7 Timeless Copywriting Exercises: How To Write Better Sales Copy

My name is Nicholas Cole. I'm one of the highest paid copywriters and ghostwriters in the world. And I guarantee this will be the most valuable video you ever watch on the subject of copywriting. If you do these copywriting exercises and if you train your brain to think this way, you will be a top 1% copywriter. Now, why don't other copywriters talk about these things? Well, because they don't know about them. Truthfully, the vast majority of people who talk about copywriting on the Internet don't even understand the most important part of copyright. So they think that it's all about using certain words. Like, oh, if I say this crazy solution that's going to hook someone, right? They think it's all about using, like, terminology or hooks that grab their attention. And then it's like, I got you. I'm going to sell you on this thing, right? They think it's about using certain sales mechanisms in order to convince people of things. Great copywriting isn't really about any of those things, okay? And you're missing the entire point. Okay, so let's start at the beginning, and this is the very first exercise. All great copy bubbles up to the category level. So let me explain what that means. You cannot write effective copy if you do not understand what category you are playing in. More specifically, as the writer, you can't write great copy if you don't understand the differentiated category that you are either trying to reinforce or create for that business for a client, or. Or if you're an entrepreneur for yourself. What that means is that how people organize information in their brains is they organize it first at a category level. They do not organize it at a brand level. So I'll give you a very simple example. If I said to you, hey, tonight, do you want to go to Jamie's for dinner? Jamie's is a great restaurant. It's right down the street. Your first question is not tell me about Jamie's, the brand. Your first question is, what. What kind of food do they serve? That is a category question. Are they a sushi restaurant? Are they Italian restaurant? Are they a Mexican restaurant? Right? So before you can even begin evaluating whether or not you want to go to this restaurant, your very first question is, what's the category? And then if I say, oh, Jamie's is Italian, you're either going to say, I'm not in the mood for Italian, AKA I want a different category. Or. Or you're gonna say, oh, yeah, I'm totally in the mood for Italian, but I Actually think that Fernando's down the street has better Italian. And now you're having a brand comparison conversation. And one of the biggest mistakes that copywriters make is they don't understand what's happening at the category level, and then they go straight to the brand level, not realizing that all the differentiation and all the copy actually starts at the category level. So what's the exercise? All right, you need to start training your brain to think in categories, because the more clarity you have over categorical organization, the more that you're going to understand A, how to recognize it with your clients, B, how to base your copy around the category that they're in, and or C, help them actually create or name and claim a new category. Okay? And I cannot stress enough how many writers skip this step and go straight to let me tell you how great my brand is. And I'm going to use all these quote unquote copywriting mechanisms to convince you, not realizing that they're not even answering the very first question the reader has, which is, what is the category of this thing? Okay? So this is the most valuable skill that you could build as a copywriter. And there's really two. I mean, there's all sorts of different nuances and ways to think about this. But I'm going to give you the basics here. There's really two ways of thinking about how to organize things at the category level. The first way is you're either taking an existing category and you are modifying it with some sort of new clarifying word. So, very simple example, for years and years and years, we have lots of different cars. All the cars are the same. They all are powered by gas. Now, there's different brands of car, right? And you can even get into different subcategories of cars. You have luxury cars, you have sports cars, right? You have mom mobiles, right? But ultimately, they all bubble up to the same mega category, which is they're all cars. And then there's different, you know, sub niches in there. There's SUVs, there's sedans, right? Then someone comes along and goes, well, what if we don't compete in the same mega category as every other car manufacturer? What if we build an electric car? The word electric modifies the legacy category. And this might seem like this is just semantics, but it's not. Anyone who says this is just semantics has zero understanding of marketing. Zero. Because all of marketing and all of even great product creation comes back to literally those two words. Because how are you supposed to write great copy for an Electric car company. If you as the copywriter haven't grasped the fact that an electric car is actually a completely different category than a gas powered car, right. All copy comes from that decision. Another really easy example. For years and