Direct Response Copywriting 101 (Everything You Need to Know)

Hey what is up stefan georgi here and in this training i want to talk about how you can get paid good money to write great ads for business and what i'm talking about is copywriting and direct response copywriting this is really like copywriting one hundred one an introduction to the world of writing ads what they ads look like what copy looks like all that kind of stuff so something to get your beak wet and i do have some stuff in this presentation that will be valuable even if you are a bit more experienced as well so quick question right who am i if you don't know and why should you listen to me you know i'm a direct response copywriter marketer who sold close to a billion dollars worth of stuff online i've grown eight businesses businesses to seven figures at least some have done nine figures i've generated millions of dollars in freelance copywriting fees i'm one of the highest paid copywriters ever here's an article from cnbc's grow about you know how i earned over one point three million in twenty twenty and i share some tips on that here's forbes talking about me here and basically you know at the time i had you know grossed over seven hundred million in sales but you can see that right in here too i'm a copywriting coach mentor to two hundred twenty plus high level writers and business owners who collectively generate over a billion dollars per year in sales and i really care about you and your success i get called by the list tv the millionaire freelance matchmaker and i'm also a devoted husband and father someone who counts himself as pretty damn lucky this is my daughter who is the light of my life this is rick ross pointing at me in miami not that relevant to the presentation but i just love that you know it's a cool photo and it makes me look super cool that i'm like right there for cross but let's get into the point of this presentation right what is copywriting okay from wikipedia which is of course the greatest source of information ever copywriting is the act or occupation of writing text for the purpose of advertising or other forms of marketing so in other words copywriting equals writing ads it's really on one level it's that simple right anytime you watch a television ad hear a radio ad read a newspaper ad watch an infomercial see an ad on facebook or instagram it was a copywriter who wrote that and this copywriter could have been a freelancer it could have been an employee of the business that was advertising it could have been the business owner themselves it could have been an advertising agency but still someone wrote that copy and here's the secret a lot of copywriters get paid quite well to do this too and hopefully you may already know that and maybe why you're watching this because the caveat there is that you do need to know what you're doing right more on that in a minute so there's tons of different types of copywriting but what we're going to be focusing on here is direct response copywriting so direct response copywriting is writing ads and promotional material where you want the person who's interacting with your copy to take a direct action where they're told to take a direct action so for example the person could be told to click here order today pick up the phone and call now go to the website you know this website and enter code blush at checkout to save fifteen percent text hair to four four two three one schedule your free consultation right like there's these are all we'll talk about them in this presentation these are all calls to action you're basically telling the person who is viewing the ad to take action right very explicitly that's direct response copywriting you're writing ads where you're telling the person to take action so with direct response copywriting the goal is that after a person has read watched or interacted with any piece of copy they take an action and by the way this person who we want to take action is often referred to as a prospect so the prospect equals a prospective customer okay so why should you get good at direct response copywriting well if you want a side hustle or a full time hustle it could be a great way to make an awesome living here's something from alex cameron about using my rnbc method which is a copywriting training program that i think is world class talking about how joined end of may i've already made six times back my one thousand dollars investment not too shabby for a greenhorn like myself andy jeffs said ever since i got rnbc i consistently made between five and ten thousand dollars per month he's enrolled a bunch of high ticket paying clients in the space doing a lot of cool stuff connor boylan basically between my mastermind and the rbc method and the mastermind i run called copy accelerator is also about copywriting went from making sixty five thousand a year as a struggling copywriter to making over one hundred thousand dollars per month as a business owner mario castielli talks about just how he's writing better faster copy right and here we have you if you're a business owner a good copy is one of the essential keys to making more sales that's another reason why you'd want to learn this so jayda bolt who runs a program called credit secrets talks about how learning copy for me and my rnbc method has changed the game for us it allows us to launch refresh offers faster than i've ever imagined possible so now i'm able to focus way less time on reading copy and more time on growing the business as a whole jeremy reeves talks about how he sold over one hundred million dollars via sales letters but now that he is better at copy he's able to write new copy in three or four days more consistently and for his own offer he's getting a two to two and a half time return on investment on paid advertising basically and it's funny as he wrote this and said i'm in the process of rolling this out and i'm expecting it to be i'm watching a million dollar funnel and it