Direct Response Copywriter on The Truth About Marketing

I just finished going through the edits for one of my books. It’s my 17th and it’s about marketing, specifically direct marketing and the power of direct response copywriting.

The book will help all business people understand direct response copywriting and the work of a direct response copywriter. Everyone should understand what a direct response copywriter does, and can do, for a business.

In that book and, indeed, in many of my blogs, I HAMMER away at branding advertising and the people who say stupid things like “brand equity” and “brand engagement” and “re-branding” and "brand authority." I pound away mercilessly at branding agencies and their ilk.

Quite frankly, I love it. I’m not the only one who thinks this way. I’m not comparing myself to David Ogilvy, Gary Bencivenga, Dan Kennedy, Claude Hopkins, and John Caples, but they ALL say precisely the same thing about branding and creativity. They are all on the direct marketing side.

I’m not writing to please the merchants of branding. They aren’t my clients, unless they all decide to cross the chasm. I don’t care what they think. I care about the business owners who NEED direct marketing. I care about the CEO of a company who has been duped by an overpaid CMO into thinking that branding is what it’s all about. I care about the people who are directly impacted by the raw malpractice of so many CMOs who have never even heard of books like Tested Advertising Methods and Scientific Advertising. These CMOs win prizes and they take home bonuses and big paychecks but they rarely know anything about selling, which is what marketing is all about.

You won’t get apologies from me when I point out the malfeasance. I’m a direct response copywriter. You’ll be over there winning prizes. I’ll be over here driving revenue.

Direct Response Copywriter on Masterclass, Vandalism, Goodby, and Silverstein.

I was on Facebook the other day and I saw an ad for Masterclass.

In case you don’t know, Masterclass is an info-marketing company. The products usually feature someone extremely famous who talks about what they do. For example, there’s a series with Robert De Niro talking about acting. Famous chefs talk about food. Famous directors talk about, you guessed it, directing.

I spoke with the people at Masterclass a couple of years ago because they were looking for a copywriter. It turns out they know very little about direct marketing, surprisingly, and I communicated with someone who had an MBA from a top business school and she was all about “brand authority” and “brand voice” and other nonsense. What does an MBA get you when it comes to real marketing? Not much.

When I look at the Masterclass sales pages, they are shockingly terrible. They could be making SO MUCH MORE MONEY if they had a direct response copywriter and direct marketers on their team. Oh well.

Maybe they’re testing like crazy and long-form copy doesn’t work. I doubt that. There are direct marketing rookie mistakes all over the place like setting white type on a black background. Masterclass provides a textbook example of a company that’s thinking “branding” while they should be thinking “direct marketing.” Mind you, every company should be thinking "direct marketing" all the time.

I’ve written copy for many of the world’s top info-marketers. The Masterclass sales page is awful. It looks good, I suppose. But they could be making so much more cash. My clients in the info-marketing space are typically brilliant when it comes to direct marketing. Put some direct marketers in charge of Masterclass and the results would be sensational.

But I digress.

The ad I saw was for a series of videos with Goodby, Silverstein, and Partners, the San Francisco-based branding agency. The video includes Rich Silverstein and Jeff Goodby, the founders.

The agency has won a ton of awards and is perhaps most famous for the “Got Milk?” campaign.

In the promo, Jeff Goodby says, with great emphasis …

“Advertising is like vandalism. It’s loud. It’s in your face. And it’s still there the next day.”

Interesting.

I’m a big fan of advertising, specifically direct marketing. I’m not a big fan of vandalism. Someone vandalized my car last summer and it cost me $1,000. Great!

Jeff Goodby totally misses the point here. The goal of advertising is to sell products and services. Does that mean vandalism? Totally not.

I’m not thinking about vandalism when I’m writing copy. What am I thinking about?

Helping my clients be wildly successful. What the potential customer really wants. Finding which benefits of the product/service will appeal to those potential clients. The perfect execution of proven direct response copywriting techniques. Massive testing. Measuring everything to the penny. And more ...

Proof? David Ogilvy, John Caples, Gary Bencivenga, and Claude Hopkins would all agree.

