Transcription
All right, welcome back to the Copywriters podcast with your host, the world's greatest copywriting coach, David Garfinkel.
David, how you doing today?
Good, Nathan. How are you?
I'm doing fantastic. We're past a hundred episodes, man!
I know. This is 101.
Yeah, that's crazy. I mean, I guess there's all kinds of temptation to blow up saying that work so you can create something new, but no reason to do that here.
Yeah. Well, I love doing the podcast, and today you sent me show notes with a very provocative title: The Golden Triangle of Copywriting. This is a discovery I made after working with three different clients in one week, and I'll get into that a little more in a second. But there's one—you know my clients very different—look, before they start writing copy, people always ask me about some version of this question: How can I make my copy succeed? But strangely enough, if they come to me after they've written their copy, their question is more like: Why did my copy fail? And today we're gonna talk about three things that really answer both questions.
Okay. But before we do that, let me answer a question I find on a lot of people's minds: The question is, what is the essential nature of copy, and what should I do about it?
Mmm, that's a weighty question. And the answer is: Copy is powerful. You're responsible for how you use what you hear in this podcast. But most of the time, common sense is all you need. If you make extreme claims and/or if you're writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity, you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time.
Now, the Golden Triangle of Copywriting. So a few weeks ago, I did three critiques, and I noticed that all of the problems fell into one of three categories. And if you take these three categories, you could make them like points on a triangle. So we're gonna talk about this triangle today, and getting all three of these points right will solve about 90% of the problem with copy that fails.
Okay. Okay. This is a big mistake a lot of people make, and I've made it in the past, and I do my best not to make it in the future. The big mistake is starting at the beginning when you're writing copy. And by the beginning, I mean the first words that will show up in the finished copy. The beginning being the hook, the headline, the big idea. Yes, that is what needs to start the actual finished product, but it shouldn't be the first part of your writing process. The first part of your writing process, and the first point on the triangle, should be the facts. Every successful copywriter I know does not start out with a headline or a hook; they don't start out by writing 50 headlines. They might write 50 headlines after they've done this, but the first thing they start out with is the facts.
Now, people start out with the facts in different ways. Some do it in a very methodical, systematic, step-by-step, A-to-Z way, like Gene Schwartz and Ted Nicholas. I tend to do it a little differently; I'll start top-down. I'll look at the big picture, and then I'll drill down to get all the facts and see where they fit into that big picture. And I'm sure there are other people who do this in a more roundabout way. These are not processed people, and so they don't really talk about how they do it because they might not even understand it. It might be all intuitive to them, and it might seem pretty scattered and disconnected to anyone else. But at the end of the day, they have a solid grasp of the facts about a product they're gonna be selling.
Yeah. Okay. Now, here's why this is important. An easy way to think of your facts is like thinking of driving directions when you go somewhere. The driving directions, the map, they give you the lay of the land. Now, to be sure, they're not all you need; after all, you need a car, and you need some fuel, and you need someone to drive the car. But without knowing where you're going, all those other things won't get you from point A to point B.
And now I want to share an uncomfortable reality: Most copywriters don't do this. Most copywriters don't take a cold, impartial, distanced, objective look at the facts of the product. They don't sit down and just make a list of the features, the objective measures, like the height and the weight, number of pages, number of chapters, other things you can measure. But it's only when you have a firm grasp of the facts that you should start writing bullets, which is what a lot of people do. I mean, some of the better copywriters will start writing bullets early on in the process, but here's the thing, though: You should never have to. You should always, always be able to defend every bullet and trace it back to a fact about the product. Fact-based bullets that go really deep into benefits in an intriguing and simple way are the best.
I'm just gonna touch on what you just mentioned. A lot of times when I start off any sales page or sales letter, I kind of have my big idea in mind, but maybe it's not completely solid yet; it's kind of out there in the ether a little bit.
Mm-hmm.
