Nate Tilley explains Michael Masterson's rule of one: the best sales copy centers on a single compelling idea that's easy to understand, believable, and unique. Avoid toss salad copy that mixes unconnected benefits. Structure everything to reinforce that one central message.
What's going on, everyone? I wanted to share the rule of one with you that I learned from Michael Masterson. And if you haven't heard of Michael Masterson, he's the chief growth strategist at Agora Publishing, which to my knowledge is the biggest information seller on the market. They do over a billion dollars a year in revenue. And he is the person who created their entire acquisition machine, which is teams and teams of hundreds of copywriters who generate demand through compelling words. And I think there's something really magical about that because he not only has been able to do it himself and hit home run after home run for home run offer, but he's been able to duplicate it in other people and create and get people who've never sold a thing to writing copy that generates 20 million, 40 million, 80 million plus just from a single letter or message. And in his book, Great Leads, the first concept that he introduces is arguably the most important, and he calls it the rule of one. And it was so important to me that I wrote it down and I have it right in front of my computer because it applies to almost everything, but especially to communication and sales messages. And so whenever he said the common thing that most copywriters do or most business owners who are trying to make an offer to be compelling to a marketplace, what they do is, is they just stack as many different great things inside as they possibly can and then say, well, if that one doesn't work, one of them will work, so I'm just going to throw them all in. And he said that's the recipe for, he calls toss salad copy, which is just, you just jumble everything together and you hope, throw everything in the wallet, see what sticks. But the reality is the most compelling messages. And he reviewed the top 100 offers of all time since they worked there, 91 of them, all centered around a single concept. And so if you think about what that means, it means that you're looking for the one big idea, the one compelling message that has to be easy to understand, easy to believe, and interesting or unique. And so he said those are the three elements of a one big idea. And so when you're thinking about the sales messaging, and this has been really just, I've been putting this as a forefront of my mind, is that when you're writing copy for an advertisement or you're writing copy for a landing page, the sub bullets should only be bullets that reinforce the singular message or the singular argument, right? They should be stories, they should be arguments, they should be facts that are presented solely to reinforce the singular concept, right? And so if I said, hey, there's six ways to wake up earlier or something like that, or six morning strategies, if each one of them was kind of different, that's like it's a tossed salad. Whereas if I wanted to center it around one big benefit or one core topic, now the six topics that I could have underneath of it are going to still be sub points of the major one rather than 15 crazy headline ideas, right? And so for me, that has been incredibly powerful. And if you look at, if you have advertised before and you look at the best converting advertisements that you've ever had, you will probably see that similar trend where the ones that do best are the simplest, the most direct, and the clearest to understand. Now, the issue is when you only have to pick one, it forces you to be incredibly tactful on your selection because you're only going to pick one. And so I think what that ends up doing is it forces us as marketers to really think, is this the best idea? Is this the most centralized, focused concept that I can point as the tip of my spear of my communication message? Right. And so a lot of these things around, like any kind of unique selling proposition, that's going to be the rule of one, right? You don't want to have 19 selling propositions. You want to have one core one that everyone can immediately understand, is counterintuitive and is believable. So when you put all three of those things together, then you have a message that's compelling and people will take one step towards you. I have now, like I said, I wrote that at the top of my computer and as I've been writing copy and keeping this at top of mind, because I can guarantee you that even since I started doing this, just even reading the book I've gotten, the copy that I've been putting out has been so much better and more targeted and, and crisper because there's one central idea I'm trying to convince the reader or prospect of, and then the sales message that follows is actually very transparent and simple to write. The hard part is figuring out what that one idea is going to be. But if you're going to think about one thing, then that would be the one to focus on. So anyways, I hope that was valuable for you. I share this stuff as it comes to me in my journey of marketing and sales. And so I hope you enjoy this, like subscribe, all that kind of stuff and subscribe and I'll see you next video. Bye.
