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That’s a successful ad.  It gets into their head, works down into their emotional sweet spot, works the passions, doesn’t let them get un-agitated.  All we have are words.  You can’t actually reach out and throttle them.  A lot of teachers talk about reaching out from the page and grabbing them.  They like to say that in the big agencies.  But they don’t know what they’re talking about. What they’re talking about is shock value, at best.  Shock value gets your attention.  After that, all you have are words to be able to bring them in, hold them, and move them through what we call the “greased slide” of the sales process.  Working them down to the point where you want them to be. To get more copywriting and marketing tips from John Carlton go to www.MarketingRebelClub.com.

Nobody sells features. You are always selling benefits. I don't care what your product is… A seminar, an e-book, a big package full of stuff, a car, some nails. Those are the conduits for the benefits that your customer wants. You don't sell the drill, you sell the hole. I don't need a drill, I need a hole in my wall. If you can show me a different way, a magic way, other than by buying drill… I will go to Home Depot, I will go to Fairy Depot where I can get a little gnome to drill the hole for me, I'll do that. But, in our world, drools are the best way to do that. But, what kind of drill? An electric drill, a hand drill, whatever… To get more copywriting and marketing tips from John Carlton go to www.MarketingRebelClub.com.

A lot of writing that’s out there, including a lot of stuff you see in newspapers (just pick up a newspaper and start counting the “that”s in a story) shows that people who do not know how to write are teaching other people to write.  The corruption is endemic and, as all marketers know, this is your “in”.  This is great news for anyone who knows what everyone else doesn’t know.  Because you can now become that clear, concise writer.  It can actually be a USP in your market for you to be the one guy who can say what everyone else is mumbling about.  OK? To get more copywriting and marketing tips from John Carlton go to www.MarketingRebelClub.com.

That’s why we like to get a little bit into storytelling.  The basic problems of ads are that they are boring, confusing, or irrelevant.  Those bad ads usually fall into one of those categories.  And, those are distinct:  boring, confusing or irrelevant. We didn’t really see any boring ads today, and I don’t think we will.  But we did see some confusion, and we certainly saw some irrelevancies.  That is usually a tangent you are going off on. To get more copywriting and marketing tips from John Carlton go to www.MarketingRebelClub.com.

Almost 100% of the time he will be 180 degrees dead wrong. He will not know why people buy. He knows why he would have bought it, why he got into it. He knows that. That is what I call the company line. And for you and your product, as Stan was saying, you have been eating your own company line for a while. You are in love with this product. When I want to learn about a product, I want to talk to the receptionist, I want to talk to the feet-in-the-street-salesman, I want to talk to the guy that invented it, I want to get the gossip, the rumors. The guys who have to sell the stuff will say “I know that Bob, the guy who owns the company, he keeps saying it does this, but we never sell it that way. We sell it by saying it will do this.” Something completely different. That’s what I want to find, and that’s what you want to find, too. A lot of the time you just have to get out of your head, you have to get into other people’s opinions about what is going on. You have to strip it down. Get your ego out of this and find out what really is happening. When people are buying the stuff, what is really going on? For more copywriting and marketing tips from John Carlton, go to www.MarketingRebelClub.com.

But they want what you're selling, because the bullets are bringing them in. "Yeah, I want it". "Oh, I don't know if I wanted or not". Then your job is to bring them in. Your job is to make that price seem like a total afterthought. "It's 100 bucks, but don't worry about it here's my business I'm right here, I don't move, I’ve lived here for 55 years. I'm not going to go away. You don't need to give me a reason why you want your money back. Bring the thing back and I'll give you your money back. You're not risking a cent. All the risk is on me to prove to you that what I've said is true. If you don't believe me, you don't have to tell me why. To get more copywriting and marketing tips from John Carlton go to www.MarketingRebelClub.com.

