Brittany Lynch: Hello, hello, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar. Can everyone hear me okay? Brittany Lynch here. If you just type in the question box you can hear me that would be fantastic. I know many of you saw my email or the post on the Facebook Mastermind group. I'm just at a hotel right now. Internet is kind of in and out right now. It seems to be okay. Someone says it sounds a little funny, a bit of a delay. Like I said, I'm at a hotel, but the reason why we decided to have another guest speaker was because I was just concerned about the Internet quality, and so instead of canceling the webinar altogether I wanted to bring someone on with a really good presentation that I think could benefit all of you. It's on copywriting. Copywriting is one of those things that I honestly think is one of the most underrated skills that marketers try to teach out there, and yet it's probably the most important thing or skill set that you could learn in order to have success online because it's really crucial in everything you do from writing ads, to writing your landing page, to communicating with your audience. Because it's so under-taught out there and because it's so important I think that this presentation will be especially valuable for you. It also happens to be my brother Conor who's teaching this presentation. He's actually one of the guys who got me into marketing in the first place. He's been doing copywriting for years and years and has written a lot of my copy, and so he's someone who has been around the space very, very long time and really gets it and someone I really look up to in the copywriting scene, so I think you're going to get a lot out of this presentation. I've gone through the presentation earlier today. I was looking at it. Con sent it to me a little bit of head time. It's really, really good stuff. I'll be online and I'll be on the call the entire time. I'll be jumping in where I can as long as the Internet permits it. On Thursday make sure you sign up. Thursday I'm going to be giving a training webinar where I'll be going over the long-term aspect of growing your niche. I'll be updating you on where I'm at on my mailing list in the weight loss category, sharing some results of some other niches that I've kind of dabbled in, talking a little bit more about advanced list segmentation, testing and tracking, as well as how to reduce your cost per click and sharing with you some more advanced t-shirt strategies. Overall, the Thursday training that I'm planning on doing is something I've been working on for several weeks now, and I think you're just going to be blown away the content on it and the results on it. Of course we'll be taking questions. Sounds like everyone is here. I know my voice is kind of cutting in and out a little bit, and like I said, that's because I'm at a hotel. With that said, it's just past 12:01 Eastern Standard Time, so what I'll do is, yes, this will be recorded, I'm going to pass this over to Conor. Again, we're having Conor as a guest speaker today, and Conor is going to be speaking about copywriting. Then come Thursday when my Internet is better I'll be speaking about updated results on the long-term and the short-term cash methods. With that said, what we'll do is we'll pass it on over the Conor. Conor, can you hear me okay? Conor Lynch: Yeah, absolutely. Brittany Lynch: Awesome. Con, welcome to the webinar. I'm going to pass over the reins to you. Are you recording on your end? Conor Lynch: I am. Brittany Lynch: Okay, and can everyone hear Conor all right? Awesome. All right, guys, and I'll be monitoring the chat box too, so if you've got questions for me in the meantime during the presentation feel free to enter those in. I'll be online the entire time. Con, I'll pass it over to you and let you take it from here. Conor Lynch: Great. Sounds good. Welcome, guys. Good to meet all of you. Copywriting is something that's obviously really, really important and underrated by a lot of marketers. It's something also that a lot of people are scared about. A lot of people don't necessarily consider themselves to be writers and are intimidated by the prospect of writing their own copy, but that's why I'm here today with Fear-Free Copywriting, this little presentation that we put together. Hopefully we can help you get over some of those issues and get down to writing solid copy. We're going to start by talking about why good copy is so important. If you guys have questions about anything that I'm talking about, throw them in the question box. I will have some time after I get through all my slides to answer them all later. Why is good copy so important? First of all, it's everywhere. It's in your AdWords ads, Facebook ads, newsletters, sales letters, opt-in pages, sales pages. Almost anywhere where you're trying to get a prospect to take action that is somewhere where copy occurs and where it's so critical to the efficacy of your marketing. I would actually say that after your niche and your particular offer, copy is probably the most important thing in your marketing effort, so that's something very important to keep in mind. If you don't have effective copy it becomes very difficult or maybe even impossible to persuade prospects in your particular niche that you have an offer that could actually solve their problems. If you can't persuade them of that it's very difficult to get them to take action, very difficult to get them to opt in to your signup form or to buy your product or whatever it is that you're trying to get them to do. If you're encountering road blocks in growing your business online or if you're finding that your marketing efforts are not producing the results that you'd like them to, there's a very, very good chance that it's because your copy isn't performing the way it should. That takes us to the next question: What exactly is good copy? What does it look like? What exactly defines it? I have a very simple definition for what is good copy. It's basically this: Good copy is a story or a narrative that effectively compels the reader to take action and specifically to take the desired action of the person writing the copy, in this case you, the marketer. This is true for everything from ad copy, micro ad copy that you find in, for example, Google AdWords or a Facebook ad, all the way to extremely long form sales letters. It's the same thing, same basic structure. It's a story that's designed to compel the reader to take action. At root that's pretty simple. If it is so simple, why are so many people so intimidated by writing copy? Brittany Lynch: Conor, let's actually ask the audience this. How many of you on the call here today are intimidated by writing copy or you do feel like writing copy is something that's kind of preventing you from having as much success online or you've struggled with it? Just [crosstalk 00:07:07]. Conor Lynch: Yeah, absolutely. Brittany Lynch: We're getting a lot of "me's" and "yesses" on here. Brian says, "It's hard." Katie says, "It's overwhelming. It's intimidating." Johnny says, "You can do better," and you can always do better. "It's confusing." Yeah, so it is one of those things where it's so funny that a lot of marketers don't really talk about this. They don't talk about how important copy is. They talk about the process, but really, what's the commonality between setting up your Facebook ad, and setting up your landing page, and sending an email to your clients? The commonality amongst all of that is copywriting. Being able to write copy effectively really is the most important thing that you can learn how to do. Conor is going to share a lot of this stuff of how to get better at writing copy. Con, I'll let you continue on there. Conor Lynch: 100%. I think one of the biggest intimidation factors in writing copy is sitting down and staring at the blank page. You look at it and it's this giant wall of white, and you don't know what to do. You don't know where to start. That shuts a lot of people down. They either don't get past that point or they might have a number of false starts and become intimidated and stop. What I like to do is find an approach that avoids that blank page as much as possible. That's sort of my, I call it the "fear-free copywriting system," but that's sort of just an ad hoc name that I've been calling it. It's based around this basic principle: There's a proverb: "How do you walk a thousand miles?" The answer is, "One step at a time." "How do you eat an elephant?" "One bite at a time." It's basically a philosophy of breaking really, really big jobs down into smaller tasks. Instead of trying to write an entire long form sales letter all at once, you break it into smaller parcels that in and of themselves are a lot less intimidating than the idea of writing a whole, big chunk of copy all at once. This is something that great copywriters do. Even guys like Dan Kennedy usually don't write a complete sales letter all in one go. They'll write components of it. They'll have a swipe file or a copy file that they go to where they'll have interchangeable components they can drop in and out. This allows them to not ever really grapple with that problem of staring at a giant blank page that in a lot of cases just shuts you right down. What I like to do before I start any copywriting project is I created six documents. These documents are called Prospect, Your Voice, The Offer, Scarcity, Benefits, and Proof. We're going to go through all of those, but before we do that I want to talk about this: What is your story about? If all good copy is basically a story designed to compel action, the first thing we should answer is what exactly is this story about? What I think the #1 mistake that many beginning copywriters make is thinking that the story is about their product. That could not be further from the truth. It is not about your product. The novelist David Foster Wallace, he had a quote, "You'd worry less about what people think of you when you realize how seldom they do," and that's true for your product as well. People aren't thinking about your product. They're not thinking about their solution. What are people thinking about? They're thinking about their own problems. They're thinking about how those problems affect them, and they're desperate for a solution. Good copy, what it tells a story about is it tells the story of a specific problem that your prospect is facing in your niche and how your offer is uniquely situated to solve that problem. Copy also has a story arc. The story arc is basically the narrative journey that you take the prospect through from the beginning of your copy all the way to the end. This is true for everything from microcopy, again, all the way up to a long form sales letter. The basic structure of this is the journey of your ideal prospect in your niche from the problems they're currently facing and the frustrations that they're currently having to the promised land of happiness and their problem being solved via the function of your unique offer. That's how that works. Brittany Lynch: That would be true whether it's your own product. A lot of the people on this call, they don't have their own product yet but they're promoting affiliate products. It's the same thing. It's just you're communicating the message of someone else's solution to that problem, right Conor? Conor Lynch: Absolutely. This is true, guys, whether you're selling your on product, or if you are doing an affiliate offer, or even if you're just trying to get people to sign up for your mailing list. You are telling a story about some particular product they have and how taking action, like, for example, signing up for your mailing list, can help them solve that problem. In that case it would be by you providing them information and solutions and advice that will help them solve that problem. Brittany Lynch: That's exactly [crosstalk 00:12:27]. Someone is asking, "What about pre-sell pages?" This is something that someone had posted on the Facebook Mastermind group earlier. A pre-sell page is basically after someone opts into your email list it's page that's kind of presented before you take them to the actual sales page or the actual buy button, and it's the same thing. What Conor is sharing with you right now, it's a formula