The Most Important Copywriting Skills To Master (No Matter What Business You're In)

How many times in business do we hear the importance of building out great copy, but we're not copywriters? Often we're the business owners. We're the people making all of this work. How do you craft copy when you're not a natural copywriter? Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. In this episode, we get to listen to Bill Glazer as he goes deep into the most important copywriting skills that you need to master, no matter what business you're in. If you're trying to figure out how to be able to craft the best sales copy that you can in any format, just so that way it This is the masterclass you've been waiting for from 3 Copywriting Boosters, your copywriting kryptonite, critical copywriting concepts that you need, 11 building blocks, 3 major categories, systems, all the different things that you would love to understand about copywriting as a business owner or as a marketer. This is an episode you are definitely going to want to save so you can go back to it over and over again. And over again. Let's dive in with Bill Glazer.

I don't think there's anybody that has had a bigger impact in the field of direct response than Dan Kennedy. The legend of Dan Kennedy should be ignored at your own peril. They're not really lessons, they're kind of laws that you live by.

Dan opened my eyes to what small business marketing looks like. Dan teaches strategic direct response that is timeless.

His ripple effect touches people who don't even know his name.

The world as we know it was changed because Dan Kennedy became obsessed with marketing.

Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host, Dan Kennedy. Alright, I want to talk to you now about what I consider the most important sales skill to master regardless of the business that you are in. And absolutely, there's no question in my mind, this is the most important skill to master. This is the ability to create copy that sells. The truth of the matter is that it's the one thing that I attribute my success to more than any other thing is the ability to craft a sales message and put words on paper in any format. Now, it's important that we talk about this notion of any format because what I'm not talking about— traditionally what comes to mind is that, hey, he's talking about writing a sales letter. And I'll tell you is I am talking about writing a sales letter, but I'm not only talking about writing a sales letter, but I'm also talking about putting words on the websites. I'm talking about putting words on email, emails. And when Alexandria Brown comes up here later today, she has made herself a fabulous living by learning how to put words on websites and emails. I'm talking about putting words on postcards, just simple postcards. I've sent out postcards that have generated for me, for my menswear business and also for my information marketing business, just tens and tens of thousands of dollars in sales. Sending out memos, just sending out memos, interoffice memos, memos to other people. It can significantly increase your income and your sales. Sending out faxes, and yes, you can send out faxes legally if you know how to legally send out faxes. You have to send it out only to people you have prior relationship to. You can't just send out faxes to people you have no prior relationship to. But yes, learning how to send out faxes. There's a, uh, Ron Ipac, who is a Platinum member. He told a story at the last Platinum meeting where he was looking through These magazines, how many of you have seen this piece of equipment in the magazines that's like, it's almost $15,000, it's like $14,000 and change. And for 4 minutes you're supposed to get on this piece of equipment and you're supposed to be able to do your workout for 4 minutes and then you become like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I mean, how many of you have seen that thing? Well, so, huh? It's what? It's in your swipe file. Okay. So anyhow, the— so Ron looked at this. Now Ron is not too dissimilar from me, which is, you know, we could afford to go out and buy it, but we— but it's— and I didn't buy this thing, obviously, but Ron did. And, and, but, but Ron said, okay, instead of him buying it— he is the number one, number one most celebrated marketing consultant to the auto repair industry. And he just said, I don't want to pay for this thing. I'm gonna let some of my members of my marketing system pay for this thing. So what did he do? He put together— he went, he went, looked at all the old stuff he had, he put it together as a big pile of stuff, and he had like 17 different piles, I mean groups of this stuff that he had, and he sent out a fax to his members and he said, you know, he's only got 17 of them and you can have this whole pile of stuff for $1,000 each. And he sent out this one fax and within about an hour he had all 17 of them that were gone and he went and bought his $14,952 piece of equipment. So it just goes to show you how a fax, by learning how to put the right words on paper, just on a fax. Signs. Well, first of all, how many people here are sort of in the retail business? Okay, good. How many people here are in a business where you have a sign? Well, how many people here are in a business where people— you see people in your office? So anytime that you have an opportunity to interact with somebody where they come and see you Learning how to write the correct signs in your offices, businesses. The very, very famous story where Paco Underhill— I don't know how many of you have heard of Paco Underhill— wrote a book called "Why We Buy." Tells a very, very famous story about the fact that a bank, when people are waiting in line at the bank, a bank astutely figured out that while they're waiting in line, they have their captive audience that's right there. And so they put up a sign talking about their different kinds of loans, tripled their loans. Very famous story about a company that has created a sign that goes in front of the urinals in the men's room. You've got their captive attention. So if you read the right sign, you can create a lot of business. So learning how to put words on paper on signs— in the retail business, over 30% of all sales are generated or influenced by a sign. And I'm telling you, if you're in a in an office where you're providing accounting advice, legal advice, if you're in your auto repair shop, you're in a place where you do mortgages, anything along those lines where people come to you, you should be learning how to use that space. I have a client of mine who's a dentist, and the number one thing that we have done for him is we— because when you're in a dentist's office, you're in a chair, right? And you're not moving from that chair until that dentist tells you you can move from that chair. So I went into his office, this is 4 years ago, and I looked at his operatoriums, I think that's what they're called. He had 3 of them and I looked at where would the person when they're laying in the chair, what will they see? And that was my wall. I own that wall. And I put up a sign on that wall that has took his, at the time, his referrals every month from 5 to 6 referrals to over 19 referrals a month just by the referrals we're now getting from the sign in the, in the dental office. So looking at