is jimmy probably hit close to ten million dollars in his first year of this offer which is crazy another one from eddie barrett boris enzel says the rnbc made him more money than any other copyright system by far he's able to crack several new traffic sources etc so you know whether you're a freelancer or somebody who's looking for a side hustle a part time side hustle full time side hustle you're already a seasoned vet you're a business owner whatever learning direct response copy is super valuable don't freak out i'm moving myself back over to here so that we can keep going cause i like being in this little corner here more than the other corner okay so my own personal story just real quick if you don't know me in twenty eleven i was working at an outdoor school in marble falls texas hence that's me there that's the mustache that i rocked at one point i feel like i'm more comfortable with my sort of beard than that stash but i was really enjoying myself i made like two hundred dollars a week i lived in a double wide trailer i had a roommate and i had five other trailer mates but i was teaching kids about nature stuff like that loved it and really just thought i'd keep doing that and then my dad got sick with cancer towards the end like may of twenty eleven so i ended up leaving this outdoor school where i was basically an outdoor ed instructor and going back home to san diego to be with my dad and after he passed away which happened in october of twenty eleven about a month and a half after that i went to vegas to a poker well i went to scandal hang out but ended up at a poker table girl sat down at the poker table i thought she was really beautiful and somebody asked her what she did for a living she said i'm a writer and then i went to talk to her and so i said what kind of writer and she said i'm a copywriter and i said wow a copywriter that's great i took out my iphone one and i googled under the table or i used safari or whatever like what's a copywriter because i didn't know but what i found was that the fact that i could get paid money to just write and be creative and it almost still feels like a like a cheat code sometimes like i won the lottery and since then i've started multiple businesses i've sold a billion dollars worth of stuff done all these cool things but yeah just copyright has changed my life and that's why i'm so passionate about sharing it with other people too so with that being said what does direct response copywriting look like it can take many different shapes so one example would be facebook ads we're gonna get to here and i'm gonna show you examples i'm gonna pop open something to show you give me but a moment there we go okay so like right you're on facebook you're scrolling through here's an ad right here from aerofit great for your abs boosts your energy levels helps you sleep better the world's first smart breathing trainer is here breathe better than ever before cool picture rose first breather trainer shop now see the benefits of aerofit breathing trainer and how it can improve your and you know apply says health but you have to hit shop now right so there's an ad that you're getting as you scroll through your feed right somebody wrote that a copywriter wrote this ad probably you know could have been a freelancer could have been someone on their marketing team whatever it is someone a copywriter probably picked the picture and the media buyers did as well and they're probably testing a bunch of these it's cute my friend joey dan jackson there keep scrolling let's see if we can find another ad here we go e comm road conference how to craft the one hundred million dollars mobile product page learn how to craft the perfect product page at e commerce book now and then let's see how much copy so this is a little bit longer i'm not gonna read all of it but right there's an ad so facebook ads this is written by a copywriter okay so i'm actually gonna go and you can sort of look at my powerpoint i'm gonna cheat like this here so we go through this alright youtube ads so i don't really have to explain that you've seen youtube ads before i'm sure they bust over to youtube though give me one second here and let's pull something up and see if we can find an ad see an ad starts before this nope i feel like i was trying to do this earlier and it's like of course youtube is like not showing me any ads right now but let's see if we can add for this there you go that's right you can use other people's videos to make money from youtube allow me to explain you see these products and app companies will create so this is an ad and that about making ads in a very meta way but and it's here on like you know on youtube right so there you go all right perfect native ads now some people get more confused on native ads but frankly there is not that i'm on weather dot com here right so there's you know another these are banner ads right you see these ads for blissey and versace because i bought my wife a versace robe for second anniversary which is the cotton anniversary so probably why i'm getting targeted for robes from versace right but so these are banner ads but which are not very pretty but whatever but what we want to look at is a native ad so native ads as you're scrolling through you've got your banner ads you kind of know those are ads but right as you scroll through the content recommended photos and you sort of see sponsored content which this is like a little weird but like then as you're scrolling basically the point of native ads is that they don't look as much like they look a little bit more native to the website more like their content right so this is for try the road's best cbd for dollar ten today tommy chong cbd now if i click on that it takes me to a interesting little e comm trial page actually but we'll get back to that which is again somebody wrote all this copy i know the person who owns this company right but let me see if i go to forbes dot com real quick as another