that can be applied whether it's to a really small piece of copy like an ad on Facebook, or an opt-in page, or a pre-sell page, or a sales page, or a webinar. It's the same formula no matter what format you're doing it in. Does that make sense to you? Awesome. Take it over, Con. Conor Lynch: Just to quickly go over this, the story arc of any piece of copy has three basic components, and I'll just quickly go through those. The first is the premise. This is where we find the prospect. It's the place that the prospect is found where they have their problem, their frustrations, and they don't know how it's going to be solved. That's where you come in. The conflict is all the fears and frustrations they're facing right now in trying to solve their problem. If their problem is that they want to lose weight, all the frustrations they're facing now is things like, "Diets are hard." They're afraid that they'll never lose weight. They're afraid that they're just going to continue getting bigger and that they'll never achieve their objectives. There's all kinds of things that are bound up in that. Brittany Lynch: Fitting in their- Conor Lynch: Finally, resolution: your unique offer, the benefits of that offer, and how it's going to solve the problems for the prospect. Now you're to the first document that I use called "Your Prospect." This is basically a document designed to describe the main character in your story which is the ideal prospect in your niche for your offer. At this point, we begin with a lot of research because you want to pinpoint who exactly this person is. I find that the best way to do that, there's a number of different ways, you can go to forums in your niche. You can look at competing products or competing mailing lists and check out their copy, read competitor testimonials, but I find that the single most effective way to do this is to go to forums in your space and read what people are talking about. Especially read two kinds of posts, one introductory post where people are introducing themselves to the forum because they'll give some background on themselves. They'll tell you who they are, what their problems are, and they'll often ask for help with specific areas. Those are things that tell you a lot about what people are looking for, what their problems are, and what their fears and frustrations are in that space. The other kind of post that I like to look for are people asking for help, people who say, "I know what I'm supposed to be doing. I've been trying all these things but I'm still encountering problems A, B, C." Those are people who are, A, it's really good research material, but, B, those people are potentially your prospects down the line, so the kinds of questions that you want to answer are, who is your ideal prospect? How old are they? Male or female? Married, single? What are they interested in? What are their likes and dislikes, but more importantly, what are their motivations? What are their problems? What are their fears and frustrations, and if you can figure this out, what does the ideal solution look like to their problem? I like to create a two-page character analysis on that. Brittany Lynch: Everyone really should on this call, and this is a homework assignment I'd like you all to do is after this call is over or this weekend, and Happy Thanksgiving, by the way, to all the Americans on this call, this weekend find some time to sit down and go through that exercise. Con, if you could just go back to the last slide for just a second. Conor Lynch: Sure. Brittany Lynch: Literally answer every single one of these question. Forums are a goldmine and especially if you're newer to a niche or if you really try to understand what are the fears or what are the issues that are going on in someone's mind in a particular niche. Going to a forum is really kind of as close as we can get to getting a glimpse into our customers' mind, and so I want you to each spend some time in the forums in your particular niche category and create a worksheet. Actually, as Conor will get into in a second, name that person and answer these questions, and really just kind of create a whole two-age character analysis, as he mentioned of a person in your category. This is going to help you so much in when you're writing copy for ads, when you're writing copy for email, when you want to create a product. Any of these things, it's going to be very, very helpful for you. Don't underestimate that and really do make an effort to go out of your way to create a character analysis for someone in your niche. Conor Lynch: That's exactly right. I almost want you guys to imagine that you're a novelist and you're creating the main character for a story that you're writing. That is effectively what you're doing. Even tricks like Brittany just mentioned, giving this person a name, going on Google images and finding a picture of what that person might look like so that you can visualize them more effectively in your head, these are all really effective tools that allow you to write for that person better. Another really important point that sort of dovetails with that is that you're writing this story for one specific person with one specific set of problems, not ... This is something that a lot of beginning copywriters do: They'll try to address a couple different sub-niches within their niche all at the same time in one piece of copy. They'll focus on people who have related problems but they're not exactly the same. What that does is it dilutes your message. It means that you're not speaking to one specific problem; you're speaking to a couple different things. People reading will say, "Oh, well, this applies to me but this doesn't," and it turns them off of your writing. Brittany Lynch: Yeah, absolutely. Conor Lynch: If you want to address multiple sub-niches, the way you should approach that is to actually have multiple pieces of copy, each one designed for one particular sub-niche. Have 14 different landing pages; don't just have one, and have each one address a different focus within the niche that you're doing. That will be far more effective than trying to address all 14 in one piece of copy. Brittany Lynch: That's a problem that I had when I was getting started. I was trying to please too many people. Let's take the weight loss category, for example. There's people who are looking to lose weight because they were pregnant. There's people looking to lose weight because they've got beer bellies. There's males, there's females, there are so many different people who might purchase something in that category. This is where I guarantee you'll find not only writing your copy easier but your conversions will go up if you create a character. Name that person. Decide if they're female, male. What is their name? Every time you sit down to write an ad, write an opt-in page, write an email, imagine that person in your head and even print that character out and post it on the wall where you write copy. Imagine that you're talking to just them because I know when I used to write copy before I got any experience I used to try to generalize everyone, and I used to try to group them all into one character. Really, you need to make the person who's reading your ad, reading your opt-in page, reading your sales page, feel like you're talking to them and only them, and that they feel like, "Oh, wow, yeah, I do have that problem. Wow, this person really does know me." This is for t-shirt campaigns too. You'll get much better at targeting your audience and understanding your audience by doing this character outline here. I know Carlos has a question, and he says, "Are you answering all of these questions in an email?" It's not so much about that; it's about understanding your prospect and understanding the type of person you're talking to. If you have clarity on that, I guarantee you'll have much more clarity on the audience you're in, the niche you're in, and the copy that you write. Just this one trick will make writing copy so much easier. Conor Lynch: Absolutely. Before we go on, I just want to take people through how this research in character creation process works with one particular niche. For the purposes of this presentation, I've picked the dating and seduction niche. I think Brittany mentioned that some of you guys are potentially doing stuff in this space. Many of you won't be but hopefully this will still be relatable. Brittany Lynch: Yeah, the application of it. Conor Lynch: I brought up ... This is The Art of Seduction subreddit on reddit. Things like this, things like reddit, things like various forums for your particular niche, these are a data goldmine, and you're going to find so much valuable stuff in here that you just absolutely should be doing this. Even if you're not writing your own copy you should just get in there and do it because it's just so important. You see lots of posts, and I'll just click through and I'll click and open a bunch of them and read and see what I find. I found a really good post earlier. I'll just bring that up. Here's a user named, "Riding Crossbow." He's 19 years old, and he's a virgin, and he says that he's extremely desperate. This is a person who obviously has a very, very big problem. It's something that's probably on their mind all the time. In many ways this guy probably represents an ideal prospect for your niche. He knows what he's supposed to be doing. He what desperation is. He says it here, "Knows that desperation is the antithesis of attractive," but he can't help it. That tells you a lot. That tells you that even if they know what they're supposed to be doing there's people out there that are afraid that they don't have it within themselves to be able to take the steps to achieve what they want. That's a fear and a frustration that you're going to want to address in your copy, and that's something that I'll get to later when we start talking about benefits. Here's another really important thing that he says: "I feel like the more time that goes by, the less likely I'll ever be to get laid." He almost feels like there's an internal clock working against him, that if he doesn't figure this out soon that he's going to be stuck forever. Obviously that must be weighing on them a lot. Something like that is really interesting because it could tell you that scarcity appeals would work really effectively in this niche because people already feel like there's a clock working against them. Brittany Lynch: This is a great example, and guys, for those of you who aren't familiar with reddit, reddit is like a forum. If you just go to Google, you go to Google and you enter in your niche plus "forum," a ton of forums will pop. Reddit is just a type of forum, and you can see how Con found an example of a potential prospect in the dating niche. He's got a very, very bit sense of a problem. To him, his problem is he's 19 years old. He's still a virgin, and he feels like that's a big problem for him. You could see if you had a solution, if your product was how to meet girls or something along those line, this could be a very big prospect, and by reading this you can get keywords for writing your copy. You can really get a sense of the type of person who's buying in this category. Conor Lynch: Absolutely, and you can go and you can read the responses and see the advice that people offered him. That's going to be useful for your copy as well. The other cool trick that you can do with this is if you find someone who has made a post that almost exactly typifies your ideal prospect, you can just imagine as if you're writing your copy as a response to his post. I find that sitting down and just the idea of writing copy, the idea of writing a sales letter, or the idea of writing the copy for an opt-in page seems daunting, but the idea of responding to someone on an Internet forum is just way, way less daunting. If you visualize it in your mind that way it should be a lot easier for you to do. Brittany Lynch: Yeah, and it's really all about little tricks that make it feel less intimidating to you, and I think that that's a good one, so one: creating a character profile; two: imagining that you're responding to someone in a forum because then you just remind yourself that you're talking to one person with a particular set of