places that you can put signage, how to put words on paper for that. Certainly newsletters. I'm a big, big believer in being in the newsletter business. All the Gold Plus members, you were treated this past Thursday, Thursday, with a Gold Plus call where we had Alexandria Brown and Dan Kennedy. Alexandria was talking about— her easings, and she'll tell you more about that today, I'm sure. Dan Kenny was talking about our paper and ink newsletters. Ali reported that she's doing over $1 million a year on that call on her easings. Well, learning how to put the— it's not because— I mean, she does a lot of things right, but one of the things that she does right is she puts the right words on the easings. So learning how to create copy that sells, it's clearly the one thing that you should be doing in order to increase your business. So as I said here, anything and everything where you are relaying a message with words is where you want to think about copy. Not specifically, not exclusively to writing sales letters, which is probably the thing that Dan and I do the most, but anywhere and everywhere. Okay, so why is copywriting the most important skill you can and should possess? Well, as I said here, it's the key to open virtually any vault you like. And also, more importantly, is the second bullet, which is this: most businesses are just one great online or offline ad or sales letter away from total transformation. If you've got that one great ad, you produce it one time and that thing is like the Energizer Bunny. It just keeps going and going. And going. And many individuals' entire lives are transformed. I mean, many cases my life has been transformed by a sales letter. Many cases, lives for my clients have been transformed by a sales letter that either I've written for them or they've learned how to write for themselves. It can really make a tremendous difference in folks' business. Okay, and as I had up here, my favorite saying from Gary Halbert, the late Gary Halbert, who I had tremendous respect for, is the answer to every problem in life is a really good sales letter. Okay, so why am I qualified to teach how to create copy that sells? So first I'll give you the BS answer, then I'll give you the real answer. So here's the BS answer. The BS answer is— and this is a no BS zone— the BS answer is I've written 19 sales letters and marketing campaigns that each have each generated the highly coveted objective of delivering over $1 million in sales. I got 19 of them. That are under my belt. And I kind of, as you can imagine, I keep track of them because I'm very proud of them. The list of top copywriters who study my stuff and keep swipe files of my stuff is very significant, including Dan Kennedy. If you go in his office, he has a swipe file of all my stuff. My outside-the-box marketing strategies have often been featured in some of the top marketing magazines of the year in the world. And also in 2002, I won the prestigious RAC Award at the 2002 Advertising Conference in Retail, and that is the highest award you can get in advertising. So that's the BS answer of why I'm qualified to teach this stuff. The true answer is because of the reported results from people who have attended my copywriting seminars and completed my online Creating Copy That Sells program. So that's the real easy reason why anybody is qualified to teach anything, is because of the results of what they provide, what it does for other people, not what it does for themselves, and/or necessarily the credentials that they chalked up. For example, Greg Moody from Scottsdale, Arizona, this is what he wrote me: The first 2 direct mail pieces I sent out did over 3 times as good as anything we ever did before. That's just with learning the difference between doing it right and doing it wrong. From Blair Hornbuckle: Now I'm getting orders from a whole new segment of customers that I never ever thought of selling to. There are enough new prospects in this arena that are on track to a 400% increase in sales just by learning how to write copy better. I used one of your principles and turned a $300 investment into an immediate $10,000 return. Another one of your principals just returned to me a $7,400 profit from a simple postcard mailed out to 480 people. Total outlay $580. Now that is my kind of return. That's from Troy White. That's in Canada. If you can make it work in Canada, you can make it work anywhere. I did that for you, Kit. From Quentin Chen, Sydney, Australia. "In the short space of 5 months since the Creating Copy That Sells seminar, using what I've learned, it has already returned over 7 times the cost to me in just one part of my business." From Paul Hurst, this is the one I love. "On my first attempt, we closed a sale worth over $1.3 million. Needless to say, my company's commission on that is quite healthy." So there's show— that's the real reason why anybody is qualified to teach anything. So, question is, is how can anyone create copy that sells, even you? Well, the way that you can do that is by doing what I've done, which is by systematizing the process. You have to look at the process as a system, because if you don't look at it as a system, you'll leave out way, way too many things. So I basically have divided my system into 3 major categories. The first category is what I call the 11 building blocks. They must be incorporated in every piece of copy you write. These are not optional, they are mandatory. So I'm going to show you today, with your permission, the 11 building blocks, okay? I didn't even like that. Is that okay? Alright, so I'll show you the 11 building blocks. They are the mandatory parts, and I'm going to actually be showing you something very interesting about these 11 building blocks today. The second thing I'm going to be talking to you about— I won't be able to show you all of them today— is the 20 critical copy concepts. And these are the ones that take your sales copy to the next level. And many of these are tools that only really the most successful pros have ever really figured out. And these will give you, as I say up here, a very, very big competitive advantage. Now, the third piece of the system is this, and this is a very interesting one. The third piece of the system is this, is it's not as— it is very valuable to know what to do, but it is as valuable to also know what not to do. And the third part of it is, which is what I think has taken this copywriting system to a whole new level is delivering what I call the copy kryptonite. And this is like the same thing that happened to kryptonite with Superman, where it would kill him. You need to know what things to avoid in your copy, and there are 7 of those, and I'm going to be showing all 7 of those to you today. