 At the end of the day, the better you are at developing and honing your messaging, the better results you will see. Welcome to the We Are Slam Show where you'll learn marketing agency insights, best practices, and ideas to help your business grow. My name is Tyler Kelly. I'm the co-founder and chief strategist right here at Slam Agency. And today I'm going to reveal to you my top five copywriting secrets. Now, when I think of a good advertisement, the first thing that comes to mind is good copy. The words that are on the page, the message that you're communicating to the end user, to the buyer, to the prospect. This is something that has been near and dear to my heart for a long time. I've always loved to write. As a matter of fact, I was an English major and I chose that major because I wanted to do more writing. I actually didn't realize that there was going to be so much reading, which at the time I didn't necessarily enjoy, although I do now. For those of you that have been here to Slam, you know that our library is just massive and books are key leaders or readers. But here's the thing, back then I just wanted to write and I wanted to hone that skill. And so I became an English major and I learned how to write more effectively, more persuasively. And then I created my first website. And part of that experience was learning how to build a website back in 1999. But more so than that, it was how to develop and craft a message that would get people once they were on the site to pick up the phone and give me a call. And by doing that, I knew that I was tapping into one of the secrets of human persuasion. And here we are 20 years later and I can tell you that developing a skill for copywriting, learning how to captivate, motivate and inspire people to action with the words that I write has been one of the most critical skills, one of the most beneficial things I can learn in my professional career. And so today I'm going to reveal to you my top five copywriting secrets so that you can take them, use them, and become a better copywriter. Because at the end of the day, the better you are at developing and honing your messaging, the better results you will see. Now here at SLAM, I've had an opportunity to work with all kinds of copywriters. And so what I want to say is it doesn't matter, you know, who you are or where you're starting or where you're not starting. This show is for you. If anything, if you are a seasoned copywriter, then maybe it's just as a reminder. And if you're looking to get into the business, trust me, this is the place to start because not everyone knows how to communicate effectively. And if you do, if you're able to craft a message, a winning message, a message that converts, then trust me, you're going to be a lot better off than your peers. So the first thing I want you to know about copywriting, my number one secret, not in any particular order, but my number one secret is that copy is not about being creative, it's about converting. So get this idea out of your head that you have to be colorful, that you have to have this creative prose and it has to be poetic. Here's the thing, you're an advertising professional. You're a marketing professional. What that means is that you have one goal and one goal only. Your number one goal as an advertiser, as a marketing professional is this, to make sales. And so what that means as you put pen to paper is that you have to get people from point A to point B. And so as a copywriter, it's not about having the prettiest copy. It's not about necessarily being grammatically correct, although I love good grammar. What it is about is about making sales. And so I want you to keep this in mind, a good offer is an offer that converts, not necessarily an offer that sounds correct. Now one of my favorite books that we've done a show on this is Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. This is what it looks like, if you're not familiar with it, go back and find the show where I talk about this book. And if you haven't already ordered this book, do so. This is one of the keys to learning how to become a good copywriter. Okay, so check this out, chapter two, Just Salesmanship, here's what he says. The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It is profitable or unprofitable according to its actual sales. Okay, now I know that copywriting has become this thing in the last, you know, 50 years, you know, when it comes to mad men and things like this, to build brand awareness and to create like funny commercials and stuff, but it doesn't matter how funny the commercials are or how many people know about your brand if people aren't buying your products or services. And I'm not talking to people that are writing Doritos campaigns, I'm not talking to the AB copywriters out there, I'm talking to marketing directors like yourself that are working in industries where you have to go in every day and figure out how you're going to increase your revenue to small business owners, to startup founders who are trying to figure out how to make people not only more aware of your products or services, but how to create that demand for your products and services, so much so that people will take action, action being that they will purchase your product or service. And so here's the thing, let me read it again for you. The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. He goes on