And then I go through and I just start with bullets, like you mentioned. I say, okay, I want to, at this point, at this point, at this point, I want to talk about this, this, this, and this. And then I go back through and I kind of flesh out that skeleton. But I know that when I first started copywriting, one of the first things I came across was your template, I think on hard-to-find seminars. You had a—you had an interview where you went through a template process, and that was one of my first templates. And well, it really helped me kind of figure out my form. I made the same mistake that you're talking about where I said, okay, I've got to start with my headline, so what's my headline gonna be? Now I got to do my hook; what's my hook gonna be? And writing from beginning to end rather than just kind of saying, okay, I know where my endpoint is; how can I work my way to that? It was—it was a very—it was a very difficult process, and it took me about a year or two of struggling through that before I finally realized I shouldn't be starting at the beginning like I was.
Okay, good. But when you say when you come to it with and I a big idea somewhat formed in your mind, and what else is that you have bullets in your mind, is that right before or even—
Sir?
Yeah, usually I'll try and say, okay, what's—what's the big idea about this? What's the—what's unique about this? What's the—can—what am I trying to convey with this message? What's going to be the—the golden—the goal and thread that kind of weaves its way through this whole sales letter? I want to know what that is so that I kind of have a little bit of a direction; that's kind of my skeleton. And then, since I've written so many sales pages now, I kind of know what flow needs to go, so I can go through there and I can pick points, and I don't have to start with a headline; I can start sometimes with the FAQs, or I can start with my bullets section, as long as I—I don't think you're doing anything wrong; I just think you're—give a blind spot here.
So how do you get that big idea in the first place? How do you—where—how do you get what goes into designing the flow in the first place?
Usually—and I don't know if I should be admitting this—usually it's just a week of just thinking about it. I—have you read the product? Have you talked to the person? Have you—
Mm-hmm.
Okay. Usually I've talked to the person; that's—that's point one. That's—you were gathering facts, and then you thought about it. You just don't see that as writing. A lot of people don't see that as writing, but that's really the first step, whether it gets actually done on a computer or dictated into a microphone or a phone, or you know, whether it gets handwritten, or in your case, whether it's graffiti all over your neighborhood or whatever it is, right? That's what I'm talking about. I'm not saying you have to sit down and write facts. You're pretty much—you sort of have a whiteboard in your mind with all of these facts, right? So you can do it that way. So you're like—you're like that third kind of person who has this very, you know, roundabout, non-process way of doing it, but you're still doing it.
Yeah, and I think the way that I do it—the only copywriter that I've really heard describe the process the way that I do is Gary Halbert. He kind of described the way he wrote sales letters; it was the same way. I'm not nearly as—as fast and loose as he is, but I do like to let—after I've done what you said, the first point—after I've done that, I do like to let it stew in my head for a couple of days, maybe a week, before I actually sit down and start putting into paper.
Okay, that's really good, and that definitely helps, and that's a little bit like what I'm gonna talk about later, although I think what you're talking about is better because you're allowing more time, but I'll—I'll stick with what I prepared. But yeah, so—so that—that's good. So you see—here's the thing: There are some people, copywriters, and I gotta say this, they're so insecure that if—if I—if I went to them and said, I've got this new grape-flavored collagen supplement, first thing they'd say is, in order to show me how smart they are, oh, we're gonna call it Dionysus, you know, the Greeks had festivals of wine, and—and they're just gonna go off on it, all of this crazy stuff without any idea what the product is. Or whether you get the facts down on paper or not is kind of secondary, I think.