problems. That makes it a lot easier for you. Is this helpful for you guys so far? Awesome. I'll let you carry on, Con. Conor Lynch: This is what a miniaturized version of your character analysis might look like. I think it, from the research I did, anyways, and I did this in about two or three hours, so you shouldn't need too much time to be able to put one of these pieces of research together. I determined that most of the prospects in this dating space are men aged 16 to 35. Their aspirations are being able to meet women, finding love. In many cases it's really common that they're virgins and they really want to lose their virginity. Problems that they have: anxiety, desperation, lack of confidence, lack of skills. That last one is very important. A lot of people in the space don't know necessarily what to do or how to approach talking to women, so that's a really important one. Frustrations: "Nice guys finish last." A lot of people in the space are really frustrated that they spent their entire life so far being a nice guy, and it hasn't gotten them anywhere, so that's something that they're dealing with. They're 19, or they're 25, or they're 35 and they haven't learned the right social cues and social moves that are necessary to meet women and to interact with them. That's something that's very frustrating for them. They feel like they've had a lot of lost time. In terms of their fears, they're afraid of being lonely forever. They're afraid of rejection. They're afraid in many cases of talking to women and approaching them. There's a lot of anxiety bound up in that. As we noticed in that post that I brought up, they feel that time is running out for them, and that is one of their biggest fears, as if they're on a clock and it's running out. Brittany Lynch: So- Conor Lynch: And ... Brittany Lynch: Sorry, go ahead, Conor. Conor Lynch: Go ahead, Brittany. Brittany Lynch: I was just going to say, do you see ... Literally, take this exact format and maybe what we'll do, Conor, is we'll save this presentation as a PDF and we'll upload it to the members area as well so that people can kind of just go through this demonstration because this is really the template you should be using, the demographic, the aspirations, the problems, the frustrations, the fears, for your niche. You can go to the forums and you can really just plug this information in. I think you'll find that really helpful. Conor Lynch: Absolutely. That's a great idea. Then we get to our second document: Your Voice. You're not just selling your product; you're selling yourself. That's one of the most important things about copy. You and your personality and your unique edge and angle are so critical to the success of your copy, and it's something that some, in fact many copywriters might ignore, but as much as you have to create a narrative around your product and your solution, you have to create a narrative around yourself. Who are you? Why should people trust you and your niche? Why should they trust what you're saying about your product? Why should they trust that you can solve their problems? Why should your words carry authority? These are questions you have to answer. I don't want you to lie or embellish your experience because even if you could keep the lie under wraps forever and no one would ever find out, it's dodgy and I just don't feel like that's a good business practice. More often than not, people on the internet are pretty clever, and they're going to uncover your lies and your embellishments, so just don't do it. You have an existing experience and background, and you can in almost all cases craft and effective narrative around that. You don't have to come across as an expert. You can come across as a regular person, and sometimes actually coming across as a regular person is the most effective way of selling. Brittany Lynch: That's exactly it. Con, in copywriting there's something that says, "You can turn what you believe to be a negative into a positive," so if you don't think you have enough experience in this niche, turn that into a positive and come across as a regular, ordinary person. This is something we talked about a little bit in the training earlier on, so really just embracing your own personality. Personality in online marketing is literally more than half the battle. People are buying not just the solution but your story and your involvement in that solution. Conor Lynch: Absolutely, 100%. Two of the biggest voice archetypes are the expert and the every man. The expert is the voice of, "You've been in this field for 20 years and you know everything about it. You've seen people with all kind of problems and been able to help them." For the dating niche it might be something along the lines of you're a psychologist who studied seduction for his entire career and helped a lot of people. Now you're finally ready to show the world the secrets you've uncovered that will help them finally get out there, overcome their fears and meet women. Alternatively, the other big archetype is the every man, and this is what we were just talking about where you're not necessarily an expert. You're a regular person. Probably you're someone who had that problem, whatever it happens to be in the past yourself in the dating niche. Maybe you were previously unconfident. You were unsure of yourself with women and constantly striking out, but you learned to overcome those fears and get out there and generate real attraction. Now you want to help other people as well. That every-man approach can be just as effective, in some cases way more effective, than the expert approach. Let's take the dating niche as an example because a lot of people, they'll look at something like the game and they'll say, "If I didn't have anxiety and if I didn't have self-confidence issues then I could do all those things and I could go out and meet women. Maybe those tactics work for people who are already sure of themselves, but they're not going to work for me because I don't believe that I have the confidence to pull this off." If you come and you talk to them and say, "I had the same confidence issues. I had the same problems with anxiety, and this is how I got around that, and this is how I solved that problem," then you're going to be able to speak to that person in a way that an expert might not be able to. Again, voice: critically important. Give that almost as much thought as you do to your research about your prospect themselves because who you are, and how you communicate to that person, and the perspective that you bring to the table is so, so important. I don't want to have anyone underestimate that. Then we come to the offer. First rule of the offer, you must always have an offer. You're always offering something, so even if you're not selling a product right now, even if you're not even selling an affiliate product and you're just building your list, you guys need to [inaudible 00:32:18] in order to get them to take action because people are always thinking, "What's in this for me? What am I getting out of this?" If you want them to do things, like give you their email address, or follow you on Twitter, or whatever it happens to be, you've got to offer them something for that. For you guys driving traffic, opt-in pages right now, and building your lists, offering a free guide or a free bonus of some kind is a really good way to do that. The other important thing about the offer, don't be timid in writing your offer. A lot of especially beginner copywriters have a lot of problems with this because we're raised to be polite. We're raised to not be in your face. We're raised to not be vulgar, and so we can be a bit tentative with how we write these offers when we're first starting out. You can't do that because timid offer copy will make anyone reading it think that your product is subpar or not good or that you're somehow embarrassed about it. Your offer copy should be bold. Your offer copy should have a thick mustache, and eat plates of bacon, and wrestle polar bears. That's what you should be thinking when you're writing your offer copy. It should get out there and it should say, "I'm here and I'm awesome." Brittany Lynch: Let's ask a question here, actually. Just answer "yes" in the question box or "no." Do you feel uncomfortable with the prospect of selling, because I know that a lot of people do feel uncomfortable at the prospect of selling, and so I want to kind of share a little trick that instantly, I think, will help you feel a lot better about it because I know a lot of people do, like you said, they're timid. They feel like, "Oh, I'm kind of shy about presenting an offer." People are saying a mix of "yes" and a mix of "no." Really, whenever I feel timid about selling something I'll always ask myself, "Do I genuinely believe that what I have to sell will help the prospect with the problem that they have?" As long as the answer is "yes," that always just puts me at easy in terms of presenting this offer. I think as long as you always go through that exercise of asking yourself, do you genuinely think that whatever it is, convincing them to opt in for the free e-book, convincing them to purchase a product, if you genuinely think that that product will help them solve their problem, then I think it really takes away some of the stress involved in selling. Conor Lynch: This is actually where the forum work can come in handy. In you're feeling at all timid about this, go back and read some of the posts from the really desperate people, the people who are having real problems. Think about that person and think, "Is my offer going to help that person? Is it going to remove their desperation and get them the things that they potentially really want in life?" If you think "yes" then you have a social obligation to give them this offer, and you should feel good about that, not timid. Brittany Lynch: That guy, that 19-year-old guy who posted in the forum, it was probably midnight or 1am when he posted that in reddit, he's genuinely having anxiety over his problem. That's just one example of a problem. There's all sorts of problems in all of your niches, but he genuinely has anxiety over solving that problem, and so if you're able to help solve that problem then you're in a good place. Conor Lynch: 100%. Oh, sorry, I skipped ahead a little bit there, but another really important aspect here is when you're putting your offer together it's really important to outline exactly what the person is going to get, all the basic components of the offer along with any bonuses in bullet points because if it's at all wishy-washy what they're signing up for, then people just won't sign up. They won't give you their money. They won't put their email into your signup form. It just won't happen because people want to know exactly what they're getting. Last thing is, if you are selling something, there's a lot of really good ways to get creative about pricing, and it can be really, really important to do that because it will help mitigate the sense of risk on the part of the person buying. For example, if your product costs $365 it's a dollar a day for the next year. I know Brittany likes to use examples like this: You can compare the price of it to real world things. Instead of your product being worth $19.99, it's five trips to Starbucks. You put it in terms that make it easy for the person buying to digest that. There's so many ways that you can approach that. You've probably seen a lot of them both potentially in your own copy but also in other copies online. Brittany Lynch: You know who does a great job of that? Steve Jobs did a great of that back when he was doing Apple keynote presentations. If you go back and you watch one of his presentations when he introduces a new technology, like an iPhone or an iPad, just watch one of those presentations. They're really great examples of sales presentations, and he does that. It's called "price hankering." Conor Lynch: One of the most important components of the offer is risk reversal. This is one of the best tools that you have in your arsenal for completely taking away fears that your prospect might have about taking the plunge and either signing up or ... I guess not so much signing up but buying a product, and this is your risk-free guarantee where you