Copywriting 101 | The Basics Of Writing Good Copy
Whether you’ve just started learning copywriting basics for the first time…
Or maybe you’ve been doing it so long that you’ve started to lose the forest for the trees…
This is going to be a great lesson for both newbies and veteran copywriters alike.
Even the best of the best can find themselves tangled up in all the tricks and tactics, and lose sight of the bigger picture.
So, don’t fret!
No matter you’re level of experience with the principles of copywriting, I am here to help you get back on track!
I also have written an in-depth guide on this topic, called Take Their Money, that covers everything I’m about to share with you and more!
Click here now if you would like to pick up a copy of Take Their Money and start reading immediately.
Now, let’s dive into the principles of copywriting to better understand how you can write words that make you rich.
Copywriting is Salesmanship in Print. To Sell, You Must Know Who You Are Selling To.
The Golden Rule of copywriting: Always be thinking “What’s in it for the customer?”
I see people all the time make the mistake of forgetting who they are talking to.
You can write all about special features and benefits, and make fancy lists with tons of bullets, and use words like “exciting” and “new”…
But you cannot forget to tie it back to who you’re talking to.
To write great copy you must always think about your audience and what’s in it for them.
Remember, we’re talking to people here.
So… let’s think about what people want…
Everyone wants eternal happiness and to be free of all fears. Start there.
What makes people happy? And what frees them from their fears and frustrations?
These things are not complicated. They are universal. Basic.
People don’t want to be broke.
People don’t want to be ugly.
People don’t want to be outcasts.
People want to be accepted and feel loved and feel important. It’s really just that simple.
At its very core, the copywriting process is an emotional process.
And I’ve narrowed down the emotions to what I call The Big 4 Emotions.
They are:
- New
- Easy
- Safe
- Big
If you’re selling anything, these are vital for you to know.
And I cover all of them in much greater depth in my copywriting book, Take Their Money.
I don’t care if you’re selling a house, selling a mortgage, if you’re selling a newsletter, if you’re selling a car…
Making use of the Big 4 Emotions will improve your copy exponentially and increase your results.
Good copy succeeds not because it creates new desires…
But because it plays off of the emotions that are already present and focuses them on to the product.
Let’s start by going over each of the Big 4 Emotions.
Copywriting Basics – New is the single most important aspect of your product.
New. What does new mean?
New simply means that what you are offering is original–it’s unique.
And New is important because it presents your audience with hope.
If your product is the first of its kind, then it means you are offering an an opportunity for a result that has not been available before.
For instance, let’s say my product is a basketball instructional course and I’m offering to teach you how to shoot the perfect free throw.
You’ve been trying and trying to learn how to shoot free throws, but the courses you’ve taken in the past always seem to fail you.
What if I just tell you I have a free throw shooting course?
Presenting my services in this manner isn’t going to inspire hope if you’ve already tried countless courses for the same thing and they failed.
However, if I present to you a new “proprietary” system…
That’s just been released for the first time ever…
That will teach you the “secrets” to mastering the art of the free throw in just four hours…
Maybe I’ve inspired some hope.
Maybe this is the solution you’ve been waiting for.
And you need to know that there’s something new about every product.
Part of your job as a copywriter is to determine what aspects of your product are unique, and highlight those to your customer.
There are many courses that offer to teach you how to shoot free throws…
But mine is the first to offer to teach you the perfect free throw in record time!
“New” is the single most important aspect of your product.
And what if your product is not just unique? What is if is unique to only you?
Supercharging the Big 4 Emotions – The Alter Egos
Each of the Big 4–New, Easy, Safe, and Big–is a very basic emotion that will make you money when you understand how to trigger these emotions with your copy.
But you can also learn to take these emotions to the next level.
Each of the Big 4 can be boosted so that you can supercharge their usefulness.
I call this their Alter Ego.
For New, its Alter Ego is Only.
New’s Alter Ego is Only
If your product is new, that’s great…
But if the product is available only through you, then even better!
So when I say I have brand new patented proprietary technology, that just means the product is brand new.
So on top of the hope of a new result, I must make the customer aware that the offer is only available through me.
This doubles down on the fact that they’ve probably never tried this solution before.
