Stop Writing Marketing Copy Until You Watch This First (Masterclass)

Hey everyone, we have a master class.

Today. We're joined by Ryan Deiss.

We're gonna break down everything you need to know about copywriting. After this episode, you are instantly going to sell more product. Your ads are going to be cheaper. It is going to transform how your business is growing. Let's get to today's show.

We wanted to start all the way back on the Warrior Forum Deus, because old school Warrior Forum lurker. And you were like one of the really incredible direct response marketers. But you know, I want to. I was really interested. I've always been curious, like, what are, what are the kind of core skills you've brought with you from those days that have stood the test of time as you've gone on to be an incredible marketer, to be a CEO, to be an entrepreneur? Because there was a little group in that Warrior forum like Russell Brunson, Frank Kearns, you, a bunch of others who, who actually went on to become really entrepreneurial, had huge businesses. And I'm kind of always curious, what were the things you learned?

Well, I think in the early days it was copywriting and offer creation.

Yeah.

And that really was the core. And I think that there were some people who got lucky and what they figured out was a singular trick or hack. And because they figured out a singular trick or hack or loophole. I remember cause I made my first sale online in 1999 when Google was a science fair project. Right. And like the trick or hack back then was you could keyword stuff. You know, you could just repeat the same keyword at the bottom of your webpage over and over again. And if you made that keyword the same color as the background, they couldn't see it. But you know, Dogpile and altavista could. And so you would rank really high. And like that was the growth hack back in the day. Right. And I was able to rank because of that. And there were some people where like their entire career was based on stupid crap like that. And that was enough. But that was all they knew. And they, they never really understood the fundamentals of what actually caused somebody to buy, what actually caused them to click, what actually created persuasion. And then there were some that did. There were some that actually became students of marketing, students of persuasion. I think some of us who really dove in and wanted to kind of understand and learn the craft of that, we were able to stay in business and learn as the tactics changed and as the trends changed. And then some of us eventually actually managed to figure out business, which is a totally different animal completely. But, yeah, I think that really is the difference. Tactics come and go, but there are some things that absolutely persist. And that ability to craft messaging that persuades messaging that converts, crafting offers, I think that was the difference between those of us who had one offer out there and those who had multiple and ultimately built companies.

Yeah. The category of people that I used to look at and dissect offers and just was always fascinated by the way you all sold and had always kind of, you were perfecting the art of the landing page, perfecting the art of the persuasive techniques and how you could get people to opt in and purchase. And there was, like, really well thought out. This was before, really. There were like inbound marketing funnels. Right. You guys were building, like, pretty incredible direct response funnels. And I'm a, I'm a nerd. I'm a dork. So I studied these things when I used to hang out on the Warrior forum. And I was living in the gray of marketing, which is, how can I just hack stuff and just get there really fast? And then at some point you have to learn real marketing. I was like, oh, God, do I really have to learn real marketing? And then you have to, because, like, the hacks don't work anymore. But. But the place I would love to maybe dig into is the category of people that I thought were world class and are the people who've gone on to do incredible things were the people who were incredible at copywriting. And maybe could you talk about how you found copywriting as a skill set to learn and maybe how that's developed and stayed with you as you've gone on to be a CEO and entrepreneur? Like, what are the core things you would want to teach an audience about the craft of copywriting?

So, funny enough, I learned copywriting, I had a job, I had an internship when I was in college, and I worked for a financial planner. And this financial planner built business. He built his business by hosting these, these free dinners for wealthy people. And so he would host these little seminars and he'd serve everybody, you know, crappy chicken lunch. And he would teach them some investing strategy and then say, you know, if you want me to do this, like, let's, let's meet. And he would send out these postcards to get people to sign up for these. And so all I did was I would help manage his CRM. This was obviously pre HubSpot, so I don't remember what CRM he used. I think it was something akin to, you know, Microsoft Excel and I would print out his postcards and I would fix stamps and send them out. And he basically said, hey, you know, I want to see if we can do a little bit better with this. I want you to read this book. And he got me a book, and it was some stuff that was written by Gary Halbert, some things that were written by J. Abraham. And he essentially just started giving me these books. I remember there were some Dan Kennedy books. So he bought. He was my first source of education because he just wanted me to learn this stuff. And so I got a lot of great old school direct response, you know, tactics and strategies taught to me by this person who was in financial planning, who just wanted me to learn so that I could help drive more business into his practice. And I just ate it up. I was like, this is amazing. And I remember thinking at that time, the Internet's new. I was also at the same time starting to build businesses online. And I was like, what if I applied some of these strategies on this new medium called the Internet? You know, at the time, websites, back then, everybody wanted to build these pretty sites in flash. You know, you go to a web page, you remember this. Like, there'd be this flash intro, all this early twirly stuff. I was like, what if I just had a webpage where there was a headline at the top and copy down below? And sure enough, it actually worked, it actually performed better. And so I discovered, you know, largely through accident, through chance, through luck, call it what you will, that these old school direct response strategies, these direct mail strategies that I was learning through this old school direct mail method that they apply just as well in this new medium called the Internet.