years and years, we have watches. We have different watches at different price points, right? There's different subcategories based on price, based on who it's for. There's all sorts of different ways to backing into that. But ultimately all the watches bubble up to. They're all watches. Apple comes along and goes, well, what if it's not an analog watch? What if it's a smart watch? You have to understand what makes a smartwatch a completely different category than a regular watch in order to start flushing out all the benefits and all the problems that it solves, right? All the value proposition to the person who would buy that, okay, one word makes a massive difference. This is why I always say, at the beginning of my career, I got paid to write a lot of words. I, I got paid to write 800 words in an article. I got paid to write 1500 words in a long form blog post. I got paid to write newsletters. I got paid to write. Yeah. And then now in my career, I get paid to write two words. This is what I get paid to do. When people hire me to do this work. I get paid to come up with two words. And usually it's only one word. It's what is the one word that modifies the legacy category in a way that completely differentiates you from any and all competition. And let me tell you how valuable this skill set is. It's very valuable. Companies pay me millions of dollars in order to do this. Okay? So this is not semantics. This is not just like some arbitrary decision. This is not, oh, I just open up a thesaurus and I come up with a clever word. This modifier, this modifier word is so incredibly important. It dictates the entire strategy of all messaging for that company or for that product or for that vertical. Another one. We do this ourselves, right? When we started our beginner writing program, ship 30 for 30, we did not just say, we help you become a better writer. Better is not a modification word. It doesn't change the category. Better just says, we do the same thing as the legacy category. We just do it incrementally better. There's no differentiation there. We differentiated ourselves by creating a new modifier to put in front of the legacy category to then completely change the way that people evaluated ship 30 relative to all other writing programs. We said we help you become a digital writer. Oh, a digital writer is someone different than a regular writer or a legacy writer. That one decision dictates all of the messaging from there. So you have to train your brain to think in terms of seeing legacy categories and then asking yourself, what different modifier words could I put in front of it? And there's not just one answer. There's lots of different modifiers you could put in front of the legacy category of car or watch or writing. And so it's not just I have to find the right one, it's you think about what are all the different options. And because you could take any legacy category and modify it with 10, 20, 30 different words and create 10, 20, 30 different subcategories or new categories, right? Another way of doing this is you could take two existing categories and smash them together. So what is a sushirito? This is a real thing, by the way, a sushirito is a burrito of sushi. Cool. Burritos exist and sushi exists. What if we smash them together? And a lot of people come up with these ideas for products or for companies, but they don't think to put it into a name. And you have to name the new category something in order for it to stick. Otherwise how is anyone going to talk about it? Another easy one, this is a really popular new category in fiction is Romantasy. What's romantasy? Well, you have fantasy and you have romance. What happens if we smash them together? Now, people, people have probably been writing romantasy stories for decades, right? It in and of itself probably isn't something completely new, but what was new was someone came along and said, we should give this thing a name. And the moment that something has a name, it begins to crystallize. And it begins to crystallize because people can talk about it. That's how word of mouth ignites. Third one, SkinCeuticals. It's like pharmaceutical grade moisturizers and lotions to put on your skin, right? So if you want to take care of your skin, you're like, whoa, I want the best I could possibly find two different categories smashed together. So this is the first exercise is literally ignore every other piece of copywriting advice because it's stupid and it's missing the context. The context and the entire game of copywriting is you have to think at the category level first. If you do not understand this and if you do not have this skill, nothing else matters. You're sitting there and you're swapping out adjectives and you're like, oh, should I say it this way or this way? And you think that's what copywriting is. That's not what copywriting is. Copywriting starts at the category level. And then everything you write reinforces this decision. Oh, it's a smartwatch that. We need to talk about smart watches in a way that is different than the way we talk about regular watches. Okay, this is the first exercise. And the best thing to do is just start paying attention. Just look at everything around you. Every time you see a category, you should ask yourself, wait, what if I put a modifier word in front