to say that literary qualifications have no more to do with good advertising than oratory has to do with salesmanship. One must be able to express themselves briefly, clearly and convincingly, just as a salesperson must be able to do those things. Okay, so this is good copywriting, this is good advertising. The first key here, my first secret that I've just revealed is it's not about being creative, it's not about being poetic, it's about converting. So I want you to keep that in mind. Number one, good copywriters know how to get people from point A to B, they know how to increase conversions and how to get more people to complete their offers. Number two, and this is specifically for those of you who are writing for online audiences, which I know for the most part many of us are. Okay, so this doesn't necessarily apply if you're going to write a television commercial or a radio commercial, but it applies to those who are writing copy for websites or in blogs or in advertisements that people are going to read. And here's the secret, people are not readers, they are scanners. So you need to be able to write scannable copy. What does this mean? This means bullet points, numbered list, making certain words that you want to stand out, stand out. And how do you do that? By making them bold or italicized, changing the color, underlining them, using your headings and snippets and paragraph intros and breaking up paragraphs so that they're easier to scan. 90% of people, they don't read content on the internet, they scan it. In fact, what they're doing is they're looking for certain keywords, they're scanning for keywords. And the reason why they're doing that is because they want to make sure that the page that they're on is relevant to their search, is relevant to their problem, is relevant to whatever it is that they're trying to figure out in that moment. And so rather than spend two or three minutes reading paragraph after paragraph after paragraph, what's happening in the famous F-shaped pattern. If you haven't heard that word before, look it up, Google it, F-shaped pattern. In a famous F-shaped pattern, they're looking at your website and they're scanning for keywords. Okay, so you have to learn how to write scannable copy and how to take copy that may not be scannable and make it scannable. Make it more appealing, make it more noticeable to those people who are scanning the copy for keywords, okay? The number three secret, and this is a big one, like I said, they're not in any particular order, but you have to know your audience, you have to know who you're writing for, you have to know what motivates them, what gets their attention, you have to know what their pain points are, you have to know where they're coming from, if where they're searching, there's so much that a good marketing director, a good marketer, a good marketing professional understands about their potential customer. And if you're thinking to yourself, well, I don't actually know much, like I know the demographic, I kind of know the geographic area where they are, so I'm able to do some advertising and I'm able to most of the time have a pretty good result, meaning that if I put out $50, I'm going to make $50 back. Well, in reality, that's not a good result, but that's for another day. But here's the thing, you have to know your audience, you have to know not only where they are, but what they're searching, what their pain points are, and how your product can, once they've implemented the solution that you provide, what does their life look like after that? Because part of that is communicating that. A good ad always communicates the after effect, okay? You have to know that before state, as Ryan Dice famously has said, the before and after state in creating offers, but you have to be able to understand the before state, but then provide a vision of the future that places that user, that buyer, that potential prospect in that after state that they desire. So my secret number three is understanding your buyer. Inside now, you can never go too deep in understanding the psychographics, the attitudes, interests, and opinions of your potential customers. This is the data that you need to be able to build a complete profile, a full persona in order that you're able to communicate with them in a way that captivates, motivates, and inspires action. Okay, the number four secret that I want to reveal for how to become an amazing copywriter, how to really do copywriting at that next level, how to level up when it comes to copywriting, how to captivate, motivate, and inspire people to action. Here it is. You have to understand your USP, your unique selling proposition, okay? Now, I want to take you back to marketing 101, and I want to talk to you about brand positioning, okay? When we think of USP, we're talking, we're kind of in this ballpark of brand positioning. What is a brand position? The brand position is how your brand, how your company, how your business, how your product, your service, how your offer is positioned within a certain competitive set within your customer's mind, okay? What this means is that in my mind, if I'm your potential customer, in my mind, I have several different options in terms of like providers of solutions to my problem. And you're one of those providers. And so I have these frames of reference. And my brand position, the way that you're positioned