example okay great thing about biden canceling see this is intrusive this is this ad is not native right but if i scroll through usually maybe not today god what a shitty user experience right i want to ask you know sometimes as you scroll through you'll see ads like around the web or whatever it is so those are native ads i mean they're gonna try one more place this is my local newspaper so if i like the review journal in vegas i come down here i'm reading an article around the web now honestly these are like looking they look a little bit more like ads but sometimes it's like disguised a little more but those are those are basically native ads so not too complicated regardless right advertorials what are advertorials so basically you click on an ad often like a native ad for example and it'll take you instead of taking you right to a page like a sales letter like here's an example right so we clicked on the inflation tidal wave will wreak havoc right from stan's right research i know they're a direct response copywriting financial company they do sell investment stuff right so to come here advertorial putting the financial industry on notice right this tells you everything you know about the state of the fair and state of affairs in america today basically it's like a short like kind of like little like news article type thing to get you have curiosity if you click on the average this part here the video or the link here will take you to a long format page a vsl video sales letter how much money you have saved and whether you retired you can see it's an hour and thirteen minutes long so very long ad right but here's another advertorial for a for a pet pet food dog food so if you look through this right same thing you see an ad on the internet you click on it it takes you to a page like this you read it kind of feels like an article then when you click here it takes you over to a sales page basically right and then finally we have well fine for now like email ads or just emails right so if you just go to your promotions tab of you know like gmail for example right like these are all ads and lost them a direct response like some of them more aggressive than others like fasting and soups like weight loss soup right and then it's like you know an ad of like new wave of weight loss soups you know click here people are losing fifty pounds right stuff like that but really when you think about people are always like sometimes they're weird clogged penile arteries but what do you think about like like the fact that like like people are like oh you know like is it hard to get clients as a copywriter and the answer is like not really because like look at i mean right like these are almost all ads these are all from the last like two days for me and somebody wrote them right and then i actually take other ads and put them in a special folder in my gmail too so lots of other people's ads too right so there's there's just these are all copywriters wrote all of these things that's what's important to understand right cool so we go back to presenter mode i'll show you some more types of copy too so to do move my head back over to this corner lookout world okay okay landing pages actually i did all that and then really i'm going to be opening up more stuff here so give me one second okay what's the landing page it's really just a special special page on a website that is you know selling a product or service and that's really it you may hear some laugh in the background my wife's got her friend from new york who just came in today so they're they're having a good time but like this is a company called blissey they sell pillowcases so you can see lp one up here right landing page one because this is like different than if you go to blissey dot com i go to blissey dot com this is her homepage right it's very like very not a ton of copy all that like you know it's fine but you're not really going to sell a ton of stuff from this page generally because you just don't have a lot of like copy for it right so they create pages like this that then ads like you saw email ads native ads facebook ads youtube ads whatever kind of ads then send people to this page which again is you know on the website but it's a unique page where they're sending people with the purpose of getting them to buy it's more direct response this is more for the brand right like big picture note not even a copy here but it's great for branding i guess but when you want people to buy you come to here and it's like the pillowcase that works while you sleep improve your hair skin and health while you sleep has a bunch of social proof about it magazines and social proof like kind of credibility magazines have featured it they talk about all their you know forty thousand plus reviews quotes like the perfect pillowcase right all kinds of stuff so this is like a landing page here's another one for a company that sells like basically eco friendly water laundry detergents right it's a page it's got you know telling you to buy it has like headlines all that kind of stuff so those are landing pages there's text sales letters so for example the tommy chong thing that i we looked at a second ago right so this is like the sales letter for it tommy chong reveals for the first time cancer saved my life how nine months in prison and cancer and the cancer diagnosis reset my health restored my energy and let me discover the real reason so many people don't like cbd and what you need to do instead so if you scroll through this right it's quite long it's a really long letter and yet you know this does tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue right and someone had to write it in this case the owner wrote it but this is what i get paid to write these kind of letters right this is like copy i mean i know tons of people being paid tons of money to write long form sales letters like this called tech sales letters then there are video sales now by the way if you really