Copywriting Panel Highlights With 5 of the Most Influential Copywriters Alive: John Carlton, Brian Kurtz, Parris Lampropoulos, Craig Clemens, and Richard Viguerie From Joe Polish’s Genius Network Annual Event – I Love Marketing Episode #403

I think the best copywriters I've ever met have been the best interviewers. They ask good questions, they're curious.

It's the most important skill that will help you solve any problem, build a successful business and create the impact that you want is to write persuasive copy or understand the power of it so you can hire and direct the right who to help you.

If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network event, or want to learn more about Genius network, go to geniusnetwork.com this week we are revisiting a previous episode. Here are some of the best highlights.

How many of you would really like to learn how to increase your sales, clients, leads, etc. I believe this is the greatest panel of brilliant world renowned, proven track records group that's ever been put.

Think about a problem that you currently have in your business or life that you'd like solved. We have put together the greatest panel of sales letter writers, copywriters, wordsmiths, problem solvers of all time. Copy is written words that sell or persuasion in print. It's the most important skill that will help you solve any problem, build a successful business and create the impact that you want is to write persuasive copy or understand the power of it so you can hire and direct the right who to help you.

How do you hire a great copywriter.

If you don't have your list work in place or you don't have your offer work in place, the best copy in the world isn't going to do anything.

What are some of the biggest mistakes you see entrepreneurs make when it comes to copywriting and also in hiring copywriters.

The mistake is going cheap and is going bargain basement. This is like one of the most difficult skills to find because first of all you're looking for somebody who can write and you just eliminated 80% of the population there, then that person has to be a salesperson, a good salesperson. And most writers are introverts. So to find an intersection of those two circles, you've already limited a lot. And. And then the third thing they have to have is some element of creativity because very often they're being called upon to find the 101st way to sell something that already has been sold 100 different ways. So the number one mistake I see is people looking at it as a cost rather than an investment, because it really is an investment.

It's gotta be somebody who's really cut their teeth in a particular category in a particular they have a passion for your product. Or service. I mean, the people on this panel are just. They move people to action. And you don't do that without putting in. If it's not 10,000 hours, it's 8,000 hours. I've outlined seven things that were evident in every great copywriter I ever hired. I checked off the boxes. You know, hunger, passion, direct marketing knowledge, humility, all those things.

There used to be a saying that there's a shortage of copywriters. Well, unfortunately, right now we have a glut of copywriters because there's all this copywriting training out there that says, oh, you know, work from the beach and live the good life and sucks people in to want to become copywriters. So we now have a glut of copywriters, but we still have a shortage of good ones. So you have to do your due diligence. You have to find out what else they've written, how well it did. And one little trick is very often when they show you the samples, I always ask them to see the first draft that they submitted to the client.

As well and make sure get the results. Because sometimes the results aren't that good either. Even though it looks pretty good, you.

Got to ask them how well it did.

You know, we all have great ideas that we're really passionate about, but I think it's important to either bring a copywriter in early before you finalize that product idea to make sure it's something that people are going to want, or at least get the basics down yourself. And there's three books I recommend that I think anyone should read before they take a product out to market first. One is My life in advertising by Claude Hopkins, which tells the story of how he created brands back in the 1920s that are still around today, like Goodyear Tire, Pepsid toothpaste, Hoover vacuum cleaner. The other book that I think is a must read is Positioning by Jack Trout and Al Rise. Positioning the battle for your mind. And that'll tell you how to tackle that horseman that Richard was mentioning, getting that fit in the prospect's mind so you can enter a new category and create your own space there. And then the third is Triggers by Joe Sugarman. All the triggers that make people buy, that make people excited about a product or service. And if you read those first before you finalize your product or service, you can build that into the product or service.

So what is your process, step by step, for strategizing and writing winning copy?

I call it being a sales detective. You gotta just interview people and really dig deep into what the truth is about the product and the market.

Even if you don't want to be involved, you've got to be involved. I think the best copywriters I've ever met have been the best interviewers. They ask good questions, they're curious, and that's why there are so few great ones, because they don't spend the time and effort to really get deep into the business. I think it's a team effort.

You can tell the good ones from the bad ones by the amount of stuff they ask you for because the game is won or lost. During the research phase, I used to.

Eliminate copywriters who didn't ask me for a list. History like that should be one of their first questions.

You will continuously have people that will give you opinions disguised as, like, know how and advice that have never even read a marketing book. They have no respect for the amount of effort that you guys have put into learning this craft. And one of the things that I want to just emphasize here is one of the biggest detriments to your success with copy is listening to all the horseshit that other people are going to actually tell you about what works and what doesn't work. Not based on any evidence of testing, but just their opinion of what they think. And how about would say the most expensive information in the world is bad information? And there's even if that information or that advice. The most expensive advice in the world is bad advice, even if that advice is free. And so when people are giving you marketing advice, really only listen to people that have the chops that have been there, done that, and can back it up because there's so much incompetency that is shared. And frankly, most people don't respect marketing. They don't understand it, but they have opinions about it.

Those who want to be copywriters, those who want to be marketers, read, read, read, Study, study, study, masters. I think it's critically important to go to the top of your game, to have mentors. Seek out mentors in your life. It'll make a huge difference.

What has copy marketing or sales taught you about life and humanity?

Everything's like copywriting. Copywriting is like everything. And there's a copywriting lesson everywhere.

People think about writers, you know, being in their garret, typing away, all alone, isolated from the world. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I think most of us are introverts up here, but we know how to operate in the extroverted world. We're kind of like from the outside looking in, but we look Very, very carefully. And we learn this stuff very, very finely. Learning how to write is learning how to live better.

If you understand those four horsemen, position, differentiation, benefit, and brand makes most all of life so much better. You want to raise, you want a spouse, you want a job, you want a customer. You know, how do you separate yourself from all that competition out there? And the fact that you're quicker, better, that's not a differentiation. You know, what is it that really differentiates you in a concrete way? And what's the benefit? What's the purple cow? What separates you from everybody else out there? And not a lot of people understand that concept, but those four principles are the secret to life.

Copywriting really is life in a way, because it's a conversation that you're having with someone. And my favorite way to start a sales letter, I learned from John. Speaking of mentors, John had put out his material around this time I started learning. So I got to study all of his stuff. He is the most ripped off copywriter alive, in good part because I was ripping off all this stuff back in the day. But I'll never forget what you said, that if you're struggling on how to open a piece of copy, imagine you're sitting at a bar and someone comes up and sits next to you and they tell the bartender about a problem they're having. And it's the exact problem that your product or service offers the solution to. And then you turn to them and what you would say to them is the way to start the letter. And I still think about that with every sales letter I write.

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