Direct Response Copywriter on Clayton Makepeace. Additional Thoughts.

My blog about Clayton Makepeace led to a significant “spike” in my traffic and so I’d like to add some additional thoughts for those interested. Hopefully, these additional musings will help your direct marketing and direct response copywriting.

As I mentioned, I purchased Clayton’s “Quick Start” copywriting system. I refer to it so often that some of the pages are falling out. I don’t remember ever seeing the “b” word.

BRANDING.

It’s clear that Clayton never thought about branding. He was a pedal-to-the-metal direct marketer. However, through his copy, he helped to build some massive brands: Boardroom and Weiss. There's a valuable lesson right there.

I mentioned it’s difficult to find the Quick Start program. I lied. AWAI currently offers it for $1295. The sales page is below. Total disclosure: I’m not getting an affiliate commission.

https://www.awai.com/p/is/qsc/

Strangely, the copy isn’t that good. Take my word for it as a working direct response copywriter: spend the money.

One of the freebies is a conversation with my good friend, and elite-level copywriter, Brad Petersen. There’s only one freebie that’s rubbish. I won’t go there here.

When Clayton interviewed Gary Bencivenga on his blog, they didn’t talk about branding once. They discussed generating revenue and how to make that happen.

Clayton had an interesting approach to writing headlines. Here’s a Clayton headline block.

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FORBIDDEN CURES!

Confidential Report Inside

Remarkable Cures CENSORED By Knife-Happy Surgeons and Greedy Drug Companies!

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And here’s a subhead I love …

ALSO INSIDE: 129 Amazing Medical Secrets Your Doctor Won’t Tell You!

His headline deck had a one or two word headline with a longer subhead.

Compare and contrast to a Dan Kennedy headline which can be really long.

But there’s a commonality. Both copywriters follow the John Caples headline formula:

Curiosity + Self-Interest = Compelling Appeal

What do I like the most about Clayton’s copy? Clarity. It’s something I strive to achieve. You can read Clayton’s copy and instantly understand what’s going on. It’s not easy. That clarity is one of the hallmarks of an "elite level" direct response copywriter.

Every single part of the copy was vital to Clayton. The headline was vital but the guarantee was vital, too. I pity the copy cub who provided Clayton with a guarantee like: SATISFACTION GUARANTEED OR YOUR MONEY BACK.

A Clayton Makepeace guarantee was almost an essay.

The same with freemiums. “Put big effort into selling the freemiums,” said Clayton.

I’ve worked very hard over the years to become a super-fast copywriter. I used to say, “there’s only one copywriter who is faster than me and that’s Clayton Makepeace.” Your direct response copywriter should produce revenue-generating copy quickly. The faster the copywriter gets the copy to you, provided it's solid, the faster you're making money.

Clayton said “I’m not the most expensive copywriter but I’m the fastest.” It’s hard to imagine that anyone would charge more than Clayton. That took some cheek.

Let me give you the link to Clayton’s blog one more time.

http://www.makepeacetotalpackage.com/archives/gary-bencivenga-with-clayton-makepeace-part-1/

My condolences to family and close friends.

Direct Response Copywriter on the Legacy of Clayton Makepeace

A big name in the copywriting world left us last week, Clayton Makepeace. He was the #1 working direct response copywriter for many years. I know he wrote for Boardroom and established some controls there, always a sure sign of ability. He also wrote a ton of copy for Weiss Research.

For many years, Makepeace had his own shop, complete with copy cubs. He must have had many clients over the years. I believe Makepeace was in movies, or TV, or something in Hollywood before getting into copywriting. He was a producer or director, or maybe both.

I met Clayton several times at the AWAI Bootcamp in Delray Beach. He was always the star of the show, hands down. He held court at the bar in the hotel where the event takes place. His presentation on the final day was always the best and I actually got some valuable direction: not always the case from the bootcamp presentations. I also met him at the Titans Mastermind one time in Miami. We didn’t get a chance to chat very much.

What was Clayton like in person? I only met him briefly, ultimately, and he was pleasant, affable, gentlemanly, and gregarious. He enjoyed life, touring the country on a Harley, etc.

Here’s what every direct response copywriter and direct marketeer should take here, in no particular order.

First, Clayton was one of the good guys, white hat all the way. He certainly put the truth in the best possible light but he was NOT in the camp of copywriters who will just make things up. Clayton did his homework. He found the truth. He told the truth. His research was really deep.