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the 11 building blocks of copy. Here's the thing that I thought would be very interesting to do, to show you. Before I do that, I'd like to tell you a little story. I almost forgot to tell it to you, and I thought you would enjoy it. Remember Ron Ipac's story about the fact that he was too cheap to go out and buy that $15,000 piece of equipment, so what he did was he created a fax? So here's what I did is I went out This is 2006. I bought my Porsche 911, and I also didn't want to dip into my own bank balance. Lots of reasons. One was my wife didn't want me to, which is a very big reason for me. And the other one was I just would like somebody else to pay for it. So what I decided to do in 2006 and 6, I put together an additional coaching group. Back in 2006, I had 2 VIP coaching groups. I put together basically a second coaching group that the income from that would pay for my Porsche, which it did. So I went in, I ordered my Porsche, and they told me it was in. They called me up, they told me it's $102,000. So I went and got a check for $102,000, and I arrived to the Porsche dealership. When I arrived to the Porsche dealership, they take you into what's called First, you see the car, you see the salesperson, they're nice to you, you know, before you pay for it, they're nice to you. And then they take you into what's called the aftermarket place. Now, the aftermarket place is where they now try to sell you all kinds of extra stuff that you definitely don't need, you know, like the rust protection for the rust protection, you know, and like, you know, you can get like the rubber tires or the real rubber tires, I don't know. So, so then they put— and they also, that's where they figure out the financing. So when I'm in there, she says, the gal says to me, how do you want to, how do you want to finance this, through, through us or through the bank? I said, no, I'm going to pay for it cash. So she says, well, that's interesting, what do you do? So now here are my options. One of them I can say is I'm a marketing consultant. Now what happens with that when you tell me you're a marketing consultant? They always want to ask you their marketing problems, right? So you're— I mean, Ali, you're laughing, but this happens, right? So you're sitting there and you're now becoming a free consultant. So I don't want to do that. So now I can say, I'm a professional copywriter. Oh, we'd like to discuss our copy with you. I don't want to talk to them about their copy. I'm a professional speaker. Oh, tell me about how you— I don't want to have any of these conversations with them, okay? So what do I do? I tell them the one thing that they will believe, and, and I want to make sure I can— it's a believable answer. Where at the same time they won't ask me any more questions, right? So I tell them I'm a drug dealer. So, true story. So, true story. And didn't ask me— yeah, okay, sign here. I mean, I'll tell you, I mean, listen, I'm gonna tell you another one that happens, okay? I, when I— now I don't do as much speaking because I'm more mostly busy at the Glaser Kennedy office, But when I go out and speak, I always fly first class. So when you're sitting in first class, there's sort of like this fraternity of first class, okay, which is like everybody has got to like say, you know, you know, you know, it's like comparing of who you are and what you do in first class. So, so the first class— and again, they always— what do you do? I don't want to have any of these conversations with people. It just leads to disaster. So now, now when I first fly first class I tell them the one answer that immediately stops them from asking me any more questions. I tell them I work for the Internal Revenue Service. Not a problem, no more conversation. I mean, there's one poor lady— I was on the aisle, okay, and she was next to the window, okay? And it was a 5.5-hour flight to Los Angeles, and she asked me, you know, before we take off, what do you do? Internal Revenue Service. She was afraid to get up and go to the bathroom. She sat there for 5.5 hours, and I really enjoyed that. So anyway, so that gives you some idea of how powerful these skills can actually be to you. You can actually create money on demand that you want to create on demand. Okay, let's go back to our 11 building blocks of copy. Okay. So what— here's what I did. I thought this would be interesting to everybody here in the room. Now, I have— not everybody in the room saw this because many of you came to this seminar because you were at the Super Conference last year. And at the Super Conference, if you invested in any or all of Dan's sales programs, you got to come to this for free. Others of you, about half of you that are in this room, came here because we mailed you a sales letter And in the sales letter, if you invested in any of all Dan's sales products, you got to come to this for free. This is the sales letter right here that we mailed to you. And actually, probably pushed the wrong— I did. Actually, this is the front cover of the sales letter. So this sales letter is 12 pages long. So what I thought would be interesting to all of you is to show you the 11 building blocks of copy by using this sales letter, dissecting it for you to show you how all 11 building blocks are incorporated in the sales letter. I'm hoping that you will find that interesting because I found it kind of interesting. So it's all about me. So anyway, so let's talk about— let's talk— go back to the 11 building blocks. Here they are. There's the headline, the subheads, the credibility, guarantees, cosmetics, offers, deadlines, the story bullets, the PS, the close. And I'm gonna— I know I went through that fast. Are you trying to write that down, but I'm going to go through this now slowly so you have plenty of time to write it down so you don't get like a panic attack. So let's talk about the first one, the headline. The purpose of the headline is to get people to read the rest of the sales letter. It is the ad for the ad. So here's the headline for the, the sales letter that many of you got for this Event. New from Dan Kennedy. Discover 2 ways to dramatically, quickly, and substantially increase your sales in person, face-to-face, through your employees, or via media. And a huge apology from me. Very terrific headline. This one was written by Dan. What is interesting about this, I'll point out to some of you in the room. Number 1 is not all words are created equal in a headline. So you can see as increase your sales is the biggest part of this in bold. Words like dramatically, quickly, and substantially are all capped. The fact new from Dan Kennedy, there's familiarity with Dan Kennedy, so his name was used above the headline. A huge apology from me creates curiosity in the headline. It's, if you see this, increase your sales, and per person Face-to-face, through your employees, or via media, which pretty much covers any way to increase your sales. If you see this, what do you got to do? You got to read the rest of the headline. If not, the rest of the ad. If nothing else, you got to read the rest of the sales letter just to find out what the huge apology is. Not to mention the fact of increase your sales. Who doesn't want to increase their sales? So there's a great example of how the purpose of a headline and how a good headline is actually crafted. The next one on our list here is subheads. A subhead is actually oftentimes it is underutilized and overlooked. Lots of times people will send me some of their— bless you. Lots of times, what was the old joke about that? I know, not sneeze the truth. It was, I know somebody who died from a sneeze, like that. But he was standing naked in his neighbor's closet at the time. So, you know, I heard that about 20 years ago, and I've been waiting now for 10 years for somebody to sneeze in one of my seminars. So anyhow, where was I? Subheads. Oh, to