Okay, let's—so can we go now to the second point in the Triangle? And it's really what you thought, and you're entitled to call it your first step if you want, but I—I would call it the second step, even in your process. It's just—this might be the point where you put pen to paper, pen to—you know, stylus to Remarkable, or maybe fingers to keyboard. So when you have your facts, you can start on your benefits. And benefits are often bullet points. Now, some people write their bullets before they have the facts, and there are two main problems with doing this. The more common problem is that bullets not based on facts won't sell, and the more extreme problem is that a bullet that is blatantly deceptive because it's not based on facts can land you in jail for false advertising. 15 U.S. Code section 54. It's only a misdemeanor, so it's six months to a year. It's not funny; that's—that's bad [ __ ] right? So you really want to have your facts together. And here's why this is important: People buy benefits; almost never facts or features. Professional buyers, as my mentor Mac Ross once said, buy on features because they know exactly what they're looking for, and their job is to keep their emotions out of it. But with benefits—that most people are buying—they need to believe the benefits, and they need to want the benefits. And anything that's derived from facts is inherently more believable, and so also you don't have to keep looking over your shoulder if it's based on facts, so you can focus more on getting desire in there. Here's a new way to look at this: Okay, facts are like prose; bullets are like poetry. Facts are like prose; bullets are like poetry. The thing about poetry is it touches the emotions and it stimulates the imagination, whereas prose usually doesn't. The poetry touches the emotions and stimulates the imagination, and to make the sale, you need to touch your prospects' emotions and engage their imaginations.
Your thoughts? I—I'm gonna ask you a question: Why is it that so many copywriters—you mentioned a lot of times they'll skip past the fact-gathering process, and they'll just jump straight in. And I—I won't say I've ever been guilty of this because that never made sense to me, but I haven't met copywriters that—it's all about the persuasion tactics, and it's—I can sell anything, and just give it to me, and—and I can write you a sales page, and they skip past the first point. And I know copywriters that have actually been writing copy for five-plus years that are still guilty of this. How come? It's—it's such a common—I don't know if I want to say common, but it does seem to be a common overstep. It seems to be a lot of people skip point one, even though I couldn't consciously explain that I do it like you did. I do know a lot of copywriters that just skip right past it and just jump into the persuasion aspect of a copy.
Mm-hmm.
Well, I don't know why. I can come up with a few guesses. One is they don't know how. I mean, research is very hard to do until you learn how to do it, and it could be a little tedious, and it—there's no glory in it. You know, we write—I mean, we—you know, Brian Kurtz put four copywriters up on the side of Mount Rushmore for his—I don't know what he called them exactly—and that's okay. I've never seen four researchers up on the side of a mountain. It's not glorious. It might be that they're lazy; that they could do it, they know how to do it, they don't want to do it. It could be they're arrogant; they just think they're above it. Or it could be, you know, if—especially if they're not getting paid very well, they need to churn out a lot of stuff fast, and they are looking for something they can cut. But the reason they're not getting paid very well is their copy isn't very good. And in any market where you have people who are going to be discerning and skeptical, it's not gonna work. So there's always some stuff you can sell to some people that requires no thought, no skill, no process, no preparation. But you know, really, the higher up the food chain you get, the more it requires those things.
Yeah, and I've noticed when I first started copywriting, a lot of people were like, we'll just go on Fiverr and—and pitch yourself there and say that you'll write a sales letter for $50 or $150. And I saw people on there doing that, and they promised turnaround of like two days: I'll have a piece of copy written for you in two days. And I could never understand—first of all, I could never understand charging that little amount of money, but second of all, I couldn't understand how they could get it turned around in two days because, like I said, I like to take at least a week just kind of letting it bubble and boil in my head before I even start writing it. So yeah, I guess you're probably right: They're the people that are turning stuff around really quick; the reason that they're charging $150 is because they don't have the time to make it copy that's worth more than $150.
I think that's true. But I'd recommend that if you're that person, change your evil ways; repent.
All right, the third point. So this is really what we're talking about, and—and this is where those people are usually starting their—their writing, because, man, you can write copy fast, and you know what they say: Even a blind hog roots up an ear of corn sometimes. But your chances of it working are much—the third point, I'd say the third thing on the triangle, third point in the triangle, is where the actual finished copy should start, but not necessarily where you start writing or even you start brainstorming. So Nathan, I want to ask you an artist question, because I know you're an artist, and—and this is—this real dumb [ __ ] question; this is like—please answer it at the kindergarten level. Okay, if you're going to do a colored pencil drawing on an ivory mat board, what do you need to get started besides the pencil—on the mat?