of that? What if I combined this category with that category over there? What would that be? What would we call that? Right? You have to think at the category level. The second, once you understand, number one, this is one of the most basic things, you'd be shocked how many people don't do it. You have to speak in benefits, not features. So features is what does it do? Literally, benefits is what does it achieve? Right? So you don't want to say, here's all the cool machines that we have at our gym. And by the way, the way that it's built, we use 17 different screws and the hinges are amazing. Right? That's all what it does. No one cares what it does. The only thing the person wants to know is what does it achieve? If you use this type of leg press, you won't have lower back pain anymore. You'll be able to build your quads faster and. And it'll get your heart rate up. That's what the machine achieves, right? I don't care about what it does literally. I just wanna know what it achieves. And this is especially true in software. It's especially true with, like, consumer goods, is everyone's so focused on, look at how cool my thing is. And not focused on, if you use my thing, here's what's going to happen. Here are the good things. Here are the outcomes. Here are the things you can look forward to. So all great copy in some way has to speak to benefits, not features. But again, if you jump to benefits, not features, I'm sure you've heard that before, but if you jump to this without understanding the category level first, you think that copy is like, oh, I just need to talk about the outcome. But no, the outcome and the benefits are based on the decision that's made at the category level. How are you supposed to talk about the benefits if you don't understand, oh, it's a smartwatch, which is different than a Regular watch, right? This is why these things are so important. Number three, if you want to really take copy to the next level, all of the best copywriters and marketers, they name and claim the legacy problem. And the reason they name it and claim it is because once you name something, once you give a problem a name, you can then diagnose people with it. You can then point it out and be like, you don't want to be associated with that, right? This, this creates extremely compelling copies. So I'll give you one of my favorite examples. And it's, it's a messed up example. And this is, this is an example of how you can use, like, this is such a powerful mechanism that it can be used for evil or it can be used for good and help people make meaningful changes in their lives. So during the opioid crisis, when pharma executives were trying to get everyone hooked on OxyContin, what they did is they created a term called breakthrough pain. And what they were doing is they were basically naming and claiming this problem that people had, which was a legitimate problem. They were just telling them, here's the solution, and not telling them, it's actually extremely addictive. The problem is that people would take painkillers, whether they were mild or high grade and already classified as opioids, they would take painkillers and they would still be in pain. And so instead of just saying, hey, you know, you take painkillers and you're still in pain, right? It's like the idea was always there, but people, ideas aren't sticky. And in order to make an idea sticky, you have to name it. And so what these pharma executives did is they started calling it breakthrough pain. And so when they would go and pitch oxycon to doctors and doctor's offices and tell, and would tell them to prescribe it, what they would do is they would coach them on this little sales script and they would go, when someone comes in, ask them if they're taking pain meds and ask them if they're still in a bit of pain. And if they say, yeah, I'm still in a bit of pain, which almost everyone always is, you say, oh, interesting. You might not know it, but you might be experiencing breakthrough pain. Once the name of that problem gets fastened into the person's brain, they will go home and continue thinking, oh, now I know why I'm still in pain. I have breakthrough pain. Now it's been named, now it's in their brain. And so what does that lead to? Once a problem has been named, the person internalizes it, and then they seek a solution. So one of the most valuable things that you can do in your copy. And again, this is like using this mechanism for evil. But I want to explain how it works, and it's a great example of it. What you want to do to make your copy really effective is you want to figure out what problem is this person experiencing. In the legacy category, in the legacy car category, in the legacy watch category, in the legacy writing category, what problem are they experiencing? And then don't just explain the problem. Name the problem. And whenever you're naming something, a couple good rules to follow. One, the name should never be more than three words. It should always be three words or less. The ideal is one or two words. Because if it's more than three words, then you might as well just explain it and then it defeats the purpose, right? Three words or less. And it has to not be clever. It has to as much as possible, literally say what the problem is, okay? And a lot of these conventions and