direct mail sales letters that run 10, 20, 30 pages hard-to-put-down even if the prospect is busy or distracted.
* 3 heavy duty words you can use in your ads to make even your most outrageous sounding offers & claims more believable.
* The Donald Trump secret to “benevolently shaming” someone into buying from your sales copy immediately.
* And a ho’ bunch more…
The deadline to get these bonus videos, and Kim’s Copywriting Velocity program at a special “Ben Settle discount” ends tomorrow at midnight EST.
Here’s where to get you some:
http://www.EmailPlayers.com/kim