Now my customer has additional hope, because they’ve never tried this new solution and I am offering the only opportunity to do so.
In this example we have supercharged New with its Alter Ego: Only.
Again, I cover how to use all four of these emotions, and their alter egos, in my book Take Their Money.
Now that your product is New, it should also be Easy.
Principles of Copywriting – Nobody wants to work. Your customers are no different.
Everyone wants the easiest solution to any problem.
No one wants to hear that they are going to have to work hard at becoming a great copywriter.
They want to hear that it will be simple and that it will just eventually come to them with minimal investment or effort…
And that’s what Easy is.
When communicating to your customers it can be as simple as telling them that what you offer is easy.
Like I tell you above, copywriting is as easy as keeping the Big 4 Emotions at the forefront of your mind when you are pitching your product.
“Wow, I just have to learn four things and I can can master copywriting!”
Boom. Now you are getting rich the Easy way!
Like the New emotion, Easy has an Alter Ego: Anybody.
Easy’s Alter Ego is Anybody
Not only should the solution that you are offering require minimal effort, but you must communicate that anybody can use it.
And by anybody, I mean that you should demonstrate that even the lowest, most decrepit moron that exists on the planet can achieve success with your product.
If someone with no motivation, drive, or accountability for themselves can get results, then anybody can.
Understand that the average person is insecure and will fear that they won’t be able to use your product or service with success.
And that’s why you need to address how easy it is for them to do it.
People hate failing.
Recall the free throw shooting example from New?
Most people who have tried something before and failed will be insecure about their ability to achieve success.
“I’ve never been able to improve my ability to shoot free throws.”
“This program won’t work for me.”
“I’ve tried every basketball program on the market.”
You have to anticipate this push back and ease their minds.
“There’s a guy with one am who used this program and learned to shoot like the pros. So anybody can do it. If a guy with one arm can shoot perfect free throws, then you can do it, too.”
Show your customers that the least qualified people can do it and accomplish it…
And that’ll give them the self esteem to try your product.
Easy as pie, right? What about Safe?
Your customers do not want to fail. They do not want the risk of disappointment.
Even if your audience is convinced that you present them with a New and Easy offer, you will lose them if there is a risk for failure.
This is what makes Safe the second most important of the Big 4 Emotions.
Safety comes with a very powerful psychological effect of loss aversion.
People cannot stomach disappointment so they will opt out of the riskier route.
Multiple scientific studies have shown that people would rather pay a premium for a guaranteed result, than take a riskier shot at a much higher payout.
A 2008 Psychological Science study on risk aversion found that people would pay more for a gift certificate valued at $50 than they would for a 50/50 chance at a gift certificate valued at either $50 or $100.
Take a moment to think about that.
The study concluded that people would rather have the guaranteed money than take a risk, even if it meant leaving a greater reward on the table.
For the average person, the guaranteed $50 is seen as more valuable than taking any risk.
This is a single example, but people have been proven over and over and over and over that they will attempt to avoid a perceived loss no matter the cost.
Even if it means taking a smaller reward or smaller payout, people will do whatever eliminates the most amount of risk.
They will take the Safe way out.
With your copy you should seek to prove that your product is not just safe, but that it’s a sure thing.
The closer you can get you 100 percent certainty, the more you’re likely guaranteed a sale.
But if you cannot get to 100 percent, you can just discredit the closest alternative to a point where it’s less safe than yours.
Let’s say that whatever you’re selling is 94 percent effective and the alternative is only 90 percent effective, the difference is night and day to your customer.
“My free throw shooting program has helped 94 out of 100 students shoot live the pros and the other program has only helped 85.”
You want your customers to feel as certain as possible of the outcome you are offering.
Safe’s Alter Ego is Predictability.
You should highlight a pattern in the past and establish a recurring theme, something that keeps happening again and again throughout history.
You want to show that when “X” happens, “Y” happens with a high degree of certainty.
For instance, we show that when this particular event occurs in the stock market, we can expect these particular stocks to explode in value.
You want to establish a very clear and predictable pattern.
So far we’ve learned that people want something brand New that offers them hope, something brand new that they haven’t seen before.
They want an Easy button, something anyone can do to achieve the results they want.