hell with it. Anyway, so So with subheads, so many people forget to use these and they are very, very powerful. So I would recommend in all cases to always have a subhead beneath your headline as well as subheads throughout your entire sales letter, but certainly beneath your headline. And I actually have used subheads above my headline in many, many cases as a more advanced strategy. So here's the subhead that we used in this letter, which is, "An unbelievable generous free opportunity. Response required by May 25th." I mean, if without that beneath the headline— the headline is good, but it is so much better to have an unbelievable free opportunity beneath the headline, which is even more, more power to the whole, in this case, sales letter. Okay, the third piece of the building blocks is credibility. What is the most common— somebody can shout it out— what is the most common way that we use today in order to create great— to get credibility in our advertising? Testimonials. However, there are many other ways that you can use to also get credibility. One of them I actually used today on this presentation. I talked— you can also talk about any achievements that you've accomplished. So in my case, I told you about my 19 sales letters that created $19 million or more apiece. I told you about the fact that I won the Rack Award. I told you about that I've been written up in magazines. There are many— there are more ways than just testimonials to use in your credibility, but testimonials are clearly the most common way to do it. There are 2 ways, 2 best ways to develop testimonials in your advertising. One is what I call outcome testimonials. The other one is where I come overcoming objection testimonials. And I, I go through that in a lot of detail in my Creating Copy That Sells course, because it's really— if you want, you learn the two easy ways to create testimonials. Those are the most powerful ones. Those are the ones you'll probably use. So for example, in, in this particular sales letter, there are testimonials throughout it, but here happens to be one that was used from Dr. Charles Martin where he wrote, "Keys to success—" This is a testimonial for the triple X-rated product that Dan and Sidney Biddlebarrows did together. The testimonial says, "Keys to success often lie in the places one would never visit or look. This is one of those secret treasures. Dan Kenney and Sidney Biddlebarrows has created a new masterpiece in the art and science of persuasion." art and science of persuasion. It's brilliant, thought-provoking, entertaining. It's certainly not in, in the boring, dry, and can't believe I'm listening to this category. It brings new thinking to the ever-demanding challenge of influence. And so that is a tremendous testimonial that's used in, in the sales letter. Again, I just picked out one. I could have picked out any one of the dozen that are in there. So one of the best ways to create credibility is the use— the easiest way is to create is to use credibility. If you, if you certainly, if you don't have any credentials, it's— you definitely want to use that— is to use testimonials. Okay, next one is guarantees. So here's the Glazer Kennedy thinking on guarantees, and I wouldn't mind if you wrote this down. Here it is: if you can't guarantee what you sell Find something else to sell. The job— when you guarantee what you sell, the job of making a sale grows up incredibly much easier by guaranteeing what you sell. The year before I closed my last menswear store, I bought a new point-of-sale software system. I went to the old company that I had my software system from before. And I had them bid on the new system, and I went to another company. And they both— their bids were almost identical, and I decided to go with the old company because I had familiarity with the old company. And I said to the old company, however, will you guarantee that it will do what you say it will do? And I said to the new company, will you guarantee what you say it will do? The old company refused to guarantee it. The new company guaranteed it. I bought from the new company. I believe that if somebody would not guarantee to me what they sold— and they gave me all kinds of stupid excuses like our stockholders wouldn't allow guarantee. Well, get some new stockholders, you know. So, I mean, that was the dumbest thing I ever heard. So they lost— not only did they lose a $30,000 sale, but I have 2,700 retailers that are members of my marketing system where I no longer endorse them. I now endorse a new software company. I just did an interview with a new software company. That's how stupid the lack of a guarantee is in anything that you sell. So I'm telling you to always guarantee what you sell. Here's the guarantee that was in the sales letter from— that we sent out. PPSS: Hey, have I ever steered you wrong? This is from Dan. I promise if you sell, however you sell, whatever you sell to— I'm sorry, whoever you sell to, whatever you sell These programs are going to prove you your greatest allies of 2007. These programs will open your eyes to new, different, superior selling approaches. These programs will make you money far, far beyond their modest cost. In fact, of course, I guarantee that to be the case. If for any reason you judge these programs lacking in value to you and unworthy of your investment, and time in reviewing them repeatedly, you may return them within 365 days of receipt for a full unconditional zero-hassle refund. So I mean, that's a powerful guarantee that, that's offered, and that's pretty much the guarantee that we offer on every program we sell. And yeah, there's always a couple of what we call— what do we call them? Oh yes, scum-sucking folks that, that, that, that return something to us, and very few, They return something to us just because they're taking advantage of us. Our belief on that is, if you take advantage of us, go ahead and do it. We'll just get rid of you. We'll deal with folks that really do honor and respect what we provide. We don't care. We'd rather have the scum-sucking folks raise their hands so we can get rid of them. Yeah, we know we deliver the real goods and we're happy to guarantee it. That's the way you should feel about everything that you do as well. Certainly write about it. Don't hide it. I mean, where's my sewing machine guy Howard? There he is. In the last peak performers meeting, we discussed this, the fact that you guarantee what you do, but you don't flaunt it. Flaunt the fact that it is what you do. You do now, right? And have you been hurt by it? No, absolutely not. Howard is like our pet project at peak performers. We have— he's like our makeover. You know, it's— okay, okay. Next, and next is cosmetics. Oftentimes I will get a really good copywriter send me a sales letter to look at. I was here yesterday, when I was here, somebody, I don't want to say who he is, but somebody gave me a sales letter to look at yesterday. It was a very well-written sales letter. Made a couple suggestions to it, one or two big suggestions, but one of the things I said to him was It's a great sales letter, but the cost needs more cosmetic work. It's just not— it's, it's too boring in the way that you're presenting it. So you need to use cosmetics. For example, in the sales letter, here's one portion of the sales letter. Now look at