say, "No matter what, don't even think about the price. You don't have to. You don't have to worry about that because if this doesn't work for you in the next 30 days, you're going to get your money back, no questions asked, completely ironclad." The science and the research shows that offers that include that kind of risk reversal have way, way higher conversion rates than ones that don't. I can't emphasize that enough. I'm sure most of you guys are already aware of that but I think it's such an important point that it bears repeating even if it is such a fundamental. In any case, most people will probably not ask for their money back anyways. Brittany Lynch: You know what? Let me just make a point here because someone just asked, "How do you apply a list to an opt-in page or to email?" If you look at my email series, the 12 email template that I shared with you, what was one of the first emails that I sent out? I said, "If you don't want to receive this information then you at any time can click the unsubscribe button." You're instantly putting the person who's reading your email at ease because this is an example of risk reversal as well. It doesn't always have to do with money. You're telling them, "Hey, you don't need to hear from me. If this isn't something that you're interested in, then hit the unsubscribe button." Communicating that on your opt-in page in your email series is an example of risk reversal as well. Does that make sense to you guys? Conor Lynch: Awesome. Brittany Lynch: Okay, great. Conor Lynch: Awesome. Scarcity: Scarcity is one of the most powerful motivators. Dan Kennedy says to think of your prospects as a sort of giant sloth who are incredibly averse to taking action right now. I think that's a really good way of thinking about it because as much as people want their problem solved they're afraid and they're lazy. Unless you really force them to take action, in a lot of cases, even if it's really to their own benefit they won't. That's why scarcity is so powerful. I'm sure you're familiar with lots of different scarcity tactics. You can say that if you're doing a coaching product, for example, you can say that there's only 20 slots available and they're running out. That's a legitimate scarcity tactic that's usually quite effective but here's a really important thing: Don't use fake scarcity because people can see right through that, and it really hurts your credibility. If you are selling an e-book or some other information product that's entirely digital and people know that you can just copy and paste it and there's unlimited potential copies of that e-book or of that information product, then they know there's not just 12 copies left. That's a lie and they can tell it's a lie. That's going to hurt your credibility. The trust that people have for you and the authority that you have is one of the most important things that you're trying to build in your business. There's something my dad used to tell me about business: "It can take a lifetime to build a reputation and about five minutes to destroy it." Fake scarcity is one of the best ways of destroying your credibility, so don't use that. Instead, offer genuinely limited bonuses. For example, let's say you're selling an information product which isn't limited, you can offer one-on-one training or a done for you product as a bonus that is in fact limited because it's based on your time. I see some offers that have a dozen different bonuses attached, and people sort of lose sight of the original offer that was there. That can be a problem too, so aim for one to three bonuses and probably not too many more than that. Brittany Lynch: Con, I'm just going to jump in here. Sander made a good point, and he says, "It's not a lie if 12 copies are left because you can close the page done after 12 copies are sold." I guess what Con really means and what I agree with him is, is you need a good reason. Of course you can put a limit on the number of e-books you sell, but you can't just say, "There's only 12 copies left," because they know that there's more than 12 copies. It's a digital product. Why is there only 12 copies left? Are you only selling 12 because it's going to give a better quality experience to the people who purchase those 12? Why are you restricting the resource? It's more about really crafting a good reason around why you have scarcity and making it believable to the person who's there, not just arbitrarily deciding, "There's only 12 copies left," because that will leave a disconnect in audience's mind. Any time you open a question, open a question loop, as I call it, in the prospect's mind and they don't get that question answered, they don't feel at ease. It's more about closing that loop and giving them a reason as to why you're limiting the number of copies or why there's scarcity. Does that make sense to you? Conor Lynch: Yeah, that's a really good point, Brittany. Again, it isn't so much about whether or not you're limiting some of these things; it's about being able to give an explanation for why it's scarce that the reader or the prospect will say, "Okay, I understand that. I can buy that reason. I get that." If your reason is good enough it potentially adds even more value, so that's something important to think about. Brittany Lynch: One of the things is what you should think about scarcity is scarcity is a tool to urge your prospect to act now. That's really why scarcity is used. It's to get them to make a decision right away, so it's not about limiting it to 12 copies. That's just an example, but maybe one of your bonuses there's a limit, or it's time-sensitive or something along those lines. That's important differentiation. I'll let you go ahead there, Con. Conor Lynch: Absolutely. Again, many of you are building out your list and driving traffic to opt-in pages right now. You can still use scarcity there even if you're not actually selling something. For example, you could offer a special report that's usually $7 that you do sell, that you actually do have a sales page for, but you're giving it away for a limited time to help grow your list. I think that that is something that people will understand. An example of that with the dating niche might be something like, "Sign up now and receive my 10-step seduction road map free, normally $7, limited-time offer." That's going to be more effective if you actually do have a sales page for that report because then you can potentially show people and say, "Look, I do actually sell this but you're going to get it for free if you sign up right now." Even if you're not actually selling a product, even if you're just doing an opt-in page, you can use scarcity effectively. This is just one way of potentially doing that. There's probably a lot of other creative ways to do that, but again, even if you're not selling a product right now, you can still use scarcity to get people to take action. Benefits: Benefits are really important, and when you're putting your benefits for your product together it's really important that you don't do it in isolation or in a vacuum. When you're doing this you want to be thinking of the problems and fears and frustrations that your ideal prospect has. Go back to your prospect document. Look at what you wrote down there. Look at what you wrote down for problems. Look at what you wrote down for fears, and look what you wrote down for frustrations. Your benefits need to be like a bomb that solves and cures ... like, as if there are problems and fears and frustrations for a sunburn and your benefits are aloe vera. That's what it needs to be like. Your benefits are written to address the problems, fears, and frustrations of your prospect. Ideally, especially if you're selling something, especially if it's a big-ticket item, you want to be flagging and addressing as many of the problems and fears and frustrations as you possibly can. If at all possible, if you can identify all their fears and frustrations, address them all and dispel all of them and explain how you're going to solve all those problems and fears. That is how you write effective benefit copy. The reason for this is you're doing two things: You're convincing the prospect of the value of your offer. You're saying: "This is why this is going to be really good for you. This is my value proposition. This is why it's going to solve you problem." You're also removing any potential objections or any potential reasons that they might have in their own minds for not taking action. There's a million reasons to not take action, and some of them are big reasons and some are small and ignorable, but you want to especially knock out the big reasons for people to not take action. For example, with the dating niche that we're sort of using as an example here, here are some benefits that you could write that directly address the fears and problems and frustrations that we identified earlier, things like get over your fear of rejection permanently. Banish loneliness like a bad dream. Make your ideal woman fall in love with you, step-by-step method to get you from "hello" to "What would you like for breakfast?" It even worked for me despite my crippling anxiety and rock-bottom self-confidence. Learn to stop being Mr. Nice Guy. Some of those are kind of funny but if you think back to what we wrote down as the problems and fears these guys have, these statements, and you'd elaborated on them, of course, but these statements directly address those things, things like our 19-year-old friend who is suffering from desperation an anxiety with women and isn't sure, even though he knows what he needs to be doing, isn't sure that he can do it. Your product worked for you, and you had those problems as well. You can assure him that it will work. Those are the sorts of things you need to be doing. Brittany Lynch: Con, maybe just go back to the forum for a second and go back to that post. Conor Lynch: Sure. Brittany Lynch: Let's run an exercise at looking at the benefits at the same time, so go to the forum there and let's read it again and ask yourself ... Maybe my computer is a bit slow, but are you on the forum now? Conor Lynch: Brittany, you sort of broke up there a little bit. Could you quickly repeat that? Brittany Lynch: Okay, sure. I was just saying let's read through that again and ask ourselves, "Does this 19-year-old guy look like he wants to banish loneliness? Does he want to make the ideal woman fall in love with you?" Go through the benefits and ask, "Is this what our prospect wants?" That's where going back to the forum can be very helpful. It's a good little exercise. Conor Lynch: Absolutely. You can read through and, for example, desperation: He uses the word "desperate" or some variation on it probably four or five times, and if you can speak to that desperation and how you can remove it from his life, then that's something that he is going to respond to. That's a word that is in his mind all the time, so if you can speak to how your offer, your solution will remove his desperation, he is going to be all over your product or all over your mailing list or whatever it happens to be. That's really critical. Again, this is why the forum stuff is so good and I encourage you guys to sign up for every forum in your niche that you can possibly sign up for. Proof: You've made all these claims and all these benefit proposals about things that your product is going to be able to do. It's all great, and the person is feeling really excited about the offer, but they've been fooled in the past and they know that stuff on the Internet can not always be what it seems. This is where proof comes in. This is extremely important because this is what backs up your statements about your product. If you already have established a lot of trust and authority in your niche this is less important, but especially when you're just starting out, having testimonials and having other forms of social proof is really, really good because it will give the prospect comfort that when they take action that there's other people who have done the same thing and had their problems solved, or had their questions answered, or achieved the things that they wanted to achieve through taking this action. Again, testimonials are a powerful form of social proof. Ideally you don't