want to go deep on all this stuff like tech sales letters video sales letters things like that like that's where my rmc method comes into play so you'd want to use that to really get good at writing all these sorts of things right that's what the rnbc method is for this is more to give you like an overview of the different types of assets right video sales letters here so let's see this one link still works right here's a another health one but it doesn't matter that twenty doctors have told you it's all in your head i got news for you it's actually all in your gut so basically this is gonna be like an hour long right so it's like a text file but it's a video script it's like an infomercial but for the internet and that's what i do too i write a ton of these right here's one for a financial thing again it's a big health wealth and relationships are the big categories you know why you should never bet against america turn your speakers up from the humblest of beginnings in tiny levittown new york he earned a master's degree in public administration so basically it feels like a documentary but this is like an hour plus long video trying to get you to buy a financial newsletter right video sales letter okay so now i can go back to my presenter mode here and we're gonna do that give me a moment to do it okay so i want you to realize that everything i'm showing you here all those ad examples are all written by copywriters and many of those copywriters were freelancers who started out by doing copy as a side hustle a part time job whatever it is but it's important because once you start getting good at writing effective sales copy it is entirely possible to start earning three thousand dollars a month ten thousand dollars a month even twenty thousand dollars per month over time not every single person will do that it can take time some people have faster success than others but this stuff is possible right here's one from david who emailed me you know fyi i made my first five figure i made my first five figure month applying rnbc to my copy so he started using my rbc method and made five figures for the first time in a month you know joey hong has a whole thing about how basically he went from you know like kind of like struggling to suddenly writing long sales letters right in a short amount of time managed to get a full time gig with an eight figure doctor firm i know without rnbc in the community i never would have had the confidence and skills i have now hands on best copy course ever created which is awesome scott mills basically said he doubled his upfront income gain a lot of royalty income from rbc which is a good methodology for teaching how to write great sales copy okay so what makes copy effective right now you know what sales copy looks like and you kind of know different ads and different examples of it so you know what separates good from the bad and the ugly when it comes to writing copy this is like you know again not going to be a exhaustive master class for that you really need something like rnbc method or join like you know a masterminded copy accelerator but it's a good start so here's my kind of essential checklist for good direct response copywriting first of all it immediately captures your prospect's attention remember prospect is your prospective customer so you have a strong opening line headline subject line you're invoking curiosity you're evoking emotion you're presenting contrarian ideas so so great example is that tommy chong one tommy chong reveals for the first time cancer saved my life how nine months in prison and a cancer diagnosis reset my health restored my energy and led me to discover the real reason so many people don't like cbd and what you need to do instead so again right does it capture the prospect's attention with a strong opening kind of line or headline and does it evoke curiosity and is it contrarian like right that kind of stuff well cancer saved my life it's tommy chong so there's curiosity there right it like you know there's some emotion i mean around this whole idea too i mean oh nine months in prison in a cancer diagnosis right so two different curiosity invoking elements right there here's opening of an email from from jen jenkamp who's a badass great marketer love her she's so smart but it's just about getting your pants on that's the subject line of the email right so that's a good subject line you're like what what's she talking about you open it you know some things are a joy to get started that twerk worthy playlist your wine of the month club season one of bridgerton hey simon other things not so much right now she's got a you know a heavy female demo like a lot of women that are following her and so you know somebody like gets you interested right kind of curiosity there's emotion here it's humor right but that that counts as well so just bringing you back again right curiosity emotion stuff like that so yeah here's one more this is from my wife for her skincare company eating beauty what we stand for pure ingredients that are hella powerful no fillers no toxins no fake stuff dark daily peel for dark spots you see the learn more right over a thousand comments five hundred seventy seven shares this one honestly the reason i included this one more than anything is the image i think the image actually yellow generally makes people feel happy as a background it really pops and that alone can be strong right sometimes it's not about the writing it's also about the image choice here and how that can capture your attention okay another element of good copy is that good copy focuses on the prospect and quickly answers the question of what's in it for me so here is dean graziosi of his free book thing where basically you can get a free copy of the book use paper shipping and then they sell you more stuff on the back of it that's like a free plus shipping model right so that gives you a free copy of the book just pay for shipping and handling right so what's