I invested (and it’s a lot of money) in Clayton's Quick Start Copywriting System. It’s two manuals and it set me back over $1,000. But it’s worth every penny. Interestingly, and in opposition to the AWAI pitch, the introduction includes these words:

“Before you take the copywriting world by storm, there’s something you should know …

Pursuing a copywriting career is NOT a get-rich-quick-scheme.”

There are lots of copywriters who are simply famous for being famous. In fact, here’s something Clayton wrote on his blog …

“Right now, the Internet is crawling with charlatans claiming to be the greatest copywriter alive – and then urging you to pay them a fortune for their books and courses. Many are complete frauds – scam artists who have never had a single hot control for a major mailer – looking to make a quick buck off of you.”

That was in 2008. Things haven’t changed that much.

You’ll hear the word “legendary” bandied about. These “legendary” copywriters had a couple of successful promotions 20 years ago, got on the speaking circuit, and now hawk their overpriced products and services.

Clayton Makepeace was actually the real deal. He had a lot of talent AND he really worked to learn as much as he could. Clayton knew direct response copywriting and he knew direct marketing. I’d like to meet someone with a deeper technical knowledge. And it was all based on what worked. A big goal of mine is to develop that level of direct marketing technical know-how. Clayton really studied … and it showed.

I don’t think Clayton ever wrote a book, which is a pity. There’s the Quick Start Copywriting System. But you’ll find a deep well of information on his blog. It’s here.

Clayton’s blog is free and it’s essentially one of the best books ever written about direct marketing.

AWAI has a really great course featuring Clayton detailing how to write a VSL. It’s gold. It’s called “The Makepeace Method for Making a Fortune Writing Video Sales Letters.” Invest in that if you want to write high-converting VSLs.

Maybe there are some other resources I don’t know about.

We really lost a giant in the direct response copywriting world this past week. If you’re a direct response copywriter or you’re in direct marketing, learn as much as you can from Clayton and ignore the 'charlatans' he wrote about on his blog.

Direct Response Copywriter on Writing Copy Quickly

"Speed is a strategy," says one of my mentors in direct response copywriting, Andrew Wood. The concept also comes from one of the world’s most accomplished copywriters, Clayton Makepeace.

Andrew and Clayton write copy quickly. I strive to write copy quickly and I might be faster than the aforementioned. In a copywriting race, it would be close.

Some copywriters like to write between three and five major direct mail promotions a year. These might be upwards of 50 pages. It will take a month to research the project. A month to provide a draft. A month to go through revisions. A month to work on the design with the graphic designer. Then a couple of weeks for final changes.

I’m not one of those copywriters, unless I find a client who is paying me a decent sum up front for that promotion … with the probability of royalties on the back end. This can happen.

However, most of my clients typically want to move much faster. The faster they get their products and services to market, the faster they generate cash. They’re not looking for copywriting perfection. They want copy that will create a positive response and they want it quickly.

One of my clients will contact me on Wednesday. They will need about 4,000 words of copy for a product by the following Monday. I’ll get them the copy and the promotion will be up and running in 10 days. That’s called SPEED. It’s easier to move faster on the web. But you can be almost as fast with direct mail.

Some companies like to take their time and take months before sending copy live, either online or offline. Others like to move extremely quickly. I’m happy working in either environment.

I’ve always written quickly. Back in high school, and even earlier, I was always under some degree of pressure to write a lot in a short space of time. This happened every day with homework. Then it happened during exams where I’d have three hours to write four long essays. I also wrote for the school newspaper, regularly writing long pieces in a couple of hours. Earlier in my career, I’d produce a 100-page quarterly magazine without any freelancers. I’d write the ads and write all the articles plus sell advertising and manage the entire publishing cycle.

Speed is great for my clients. I can turn work around quickly so they generate revenue faster. But it’s also good for the writer because it means more opportunities.

Where can you speed things up when it comes to marketing? Speed is a mindset. I eat slowly. I usually ski relatively slowly and in control. But I can produce copy quickly. I've worked to become a fast professional copywriter.

Direct Response Copywriter on a Part of Writing Copy That's Rarely Discussed

As a direct response copywriter, how are you going to learn to write direct response copy?

You can read all the books about writing copy.

You can buy and study some manuals. The Clayton Makepeace manual is superb, if you can find it.

You can mentor under more experienced copywriters. You can get paid as an apprentice or you can pay for training. I recommend the former.

You can watch videos to learn to write copy. I have some here.

You can work for an agency or marketing department and learn from the other copywriters.

You can attend a copywriting training seminar just about every week of the year. There’s even one in Poland coming up. I could go. The whole trip would cost me a mere $5,000.