this. Not only does this have different color font, different color, it has it in different color font. It also shows pictures. It also uses bolding. It uses a lot of different cosmetic things in there If this was all text, it wouldn't be nearly as interesting as it is by using all those different elements that are in there. So there's how you can be using cosmetics. There's lots and lots and lots of different ways to be using cosmetics in your sales letters. These are just showing you just a few. Okay, with our 11 building blocks, the next thing is the offer, and When you put together your offer, you— a lot of people, this is a place where they don't spend enough time in thinking about their offer. They're just too afraid to make a good offer. That's a big mistake because if you can typically, again, if you've got a good product and/or service, you want to— the opportunity to get more customers goes up infinitely by making a very, very good offer. So for example, In the sales letter, either or both, this talks about the two products that we made available. A generous free gift, whichever choice you make. You can acquire Sales and Persuasion Strategies, So Certain of Success, The Auto Require Weapons Permit program, or the triple A, triple X-rated sales program with Sidney and me, or take both with an extra savings of an additional $50, just $544 for both. "When you get one or the other or both, you're invited to attend a one-time only new Glazer Kennedy sales strategy seminar featuring Sidney and me for free." Now that's a very generous offer. How many times you buy a product for $200, almost, let's call it $300, and you get a free seminar along the way? Very, very generous offer. So that's how we crafted that offer for this particular offer. You want to be thinking of How can you craft your offer where it is actually irresistible? And as I leave you all with that pain, I'll move on to the next one, which is deadlines. Joined to the hip with the whole notion of offer, joined to the hip, attached, is this idea of deadlines. Without a deadline, There is no offer. Now let me tell you all two secrets. Secret number one is I am a procrastinator. Here's secret number two: you are all procrastinators. And the reason why I tell you that is because everybody's a procrastinator, and unless you make them do something They want to do it, but if they're— unless they're forced to do it— I hate to use the word, but that's the word— unless they're forced to use it, they're just not going to do it. So you need to put a deadline on everything that you offer in order to get people to take action. Historically, my big dumb rule of thumb is 2 weeks, no more than 2 weeks. I have made them as long as a month, and my favorite are usually somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 days. I had my most famous one, which actually talk about my copywriting course, is I had the client that I did the offer for 2 hours. They did more business in 2 hours than he did in his best month of business in 30 years. So, so oftentimes shorter offers, shorter deadlines are good. Going back to our subhead, now it's all throughout the sales letter, but in our subhead, part of the subhead was response required by May 25th. We put it front and center. We didn't let people have to go through the whole sales letter to find the deadline, because if they had to, they may never got through the whole sales letter. This is right up front and center. We're not hiding it, we're flaunting it, and you shouldn't hide it. I can't believe how many retailers— when I was working the retail business, they would put the deadline in the little 4-point invisible type. Put it right up front and center. That's what gets people to respond. Okay, next is the story. The story is absolutely critical to any great sales letter. Why do people like stories? I'm going to tell you why people like stories. They like stories because of your mama. They like stories because of your mama. Because that's how we were brought up as little kids. We were told stories. We're used to stories. We like listening to stories. You want to incorporate stories in your sales copy. For example, here's one of the stories that's in the sales letter. This is a set of audio CDs that I recorded as a dialogue with Siti Bill Barris. You may know of her brief but famous or infamous, as you prefer, past as the Mayflower Madam, so dubbed because of her own blue blood heritage from a family who came over on the Mayflower. Her ultra-high-priced escort service serving diplomats, Wall Street executives, doctors, lawyers, etc., made front-page news in 1984. And then it goes on. Now that's a pretty interesting story. Had we just had this thing as triple X-rated sales strategies without the Sidney Biddlebauer stories, it's not nearly as interesting. All of you, I'm going to tell you something, all of you have got a story. Believe me, you've got a story. Because I'm out there in the hallway and you're walking up to me and you're giving me your stories. So you all got a story, and with a little bit of digging, you got better stories than you even think you got. You should be using your stories everywhere because your stories make you much, much more interesting. Um, Ali, the other day on the call, she talked about how she was a struggling copywriter in Manhattan, and now she has— what she did to move from there. And in the phenomena, I think you even tell the story how you went to the ATM machine and you couldn't take out $20 or something like that. I don't know if you mind me telling you that, but it's in the phenomena. And they're all getting the phenomena, so they're going to know it sooner or later. Well, that's a much, much interesting story than the fact is I'm just a millionaire internet person, you know. The before and after story is much, much more interesting. So, I mean, my story about how, you know, I went to a Peter Lo seminar, and I heard Dan Kennedy speaking. Then 2 years later, when he came to Baltimore, I wrote him a letter and asked him if I could take him out to dinner. And he said, he called me up and he said, I can't stay for dinner, but I can go for lunch, and you can bring all your stuff. And I look, I mean, I'm shortening this story. I mean, that changed my life. That's an interesting story for people to hear, so I tell it often. So telling your stories is absolutely critical. Okay. Next is bullets. Bullets are really important, mainly in sales letters. Oftentimes they can't be used elsewhere, but although I usually typically use them in postcards for sure, and it's really— people really like to look at bullets because they know that a lot of the goodies are in the bullets. And there's really— I spend a lot of time in the Creating Copy That Sells online course teaching people how to write great bullets. But this is just some of the bullets. That were in the Creating Copy That Sells— I'm sorry, in the sales letter for this event. And what's interesting about this is not only are they great bullets where it talks about things such as client customer training, non-consensual selling, the Pavlovian power play, things like that, which is really— you can look at and get some really good concise information. But also look at the fact that there's stuff that's in blue. There is things that are underlined, things that are bolded. Again, this