No, the pencil and the mat.
Right. Okay, that's what you need to start with. Then you need to have the idea, then you need to have the skill about perspective, the planning. But first, you need to have the pencil and the mat.
Absolutely. I told you it was a dumb [ __ ] question. Okay, so knowing the facts and the benefits of those facts, like the points 1 and point 2, are your colored pencils and your ivory mat board. And what we're talking about in step 3 is your big idea, your hook, your headline, your Keller headline, your lead—the thing that's really going to draw somebody in. Okay, but if you don't have the raw materials to start with, how in the world are you going to come up with an idea made from those raw materials? Now, maybe a lot of people don't look at it that way, but you know, I've been doing this 30 years; I've been writing copy; I've written copy that's made millions of dollars. I've worked—well, one guy I know at Agora—you probably heard of him—Evaldo—made eighty million dollars for the company last year with his sales letters. That's the largest number I've ever heard of any copywriter anywhere. So I know these people, and I know lots of people in between that and the hundred-dollar copywriter, and they all need raw materials. They may look at it differently, but I'm telling you, they all have it in common.
Now, to come up with a great hook, you need a hook to catch your attention. But a good hook does more than that. Have you ever thought about everything that a good hook does? For one thing, it sets expectations about what you're going to learn about, about what you're going to be able to do or have or get rid of or control. And the other thing is a good hook will actually start to give the prospect a reason to believe. You know, Rod Stewart had a song about that: Reason to believe. But people need that; they need a reason to believe. I mean, they want to believe, but they're not going to be fooled again, to quote the Who.
Okay, I gotta stop this rock and roll stuff. Um, and here's the main reason it's hard to create a good hook if you do it right. And what I say right is: First, you get your facts all organized and lined up, or you know, zooming around your brain like the Jetsons, the way you do, or however you get your facts together. And then—then you get your benefits, your—your bullets, and maybe—maybe your subheads, maybe—maybe stories or testimonials—all those things. You get really deep in the weeds; you're not at 30,000 feet at all; you are so far down there, even with your—even with your bullets, you're deep in the weeds. And so it's really hard to step back from it and look at it at fresh eyes. I think that's one reason people come up with hooks 'cause they are afraid if they knew too much, their imagination would sort of be tied down like Gulliver in Gulliver's Travels; it wouldn't be able to get up there where you need to get up there, right? You know what I'm talking about—you need to go into this more creative, a meditative, floating space sometimes in order to come up with a good hook. So that's a—a problem. And sometimes at that point, it's hard or impossible to come up with a killer big idea.
Now, there are a couple of ways to handle that, and this is what most people don't know, and this is going to be difficult if you promise you can turn your copy around in 48 hours. You know, it's fast, cheap, and good; pick two. Write fast and cheap does not usually equal good. So but if you can take some time, put it in a drawer or an envelope, take a walk; if you happen to partake in cannabis, smoke some weed, go to the ocean, go to the mountains, just—you know, really have a state break that's more than just some kind of hypnosis or NLP trick; actually do something different, and maybe for a few days, that can give you the distance so you can look at it afresh. As long as it's all written down, you're not going to lose anything in terms of mojo, momentum. But you might get enough distance from it. The other thing is to hire someone like me who does this all the time. I mean, usually when I'm working with a client and they're stuck, ask him a few questions, and it's probably annoying, but I'm basically getting them to condense all of their research and all their thinking in about five minutes, or it's sometimes 15 or 20 minutes of back-and-forth, and then from there, I've trained myself to go into that creative, relaxed space in a high-pressure, high-stakes, high-cost session, and I'm able to come up with an idea that usually works pretty well because I'm not in the weeds. I'll—I will dip down into the weeds, but I can go back to 30,000 feet, or you know, soar like a fighter pilot, 10,000 feet, 20,000 feet, 20 to 5—you know, a lot of different levels.
