Making $3 Billion Dollars is as Easy as Writing Good Copy (ft. Craig Clemens)

If people want to get better at copywriting, the beauty of copywriting is there are a lot of timeless resources. So what do you recommend people check out if they want to get better or if they just want to get started?

Yeah, so Eric, as you probably know, but people often don't realize, is that the same principles that worked in marketing back in, you know, 100 years ago are just as powerful today because human psychology hasn't changed. So I recommend you study 2 things. I recommend you study the greats, being the classics. So books written by guys like Claude Hopkins, Robert Collier, and Eugene Schwartz. Those are 3 iconic copywriters of the olden days that have written some of the best books on the subject. I think, you know, between those 3 guys, there's 4 books. I would devour all of those. And then you really gotta study what's working. There's a lot of guys teaching copywriting right now. Some of them are great, some of them are not so great, and it's hard to identify, but I believe that the best copywriters are just doing it because when you're really good at copywriting, you can use it to sell things other than copywriting courses. And it's, more profitable. You know, that's the bottom line. And so look at the companies that are really successful and study them. And the way you can tell if a company is successful is if you see their ads over and over again across different websites, then you know, okay, that company's doing something right because they can continue to pay to run the ads. It used to be back in the day, you go buy the same magazine every month, you'd see the same ad in the magazine For a year, you know, it's a profitable ad. Otherwise the company would go out of business. So the same is true today, looking at the ads that pop up on your Facebook newsfeed, you know, or on the bottom of the articles on CNN.com, you know, places like that. And then another thing you can do is get the Alexa toolbar. And the Alexa toolbar, as you probably know, Eric, it gives you a ranking of where the sites lie as far as how much traffic they're getting. So Google is the number one traffic site on the internet. I think Facebook is number 3 or 4. You know, MSN is like 5 or 6. You know, it goes backwards, Alexa rankings do. And if you see a site that is under 150,000 Alexa ranking, it probably means it's doing pretty well. And so Those are sites you can learn from. Though there is one trap you can fall into, and that is looking at venture-backed companies. So venture-backed companies can afford to go splash around a bunch of advertising that doesn't really work that well, that's acquiring customers at a loss. And they can do that because it's not their money and they just, you know, raised a few million dollars. They can splash it around and their advertising might not be very good. So when you find a company that meets the criteria, you see their ads a lot, they've got an Alexa ranking under 150,000, type in the name of the company and then type in Crunchbase, and you can go pull up and it'll show you rounds of funding. If they've had, you know, $10 million in funding or even $4 million or $2 million, Don't study their ads. I'm not, I'm not saying their ads are necessarily bad. They might be great, but you don't know. You know, you don't know if they're acquiring customers at a loss or if they're acquiring them at a profit. And Eric, it's a whole lot easier to acquire customers at a loss than it is to be profitable on every transaction. And so it makes you have stronger copy if you got to make a profit. So I suggest studying profitable companies. If you wanna create a profitable company yourself. And, you know, with the whole WeWork fiasco and some of these other direct-to-consumer plays that have come to market that have either been acquired by big brands or have gone public and seen the valuations fall apart, I think all of the markets are gonna be more favorable towards profitable companies moving forward. So whether you wanna build a big organization that you wanna take public one day or have an exit on, or just a lifestyle business that makes you profit, profit is the name of the game.

With your creative copywriting process, I'm just gonna call it that, I mean, what goes into that? 'Cause I'm assuming you probably have a swipe file. I guess like, what is that, what does that process look like for you? Like, are you saying, you know, each day I'm gonna spend X amount of hours, you know, writing copy? Like, what does that look like?