All good (except Poland).

I have used all of the above to learn to write copy and to improve my direct response copywriting skills.

But there’s one thing that’s seriously missing in all this training. LIFE.

I was at an event a few years ago and met an extremely accomplished yet totally non-famous copywriter. He actually mentored under Gary Bencivenga. How many copywriters can say that? Not many. How I wish …

We started talking in the area outside the large ballroom. What’s that area called, by the way? I have no idea. Mezzanine? Room with ugly carpet?

Anyway, the copywriter told me a couple of things that were especially interesting.

First, he sold encyclopedias door-to-door as a teenager IN ORDER TO SUPPORT HIS FAMILY. No pressure there.

Second, he would often just sit in a coffee shop, look at the people, and imagine what they’re going through.

I lived in London as a teenager. I didn’t have a car and so I rode the tube all the time. I would sometimes look around the carriage and start to imagine who I was looking at and what their lives were like.

I would make up names and every part of their life.

Right now, as I write, I’m in a coffee shop. I'm looking around.

There’s a big man sitting in the corner. He’s about 45 but looks older and needs to lose around 70 pounds. I imagine he manages the water system for the local government but he loves Chess and is playing a game with someone in Borneo on his laptop.

Next there’s a bald guy, fit and trim, looking at his tablet. How old is he? He’s around 40. I imagine he’s about to inherit around $250 million from his great uncle, who owns a chunk of a Fortune 500 company. To this point in his life, he’s been struggling to make ends meet as an electrician. Now he’s thinking about where he’s going to travel and the house(s) he’s going to build.

There’s a family of five at the next table with three children aged 10, 8, and 8 months. They’re hammering some donuts. What’s the father thinking about? I imagine he works for a big company in the accounting department. He works hard for his family but he just got by-passed for a promotion because they gave the job he wanted to a person with an MBA. He's happy when he's with his family but now he's wondering about his career.

In the next corner, there’s a young woman on her laptop. She’s on Facebook (wild guess, I know) and thinking about a trip to Australia and New Zealand. She’s also chatting with some friends who might make the trip. Or maybe she’s a medical student starting to figure out what she’s going to specialize in.

And what about the five employees working behind the counter?

I don’t know their names. I don’t really know anything about them, other than their place of employment. Why are they here? It’s hard work with strange hours. Almost all the punters are pleasant, I’m sure, but what about that 1% who are jerks? I'd tell the person who is ordering their coffee while on their cellphone to go to the back of the queue.

Are the baristas here for the pay? The health insurance? The tuition reimbursement program? The stock options? The free shift beverages?

I can only imagine.

I will NEVER be correct when I imagine what people are going through and what they’re thinking. How can I ever get this right? It’s an exercise.

But I know, with total certainty, all these people have the following …

Dreams, goals, and aspirations. Feelings. Skepticism. Days of confusion and days of clarity. The ability to love.

I would add A LOT OF TATTOOS but that’s probably going a bit far.

There are lots of copywriting courses and events making a lot of crazy promises … like … be a world-class copywriter in 6 months.

It’s not hugely difficult to learn the craft of direct response copywriting. The techniques and so on. Headlines … bullets … writing a guarantee. That’s not impossible for a decent writer.

But here’s the difference between the copywriter who generates $50,000 from a promotion and the one who generates $500,000 … THEY UNDERSTAND PEOPLE.

Claude Hopkins touched on this in his book My Life in Advertising. He said that young graduates from expensive universities rarely make good copywriters. But it’s the hustling, street-smart person who writes direct response copy that converts.

That was in the 1920s but it’s the same today.

I’m fortunate in that I was very well-educated but I was never part of the “ivory tower” club.

I’ve been writing copy for over 30 years now but I’ve had a wide variety of jobs before I wrote copy and concurrent with copywriting. Here are just a few …

Application screener in HR department. Quality control specialist in an ice cream factory in West London. Filing clerk. Publishing salesperson. Magazine publisher. Ski instructor. Waiter. PR hack. Reporter. Soccer coach. Published author.

The result?

I understand people and what motivates them.

People who are brand new to direct response copywriting? They don’t have this. They can write some clever branding ads but they can’t write direct response copy that generates results because they just don’t fully understand people like I do … like that copywriter I mentioned earlier.

There’s no training course for this part of being a direct response copywriter. It’s something that happens over time but it’s a skill, if that’s what it’s called, that can be fostered.

For example, use that exercise above.

Here’s something interesting. With all those jobs I’ve had and all the varied experiences, and especially all that selling, you might call me a hustler.