just want to just have testimonials that say, "This product was good," or, "I love this mailing list." You want to have testimonials that speak to the specific fears, problems, and frustrations that your prospects are having. If you have a testimonial that says, "I had crippling anxiety and I was deathly afraid of approaching women but I started reading this mailing list and now I am able to approach women as if it's nothing at all, so thanks." Those sorts of things are really good because they speak to the specific problems that these people are having, and it's just a lot more effective as a form of social proof. Again, don't fake testimonials. Just like I said before about not lying or embellishing about your personal character, the voice you're writing in, don't fake testimonials. Most people can see through fake testimonials and it jeopardizes your authority. It jeopardizes your trust. It's just not worth it. You all have friends and family. There's got to be at least a handful of people that you know that they could benefit from what you're putting out there. Getting reviews from them would be great. Another thing that you can do, if you're comfortable giving away some of your offers for free, or again, if you're on a mailing list, or trying to build a mailing list, one thing you can do as well is to go to the forums and find people who are really desperate and start a conversation with those people. Get them to try your product out or get them to try your mailing list out. Then see if you can get them to review it. Even if you don't have an existing customer base there's always ways to get testimonials and to find social proof, so that's that. Brittany Lynch: That's a nice point too about forums. A lot of you are selling t-shirts. Again, t-shirts are just one example of a potential product. However, you can go to the forum with four different designs and ask people in the forum, "Which one do you guys like better?" Provide the links to the sales pages too. I guarantee you'll make some sales that way and you'll also determine which design is the winner in that particular demographic. Conor Lynch: Absolutely. Once we have those documents all put together and it comes time to writing the copy itself, one of the mistakes that a lot of people might make is to go and try to start writing a letter from scratch in a new document. Don't do that because then you're putting yourself right back where we were at the start where you're looking at a blank page and even though you've done a lot of homework now and it should be easier, the potential exists for that blank page to still shut you down and to still give you that writer's block. Don't do that. What I'd prefer that you do is write each component of your copy in one of your preexisting work docs in a section that relates to it. If you're writing your benefits copy, write it in the benefits work doc. If you're writing your offer copy, write it in the offer work doc because it will feel like you've already started. There's already lines on the page and it won't feel as daunting. It's just a little head space trick but I find that it's really effective. The other big thing that I would say is you need to finish your first draft in an hour. That might seem crazy to you but the most important thing is just to get lines on the the page. I'm going to explain more about that over the course of the rest of the presentation but it is really important that you just get the draft out there. The longer that you let the lines sit on the page, the more you go back and try to edit as you're writing, the less effective it's going to be, the slower it's going to be, and the greater the chance that you're just going to stop and quit, and you don't want that. Just get it all out. Editing can come later. I've got a series of tips that I want people to keep in mind when they're writing their actual copy. I think there's 10 of them but I'll go through all. Power words: There's been a lot of research on different words that are I guess you'd say psychologically more potent than regular words. Some of you might be familiar, there was a Yale study about 12 power words. There have been other studies that show how words like "free" and the concept of "free" are really, really effective in driving human behavior. This list that I have here is just a handful of these power words. If you do some of your own research, I would look into there's a Yale study of the 12 power words that they uncovered, but there's a lot of research out there, and you should look into this if you want to start writing really effective copy. I'll just quickly go through these ones. You: The word "you" is one of the most powerful words in marketing, and it's why I think it's so important to write as if you're speaking to a specific person. Your sales copy should be addressed to that specific person, and you can use that pronoun "you" to address that person. It activates things in the person's brain that gets them responding, gets them thinking about their problems and the solution that you're offering in the context of their own problems, and it's very, very effective. You should use "you" a lot in what you're writing. The word "free": "Free" is effective. People have been found to choose the free option overwhelmingly when presented with baskets of options. It can drive human behavior very, very well, but one of the dangers with that is that you get a lot of free riders, a lot of people who are just bargain hunters who will pick your free offer, or your free gift, or whatever it is that you're offering for free and then not ever turn into real customers. This is one of the biggest problems that people have with Groupon. Groupon is actually not a great deal for merchants because they're using it as a discount and a loss leader to get people in the door, to hopefully build good long-term customers, but who buys Groupons? The people who buy Groupons are generally bargain hunters, and they're just going to go to the next Groupon. There's probably a new sushi Groupon in your city every day, and you can eat sushi for 50% off all year if you wanted. That doesn't actually build any good long-term customer relationships, so you got to be careful with "free," but it is really powerful. The next word is "because." People are rational. They make decisions for reason or they at least like to think that they're making decisions for a reason, so using the word "because" in explaining why they should do this or how it's going to work for them, that is really powerful and important. It gives people justification in their own minds for pulling the trigger on your offer. "Instantly" and "immediately," both of them are really effective words. This is because we want things right now. We don't want them three months from now. We don't want things a year from now. We don't want to struggle and wait and be patient. We are very impatient. We want things right now, so as much as you can say that you're able to do things instantly for people, that is really ideal. If you're selling an information product or if your offering, if you're trying to opt people in to a mailing list, that instantly proposition is probably true. You can actually give them their product right way and they can get right into experiencing the benefits. If you're selling a physical good then you could address say overnight shipping or, "You're going to get your product in the blink of an eye." There's lots of ways you can address that but just creating the feeling that people are going to get stuff right way is very important. Next word is "new." "New" is very interesting. It's mostly important to apply the word "new" to your product or your offer itself rather than to your brand. This is because the word "new" increases the perception of utility for a product or for an information product or anything, really. We automatically assume, because we live in a technological age, that the newest version of something is going to be the most affective, and most powerful, and most advanced version of it. If you can use the word "new" it will increase the perception of utility that your prospect has for your offer. The word "easy": "Easy" is really important too. People are really, really averse to hard work. I think there's been a lot of research that shows that people are more averse to pain than they are attracted to pleasure, so fear of hard work and fear of pain is going to going to be a bigger behavior-driver for your prospects than even the magical happy land provided by your solution. So you have to keep that in mind. Try to dispel the notion in your prospect's mind that it's going to be really hard for them to achieve the benefits that your offer offers. Finally "results." "Results" is a really powerful word because people don't care about your product. They care about the outcome and how it's going to solve their problem. If you can speak to results then that is going to help them visualize in their own mind how that outcome can become true for them. Those are just a handful of power words, and there's a lot more out there, and there's a lot of theory that goes behind all these and I encourage you guys to research more on it because this whole book is written on this stuff. Brittany Lynch: One comment I want to make about the word "free," and someone had a good question. Someone said, "Sometimes they don't think free has any value." What I want to say is just because you're giving away something free on your opt-in page or in your email doesn't mean that you don't still need to sell it. Free still needs to be sold, and that's a big mistake that people make on opt-in pages. They assume that because it's free people are automatically going to want it, but that's not true. There's still a risk involved with entering in your opt-in address or your email address. It's lower than purchasing something but free still needs to be sold. You still need to go through the story arc. You still need to go through the benefits, and so on, and so forth. I just want you to know that "free" is a powerful word but it's not a get out of jail free card. It's still something that needs to be sold. Conor Lynch: Absolutely. That's a really good point. "Free," of all the power words on there, it is really, really effective in terms of driving human behavior but it is also one of the trickiest or most dangerous ones to use, so just be very careful with "free." Tip #2: Speak to your prospect. By this I mean speak to your individual prospect. Don't speak to your entire audience your entire niche at once. I see a lot of beginning copywriters who will write something like "you guys" or use "you" plural, but you should be using "you" singular. You should be writing to one specific person, and this is where the legwork we did before comes in really handy. When you're starting to write the copy for your first draft, bring up that picture of your ideal prospect that we found in Google images. Write their name at the top of the documents that you're writing and just keep that in mind because you're writing for that particular person. You're not writing for an entire group. There's something called the "bystander effect," which I think was in Freeconomics. I can't remember exactly where it was but it's really, really widely known. Basically what it is, is if someone's getting mugged on the street and they're yelling for help people have a tendency to just walk right by because they feel like someone else in the crowd will be responsible for responding, responsible for taking action, and responsible for helping. They found that if you're being mugged or attacked on a street or in an alley or something, you're better off not yelling, "Help!" but yelling at one specific person. Say, "Hey, you in the red hat, come help me." That person will actually be way more likely to respond. It works the same way with sales copy or copy of any kind. If you speak to some specific person, to their specific problems and their specific needs, then they are going to be far more likely to respond. I can't overemphasize this one. It's really, really important. Highlighting: Tip #3: Most prospects are lazy. Their eyes are lazy. They don't read a lot: they scan. They're not going to read most of your copy. They're going to read headlines, and subheads, and