In fact, here's what Gary Bencivenga writes in his Bencivenga Bullets.

"First, I believe the purpose of advertising is to sell, not win awards or applause."

If you want to argue with the copywriter the world's greatest direct marketers were lining up to hire, have at it.

And, of course, I must provide a link here to one of the greatest marketing videos ever produced: David Ogilvy, WE SELL OR ELSE. Click here now.

Advertising is not about awards. It’s not about the advertising hall of fame. It’s not about branding and cute milk moustache ads. It’s certainly not about vandalism. It’s about generating revenue, ethically, for my clients and helping them reach their business and personal goals.

Direct Response Copywriter on The Art and Science of Writing Headlines

It's no great news that headlines are important in direct response copy. Alert the media. This just in.

The headline is what I like to call “the ad for the ad.” The headline says to the reader: “you need to read what’s below and here’s why.”

An advertising man named Howard Gossage said, and I agree: "People don't read ads. They read what interests them and sometimes that's an ad."

In some instances there’s no need for the headline to be all that interesting. Here’s an example:

Buy two bananas and get one free.

However, when the product and offer are more complex, the ad must start by providing interesting information.

The key word is interest. I like to use the John Caples headline formula, also championed by Gary Bencivenga.

Interest = Benefit plus Curiosity.

I like to choose the benefit very carefully plus add some specificity. Here’s an example …

Discover How Johnny Riggs Gained an Extra 27 Yards Off the Tee WITHOUT Spending Endless Hours in the Gym.

That’s a golf example and I’ve written successful headlines in other verticals.

You can see examples of really great and really bad headlines in newspapers and on all sorts of websites.

What’s the biggest mistake I see in headline writing?

That’s easy: giving too much away in the headline.

Here’s an example:

The Queen's reluctant farewell: Monarch expresses regret as she confirms Prince Harry and Meghan departure.

I know what the article is going to say. Why should I read that article?

Now here’s another headline, from the same newspaper.

The five secret corners of Provence you must visit.

That’s a much more inviting headline.

Should headlines be long or short? I know one superb direct response copywriter who writes a headline that’s 2-3 words followed by a hybrid subhead/headline that’s about 30 words. I know another copywriter who writes longer headlines that take about 5 seconds to read.

The headline for a sales page is obviously important. But all those display ads we see online are also headlines. Everyone is writing headlines and all those people who are writing display ads MUST understand how to write headlines.

I have a series of headline templates based on the John Caples formula. I could write a book about writing headlines. There are some excellent books about headlines. I recommend you read all of them.

The next time you’re looking at ads or looking at a newspaper website, look closely at the headlines. See if the headline really pulled you into the ad or the article.

In a perfect world, my client has huge traffic and I can test headlines. But I'm always going to use the John Caples formula.

Direct Response Copywriter on the Important Difference Between Persuasion and Motivation.

I bought and read a book recently titled “The Art of Persuasion.” How could I, as a direct response copywriter, NOT buy a book with that title? The author, Trish Hall, is a writer and editor and used to edit the Op-Ed pages at The New York Times. A big position in the world of American journalism.

You can see the full review of the book here.

I didn’t have high hopes for the book for two reasons.

First, people who edit Op-Ed pages have zero accountability. Ditto the people who anonymously write the editorials. More on this later.

Second, there’s a significant but subtle difference between persuasion and motivation. Persuasion is trying to get someone to change their mind. It’s trying to turn a liberal into a conservative and vice versa. It’s really, really hard. Persuasion is going up to someone in the Sahara and saying, “how about a really nice sun lamp?”

Motivation is different. It’s going up to that same person in the Sahara and saying, “how about a gallon of really cold water?”

Motivation is connecting the needs and desires of potential customers to the benefits of a product or service. I write a lot of golf copy and golfers want more distance. So … when I sell a product that promises … more distance … the result is usually pretty good. But let’s say I go up to someone who hates golf and try to sell them a golf club. It’s going to end in tears. No direct response copywriter can do that.

Motivation, in Op-Ed terms, is writing a piece about a liberal cause to the readers of The New York Times. The readers of said organ have a liberal bent. They want liberal articles to back up their views.