Now, this is how stupid I am. I didn't know that that isn't necessarily a friendly term to use to a woman who rides a Harley. She laughed, and turned around and said "oh Tiny, this guy just called me a biker chick". And I turn around, and Tiny is, of course, 250 snarling, tattoos all up and down his arms, beard, the typical biker look. And Tiny looks at me and his brow furrows. And this really is the wild West up there. There are bar fights up there all the time. It would not have been a long fight. Right at the time his brow furrowed I remembered a phrase from the book "Hell's Angels", that Hunter Thompson had written. I don't know to this day if I had this right, people correct me all the time, but at one point, the Harley Davidson had a pan head engine. In the 50s they switched to what's called a shovel head engine. I think I have that right. So, I looked at Tiny, and in a split second I knew I had to gamble, and I said "Tiny, is that your pan head out front?" Not knowing what I was talking about. Tiny's face breaks into this big grin, he puts this paw onto my left shoulder, lifts me out of the seat, says "come on buddy", and hauls me out front. He had the only pan head out there. I could've said "is that your shovel head out there?" And I would have been wrong, because he had a 40-year-old bike. And I had to stand there for a half hour with Tiny, still with his paw on my shoulder, thinking about other things to say about the bike. "That sure is shiny chrome, Tiny". As it turns out, I know a little bit about art and stuff, my friend Mark actually spent some time airbrushing bike gas tanks (this guy had the flames and the skull and stuff), so I know a little bit about that. But this is a good example of how little tiny fraction of knowledge saved me. I use this all the time when I talk to people. When I go into a room and don't know anything about the people there, I don't know anything about the business, I don't have a photographic memory, but I am interested in the human race and its civilization enough that I can pull something up to just get started. And you don't need much. To get more copywriting and marketing tips from John Carlton go to www.MarketingRebelClub.com.

The point was, put it down and then he hit it straight and true. And then we got Bobby Schaffer to hit a ball with a piece of rope. Put on knot in a rope and knocked it over a house. Actually, just to carry that further, when I started golfing I bought a starter set. It was a cheap little set. The whole set cost less than an average club does now. Now, I'm four sets into the game. I'm not playing any better. Actually, I have a theory that the worse clubs you have, the better, because you're relying on touch or feel. From years of playing baseball, I can throw wadded up piece of paper into a trashcan from across the room. That's a cool little skill. When I was applying that to golf, I was playing pretty well. Then I started trying to listen to people and screwed it all up. In your business, don't take it for granted what it is that people want of what you're selling. I talked about consultancy, and were going to talk about that in the next ad. The guy in the next ad is one of my favorites, one of the more simple ones. It looks like it was typeset by a gang of monkeys that broke into the lithographer’s. But, the big thing was, after talking with the guy I figured out that what he was selling wasn’t what the guys wanted. He was dealing with chiropractors, and one of the things they wanted was more time off. Maybe they didn't really know it. All everyone says is that if only they could make more money their problems will go away. If that's your market… that’s biz op, by the way… If they're thinking that if they could make $100,000 they'll be the richest man on the block and everything will be fine, then that's how you have to sell it. Don't try to convince them the money isn't everything, because the guy who doesn't try to convince them is going to clean your clock in that market. To get more copywriting and marketing tips from John Carlton go to www.MarketingRebelClub.com.

You could say “I could do a report and say it is worth $5,000 because if you paid me for this stuff it would take 3 private sessions at $ 1,450 per hour, which is what I charge for an hour’s consultation”.  I can make the case that what you’re getting is equivalent to 3 sessions with me so it’s worth $5,000.  I am giving it to you for free, so right there you are getting this enormous value. When we say “heart-skipping” , one of the problems people have when they do try to add value is that they get irrelevant.  Remember why the guy is even paying attention to your offer at all.  Why is he there?  What does he want?  That goes back to the benefits he is getting from the features you have.  You want to expand on that.  So, “not only are you getting this, this and this, but, what the heck, I’m going to throw this in and this in and this in.”  And all of this builds on the thing that brought him there in the first place.  Whatever the benefits are that he thinks he’s getting from the main offer is expanded by what you’re adding on for free. Does that make sense?  I know I’m being broad. “Mooch-pleasing bonuses” means that the free stuff can’t be something that you think is valuable and he’s going to think is valuable after he reads it.  It needs to be valuable before he gets it in his hands.  So, a lot of times you will rely on the explanation or the title of the thing.  It has to be something that, sight unseen, presents value to him.  Something he wants.  Really, really wants. In the financial field, it would be “how to get bags of pre-1949 silver dimes for free…(there is a way to write a single, one-page letter to the Fed where they will send you a bag of dimes absolutely for free)” and blah, blah, blah. And then the paranoia-calming guarantees is one of the big things.  It is risk-reversal.  The classic offer is that you get all this free stuff, it’s an outrageous value, tons of free material, and you don’t risk a dime.  You will get all your money back if you aren’t happy within a certain time period.  And then we talked about extending that time period.  The shorter you make the time period, the more he is going to think about it.  What all my clients have found, across the board, is that by lengthening the guarantee period (rather than having one month you have a 6-month or 1 year or lifetime guarantee) the more you lengthen that out the lower your returns will be.  Because it takes away all the risk.  The recipient doesn’t think he is under the gun to decide on this.  He has some time, and as that time passes he is either going to fall in love with the product, or I guess there is an element of forgetting about it, too. Reversing the risk and taking away all the elements that make him think “I’m not going to buy this now…I will wait”, you want to make it urgent and calm their paranoia. The guarantees…you will get your money back.  You’ll get all your money back.  I’ll even include the shipping and handling.  And, you get to keep all the free stuff that I gave.  So, you’re not only not risking a dime but, at the very worst, you’re going to come away with $5,000 worth of free information that you won’t find anywhere else. To get more copywriting and marketing tips from John Carlton go to www.MarketingRebelClub.com For more information about the Simple Writing System, go to www.SimpleWritingSystem.com