goes back to that whole cosmetic area. It's a very important part of any sales letter. And again, learning how to create great bullets is not as hard as you think it is. It's just learning sort of systems and formulas for it. The next is the PS. The number one most read part of any sales letter is what? The headline. The number 2 most read part of any sales letter is the PS. Why is that? Because we have been trained to know that all the goodies are in the PS. So what we do is we typically— now there's lots of different readership paths of sales letters. Some people are very, very, very anal and they will read the whole sales letter front to back. Most people are what we call have different readership paths where they'll sort of skim and then they'll go back and read it all if they're still interested. Those people will read the PS second. So the time that you put in your PS, how to craft PSs, how many PSs to have, is absolutely critical because people know all the goodies are in the PS. Here's a couple of— these are not all the PSs, but here's a couple of PSs that are in the sales letter that was sent out for this. PS number 1: If you do not already own my classic sales program, 19 Secrets of Exceptional Results Selling. May I suggest you add it on to your purchase? There was an add-on sale in the PS. Um, it goes on to say you can pick it up for an additional 30% off. PS number 2: This offer can never repeat itself. So there's an urgency, there's a deadline in the PS. So there's lots of different things that you want to put in the PS. The PS often does a lot of heavy lifting for you, and you should not underestimate the value of PSs in your copy. So there you go, there you have the— oh, you got one more, you got the close. So this is a place where a lot of people really screw this up. This, I always call this, is like they, they get to the red zone. How many of you football fans? Good for you. They get to the red zone and they just can't score. The first game of this year The Ravens played Cincinnati, and we had the ball left. We had— we're on less than the 5-yard line. We had 7 chances to get in the end zone and win the game, and we couldn't get in the end zone and win the game. Wasn't a particularly good night for me. And that's what this is all about, is bringing the ball down to score but not scoring. And that's what happens with the close, is not having a very, very strong close. We're getting people to take action. So for example, in the sales letter that we sent out, "As you know, it's increasingly rare to get me personally presenting new or advanced material in a relatively small group setting. I want to respect you. I want to respond to your questions about selling, your selling situations, give you ideas specifically for you. So you have an opportunity to submit questions." It goes on to say, "The seminar occurs only once on September 29th." Then it goes on to say, don't procrastinate. Every event we held in the past 2 years, we've closed the doors and turned away people. It will certainly occur with this free opportunity. Rush to your fax machine and send your form to 410-825-3301. Seating assigned first in first serve. So again, it's rush to your fax machine and send your form to the to that fax number. It's telling people exactly what to do. This is a close to the sales letter, and a lot of people make that mistake. Okay, so those are the 11 building blocks of creating copy that sells. So my question to you is this: I have a question to you. My question is, which one of these do you think is the most important building block? And so by show of hands, how many of you think Well, let me give you all just another couple seconds to look at this. How many of you think that the headline is the most important building block? How many of you think subheads? How many of you think credibility is the most important building block? How many of you think guarantees most important? How many of you think the cosmetics Offers. Deadlines. The story. You only get one. See, that's why they're called the most important one, you know, because other than that, they're all building blocks. Bullets. The PS. The close. Ah, well, how many of you are too afraid to raise your hand about any of them? Well, the reality of it is that the most important building block— there is a number one most important building block. The number one most important building block, and I want to talk about it a little bit more, is the headline. Because unless you get somebody to read the rest of it, Doesn't matter what the rest of it is. So the headline is by far and away the number one most important building block. And its chief job, as I said, is to get the reader to read the rest of what you present to them, regardless of the media or the format. And actually, even when I create radio and television advertising, I consider the opening line like the headline of that. So it needs to answer the following question: Who cares? What's in it for me? Why are you bothering me? So what? It needs to answer those 4 questions. Not necessarily all 4 of them, but if it can answer all 4 of them, it's typically even a stronger headline. And this is no place to be skimpy. When I write a headline for any new ad I'm doing, new sales letter I'm doing, anything I'm doing, I never write less than 10 of them. And I usually will— not usually, but I oftentimes will write as many as 100 headlines best on any kind of ad. Now the good news about that is that even if you pick your number one best one, you normally can go back in there and get your subheads out of the ones that you didn't choose that are like the next best ones. What I always tell people to do is to use successful headlines to guide them and sort of get templates for it. In my Creating Copy That Sells online course, I actually give everybody 350 of the best headlines as templates. So you go through that, and I actually still use those same 350 today to create all my headlines. I actually will go through those 350 to help me to craft my best headlines, use them as templates. Another important thing about them is, and this is a big thing that a lot of people screw up, they think that short headlines are the way to go. I am not a short headline guy. Dan is not a short headline guy. We've written headlines up to 30 words in than them. So this is no place to think in terms of I gotta have short headlines. Let me give an example of what I mean by that. This is a bad headline: 50% off sale. Now a lot of people would look at this and say, gee, that's a great offer, I want to get that in my headline right up front. That is not a good headline. Here's a headline that I wrote for a retail client of mine many years ago using the same concept of a 50% off sale, and I created this headline: Shh! Discover the McKeldon's Furniture half-off sale that other furniture stores don't want you to know about. Same message, but I got the name of the store in there, but more importantly, I got curiosity in there. That other furniture stores don't want you to know about. Here's a little inside trick for you, by the way. Alpha 50% off outperforms numeric 50% off. Alpha 50% off outperforms— so alpha offers oftentimes will outperform numeric offers. 