Let's Get Vivid

Andrew Wood introduced me to direct marketing. He's a superb copywriter and a highly successful information marketer. I write copy for his company, Legendary Marketing. He provides me with a copywriting checklist and one of the items: Is the copy vivid?

I've been working to make my copy more vivid. This means stronger headlines with more metaphors, adjectives, and color. One additional technique...getting the senses involved.

"As you pass the grill room at Bogey acres, enjoy the aroma of perfectly cooked steaks."

"When you step to the first tee at Morgan Farms, enjoy the view of the perfectly manicured first fairway. Then enjoy the sight of a perfectly-struck drive bombing down the middle."

High converting copy should follow--somewhat--newspaper writing, especially tabloid newspaper writing. Let's take a look at an article from the New York Post about Courtney Love.

Celebrity train wreck Courtney Love is on fire again.

A curtain in the grunge rocker’s tony West Village townhouse went up in flames early this morning, prompting her to scramble to put it out while suffering a minor burn to her hand, FDNY sources said.

Note it's not "Celebrity Courtney Love" it's "Celebrity train wreck Courtney Love."

It's not her West Village townhouse but it's a 'tony' townhouse.

Now, let's take a look at The Sun from London...an article about a new soccer coach.

Villas-Boas will be fully aware of the need to make major alterations to the squad he inherits from predecessor Carlo Ancelotti, who was axed after failing to win a trophy last season.

It's not just alterations...it's 'major' alterations. Ancelotti wasn't fired, he was 'axed.'

Now, let's visit Dan Kennedy's website. Kennedy gets vivid with the best of them. From his blog titled: I Can Raise the Dead...

You’ve heard that “you can’t raise the dead.” Well, very recently, with a marketing campaign I got response from a dead guy. So I can raise the dead. Amazing. But if you were fortunate enough to be on my group call with the folks in my personal coaching groups, you heard me tell of even more amazing feats – theirs, not mine.

A vivid opening paragraph.

Last week, I wrote a headline for a client in the United Kingdom and it included the phrase:

GIVE YOUR BOSS THE RED CARD

Some soccer imagery there...get a red card from the ref and you're out of the game. The phrase was better than "Escape your day job." We'll see how it converts.

Either way, something I'm learning from the rock star copywriters--vivid writing. I'm building a list of adjectives and metaphors to get my copywriting more vivid.

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I'm a direct response copywriter based in Charlotte, North Carolina. I specialize in providing copy and content for the direct marketing environment--for clients around the world. Enter your info to the right for my free series: Seven Steps to High Converting Copy. Or contact me here for a quote.

Copywriter asks, "why bother?"

So I'm working on direct response copy today and instead of writing, 'we'll send you...' I write: 'we'll RUSH you.'

And I'm looking for a slightly softer word than 'FAST' plus I'm trying to tone down a paragraph and make it more readable, more conversational. And yet 95% of the direct mail I receive is poor and obviously pounded out by someone without a direct response background. Or it's been watered down by lawyers and/or our brothers and sisters in branding.

I should have written the last sentence in the active voice: Lawyers and/or our brothers and sisters in branding have watered down the copy.

So...why bother? Why obsess over finding the perfect word and writing copy in the active voice and spending plenty of time really finding out what's going to motivate the reader to buy or hand over their email address? Why include specific numbers? Why do I write 'discover' instead of 'learn?'

BECAUSE...it's all about MAXIMIZING RESPONSE...we're different in direct marketing. All of us MUST use every technique and obsess over every word and sentence so that we maximize response for clients. Serious direct marketers understand it's all about maximizing response. And it works. A page I wrote is getting more than a 30% opt in for a special report and the client's client is swamped with qualified leads.

Sometimes people ask me, 'why do you like direct response?' Because it's all about the results and the results of the results.

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I'm a direct response copywriter based in Charlotte, North Carolina. I specialize in providing copy and content for the direct marketing environment--for clients around the world. Enter your info to the right for my free series: Seven Steps to High Converting Copy. Or contact me here for a quote.

What is an SEO Copywriter?

SEO Copywriter is a fairly common phrase. And here's a definition I found.

SEO copywriting refers to the knack of being able to create original text (possibly) after referring to existing material in such a manner that it propels your website’s ranking amongst the top 1st rank contenders on a Search Engine. Common factors influencing a good SEO copy are keyword choice, keyword relevancy, keyword density and placement, use of synonyms and knowledge of Latent Semantic Indexing.

Some heavy fuel there!

So an SEO copywriter simply plops keywords into copy or writes copy around the keywords. And there's a TON of SEO copywriting on the web and it shows. It's mostly drivel and while it may help with SEO, there's no excuse for copywriting this poor...this from a lead generation website in Delhi.

SEO is constantly evolving and it is necessary to determine the goals, target users, and competitiveness of a particular website before charting out a customized SEO plan accordingly. Internet-Marketing-Services-India believes that SEO is much more than getting the #1 position in Google search results.

Really? Then why is your copy so poor? Where's the response mechanism?

A direct response copywriter incorporates keywords AND writes copy that compels the reader to take the next step in the sales process. One of my clients handles millions of dollars in PPC spend and gets superb SEO results for their clients. But that's only half the battle. The copy has to convert readers into buyers and so their copywriting model is direct response. And it works.

So while an SEO copywriter might be able to help with SEO, it's all waste of time if the copy fails to deliver a lead or a customer. If you can get those high rankings AND generate leads and revenue--why would not want that?

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I'm a direct response copywriter based in Charlotte, North Carolina. I specialize in providing copy and content for the direct marketing environment--for clients around the world. Enter your info to the right for my free series: Seven Steps to High Converting Copy. Or contact me here.

'Branding Man' hails direct response marketing

Here's a peach of a video from David Ogilvy on YouTube. One of the heroes of image advertising, or 'general' advertising, as he calls it, hails all of us in direct response!

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I'm a direct response copywriter based in Charlotte, North Carolina. I specialize in providing copy and content for the direct marketing environment--for clients around the world. Enter your info to the right for my free series: Seven Steps to High Converting Copy. Or contact me here.