a lot of these mechanisms, you can see how they work in these different areas. Like, as you get good at thinking at the category level, that same thinking applies to how you name and claim problems, which also applies to how you name and claim solutions. So again, if you don't understand step one, none of this stuff is going to click. So when you name and claim the solution, this is actually very similar to the way that you would name and claim a category. So first you have to have the category in mind, and then you start naming all the positive things that happen. So again, instead of just saying, if you adopt this new category, good thing, good idea, right? You're like explaining it to the person you want to name it. So bitcoin is actually a great example of this, right? Bitcoin, entirely new category of money. And one of the ways that the solution of money or the solution of bitcoin gets explained is more and more you hear people using the term, it's digital capital. Now, when you call it something and you name it digital capital, that's very different than saying, it's like money, legacy category, it's just better in all these different ways. That's not sticky, right? The average person can't internalize that. But if you hear the term, oh, bitcoin is actually digital capital, well, you start to internalize that solution. It's sticky. And because it's sticky, that's what makes you go tell other people about it. This is how word of mouth ignites. So there's Two ways of thinking about naming and claiming solutions. It's either a positive solution, so there's some sort of modification word that leans this is a positive outcome, or it's an absence of a negative. So for example, no code, technology, legacy category of technology. If you put no code in front of it, it's the absence of needing to know how to code. Now you hear over and over again people go, oh yeah, I use no code all the time. That's an absence of a negative. It's worth pointing out that term didn't just fall out of the sky. Some marketer somewhere came up with that. And it was so good and so sticky that now everyone uses it. This is why this skill is so incredibly valuable and why at the highest level, this is why companies pay so much money for this. They're not paying. The highest paid copywriters are not getting paid to write 800 word emails. The highest paid copywriters are getting paid to come up with the name of the category, the name of the problem, the name of the solution. Come up with those three things, I'll pay 2 million bucks. Like, it's that. Because if you come up with that for a multi billion dollar company, you literally just came up with the entire North Star and messaging strategy of a company doing $15 billion in revenue. What's that worth to them? Those six words are worth billions and billions and billions of dollars, right? So this is what it looks like to execute copywriting at the highest level. Another great example, sugar free maple syrup. It's the absence of a negative. Now these two are where you start getting into the nitty gritty and the execution of writing effective copy. These are two of my favorite copywriting exercises. I think about this all the time. I'm constantly asking myself, how can I make something tangible, not intangible, how can I make it objective, not subjective? Okay, so when you get into the writing and when, once you have the category level, once you've named and claimed the problem and the solution, or multiple problems, multiple solutions, potentially the next thing. This is what a copy chief would do, right? The copy chief would sort of set these constraints and then all the copywriters would be like, I'm going to go execute based on those constraints. Okay, so I'm talking at the copy chief level. Tangible language is where you use things. You use words that make everything feel like a physical object. Okay, so like tangible language would be instead of just explaining like, oh, here's how to do something, you would call it a blueprint. I'm going to give you my three step blueprint. Well, if you say I'm just going to give you the three steps to xyz, that's intangible. I can't hold three steps, right? Three steps is just air. But if I call it my three step blueprint, the blueprint feels like an analog object in my brain. And as a result, consumers, customers, just every single person on planet earth, we value things that are tangible more than intangible. The reason we value them more is because we feel like we can hold them. It feels like we're being given an object versus being given an amorphous idea. Okay. Or I'm going to give you my five step framework. I'm going to give you my quick checklist, right? If you type in your email here, I'm going to give you my cheat sheet. A lot of great copy forgets this. And they have such good ideas and they have such good, like, insights to share with the customer. But then they don't make it tangible. They don't bundle it in a way. I always like thinking about how when you receive an Apple product, right, Part of why Apple is able to charge the prices that they are is because of the way that they share the product with you. And what happens, you go pick up your new iPhone, you go pick up your new MacBook, whatever, you bring it home, the box, it's that super gratifying. Like you tear the