50% off, it always outperforms it. Now, what's important about this is some of you are sitting here in the audience and saying to yourselves, gee, I am not a furniture store, so I can't use this headline. So here's how I took the exact same headline one time and I used it for my BGS marketing system, which is, shh, discover the BGS marketing scratch and dent clearance event that we wouldn't want the customers who paid full price to know about. Same headline, fill in the blank. So you want to take great headlines. That's why I have the 350 of them. I just fill in the blank with using the same headlines. Okay. I'm going to move through this real quickly. I don't have time to go through them all, so I'm going to go through mainly 3 of them, but I'm going to show you all these 20 critical copy concepts and give you, show you some actual examples of some. And these are the ones that once you get the foundations of the first 11, these are now the ones that will take your copy to the next level. One is that understanding that copywriting is salesmanship in print. Dan talked about that yesterday. Number 2 is the message to market match. One of the most important things is sending the message to to the right market. With Miracle-Ear, we talked about Miracle-Ear. I think there's somebody in here who's a Miracle-Ear person, right? So, yeah, okay. So, customers 65+. If we send our message to people that are 18, we probably will not get a very good response. Message to market match. Next is the 4 things you need to be concerned about before you write. Knowing those 4 things. Next is component parts of a direct mail package. Understanding how all the component parts of direct mail package. Number 5 is double readership path. I talked about that a little bit before, where different ways that people actually will read your sales letter. They don't read it typically the way we want them to read it, which is in the order and word for word that we do it. That's why cosmetic enhancements often are so important. Number 6 is personalization. This one I'm going to tell you a little bit about. Personalization will typically increase response by about 30%. This over here is a mailing piece that I sent out. This was one I sent out for my menswear store. This was the actual piece right here, which is a big window envelope. When you get this in the mail, it goes to the recipient, Steve Harshberger, and you can actually see through the envelope, "Dear Steve." This kind of thing, if I had just put this in a 6x9 white envelope, without being able to see through it, wouldn't have gotten nearly the response. If I put it in a 6x8 envelope and sent it out without the personalization in it, it wouldn't have gotten nearly the response. Personalization will significantly increase response on all of your advertising. Next is making the piece believable. Very, very important point is making sure that what you— your proposition is believable. Next is how to improve the offer without discounting. Oftentimes I get that question is, okay, Bill, I want to sell these things, but I don't want to reduce my price. Well, there's a lot of different strategies that you need to know about how to do that. The next one is photographs and illustrations. Well, this one I am going to show you an example of, and here's one I've actually used many, many times, and the power of photographs. And actually, all of you got this photograph that I'm about to show you that I used in your bag, but here's how I used it one other way, which is my straitjacket photograph. And actually, this isn't the first time I ever used it. The first time I used it was in my retail store where it was really a funny thing. We rented the straitjacket, $40, digital camera. I stood in the store, put it on, my staff helped me put it in, get in the Tied me all in, you know, photograph. Took the picture. 4 days later they let me out. We both enjoyed ourselves. I didn't have to deal with them for 4 days. But here's how to use a photo. Now, if I had this here that says, "I must be totally nuts," well, it's pretty good. But having me in a straitjacket, "I must be totally nuts," significantly enhances the power of what I've done here. So using photographs and illustrations are things that significantly take your advertising to the next level. Next is grabbers. Actually putting things on your ad. We did that— Lee told you that Peak Performers Group, we did that great illustration using grabbers in that particular media piece. You want to learn how to do that. Next is humor. Humor is very, very dangerous in your advertising. Properly done, it is fabulous. You need to know how to properly do it. Next is letting the reader in on the secret. This is a biggie. See, here's the deal. Everybody believes that everybody else knows the secret. They all believe that somebody knows the secret that they don't know that they need to know. So one of the big things that you want to do in your advertising is you want to let— tell people that you're going to tell them the secret when they get your thing. Involvement is getting them involved in the piece, and we're going to talk about that a little bit later. Takeaway selling— this is actually one of Dan's favorite types of selling, maybe his only type of something that he even likes to do, is actually being involved with— there's really a— to buy this, you actually are being privileged and not everybody has an opportunity to buy this. Celebrity, the use of celebrity will always boost response. I talked to somebody this morning out in the hall about the use of celebrity. Order forms. Order forms, when you put order forms in your mailing pieces or even online on your websites, This is usually a place where people screw it up. Here's the order form that we used in the sales letter. And look, I didn't call it an order form. At the top I said free admission only for the first 400 to invest, deadline, but not by date, by limited quantity, and free opportunity. Then I had the response required by May 25th. So I had 2 deadlines up right up front, and I had free opportunity. I didn't call it an order form. I, I cringe when people call it an order form. There's a lot of other things on there that we did write also. I don't have time to talk to you all about them today, but learning how to write the right order forms is really valuable. And the reason why it's so valuable is because when— let me now be honest with me— when we send you a big sales letter and you get it, isn't the order form one of the first things you go to to look at? And the reason why is because that's where you know how much money it's going to cost you. So you look at it almost right away. Some of, some of us look at it right away. So the order form often has to do a lot of the heavy lifting for you, and they think the sales letter is going to do the heavy lifting for you. Shortcuts, swipe files, S&D, etc. You need to know how to do shortcuts, swipe files. You need to know how to do editing because great copywriters, or anybody writing copy, shouldn't be spending, wasting their time with doing a lot of editing. You need to know the 3 chief reasons why people don't buy. And you know, you need to know number 20 is when is good good enough? So at what point do you stop slaving over this thing and you just gotta like move on? Because I can tell you 100%, 100% that you will get no response from any mail that you never send out. So if you gotta eventually get it out. Okay, let me move