Written By Loren Woirhaye, June 4th, 2009
Reading time: 6 – 10 minutes
There is a lot of ballyhoo about the importance of headlines in copywriting. If you are just getting started it is easy to take this stuff out of context.
The importance of the headline IS paramount in several different formats of copy – in situations where the headline MUST grab the readers attention an effective headline is the difference between success and failure for the ad.
One of my pet peeves is super-long headlines that try to cram a detailed description of what the product is or does into the headline itself. This is usually not a good thing, but of course in the hands of a skilled copywriter a long headline can work well indeed.
Most writers doing online marketing these days cranking-out verbose headlines are not particularly skilled however – their headlines are like the desperate guy trying to get a date from every girl who walks by; rattling off a meandering list of benefits hoping she’ll hear one she likes and stop and talk to the guy.
Does that sound like a good way to get a date?
No. It doesn’t
It’s fairly easy to find examples of this kind of headline writing in copy ebook authors and 
Written By Loren Woirhaye, June 3rd, 2009
Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes
Perhaps unique to copywriting is the idea of “swiping” sales appeals from winning letters written by yourself or other copywriters. This is not, and should not be approached as, strict copying of others’ work, for a couple of reasons. 1) plagiarism is illegal and will land you in hot water because you WILL get sued if you do it in direct marketing, and 2) there is an art to adapting a proven sales message STRUCTURE to the thing you want to sell and the state of AWARENESS in the marketplace at the time.
That’s another way of saying that running old copy won’t work – it must be adapted.
How to get ideas to create winning copy for today adapted (“swiped”) from yesterday’s winning copy:
Any salesletter written by a A-level copywriter that has the APPEALS in it I need for whatever I am working on at the time. Don’t make it hard on yourself by studying Gary Bencivenga’s food letters (which I believe he still writes mostly because it’s fun) and try to apply the methods to selling info-products.
Get the appeal right. I know this seems very basic and
Written By Loren Woirhaye, June 3rd, 2009
Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes
Perhaps unique to copywriting is the idea of “swiping” sales appeals from winning letters written by yourself or other copywriters. This is not, and should not be approached as, strict copying of others’ work, for a couple of reasons. 1) plagiarism is illegal and will land you in hot water because you WILL get sued if you do it in direct marketing, and 2) there is an art to adapting a proven sales message STRUCTURE to the thing you want to sell and the state of AWARENESS in the marketplace at the time.
That’s another way of saying that running old copy won’t work – it must be adapted.
How to get ideas to create winning copy for today adapted (“swiped”) from yesterday’s winning copy:
Any salesletter written by a A-level copywriter that has the APPEALS in it I need for whatever I am working on at the time. Don’t make it hard on yourself by studying Gary Bencivenga’s food letters (which I believe he still writes mostly because it’s fun) and try to apply the methods to selling info-products.
Get the appeal right. I know this seems very basic and
Written By Loren Woirhaye, June 2nd, 2009
Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes
I don’t know about you, but in school I got by pretty well churning out reports and written tests using big words and self-important academic grammar.
For writing about ideas those stuff can be appropriate – and in the University environment readers are accustomed to such puffery. Ideas are abstract, which is why when we write about ideas in school papers the language gets complicated.
For advertising copy, chuck the write-to-impress model and get down with the common words we all use every day. If people don’t understand the word you use, you will lose them.
Write short sentences. Break up long sentences into shorter ones. Sometime this is easy. Sometimes it is not, but simplicity in communication is worth reaching for.
Try to write in concrete terms. Not abstract terms. Objects and people are concrete. Rudolph Flesch discovered that comprehension of written text increased when people were the subject matter and when their names were used.
For example: “John drove to Mary’s house and met Mary’s parents.”
The John and Mary story is boring but you know instantly what it means. Comprehension is easy because the words are common and short.
Written By Loren Woirhaye, May 31st, 2009
Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes
Despite having only recently hung-out my own shingle as a writer-for-hire, I’ve been writing copy for my own business ventures, and learning a thing or two, since at least 1999. Even though my businesses until 2005 or were mostly local concerns (aside from selling old tools on Ebay), I still used copy in ads and promotional materials.
I also learned some hard lessons about how many balls you need to juggle to make it in the hard goods business. Finally I threw in the towel and went into marketing and selling stuff only instead of what I had done before, which was design, customize, manufacture, maintain machinery, pick-up all manner of heavy and awkward materials, advertise, kiss clients’ butts, install stuff, work long hours for low pay, market, write copy, try to sell, network, and generally run myself ragged trying to do it all by myself.
Did someone call me a fool?
Actually I learned a lot. I learned that owning a small business is a lot more complicated than doing the same thing just for pleasure, especially if your business involves working with clients AND physical labor.
Call me stupid. Somehow I thought