bits and pieces here and there, but especially if it's long form copy they're most likely not going to read the whole thing. You can use highlighting to draw your readers' focus to the most important parts of your copy. There's a lot of different ways to do that. Some of them are using bolding, capitalization, italicization, underlines, or color, but I have to warn you that you should not overuse this effect because if you highlight everything in your copy then nothing is highlighted. You've just written a bold document, and that's not going to be effective at all, so don't do that. The other thing is don't mix in too many highlighting types because it will confuse your prospect's eyes and increase the likelihood that they'll have visual fatigue and just back out of your page altogether. I actually wrote this slide to emphasize that. As you can see, I used too much highlighting and too many different types. You can just see it's really hard on the eyes, so don't do that. Tip 4: This is a really important one, and it's one that a lot of people have questions about especially for sales pages: "Should I write long form or should I write short form? How long is long enough for my copy?" Basically there isn't a definitive answer for that. I can't tell you in advance whether you should write two pages of copy or four pages of copy or ten pages of copy, and that's not the way you should be thinking about it either. The way you should be thinking about it is, "Okay, I've identified my prospect's problems, fears, and frustrations. Has my copy addressed those problems, fears, and frustrations in a way that is adequate to get them to take advantage of my offer?" If it achieves that it's long enough. If it doesn't, then it's not. Another good rule of thumb for thinking about this is the more expensive your offer is or the more that your prospect has to give in order to get your offer, and that could be time or money or whatever it has to be, whatever their commitment is, the bigger that commitment is the longer your copy should be. A good exercise that I like to do is I like to think, "How long would it take to persuade me to take the offer that I'm writing about?" If it's something that I would only think about for a few seconds before doing, then the copy doesn't have to be that long. If it's something that I think about potentially for a few hours or a few days, then the copy should be long. If you're selling a car from a web page you're probably going to need really long copy. They're going to want to know a lot about that car. If you're just trying to get people to opt in on your mailing list, copy might not need to be nearly that long. This is a really good tip. Your swipe file: Every really talented copywriter keeps one of these. Let me just quickly explain exactly what a swipe file is. A swipe file is a document where you keep examples of really good copy that you've found to use as inspiration for your copy later on. It can be a bit of a pain in the ass to write all of your copy from scratch every time, and sometimes it's good to identify particular headline structures, or different pricing strategies, or different scarcity offers that, while you don't steal them word for word you can borrow that idea or borrow that structure and it will save you time and it will save you a lot of effort. Every serious copywriter that I know, including myself, keeps a swipe file. I think it's just really important. There's that famous Steve Jobs quote: "Good artists borrow. Great artists steal," which is funny because he actually stole that quote from Picasso, who in turn stole it from William Faulkner, who in turn stole it from T. S. Eliot, who actually stole it from another writer whose name I can't remember right now, but it just proves the point. You can use this to get inspired for good copy, and you should not be shy about borrowing other people's structure and ideas, but, and this is really, really important, do not knock off copy word for word. It's just bad form. It's also not going to be effective. A lot of your prospects wills have read some of your competitor's websites, so if they come back to your sales page or come back to your mailing list and see word for word knocked-off copy, you're going to lose trust and authority hand over fist. It's just going to bleed away, so don't do that, but you can absolutely borrow ideas. I'm just going to give a quick example of that. This is an example I have from a headline from a ClickBank offer that I was looking at a few days ago. The original headline was, "Brand new traffic software generated 867,981 targeted visits on autopilot and banked $540,430." I created a version of that that borrows some of the aspects of this structure but for our dating niche, and I wrote this one: "Brand new seduction system taught me to stop fearing rejection and start attracting [inaudible 01:08:39]." That would be a good example of how you might use a swipe file. Brittany Lynch: That's a perfect example. What you should all be doing is have a document on your desktop, and anytime you're motivated to buy something online, swipe headlines or bullet points that you felt were especially compelling. When you're writing your own copy, whether it's your opt-in copy or email copy or sales page copy, you can go look at that for ideas and do what Conor just did, subbed out that particular niche for your own nice. It makes writing copy so much easier. Do guys see the power in that, like why it helps so much? It's that whole not starting from a blank place. It really does make a difference. Having a nice swipe file really does make a big difference. Conor Lynch: It really does, and every serious copywriter has one. Every serious copywriter does this. So if you're going to be writer copy you should start a swipe file today, and even though it might feel a bit daunting because you don't have anything right away, I think you guys all are planning to have long, successful careers as marketers in your niche, so just start building it. It will probably take a few months before it's really substantial but it will be worth it. The investment of your time and effort in building a swipe file is going to be worth it, so I encourage you to do so. Brittany Lynch: Yeah, and it's something you'll have for years and years and years, and you just build on. Conor Lynch: 100%. Here's Tip 6: Editing. This is really, really important. Never edit while you write. It will bog you down and you're never going to finish your first draft. Let me just quickly explain something. There's sort of two frames of mind: Editing is one frame of mind and writing should be another completely different frame of mind. When you're writing you should have inhibition. You should just write and get it on the page. You should just get it out there, maybe not even worry about grammar or structure or what exactly you're saying in your first draft. Just get it on the page, no inhibitions. Editing is where your inhibitions come in, and then you can cut it down to size and turn it into the final draft that you actually want to use, but they should be separate frames of mind and occur at separate times. There's a great quote: "Write drunk. Edit sober." It's commonly attributed to Hemingway, but I was looking into it today. Apparently he didn't actually say it but it sounds like something he would have said. The point is that when you're writing you can't have an inhibited mind because it will stop you from getting it out there. You'll be too afraid. You'll be two intimidated, and you just won't put it on a page, so don't write sober, if you will. Brittany Lynch: Con, that tip that you have about writing in an hour, I would literally, if you have a stopwatch or some sort of clock that can count backwards, like I think most iPhones have an app for that, put 60 minutes down and just get your first draft done. Having that time pressure will just spur you to produce better. Conor Lynch: Yeah, absolutely. That's absolutely the case, anything where there's structure or limits will force you to act. Think of it as a scarcity offer on your own ... or scarcity tactic on your own behavior. You have only an hour to write your copy down, and before that you will have lost all opportunity to write it, so just get it on the page. Just act, and whatever tools you have to use to get yourself to act and do it right now, that's something that I would do. When you finally do get to the editing, it's a completely different mindset. At this point it's not about just getting it on the page. It's about removing everything that you've written down that doesn't fit, or doesn't work, or is two verbose or too over the top. Cut fluff words. Don't use five words when three will do. Don't use a $10 word, and by that, that's a writer's term for a really long, multi-syllable word that most regular readers won't understand when plain language will do just fine. You're not trying to impress people. You're trying to get them to take action, so you don't have to write War and Peace on this. You just have to get it on the page and do it in plain language. Tip 7: Proofreading. This is a really important one too. Nothing kills good copy worse than spelling and grammar mistakes. If people are reading your copy and it is replete with spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes and errors of every kind, formatting errors and so forth, then every time they encounter one of those the level of trust they have for you is going down. Think of your readers as having a reservoir of trust. They've given you the benefit of the doubt, not that much benefit of the doubt but a little bit, as their reading. Every time they encounter one of these errors that reservoir is being depleted to the point where they're just going to leave the page altogether. You want to avoid that at all costs. Fortunately, these sorts of problems are really preventable. You want to use a good text editor that has strong spelling and grammar checking, and you want to make sure that you have a friend read over your copy before you publish it or if it's an email copy, send it out, or if it's an ad copy, publish it on there. Just get them to give you feedback and let you know if there's anything that isn't working properly. Font: I get a lot of questions about fonts. People always ask, "What's the best font for this? What's the best font for that?" Even amongst professional designers this question is really hotly debated. It used to be that for print serif fonts like Times New Roman were viewed as best, but for the screen it was viewed that sans-serif fonts, which are things like Arial or Helvetica, were viewed as the best. That's disputed now because of increased screen resolution. Some people think that serif fonts might now be better for the screen, but the fact is, no one really knows, and stressing about this too much is probably not going to help you. It's something you can like split test down the road, so I would worry about that. [crosstalk 01:14:55]. Brittany Lynch: Con, you won't believe how many people have emailed me about, "What size font should I use? What font should I use?" Literally, it takes a week for them to wrap their head around that, and then they're delayed for a week. Just make a decision and split test it down the line using a split testing program. Conor Lynch: Yeah, so the font question is a good excuse that people have for not acting and not getting their copy out there, and not starting to test with real traffic. I think when you're approaching copywriting, one of the most important things is removing every possible excuse to not act, and not get it out there, and not get it published that you could possibly do, and if fonts are going to get in your way, don't think about them. Use something basic like Arial or Helvetica or Verdana. Just get it on the page. Get it out there. Get it published, which dovetails into my next point: Don't over-think it. The perfect is always the enemy of the good. Good enough sales copy today that nets you 80% or 70% or all possible sales is vastly preferable to perfect copy three weeks from now. You want to be making sales today. You want to be testing your business assumptions right not. You don't want to be waiting three weeks to do it. Over-thinking it, over-editing, wasting time thinking