on to the third step, which is copy kryptonite. As you can see, I'm giving you lots of information, so I gotta move fast. Okay, okay, okay. Or you want me to slow down, give you less information? Okay, copy kryptonite. There's 7 of them. These are the things that will kill all your, your copywriting, your advertising, whatever. Number 7 is placing your logo, business name, address, etc. above the headline. Our good friend Howie, who has got his makeover. Makeover Howie, okay? He, you know, what's good about— two things are good about Howie. Number one is he's getting tremendous value out of his association with us, and number two, he's a good sport about it. So here's his— here's the piece that he gave me from his Stony Brook. Okay, Howie would be afraid to even come there. You ought to put like a bag over your head. So here's what he sent me. And we talked about the peak performers, okay? You know, Stony Brook ain't going to sell anything up there. You need a headline up there. Put Stony Brook on the bottom. If you got me interested, I'll find out who's sending me this piece. So get that logo off the top of everything that you do. Big, big copy kryptonite. Number 2 is failure to tell your entire story. See, what happens is we get bored with our story. So we forget to tell it. It is critical to tell it because you want to hear something, even if somebody's heard our story 10 times, they're not thinking, I gotta remember your story. I got enough trouble remembering my own story. So you gotta tell it every time. Number 6 is blank space. It drives me nuts. Dan Kennedy always says blank space doesn't sell anything, so use it all. No blank space at all in your copywriting. Number 4 is understanding— underestimating the difficulty of the task. A lot of people think— I was talking to a guy the other day, bought an hour of consulting from me, wants to go into the information marketing business. He says to me, well, I got a list, I'm going to send them all out a 4-inch by 6-inch postcard. I said, don't. Here's the best advice I can give you in this one hour. Don't go in the information marketing business. A 4 by 6-inch postcard is not going to— is not going to deliver the sale to you. You gotta put people into multi-step marketing funnels, some short, some long, online, offline, all kinds of media. 4x6 postcard ain't going to do it. Underestimating the difficulty of the task. Number 3 is writing from a me perspective, not a you perspective. WWIIFM— what's in it for me? Nobody's interested in what's coming from the writer. It's what are they going to achieve by taking action of what you send them. So don't ever use the word me. You always use the word you in your marketing, and it can always be translated from me to you. I've never seen it where I couldn't do it. Number 2 is not telling the prospect how to take action. This sort of talks a little bit about what I told you before as far as bringing them to the red zone but not, not scoring, not telling specifically how to take action. And the number 1, number 1 copywriting kryptonite by far Anybody want to guess? What? I can't hear it, you got to shout it. No what? No? Number 1 copywriting is being boring. I mean, I can tell you 100%, you bore them, they ain't going to read it. I don't care where you're at with it. You got to be interesting, you got to be exciting, you got to engage them, you got to keep their attention. You don't want to be boring at all. And I also identify what I call copy boosters. These are little bonus for you. I've actually identified 29 of them, and I'm going to show you, um, 3 of them. By the way, you guys, I have a— I'm not ready yet, but you have a video at some point ready, right? I forgot to ask you that today, but I should know you got it already. So copy boosters, I've identified 29. These are little things, what Dan calls You know how little hinges open big doors? These are little hinges that will open big doors for you. So I'm going to show you 3 of them that I think you'll find interesting of the 29. The first one is stamps, okay? You want to use multiple stamps. Multiple stamps will outpull single stamps. So you can send— put on multiple stamps on the envelope. Number 2 is commemorative stamps will outpull regular stamps. And commemorative stamps can be bought for the same price as a regular stamp. Number 3 is stamps put on upside down or an angle outpull stamps put on straight. So we have our mailing house, for example, let me show you an example. We had our mailing house put on a stamp on one of our letters. Here it is. This is a commemorative stamp that's a triangular stamp. I love that stamp. Good. You got to get a life. I mean, I could just imagine what a beautiful woman does to you. All right. So, I mean, it's a stamp. I probably will never see that guy again. But he's sitting next to Howie, so he's probably a good sport. So anyhow, so using that stamp, if that arrives in the mail, you're much more apt to take notice of it because it looks like a friend is sending you a friend something. So there's one of them. Number 2 is order of insertion. How do people open up a letter? They open it from the back, not from the front. So they always go to the back, they always pull it out from the back of the back of the letter. So here is a letter that I sent out several years ago. It says, "People, open at once. Some people are already calling this illegal, but once you learn the facts, you'll want in too." And then when you open up from the back, what you see here is coming out of the back of the letter is one of— is a photo with a Grabber. What would you rather do this holiday season, shop at the mall or shop at Gage and save some real money? And it has a picture of me behind bars underneath it, which we should have had there. It talks about that a lot of people feel as though that these prices are so low that Bill is offering that it's almost illegal. So we actually had to use that photo in there. But you always have to insert it from the back to the forward, not from the forward to the back. The third one I'll show you is this, is premiums. These work online or offline. And premiums will significantly increase response by as much as 30%. What is a premium? A premium is a free gift you get when you take action. So giving people a free gift or adding that into your offer will increase response. And when you do it, you always want to show the photo, and you also always want to provide a description of the value of the premium. So for example, here's a, here's a piece that I sent out in my retail business. This is when my son Graduated from college now 4 years ago, I believe. And so this is a picture of me and him at his graduation. And I wrote— I used that as an excuse to run a sale, is the fact that I promised him when he graduated college— actually, I promised— and here's a whole letter about when he was 6 years old. I promised him when he graduated college I would run this big sale in the store. Now I'm keeping good on my promise. This is a story. But if you see down here at the bottom, I have you get a free $20 bonus umbrella. That is a premium and that will increase response. Without the umbrella, it's a very, very good ad, but with the umbrella, I'm getting increase in sales. I'm looking for incremental increases in sales.

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