in it for me there are about seventeen hundred new millionaires every day in america alone what's your secret get your free hardcover copy of millionaire success habits today and discover what makes them different and how to follow the same formula get your free copy of millionaire success habits shipped in less than seven days seven so back to this focuses on the prospect and answers the question of what's in it for me so what's in it for you discover how basically how the formula that the millionaires are using that you can use as well right immediately answers that this is an email from ryan deiss co founder of digital marketer and they're good group to follow as well your homepage sucks right immediately gets my attention i know it's rough to hear but it's okay you're not alone most homepages are terrible because most marketers don't actually realize what a homepage is supposed to do but i do and you will too after this right so what's in for them they'll learn what a homepage is supposed to do if they click that link right there right here's another one for a property management company we guarantee our landlord's rental income yes you're right correctly landlords who have rentals in las vegas choose us to manage their properties because we protect their investment we protect them against any tenant related issues we protect their time and most importantly we guarantee their rental income powered by innovation we make rental properties more profitable predictable and hassle free to learn more visit our website right so what's in it for me well the guarantee my income oh answers it right away it's about me and if i'm you know someone has a rental property this is giving me information like this is speaking to me right so again focuses on the prospect and quickly answers the question of what's in it for me that's the second one right okay number three it calls out the prospect's pain point and promises a solution this is important why do people buy when they're in pain and it doesn't mean physical pain necessarily but it means there's something that they're not happy with or that they want to solve or resolve that's when they buy right so here's one from carnivore aurelius right eat beef liver learn to fly beef liver and a crunchy crisp no slimy texture or gross smell but all the pure and powerful nutrition if you want nature's original superfood a food that puts multivitamins to shame wait until you get addicted to these bad boys did we mention the grass fed get one whole month's worth of beef liver crisps in a single bag and it's a testimonial i read a lot about the benefits of organ meats but didn't find them very palpable i wasn't a fan they tried the crisps now they're an addiction it's really hard not to eat a whole bag every day i love them do yourself a favor for yourself and your loved ones replace the junk food in your life with the most nutritious food in the world eat carnivoreus crisp right so it basically i guess this one does it call it a pain point a little bit i mean pain point of things not tasting well right but also promising like a solution right away it is like promising you that you're going to be able to eat like like a super healthy food and actually enjoy eating it right that's like the promise like you can eat a health you can eat before if you're into like beef organs which sounds crazy maybe to some people but that they are like a superfood yeah i want to eat it but it's like tastes gross and i don't enjoy it and it's basically like nope like you know the pain point is usually slimy texture or gross smell or something like that but they're like no like no grossness just all the benefits right pain point grossness benefits no grossness here's one from tai lopez and rudy mahler imagine behind the scenes tour in our ad managers with myself and the team teaching you how to run profitable ads well for the first time ever in twenty years you you now can learn facebook google and youtube ads with us all our secrets revealed so basically not calling a pain point here but there is a big promise right basically like we're going to show you exactly how we run ads get your best sleep yet with tips from a neuroscience professor and sleep researcher matthew walker so again just big promise get a good night's sleep you know pain points would be stuff like tired of dark spots right like find out how to eliminate them with eating beauty's new skincare product something like that okay another fourth element of direct response copy is that it often includes a story storytelling is important for a lot of reasons but mostly we connect with things emotionally first and then intellectually second right give me one moment here okay sorry i drink some pellegrino real quick but yeah that's why stories are important so here's one right this is these hand carved animal skulls but master carvers from bali spend two to three days carving each skull by hand with the intent to transcend the death of a beautiful creature into a sacred piece of art right premium quality hand scarf skulls by skull bliss shop now genuine carved animal skulls stand out from the crowd with hand chiseled skulls so something like this going back to what we're talking about here right including a story this tells you a story it makes it way more interesting like it's like a cool art but now when you hear the story of master carvers from bali spend two or three days carving them now you're like ooh i relate it's more interesting to me i might be more interesting if i buy this right that's what they're going after stand up from the crowd they're basically saying if you buy this product and hang it up in your house you'll be more interesting and you can tell interesting stories about the product it's a conversation piece to people right well like cool like you know now you have the story they give it to you right here's another one like you know multimillionaire consultant reveals how a handful of coaches consultants and service providers