So it's like this little ladder. Theoretically, the weight goes is that any one control should not last very long. What a control does is break ground for other writers. They bring in new writers and don't mail the losers again; they only mail the control. The writers will try to knock it off. The writers trying to knock it off get to read the control. If I have a control, I won't futz with it, because it's working. But the new writers will come in, read the control and say "oh that's not working, I'll change it". Or they'll try to deconstruct it and figure out what I did and then try to do it better. That's why having a control for five years in a competitive market like that is legendary.  Even among the guys at Rodale. Beside the fact that I was blacklisted and they never have another letter like it, just the fact that it was a letter in the world of magalogs. For more copywriting and marketing tips from John Carlton, go to www.MarketingRebelClub.com/videos

Here, I have 2 in a row.  What’s interesting about this (and I wouldn’t have brought it up if Tony hadn’t brought it up) is that this is an A-list piece for a top-end mailer.  I forced them to do that because I like “how to”s so much that I left them in there.  I had 2 “how to”s and they happen to be right next to each other in the copy. I usually write the bullets as soon as I can.  I get my features and benefit list out, then I start writing bullets for every single one.  Every single feature and the benefits I will start writing bullets.  And I will have 20 pages of bullets that I will start culling down from 100 to the hottest 20, the best, and then I will start arranging them in order.  Really nailing them. There is nothing wrong with “how to” bullets, but they are way overused.  And, in fact, Rodale does put that in their contract.  No “how to” bullets.  The only way I get these through, when I write A-list pieces, is that they’re so good that they have no argument. Their argument is sound.  Most writers would have 20 in a row…”how to do this”, “how to do that”.  Boring, boring, boring.  And this, by the way, is page 6 of an 8-page letter.  Mack… Is there a formula for how many bullets you do use then? In direct mail you are usually limited to an 8- to 12-page letter because of postage, so there is a physical limit.  Online, people are writing 40 to 100 page letters full of bullets.  But, I go in and I say “This is the same bullet as this one”.  They may not realize that, but the feature and benefit are the same.  They get repetitive. A good writer goes in (what do they say “good writing is rewriting) and starts culling and seeing how they can say things better.  I will tell you that on this page, these probably started off as 10 or 12 bullets.  I started combining them. Do you write them from the best to the least?  Yes.  Don’t save the good for last.  That’s another thing I do when I critique websites.  The guys usually hide their stuff for 4 screen pages down.  I say “No.  You want everything you can get on that first screen page”.  Then you start supporting that as you go down.  So, yes, you don’t want to save the best for last.  That is a ridiculous way to do it. To get more copywriting and marketing tips from John Carlton go to www.MarketingRebelClub.com. For more information about the Simple Writing System, go to www.SimpleWritingSystem.com.

Not everybody likes me.  I know that is hard to understand.  Like I said, I piss people off just walking on stage, because I am kind of loose, like to shuck and jive with the crowd and stuff.  A lot of people are offended by that.  Do I care?  No, not at all.  I like the people who are conversant with that kind of thing.  I’m not going to sell those other people anyway. Just like David…if you aren’t getting complaints, you aren’t pushing hard enough.  You should be in a sweet spot of about 7% to 15% return rate and you should be getting a few people writing to you saying “How dare you…do whatever”. For more copywriting and marketing tips from John Carlton, go to www.MarketingRebelClub.com.