among all these other competitors in my mind, that is how your brand is positioned. And the key here is, it's not what you say it is. The key is it's what I believe it to be as the consumer, as your potential prospect. And so as a copywriter, you have to learn not only how I perceive keyword here is perceive your brand and how it ranks. And then you have to be able to take what you know that I am thinking or perceiving about your brand and craft a message that motivates me to think differently or that reinforces what I'm thinking about your brand. So this is brand positioning, this is marketing 101. So when I talk about USP, this unique selling proposition, what I want you to think about is how are you different than your competitors? But also, how are you the same? Now, what I mean by this is that you can't be so different that you don't fit in the box. Okay, if I am looking for band-aids, and you have completely positioned your line of band-aids so far out there that I no longer think of you as band-aids, then at that point, you're no longer relevant. At the same time, you have to differentiate yourself so much so that I see a clear difference between you and your competitors in my mind to solve my problems. Okay? And so this is key, the USP, the unique selling proposition. You know, if you Google it, there's some gurus out there that might say, you know, this isn't really relevant today because the USP is something that's just not attainable, that there's just so much of the same stuff out there and everyone's just doing the same thing. But I would beg to differ. I would argue with this because I would say that there's always a place of differentiation and as a good marketer, as a marketing professional, you have to find it. You have to find where are we different, whether that's in our vision, our values, our purpose, how we connect to the community, where are we different and how can we communicate that in a way that shows our difference among that frame of, among those competitors in the consumer's mind in a way that is going to captivate, motivate and inspire me to become your customers. Now, here's something that you can do right now. You can go to your top five competitors' websites and you can take a tally of all the, you know, descriptive words that they use on their website which explain who they are and what they do. Okay? Take a tally. Every time a certain word is used, like for instance, highest quality. When that term or that phrase is used, write down highest quality if it's first time seeing it and then, you know, do a tally each time you see it on every competitor's website. And here's the thing. Anytime you see a term, a phrase that's used more than twice on your competitors, like among your competitors, I want you to challenge yourself to think of a different way of communicating your brand to your customers because if you use the same words that everyone else is using, highest quality, lowest price, like these types of things, guess what? You're not going to be able to stand out. You're not going to be able to communicate that USP and you're not going to be able to differentiate yourself among your competition. And what this leads to is it leads to a brand that really has no brand position. And if it does, then it's lackluster. Okay? So that's number four, the USP, how to become a great copywriter. You have to keep in mind differentiation and unique selling proposition. Number five, this is the last one. Number five, the fifth secret that I'm going to reveal to you today on how to become a master copywriter is this. You have to ask for the sale. In your writing, you have to create and provide a CTA, a call to action. We said in number one that you have to think about conversions as your primary goal. In all of your writing, sales are what matter. How are you going to get people from point A to point B? If point B is the sale, then you have to ask for it. Somewhere in your writing, you have to say whatever that next step is. People want to know. People want to understand what they have to do in order to progress in the buying cycle. And so you as a copywriter need to be able to clearly communicate and articulate that and do so in a way that it's not a secret. It's not confusing. There's no gray area and you're very clear. You're very clear because this is what people need. You've heard the phrase kiss, keep it simple, stupid. This is what it is. Do it. Ask for the sale. Make it happen. Know that if you don't ask, you won't receive and in writing and copywriting and creating offers that will convert, you have to ask for the sale. So these are my top five secrets for becoming an amazing copywriter for leveling up your copywriting game. Now if this is your first time tuning in, do me a favor. And if you're on iTunes, subscribe, then rate us hopefully five stars and then leave us a review. If you leave us a review, I'll be sure to shout you out in a future show. Thank you for doing that. And if you're watching on Instagram, TV, IGTV, Facebook, YouTube, any of these areas, leave me a comment. Let me know what you thought about this show today. And if you have any tips of your own, be sure to leave those in the comments as well because we're all growing, we're all evolving, we're all optimizing to become better professionals in this world that we call marketing. So thank you for tuning in and I will see you next week.