I think—yeah, I think also why I find your services so valuable is a lot of times as copywriters or as business owners, we're stuck inside the frame, and we can't see the whole picture. And by going to somebody who's experienced, who's not as emotionally attached to it, we can get a different perspective that just helps us overcome that last hurdle.
Yeah, I mean, when it—when I go in there—thank you—when I go in there, I'm not thinking about your ego; I'm not thinking too much about my ego; I'm thinking about the customers. Here you go. And—and how they're gonna respond, and I'll—I don't think I visually do this, but I will sort of mock up the avatar in my mind and say, how are they gonna respond to this? What problems are they gonna have with this? And I will suggest adjustments so that those reactions don't occur.
Okay, so let me wrap this up. I think—I think we're at about the end of our show. One thing to realize is not to get too rigid and programmatic about this. The Golden Triangle is not a one-and-done process. It might be, but sometimes what you discover at one point will give you great insights; go back to a different point. So something you discover in the bullets may make you realize, hey, I need more facts, or I need to do research about this thing that I thought was irrelevant before. And honestly, that used to bother me because it made me feel stupid for not seeing it in the first place. And the more creative stuff I do, the more I realize it's not that I'm not stupid; it's that I'm not a fly; I don't have eight thousand eyes in my head. I know—me, you have two—maybe one here, maybe one in the back of my head, but certainly not 8,000. So yeah, sometimes you can go back, and no shame, no foul, no harm in that. I mean, you know, you think about the guys who write for the big financial publishers; they'll spend two months sometimes working on something. What do you think they're doing all that time? Don't say it. No, what are you—seriously, why do you think they're doing—I mean, a lot of it's research and revisiting and rehashing and—
Okay. So as far as the sessions I was talking about, I was talking to a friend who's also an A-list copywriter who does these critiques sometimes, and he said the same thing: It almost always boils down to the first hundred words, which is 80–90 percent of the sales effectiveness. That's the hardest for most people to do, and because it's more than creativity, it's almost like turning your brain into a CAT scan, looking at things; it's Cubism, you know, looking at things from multiple perspectives. And the more practice you have at it, the better you get at it. So it's—so impossible to do—so let me see if I can recap this real quick and add my own two cents and then get your feedback on that. Okay, so step number one, or point number one, is doing your research; figuring out the facts. What are the facts about the product or service that you're offering? What are the facts about the market that you're serving? Once you've got that, then you want to go in, and you want to—
Point number two is: you want to find the benefits that are are going to be compelling to the people that are reading this sales letter. And I think at this point, I am also gonna add that what I'm trying to do is figure out what's the big promise; what's the promise that I'm trying to make? If I can only—if I can only convey one promise to people throughout these benefits, what is that promise going to be? And then, once you have that, that's like having your your sketch pad and your and your your drawing utensils. Once you have that, then you can actually sit there and put pen to paper or stylus to Remarkable, like you mentioned earlier. And and that will—that third point, which is where a lot of people actually start, is a lot easier once you've got the first two points solidly laid out.
Yeah, it's sort of like a lot of people don't want to eat their vegetables before they have dessert, but you know those leafy greens keep you really healthy. So yes, I would agree with you; I like what you added. I think figuring out the promise while you're working on the benefits is good because you don't have to go back and, you know, wreak urate them or or align them more. I think that technically the big promise is as part of the point in the triangle where you come up with your big idea, your headline. And I don't think it's necessary to, you know, follow this pristine model. I mean, this is something I came up with to make it clear; it's a teaching tool. You know, like with Mike Tyson: everybody changes their mind once they get punched in the face or something like that—it gets messy. So yeah, I like what you said a lot. Awesome.
All right, David. Until next time, if the listeners want to check out more episodes of the Copywriters Podcast, they can go to copywriterspodcast.com. And what are we gonna be talking about on the next episode? Next time we're going to talk about the trick of the greased chute.
Mmm, sounds kinky.
Alright man, I'll see you next week.
See you then.