Now, this one has a lot of “how to’s”.  You can overuse the “how to”, but sometimes I say “the hell with it”, and I have every bullet start with “how to”.  When I worked with the big mailers they would not allow that.  It was in the contract that you can’t have a “how to” bullet. Their idea is they want to challenge you and if they are paying you to be a top writer (and they pay a lot) they want it to read well.  And there are other ways to say it.  But, they get the point across so well that I always have “how to” bullets.  “How to” headlines are some of the best in the world. Here is a good example.  “How a ‘secret’…” in quotes.  Why did I put it in quotes?  I wanted to set it apart.  I could have used parentheses, I could have underlined it.  I used “secret” a couple of times in here.  Here’s “the secrets of …” and I don’t put it in quotes.  Be careful with quotes, guys.  I am fast and loose with quotes, but the great story about quotes in copy is "I'd like to introduce you to my ‘wife’". Watch quotes. They mean something. To get more copywriting and marketing tips from John Carlton go to www.MarketingRebelClub.com.

The best headlines are, pretty much based on the USP. And then you kind of off to the races, because the USP is kind of edgy, or if it's totally contrarian, or if he's little education, or if you need to go off and explain a little more, then that would dictate what you're going to do. To get more copywriting and marketing tips from John Carlton go to www.MarketingRebelClub.com.

No, that’s a feature.  Let’s use that as an example.  What is the benefit of being able to go anywhere and not missing an alert? To me, the online alert is the feature and the ability to travel without missing anything is the benefit. Do you see how this changes it slightly?  The feature is “you’ll never be away from an alert”. What is the advantage of that?  What is the benefit of that? So you might say something like “Last Monday, when a lot of people were stuck in traffic on the 405, something happened that presented one of the best opportunities in the last 5 years in futures, and what would have happened is your cell phone would have rung, and blah, blah, blah.  Make sense? For more copywriting and marketing tips from John Carlton, go to www.MarketingRebelClub.com/videos For more information about the Simple Writing System, go to:  www.SimpleWritingSystem.com

“Hi, my name is Bob.  I’m a successful freelance writer”.  Keep in mind that your ultimate goal…grammar doesn’t matter, sentence structure…you don’t want run-on sentences or crazy things.  But the most important thing is that it sounds just the way you speak.  So, read it out loud, and see if you would engage someone with that conversation. Another thing, and I don’t see it at the top of the screen right now…You’ve got a list of bullets, which I’m not sure that that’s what you want to do there.  You’re credentializing yourself too early, in my opinion, then this “Hi”.  With the golf ads, for example, it’s “dear fellow golf nut”.  That’s a John Carltonism, but “Hi” is too weak. You’re credentializing yourself too early, but I would like to hear your story earlier.  Your story is what’s really strong.  It’s a fascinating story about travel writing and the excitement of it. That’s in the video Doesn’t matter.  You can’t assume that people will watch the video.  Don’t let it go without backing it up with text copy, unless it’s the only thing on the page. To get more copywriting and marketing tips from John Carlton go to www.MarketingRebelClub.com. To get more information about the Action Seminar, go to www.ActionSeminar.com.

Kevin:  Exactly.  You still have to get us to press “play” and you need something unique to get us to do that.  “You won’t believe what I reveal in this video…Something Frank Sinatra used to do to his cat”.  Something to make me want to know what the heck this is. David:  He’s not even saying that it is something that he did.  He’s just saying you can.  He isn’t saying he did it. Robert:  A quick thing to look at.  Sometimes you can just highlight the headline and right click, and it will say “Search Google for ‘Discover the number one secret to slapping Google’” or whatever your headline is.  And see how many people are saying the exact same thing.  If that doesn’t talk you out of wanting to do it (or “Who else wants to…?” and all that).  Just get clear on the fact that you can have something you think is totally unique.  How many sites have you seen that look exactly like this?  They have the opt-in, a little picture, “you don’t need this”, “you don’t need that”, whatever, and it’s just money.  I don’t know… For more copywriting and marketing tips from John Carlton, go to www.MarketingRebelClub.com/videos For information about the Action Seminars, go to:  www.ActionSeminar.com