They want something Safe so that they can avoid disappointment and failure.
And they want a minimal risk of suffering a loss, even if they have to opt into a smaller reward.
Finally, you want your copy to be BIG.
Big copy is copy about claims that really move the needle in your customer’s life.
If your customer’s needle sits at neutral then they are going to be much less motivated to buy.
If you want your audience to stop and listen to your sales pitch, you need to give the notion that your product will make a significant impact towards achieving their goals.
I don’t care that you can move my profitability from a 10 percent to 11 percent.
That one percent isn’t worth the time investment and it’s not worth the risk.
That one percent does not move the needle for me.
The thing about Big is that it can be hard to define, because it’s relative to the results your are trying to achieve.
What’s Big in one scenario may not move the needle at all in another scenario.
But that’s okay, because when you package the other three emotions together–New, Easy and Safe–your sales pitch automatically becomes Big.
If your product is the newest thing, and the easiest thing, and safest thing, that fact alone becomes a needle mover in itself.
The copywriting principle of Big has an alter ego as well…
Big’s Alter Ego is Fast.
You can make 10,000 percent more money.
Ten thousand percent strength gains.
You can look 10,000 percent younger.
The only thing better than Big results is for them to happen overnight.
The faster results happen, the more impactful.
Your audience will pay a lot more attention if they can see that your product is a big needle mover and results are going to happen quickly.
If you couple Big with Fast your argument will be so much more powerful.
Let’s review the alter egos:
- New and Only
- Easy and Anybody
- Safe and Predictable
- Big and Fast
The Big 4 Emotions are the copywriting basics.
If you can triggers these four emotions you can have the attention of anyone.
If you’ll pay close attention to sales pitches that don’t move your needle you will notice that they are not triggering these emotions.
All other sales triggers are spinoffs of the Big 4.
Sales tactics are based on emotions, but great copywriters understand that emotions are fluid.
Great copy is about much more than just the words you say. What matters is what you communicate to your audience.
That’s why there is no single, perfect template to teach you exactly what to write and how to write.
What matters is that you communicate directly to these 4 human emotions.
Don’t try to get too cute, don’t overthink it.
Just remember to tell people your product is New, Easy, Safe, and Big.
Stick to the copywriting basics.
Then you can justify your argument with logic once you have your customer’s emotional buy-in.
If you don’t have the emotional investment of your audience first, then you’ve already lost.
A Bonus Copywriting Tip: Don’t read about copy. Read copy.
Once you’ve read a handful of copywriting books you’ll notice the material starts to become repetitive.
This is why I say don’t read about copy, as much as you read copy.
This is a tip I received from Joe Schriefer, a Publisher at Agora financial.
He says to do three things:
- Read a promo a day
- Write a page of copy a day
- Come up with an idea a day
Personally, my advice to copywriters–new and old–is to read a piece of copy a day and really dissect it.
I do not believe in sitting and pontificating about copywriting theory.
Instead, I show you actual copy that makes millions of dollars.
Instead of beating you over the head with theories and hypotheses…
I’m showing you exactly what was written, what it communicated, and why it works.
That’s why my new book is the first and only book of its kind…
Because it doesn’t treat copy as a “how to.”
There are no “paint by numbers” be-all end-all guides to writing copy.
We’re not putting together a tent or a piece of furniture.
We are communicating with a professional language and the language is not communicated with the words.
The words do not matter. What matters for copywriters is what’s communicated through the subtext.
Copywriting is a language that is communicated purely through subtext.
The words you choose do not matter.
To understand that language, to understand how to communicate through subtext, start by just reading a piece of copy a day.
Immerse yourself in the language…
And learn how to actively ready copy and dissect it until it becomes second nature to you.
Then, come up with one idea per day.
This idea doesn’t have to be a game changer.
Just try to come up with something new or something a little different.
Anything is better than nothing at all.
What you’ll find is that you’ll often come up with more than one idea and sometimes you’ll hit on something great.
Lastly, if you don’t know where to find million dollar sales copy, I offer you my swipe file totally FREE.
At the above link you get access to all the PDFs I’ve ever broken down on YouTube.
If you’re interested in writing copy that makes you rich, check out the rest of my content.
I highly recommend it.