Yeah, so it starts with research. And the research is into the market that you're entering. And first and foremost, who you're selling to, because the key to copywriting is understanding the customer and understanding their unique problems, their dreams, their hopes, their desires, and then speaking to that person. I heard Bob Pittman speak at a conference once. Bob Pittman's the founder of MTV, and then he founded iHeartRadio. He's just a business legend. Not a copywriter, but he said something about copywriting that changed the way I think about it. And he said, you cannot sell anything to anyone. The idea of selling is a myth. The only thing you can do is show someone that your product or service is the best solution to their problem. That's all you can do. Then they have to make the choice themselves. So really getting to know your customer, what their problems are, what is going to be the needle movers for them in their life to make their life better, and then speaking to those points is the most important thing you can do. And market research is key because you have to do it in a unique way. You know, if I had a— let's say I was launching something for weight loss, and I said, you know, take this pill, Eric, and you're gonna lose 50 pounds in 5 weeks. Well, that pitch worked really well 40 years ago, but now everyone knows that doesn't work, and they've seen dozens of companies say a pitch along those lines.

Banner blindness.

Exactly. It's just, you know, the same old shit now. So you look at other companies though that are coming into the weight loss market, which is a big market. Do you remember 1-800-GET-SLIM, the Lap-Band? That had a huge radio campaign. It was a massive business and it was actually for gastric bypass surgery, but it made that mainstream. It made this crazy invasive surgical procedure mainstream with that marketing that they had on the radio. It's like, 1-800-LAP-BAND, we're all gonna get slim. You know, it had like the catchy captions, they'd have rappers singing that and the DJs and all that, you know, and it was unique. So it stood out in people's mind as a unique solution. And so I think market research with your customer and with what else is out there is important because you have to first identify the customer's dreams, hopes, fears, Frustrations, then identify what you can do to solve them in a unique way. That's the key to success.

Got it. And is there anything that you— did you just learn that process through experience, or was there like a specific thing that you read? It's like, oh, I'm just gonna duplicate that process.

I mean, this is just Copywriting 101, really.

Yeah.

Yeah. You know, copywriting is all about the basics.

Yep.

And the mistake a lot of writers make, myself included, is trying to get too fancy. Anytime I try to get too fancy with a marketing piece, I usually lose the customer.

And one thing I forgot to touch upon when we first started, your ad campaigns have generated almost $1 billion in sales. Is that with Golden Hippo as well, or is there another story there?

Oh, it's well over a billion now, and that is counting ads that I wrote for Double Your Dating and Catch Him and Keep Him, which was our women's brand back there, and freelance projects. Though my ads that I've written for Golden Hippo brands have generated over a billion by themselves also.

Got it.

So I just, I kind of stopped counting at a billion because it's kind of hard to add up and all that. Good problem to have. It's not really about the, The numbers, you know, because as we were talking about earlier, you know, it's about profit and people always quote numbers, you know, they'll be like, oh yeah, we're doing $100 million a year in revenue. But what they don't tell you is that they're burning $20 million a year, you know. So I just put that number up because it's hard to like clarify success in copywriting.

Mm-hmm.

Because a lot of times you're doing it for brands that not a lot of people know. So it's not like I was doing marketing for Uber or Domino's Pizza or things like that. You know, I'm doing brands that help millions of people but not as well known. So I was thinking about like, how do you quantify success? And I was thinking about it, I was like, you know, I probably sold over a billion dollars worth of stuff one day. So one day I pulled out the spreadsheet and I, you know, entered all the numbers and I added it up and it was over a billion. And I said, cool, I'm using that as a personal branding Yeah. And that's something to think about, you know. It was a copywriting move that I did for myself to use that as a personal branding play.

That's awesome. Well, Craig, this has been great. What's the best way for people to find you online?

Uh, I'm on the, on the gram, uh, just @Craig, just, just that first name. And I also been going on Twitter a lot, and Twitter is where I share more of my marketing and business insights. My Instagram is more motivational and Helping young people. Twitter is more business stuff, and Twitter is my full name, Craig Clemens, C-L-E-M-E-N-S.

Dude, a separate note before we hop off. So I follow you on Instagram. I'll have to add you on Twitter, but Twitter to me is the most important social network. But that's like, we got to do like a session too, but literally I got booked back to back on podcasts. So that is it, everyone. If you guys want me to have Craig again, please type 1 into the chat right now or just tweet at me. And we'll see you guys in the next podcast or another day. All right, guys, see you later.