about fonts, that stuff that stuff that's going to get in the way of you getting your copy out there and testing it and seeing how it actually performs out in the wild, so to speak, so don't let copy be an excuse for your inaction. The most important advice I can give you guys is just write it down. Get it on the page. Get it out there, which bring us to my last tip: split testing. The reason that I'm so emphatic about just getting it down on the page, and getting something out there, and limiting the amount of time you spend on this is that honestly you can't predict how your copy is going to perform into it's out there and people are reading it and responding to it. Your first draft is almost certainly not going to be the most ideal possible version of the copy that will ultimately be driving your business. That's why split testing is so important. As soon as you get the first version of your copy out there, what I'd like to do is write a second version right away with different hooks or different scarcity tactics, different offer text, different pricing strategies. I just get a new version up and I will split test it right away. If any of you are not split testing your copy, that is a huge mistake. You should absolutely be doing that. One of the tools that I use for that is Visual Website Optimizer. I'm just going to bring up they have a page, visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/case-studies.php. It's just a list of all kinds of different case studies of different things, very, very small changes, things like changing the color on a button, paid versus free signups, and the effect that those things had on the underlying business. It can be profound. I think I saw one that was a one-word change that increased their revenue 114% or 158%, something like that. It makes a really big difference. It's why you should not waste too much time on each draft of your copy. Get a version out there. See how it does. Get a second version out there. Get them competing against each other, and the better version will win. The copywriter who writes 12 version quickly and test them against each other and finds out which one wins is going to do way better than the guy who takes the same amount of time to write one version, one highly polished version and gets it up there. You are going to do better with quick and dirty copy that you can pit against each other, way better with that than you are with the stuff that you take a long time to edit and polish. I really want you guys to keep that in mind. Brittany Lynch: By the way, it also takes a lot of pressure off of you too. Then you're not sitting there wondering, "Oh, I wonder if I did a good job?" You let data tell you if you did a good job or not. Conor Lynch: That's a really great point. It's one of the most intimidating things about copy. People fear that, "I'm not a writer so I fear that my copy is going to be inadequate or it's not going to be good." Get it out there. Find out. Who knows? Maybe you're a copywriting [Dynamo 01:19:15] and you just haven't found out yet. Even if that's not the case, you still have to test three or four different versions, and you'll watch the conversion rate improve dramatically over that period of time. You're going to realize how powerful the act of just getting something out there is, and you're going to feel really good about that, so just do it. Those are my tips. Just in conclusion I just want to recover some of the main points from this little presentation. Keep it about your customer. You're writing a story for them, for their problems and their particular fears and frustrations, and you need to be addressing that. It is not about your product; it is about your customer and their problems and how you can solve those problems. That's point #1. Point #2: Research, research, research. Get into those forums. You guys saw through the course of this presentation how useful that was in putting your copy together. Get into them. Live in those forums. Read them all the time, especially the people asking for help in introducing themselves because those are the juiciest ones. Those are the guys who are your prospects. They're going to be the bread and butter of your business. They're going to be signing up for your mailing list. They're going to be buying your products. They're going to be buying your affiliate offers because they're desperate. They're literally desperate, so get in there, and research, and find out exactly what they need, what they want, what's hurting them. Point #3: Break a big job into many little jobs, so important, so important to do. Again, staring at that blank page, it is terrifying. It scares me even. If I sit down and if I think about writing a long form sales letter all in one go, that prospect scares me, so I don't do it. I'd never do that and you shouldn't either. Fourth point, and I've emphasized this a lot but I will emphasize it again because I really do believe it's so important: Get it on the page right now. Just get it out there. Edit as quick and mercilessly as you can. Remove anything that seems wasteful, and then just publish it. Get it out there. Get it out there. Get it on the page. Get it done, and that's- Brittany Lynch: Let me add one more, Con. Conor Lynch: Yeah, go ahead. Brittany Lynch: I think also one of the really big key takeaways here was creating that character profile. Really, each one of you should have a homework assignment for yourselves of creating a character who you're going to be writing to. This is kind of your little writing partner that every squeeze page, every ad, every email you write, you're going to, in your mind, be writing to that one prospect and really understanding who that person is. That will just go so far in terms of making this process easier for you but also making this process have a higher conversion and more success. Conor Lynch: Great. That's basically the end of the presentation. I'm going to be taking questions in just a second, but I wanted to talk about this really quickly. I have a few spots available for my own copywriting work. If you guys need an autoresponder series or a sales letter, that's something that I can help put together. My standard price is $350 for a 12-email autoresponder series and $500 for a sales letter, but for friends of Brittany, who you all are, there's a special price of $250 for the autoresponder series and $350 for a sales letter. I've included PayPal links for that just right here. I think Brittany is going to put it up in chat box. Brittany Lynch: Yeah, I posted them in chat box, so- Conor Lynch: Go ahead, Brit. Brittany Lynch: I was just going to say, these are prices. If you remember a little while ago in the Facebook Mastermind group I had posted a discount on the copywriting because I had already paid for the deposit. We had a few people take Conor up on that offer, and actually Conor wrote the email autoresponder series, so he's just extending the same price. The links are in the chat box if you guys are interested in that. Otherwise, obviously you've gotten a lot of really good information here. Have you guys enjoyed this presentation, and did you feel like you got a lot of good information out of it? Conor Lynch: Yeah, have you guys ... Hopefully you guys have learned something today and had fun. Brittany Lynch: Mike says, "Well done, Conor. You know your stuff. Excellent tips and info." Patrick says, "Super. Yes." Sam says, "Thanks, guys." "Very helpful." "Hell yeah." "Good info." "Beautiful." "Great." "Certainly," so a lot of really positive feedback. Conor Lynch: Awesome. It feels good helping you guys, so I'm glad you guys got something from that. Brittany Lynch: Ken says, "It's been great, Con. It's funny because I'm calling your 'Con.'" No, but you know what? It's really nice. This is the first webinar Conor and I have ever done together, and obviously while we group up together and we both grew up in a very marketing-oriented family, we both went slightly different paths but Conor has been copywriting, helping me with my copywriting for ages. He really knows his stuff, and I think a lot of the tips that he really brought to the table on here are fantastic. At the end of the day, A, I would encourage you all really hone in your own copywriting skills. I think that's important. No matter whether you decide to get the done for you service that Conor is providing, and for some of you that makes sense if you just want to speed it up, whether you take that option or not, it still makes sense for you to learn more about copywriting, to get more information and start practicing it because it is such an important skill, and I definitely think that the tips and the information that are provided on here are very helpful. It's really funny, and I don't know why this is, but I know when I posted that I had to change my webinar to Thursday because of my Internet, and I know that the Internet has kind of been on and off today, there was a mix of results but a lot of people were disappointed that they had to wait a few days for my training. I think it's because it's copywriting. There's this general sense that copywriting is boring, but it really, really is the most important thing. It really is the most important thing to do, which is learn how to copywrite. That's crucial because it has to do with selling your Facebook ads, connecting with your prospect, understanding who your prospect is. I'm glad that we did this webinar because I know that if you apply this information it will make you better marketers, and whether that's in your online business or your offline business. We had a really good question earlier, Conor, that I'd like to address. Someone was talking about the risk-free offer. Someone was talking about risk-free offer, and they were asking basically, "If I have an offline business ..." This person, I think it was [Joaney 01:25:38], who said that she runs a Chinese medicine practice. As a doctor she can't promise that your results are risk-free or that there is a guarantee for results because legally she just can't do that. I was saying, "You could probably still promise a satisfaction guarantee." How about this, and this really comes down to knowing your prospect and knowing how much a customer is worth to you. This is something we'll get into in a future webinar is customer value. For example, if you know, [Joaney 01:26:10], that your customer on average comes in five times a year, or five times every six months, or that every time you get a new customer, that they come in two times within the next 60 days. You could figure out how much the new customer is worth to you. By offering a one-time entrance price into your practice with a "satisfaction guaranteed," which is different than "results guaranteed": "Satisfaction guaranteed" is just literally that they had a good time, that they felt like they got value. Maybe something like that makes sense in terms of reversing risks. There's many different ways to apply risk reversal. A lot of good questions coming in, but does that make sense to you guys? In the meantime, I'll just ... Chris says, "Conor's expertise, real dynamite." Frank says, "Nice to meet you." Sam says- Conor Lynch: Yeah, so- Brittany Lynch: Go ahead, Conor. Conor Lynch: I was just going to say that on the subject of risk reversal, one of the most important parts of good copy is the risk reversal. You could probably write several whole books on that subject, but yeah, so there's lots of ways to do it. There's not just one way of doing that. Brittany Lynch: Yeah. Let's see here. Someone says, "Where is the sales letter link, guys?" It's just in the chat box. You can see that there is autoresponder order link, and then a sales page order link in the bottom right in the chat box area, so just down below. Sandy says, "Great job, Conor." Sanders' got a great point. He says, "You have over 15 hours of video left to watch over copywriting. Watch every day a little part of it in train- ..." Yeah, it's very important. Sam is asking, "Can you recommend more additional training?" Dan Kennedy is a fantastic copywriter. I've been learning from him. Both Conor and I have been learning from him. Conor Lynch: Yeah, he's the best. Brittany Lynch: Yeah, since we were young. Honestly, our dad gave us both materials when we were