In fact, I was at a meeting of the mastermind group I was in and there was a famous copywriter there. He said, after hearing about my work, “oh … you’re a hustler.” I'm not sure precisely what he meant, derogatory or otherwise, but I’ll take it as a compliment.

I’m a hustler. So I understand how human beings work. It’s one reason I’m a successful direct response copywriter.

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And by the way, I didn’t spend $5,000 to attend that seminar in Poland. Why? Two reasons. One … the copy was rubbish. Why should I attend a copywriting training seminar when the copy selling the event is F-grade twaddle? Two … the copy mentioned a speaker who speaks at just about every event I've seen advertised by saying “he rarely speaks so now is your chance.” Or something like that. Lies.

Plus think of the opportunity cost of $5,000 … that’s a lot of bananas.

Direct Response Copywriter on Why Long Copy Beats Short Copy

EVERYONE in direct marketing knows the following …

THE MORE YOU TELL … THE MORE YOU SELL …

And …

Long copy, provided it’s thoroughly salient and written by a professional direct response copywriter, ALWAYS outperforms short copy. We base the above on decades of actual sales data. In the world of branding advertising, copywriters believe that a couple of photos with a few words of copy will create a flood of new customers. They’re wrong. We know that longer copy will always outperform short copy.

Let me explain why …

• When a prospect is reading copy and they’re genuinely interested in the product or service, they’re often looking for that one benefit or feature they really, really want. Long copy gives me the opportunity to include EVERYTHING … including that one sentence that will motivate the reader to buy. • For each promotion, I like to try to include 40 proof elements. Longer copy provides room for as many proof elements as possible. • When a prospect sees long copy, they subconsciously think, “there must be something to this.” But when they see short copy, they quickly move to the next product or service. • For each promotion, here’s how readership works.

o One third will glance at the copy and make a decision. o One third will look at the headline, the subheads, the photos, the captions, and some of the body copy … then buy. o One third will read every word three times … then buy.

• So … with long copy, you gain sales from all three types of reader. With short copy, you lose the 2/3rds of prospects who are looking for more information. • When someone is genuinely interested in the product or service, you cannot provide them with enough information. It’s especially true when the product or service is expensive. With short copy, the reader will soon leave your message and start to find information elsewhere. Who knows what they will find. There could be a lot of negative reviews on nefarious websites. But with long form copy, it’s much, much easier to control the message and keep the prospect from wandering off. • If you’re competing against another company and you have more information than your competitors, you’re ALWAYS going to win. • Long form copy gives you the ability to charge higher prices more often and get out of the “race to the bottom” price battle. It’s because long-form copy means you can justify the higher price for the superior product you’re offering. • You can overcome objections and this instantly means you will generate more revenue. • I can overcome skepticism in long-form copy. I can’t in short copy.

People who believe copy is too long forget two things.

• People still read … a lot … when they’re genuinely interested in something. • The only metric that really counts … revenue … shows that long-form copy generates more MONEY than short-form copy.

The most successful companies in direct response use long-form copy. It’s a huge part of their success.

Famous copywriter Gary Bencivenga sells a series of DVDs from his retirement seminar. The cost? $5,000. The length of the copy? 30,000 words. When Boardroom sold subscriptions to a newsletter for $39 a year, the copy was 36 pages long.

When I sell a golf training aid that costs around $50, I write at least 4,000 words of copy and the copy generates tens of thousands of dollars … out of thin air. The tactic that always worked the best was … long-form copy written by an experienced direct response copywriter.

How Long is Long Enough?

Famous copywriter Clayton Makepeace says, “the copy needs to be long enough to sell the product.”

In some cases, short copy can get the job done. But in most cases, long copy is going to smash short copy when it comes to actual money generated, short-term and long-term.

In a perfect world, you can test enough to the point where you can determine the perfect length to sell what you’re trying to sell. In almost all cases, the copy that will give you the most revenue will be longer.

When There Isn’t Much Space

There’s only so much I can write in a 2-page letter. There’s only so much I can write on a post card. There’s only so much I can write on a Facebook ad.

So there are plenty of times when I have to write short copy. The fundamentals of direct response copywriting apply. It’s actually more difficult to write short copy because I have to choose what to leave out. In longer copy on a web page, which has no length limit, I can include everything I believe is relevant … everything that will motivate the prospect to try your product or service.

I’ve had plenty of success with shorter copy but when I can write a ton, I’m always the happiest. Why? Because my client is on the road to being very wealthy.