As a direct response copywriter, it’s VITAL you understand the difference between persuasion and motivation.

It’s not a huge surprise the book by Ms. Hall was not relevant to my work as a direct response copywriter.

I used to work for ‘big newspaper.’ It was a newspaper in the top 30 in the U.S. based on circulation. I was on the business side.

The people who organized the op-ed pages and wrote the editorial pages were, to be polite, very odd. My boss left my division to write editorials. He once confided: “It’s not very difficult … we write something then have some martinis for lunch then go home.” And that’s from someone who won a Pulitzer Prize.

I remember the guy who was in charge of the editorial board. I told him I disagreed with an editorial and he pompously replied, “you can.” The editorials were slanted one way but represented the newspaper. Thus the views of the editorial board became my views. Not exactly fair … from a group of people who were supposedly all about fairness. The newspaper would endorse candidates in elections. Why?

The guy in charge once wrote in one of his op-ed pieces, “I was a good writer.” Until that point, I hadn’t realized. How nice of him to let me know. He published a book of his editorials. Have you seen it on the best-seller lists? No? I haven’t either.

I always wondered why newspapers published editorials. “Because the newspaper has to stand for something,” was always the answer. “Then why not stand for impartiality, reporting the news, and not being biased?” was my answer.

My newspaper and publishing days are behind me now, thankfully. Here’s the problem with editorial writers and those of that ilk. It’s all theory. They never actually have to sell anything. There’s no accountability. They win awards given by other editorial writers. Eventually, everyone wins something and is an ‘award-winning journalist’ or whatever.

Newspapers have declined in almost every market in the United States. They’ve sold their buildings. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs. The people who owned the newspapers could have owned all the big Internet sites and be minting it now but they believed nothing would happen to them and then were late to the party.

The publisher at the newspaper where I worked was one of the more vapid people I’ve met. His brother was more interested in his corporate jet than dealing with the digital age. For every dollar those guys were making in the early 90s, they’re now making ten cents.

But I digress.

If you want to be a successful direct response copywriter and/or direct marketer, you have to understand the difference between persuasion and motivation.

And if you’re a Trish Hall, then pay close attention to direct response copywriting and direct marketing. We know what works when it comes to motivation. We have the results to prove it.

Direct Response Copywriter on the Power of Persistence

Several years ago, I was extremely fortunate to work with Jim McLean, the extremely successful golf teacher. And well before that, McLean was fortunate to work with a golfer named Jackie Burke who won The Masters in 1956 and is enjoying a long and fruitful career in golf and business. I still work with Jim McLean on various projects.

Burke told McLean “I never saw a persistent man fail.”

These words stuck with McLean and they have stuck with me. I think about the word “persistence” almost every day.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that direct marketing and direct response copywriting success comes down to persistence.

Last week, a company I know very well asked me to write a presentation to help them improve one part of their business that’s not going very well. It should be going well. It's a great offer to the perfect audience.

In looking at how they market this particular product, I noticed something pretty obvious. There’s only one touchpoint to market this product. Once someone says “no” then that’s it. So I simply said, in my presentation, “that first 'no' must not be the end of the conversation, it should be the beginning.”

I’m a direct response copywriter, so I’m going to tell you the copy and the message are important. Vital, even. But with 7-10 touchpoints instead of 1, guess what’s going to happen?

Someone I know once referred to this consistency as “polite persistence” and that’s a phrase I like very much.

There’s a lot of failure in direct marketing. We fail a ton. But the top direct marketers keep going and keep pounding away. They also keep testing. It’s all about persistence. It’s not a concept that branding people understand because they can’t measure anything. A campaign lasts for a defined period and that's that.

Dan Kennedy said that most people give up when there’s the first sign of a headwind. And he’s right. Many people fail because they’re not persistent. I’m a direct response copywriter which ultimately means I’m in sales. The great salespeople and the great marketers know that 99% of sales begin with the word “no.”

But they also understand that’s just the beginning of the journey that ultimately leads to a “yes.” If you have the right market, the right offer, and the right direct response copywriter, then persistence will pay off.