Back in my client days and through today, I gleefully break the cardinal rule of copywriting, which is:
- Get on everyone else’s lists
- Create a swipe file of their ads
- Study what the really successful ads that keep running are doing
It’s certainly not a bad idea to do those things.
Probably, you should do them.
But, I can say I did very little of that in the niches I was most successful at.
Especially in this day and age of email and pre-selling and product launches.
(Where the “sale” is often made well before someone sees your sales letter.)
That is why, when I did client work in other niches I was unfamiliar with, I was far more interested in uncovering info about the market that went beyond the obvious or what everyone else was focusing on. And I did it by playing upon a sales technique where you ask people a question about why they might want a particular benefit or why they might not want to buy. Then, after they answer that, you ask them if there any other reasons they might want it or are there any other reasons for not buying? And then what happens is, the salesman finds out the “under the radar” emotional reasons that people will buy or why they aren’t buying.
Anyway, it’s something I adapted a long ago to online selling with email.
I call it “stealth research.”
And, it allowed me to do things like:
- Write control-winning copy in the golf niche when I had never played in my life — and without carefully studying any other golf ads
- Write emails and ads that converted 40%+ of a weight loss list to buyers — again, knowing nothing about the market going in and not even bothering to look at any competing ads
- Create the ad copy for the biggest company in the self defense niche’s entire arsenal of products (info products and supplements) without looking at that industry’s ads, either — especially after we found out all the other companies were targeting the wrong people and missing out on multiple millions of dollars in business
Anyway, point is this:
I didn’t have to scour the competition’s ads.
Nor did I have to be the best “copywriter.” (I never was.)
All I needed was the right marketing intel.
Intel I show you how to get for your market in the bonus “Ravings of an Adman” training in the November “Email Players” issue, which goes to the printer soon.
After that, it will be too late to get it.
To get your grubby hands on this info zip on over to:
Ben Settle