seal, right? It's perfect. It never rips, it never breaks, it just right, rips off. And then you go to grab the box and you pick it up and it makes that sound, right? It's like, right? And then you see, oh, there's my new iPhone or there's my new MacBook. Part of the reason why you value it so much is because the thing that you're buying is wrapped in this box. And what so many writers don't understand is that you can do the same thing with ideas. Ideas don't actually have to be these intangible, amorphous things. You can, you can batch and bundle ideas together if you use tangible words, if you make them feel like objects. Okay? This also applies to like, instead of saying, I will, here's a good example. Like, I, I will help you make more money. You can't hold more money because I can't measure it, right? But if I say, I will help you save a million dollars before you turn 30, well, you can imagine yourself holding a million dollars because it's a specific number, okay? So this also applies to not, not just like Objects in and of themselves. But you want to think in terms of numbers that are measurable. You want to think in terms of geographies and places, right? Like I'll show you how to buy real estate is less compelling than if you say, I will show you how to buy real estate in Chicago, Illinois. Chicago, Illinois is a place, it's tangible, you can imagine yourself being there. So over and over and over again, you should look at every single sentence that you write and ask yourself, is this intangible? And if it's intangible, how can I make it tangible? It's one of the easiest upgrades that you can make to your copy. Now the same applies with this idea of objective and subjective. A subjective outcome or benefit or something would be something like, I will help you retire happy. If you ask 10 different people what it means to retire happy, you're going to get 10 different answers. That means it is subjective, right? It's open to interpretation. Effective copy is not open to interpretation because if everyone is interpreting what you're saying differently, then you do not have a cohesive message. You do not have a message that scales. So it cannot leave room to be interpreted in different ways. So how do you remove that? How do you solve that problem? Well, you change subjective statements into objective statements. Okay, So I would rewrite this to I will help you retire with, you know, half a million bucks in your bank account, a five bedroom house on the ocean and a brand and a vintage Ferrari in the garage. All three of those are tangible, right? I can hold half a million bucks. I can hold and imagine myself inside a five bedroom house. I can hold, imagine and sit inside a vintage Ferrari. I can see it inside that garage, right? And so I'm using an exaggerated example, but that is the difference between objective and subjective. And over and over and over again you want to ask yourself, how can I say what I'm saying in a way that is objective so that there is no room for interpretation? It's very, very important. And then the last one is, all of these rules ultimately dictate who is this for, right? And one of the best things that you can do for writing effective copy is being very clear about who the audience is. And one of my favorite examples is this company called Dude Wipes. And you know, like wipes, Wipes are a category that have been around forever. They modified that category by saying our wipes are only for guys. They're only for dudes. Okay? This is a multi hundred million dollar company now. So you can differentiate based on who this is. For at the category level. So this is actually a new category of wipes specifically for this person. Now here's where all of you can see how all of these things work together. Can guys use regular wipes? Have they been able to use regular wipes forever? Of course. Of course, right? Both men and women can use them. It doesn't matter. Dude Wipes has been so successful because they were the ones who came out and said, we are going to name it something we are going to call what we're doing something different. It is the naming that is important. And in this case, they modified the legacy category with a different audience. This is another way that you can modify categories. So you can do this at the category level, but you can also do it at the subcategory level where for the brand you can say, not only like, dude Wipes, this is for guys, right? But then you would want to list out like three different archetypes of guys of dudes who would buy this product, right? So you have the guy who has this sort of routine, this sort of guy who has this problem, hygiene, whatever, this guy who has this problem. And then that way different archetypes of customers can see themselves in the product. So it's not just the category, it's not just the naming and claiming of problem and solution, right? Tangible, intangible, all of these things. But you also then want to bring it all back to and who specifically is this for? And then that way different archetypes of customers can see themselves in the product. So it's not just the category, it's not just the naming and claiming of problem and solution, right? Tangible, intangible, all of these things. But you also then want to bring it all back to and who specifically is this for?