in our young teens and have been studying it, so this is really good. Ken says- Conor Lynch: Yeah, since I was 13, basically. Brittany Lynch: Yeah, exactly, both of us. I've been really privileged to be able to work one-on-one with him, and he's such a smart guy and very entertaining. Ken says, "When will this be in PDF form?" We'll get it up sometime in the next 24 hours, both the recording and the PDF form. I know a bunch of you are really keen to do that. Yeah, there's a lot of good information here and know that you guys want to review it. Cynthia says, "Conor, for your product, does Conor do the research? Do we send in our prospect description, then he uses that to write?" Cynthia, what happens is if you decide to order the done for you process, then what actually ends up happening is Conor will reach out to you and give you a little bit of a questionnaire. He'll basically get the information that you have already. Above and beyond that, he actually does the research. Con, maybe you can speak a little bit more. Conor Lynch: Absolutely. I usually send a questionnaire to ask a few things, but I do the research myself. I don't like to rely on other people's research when I'm going to write copy because I want to know definitively and for myself who I'm writing for, and who I'm writing to, and what those people ... what their problems are and what their frustrations are, so I will always go through that research process myself. Brittany Lynch: For people in our Mastermind group, at least a few other people you've done already, and I know that they all got really good results from it, but regardless whether you end up going for the done for you option, I think I saw several orders come in, so Con, maybe just later on you can let me know if there's any spots left or not because I know, again, this is a good example of real scarcity in that Conor only has so much time. Obviously if he takes a bunch of orders then it's going to really limit the speed at which it's going to get done, so it does impact quality. Just let me know a little bit later on. [Joaney 01:30:08] says, "Will we get the results of that research? Insightful." Yeah, so this is really good. Conor, and I believe that when he's writing the copy he does obviously the research process and he creates a bit of a character sketch, can you provide that research to them as well? Is that something you can provide to them? Because that would be really [helpful 01:30:24]. Conor Lynch: Absolutely, 100%. That's something that I'll definitely share. I can include things like if I find some pretty clearly insightful posts on forums I can include the links for those as well. Brittany Lynch: Cool. Just to be clear, whether you get the sales letter or the autoresponder series, Conor will provide the, basically, I'm not sure what it looks like, a page or so of the research or character sketch he's created. Can you tell me how to pronounce your name properly? Not you, Conor. Obviously I know your name. [Svanfriger 01:30:56], I know I see you on webinars all the time but I don't want to mispronounce your name there. He says, "Can we order this later?" Again, the answer is, "I believe it's going to be shut down after the spots are gone, which I'm not mistake, might already be at this point. Then he'll probably reopen it after he has more time. Con, maybe you can speak to that. Conor Lynch: I will probably have more spots open a week ... Brittany Lynch: Later this month. Conor Lynch: ... or a week and a half from now. I work pretty quickly. I'm a fast writer. I also tend to work long hours too just because I love writing. I like learning about new niches and just getting stuff on paper, but I think there's one spot left, so if someone wants to jump on that then they can absolutely go for that, but I will have more availability down the road for sure, and I'd love to work with you guys. Brittany Lynch: A few questions here: Norman says, "How long are the autoresponder series he'll write?" It's 12 emails. Sorry, we should have specified that, 12 email autoresponder series. Also, I don't know, basically it depends where you're at. Conor, correct me if I'm wrong, but in the past you wrote for someone the first 12 emails, and then for the other person you wrote the second series of 12 emails, but your [crosstalk 01:32:24] was 12. Conor Lynch: Yeah, that's correct. Brittany Lynch: Anne says, this is a great question, "Do you advocate sending a survey to your mailing list when you're trying to find out what their problems, challenges are?" Do you advocate sending a survey to your mailing list ... Conor Lynch: Definitely. Brittany Lynch: ... when you're trying- Conor Lynch: Whether it's specifically a survey or just reaching out and asking them what their biggest problems are, that is definitely a good idea, definitely a good idea. Brittany Lynch: I would definitely agree with that. Yeah, it is really important but you just ... One thing you have to be careful about with surveys is there's an inherent bias when you write surveys. Just generally and automatically you tend to, when you're writing the survey, try to provoke the answer that you want to hear, so you just have to be a little bit careful about actually trying to be unbiased in the survey questions. Maybe that's a topic we can get into at a later date, but for now what I would suggest is a really easy, fast step especially if you don't have a mailing list is go to forums and really use that as a way to do surveys because you can still ask questions in forums. The other thing that I would say is also just if you do have a mailing list and you do want to do survey, SurveyMonkey is a great resource. That's literally surveymonkey.com. Conor Lynch: SurveyMonkey is pretty good. I've used that in the past. FluidSurveys is pretty good too for putting together surveys. Brittany Lynch: This is good. Chris, by the way, you've been awesome sharing information in the Facebook Mastermind group, so kudos to you. Chris says, "Adding one 's' to an adword got a 300% increase in response. That just goes to show you ... What I'll do, if the Internet will provide it, a little later on today or a little later on tomorrow, I'll post a link in the Facebook Mastermind group. It's a video of about six minutes that walks through a split testing that I've done. I increased the conversion rate to sign up from 9% to 18% literally by adding one word, so I'll give you a real life example of that. Jenny says, "Can you offer a free gift or bonus if you want to collect testimonials?" Yeah. What I would suggest you do is if you have a mailing list already and if you product is conducive to this is offer a competition. As you know, I offered a competition to everyone in this Mastermind group. I offered a competition for people who shared the best results, the best case studies, took the most action. That's a great way to get testimonials. If you're able to do that in your niche then that's a great way to get testimonials because it kind of encourages and makes it a little bit more fun, but in terms of getting testimonials, I find if you have a good product people will freely give them to you. [Deeta 01:35:15] says, "Many opt-in pages are very short. How do you address that?" [Deeta 01:35:18], I'm not sure exactly how to answer that question. Do you mean that- Conor Lynch: I think maybe the question is, "How do you fit in all of the critical components of your copy in such a short space?" I think one of the best ways to do that is just use bullet points. Don't try to write long copy. Pick out the top three problems or frustrations that the person might have and that you're trying to address, and focus on those instead of trying to be exhaustive. Those are really good ways of doing that. Brittany Lynch: Frank says, "Will all this additional information of the training be put into Mastermind group, not in this part where we can only ask question?" Absolutely, Frank. All of this information, we'll get the recording up as well as the PDF up in the Mastermind group. One thing to keep in mind is just that ... Let's see, what was I going to say? Oh, yes, that it might take me up to 24 hours, so yeah, we'll definitely post that in the Mastermind group, and I'll send out an email because I definitely think this is really good information and it would be valuable for you to just go through this again. Like I said, I really want you all to do a homework assignment of creating your character profile. I can't tell you how much that is really going to help you. It's going to, A, make feeling like copywriting is a lot easier for you, and, B, your results I think will certainly go up. I think my two favorite tips of this whole presentation were, one, create a character profile, and, two, create a swipe file. Those two things will make writing copy so much easier as well as just more effective. Hopefully you guys found those helpful as well. Jenny says, "Brittany, You and Conor should do more webinars together." I actually quite liked it. Conor Lynch: Maybe we will. Brittany Lynch: It's kind of fun to ... We're lucky to be able to do that together as siblings, but actually I've been out of town for quite a while. This is kind of cool and irrelevant but I've got three brothers. Conor is my oldest brother, and I've got two brothers younger than me, and there's four of us born within five years. We're all going to be staying in ... About four of us are going to be living in the same house over Christmas again for the first time in years, which is going to be kind of fun and crazy. Maybe we'll do a cool webinar together or something like that. Conor Lynch: Yeah, that would be fun. Brittany Lynch: A cool webinar would be if we actually took somebody's product and we did like a live training where we wrote the the sales page in front of you guys as well. I think that could be kind of cool too. Let's see here. All right, Brian says, "I'm excited." I'm excited too. We're lucky. All three of my brothers are up to really cool, smart things. Larry says, "Could you repeat the homework assignment?" Yeah, sure. My homework assignment for you is to once this recording goes up, once the PDF goes up, create your character profile. Name the person in your niche that you're going to be speaking to. What should we call that person? Like your little writing muse, where every time you sit down to write an ad, to write a squeeze page, to write an email you think about your writing muse and you think about his or her problems, what motivates them, et cetera. If you could do that, that would put you in a really, really good spot. The second homework assignment is create a text document on your computer for swipe file and start starting to create your swipe. Conor Lynch: Yeah, those are two, the swipe file especially, it's a really good thing to start putting together. Brittany Lynch: Yeah, I think so for sure. It doesn't look like there's any other questions. Guys, again, have you enjoyed this? I hope you have. Maybe if you can, in the mastermind group, let us know what your favorite part was that would be really good to see. I'll get the recording and the PDF up again soon. For those of you who are interested in Conor's done for you autoresponder or sales page order link, those are in the chat box. Basically, Con, you're just be reaching out to the people based on when they purchased to let them know your deadline? Conor Lynch: Yes, absolutely. Brittany Lynch: Okay, awesome. Let's see here. Brian says, "Loved it. Thanks for webinar. Awesome," and yeah, just a ton of great feedback here which is so good to see. Guys, glad that you enjoyed this webinar. Again, sign up for Thursday's webinar. I'll send out another email about it. There's just going to be more great information coming over the next few weeks so definitely watch your inbox. Hang out in the mastermind group. Share your results and all of the things that you've enjoyed, what you'd like to see more of, and I'm more than happy to do that. Take care. Have a really, really great long weekend, Thanksgiving long weekend for those of you in America. For those of you elsewhere, just have a good weekend. Con, I'll talk to you. Conor Lynch: Hey, great to meet all of you, and I'm glad you guys enjoyed it. Brittany Lynch: Take care, guys. Have a great day. Conor Lynch: Cheers.