use this converted framework to double their output while they slice their work day in half this is like a headline right here right this is the top part but then this is for traffic and funnels if we have a baby is it just gonna be me one of the worst moments of my life was when my wife lindsey looked me in the eyes and asked me that question the words felt like a dagger twisting my soul you see i was ready to start a family at that point right so we're starting off an emotional story about basically this is how he wanted to start a family but he was working all the time he couldn't get off his business he was trapped in it and they discovered you know a better way a system and now he teaches it to others but it starts with a story and back to the tommy chong one right hey i'm tommy chong if there's one thing people know about me it's that i love lighting up right my wife jokes that i'm a walking drug test if anyone under thirty recognizes me on the street she assumes they do too but almost twenty years ago i quit cold jerking more on that in a second my health completely fell apart right and it goes into like all my life people have been telling me that stuff was going to kill me but couldn't turn my health upside down my joints began to ache like they never had i was constantly tired and sore i was getting up several times a night to pee they were getting a decent night's sleep you know et cetera right so he's telling this story and here's one more this one's an email from dan ferrari number one marketing lesson from the time my brother killed a guy actually it was two guys hold up don't freak out they were bad guys i'll tell you the entire story in just a moment so basically he's talking about how it's like the two hundred forty fourth birthday of the us marines and all this other stuff but it starts with like a story but it has curiosity he's speaking to you right very very interesting compelling copy okay and speaking of that very conversational in tone right most good direct response copy is very conversational in tone so going back to dan zema we just looked at right it starts actually it was two guys hold up don't freak out they were bad guys that reads great it reads great but they're not big dense paragraphs for the most part there's not like a bunch of you know commas and colons and for which thou shall you know like it's like some people actually talk it's like your friend dan's talking to you right that's a really good thing here's one from kelly felix for an offer he had my name is kelly felix and i must admit something embarrassing not long ago i overheard some top marketers discussing me in private and what i heard was soul crushing they said i was a has been overrated a one hit wonder and although the words pierced through me like a knife they were kind of right and it goes on to talk about you know how he was washed up but re got his groove back basically right but very conversational look how short these sentences are very easy all that kind of stuff here's one from ian bentley ian i bought courses and programs before nothing worked well no wonder look at who teaches them most agency gurus out there have not have had nothing more than a side hustle for themselves so now they're repackaging training they bought and probably in the same out of date nonsense all my buddies who are turning over six to eight figures per month would never teach what they know why would they they're busy using what they know to grow their agency by buy a competition and so on but some time ago i actually sold my digital agency and a twenty million dollars deal for a company just google atropolis acquired and after spending some time away i've decided to return not to build up another agency my own and so i'm here to make a change in the agency education space and personally help a small handful of up and coming agencies implement our proprietary approach for growth right so pretty conversational still gets like a you know kind of more of a sophisticated client for him probably but it's also you know like why would they write like short sentences punchy all that so crucial okay number six good direct response copy you know contains at least one clear call to action so we go back to this ad right here van bentley download my free case study here right and here's the link here's the link again but has a clear call to action right do that here's for tommy chong right choose the six ball package or any other package that's right for you below and secure your order today while there are supplies in stock add to cart right it's telling you to choose whatever package buy it here's a yoga burn which is another kind of sales letter right but basically like a time offer add to cart add to cart right call us to action there back to these guys right shop now link right call to action telling them to shop now back to dean graziosi get my free book shipped now right call us to action now in addition to this other places where you'll see direct response copywriting radio ads tv infomercials newspaper ads direct mail so like ads you get in the mail newsletters that you get dating profiles i think that's kind of interesting to note too right i mean like i've seen people look at their like tinder profiles and like right from a copy perspective and do really well with that online listings if you're selling like a bike or something or a house right from a realtor selling from stage i think you can follow a lot of the same great copy principles to sell from stage selling in person like door to door or on a consultative like in person selling selling over the phone also you can even add in like you know dm's and messages right these are all places where you can use it so that's about it for this one i just wanted to go ahead and shoot this video so that you can see what you know early on just kind of gain exposure for different types of ads and what they are and all that so hopefully you enjoy this and yeah we'll stop right there.