I love the smell of good copywriting in the morning ☀️💣
Full disclosure: I’m not the greatest copywriter.
Contrary to popular belief, a good marketer doesn’t need to be a great writer. To create incredible copy, they just need to be exceptional at psychology.
In high school I hated writing. Like, really really hated it. I loved writing lyrics of course, but that’s because I got to write for myself. English class made me hate writing, because I was told to write a way that would deem myself a success or a failure.
I hated writing so much that I looked into university programs that had the least amount of writing. That’s how I ended up taking computer science. Sure, I did a bit of hxcking in my teenage years, and that probably propelled me to explore deeper into this thing called “the internet”. But I mostly needed to pick a program that had nothing to do with writing.
Fast forward to now, and not much has changed. I still write for myself, and prefer it much more than writing for others. I can write copy for marketing clients, but it doesn’t make me run through the streets in ecstasy.
Here’s the formula for how a business builds exceptional copy. It requires:
A marketer that can dictate the brand’s voice, tone, and personality.
A copywriter that can work with marketing to develop copywriting.
Very rarely will you find someone that can do both.
One of the most fascinating books I’ve read about copywriting is The Boron Letters by Gary Halbert. Born in 1938, Halbert was a direct marketing practitioner and one of the greatest copywriters in the last 50 years. His book is a collection of letters from 1984, written by Halbert to his young son Bond, while in prison for tax evasion at the Boron Federal Prison Camp.
The book combines fantastic storytelling under a father-son narrative. In his letters, he shares his direct mail copywriting secrets in hopes to inspire his son to make use of them. Prior to his incarceration, one such direct mail campaign was sent out 600 million times, generating 20,000 orders per day. The letter helped Halbert build a company that would sell for $75 million. You can read it here.
One such lesson from this book is an avenue of simplicity. His use of cliches and idioms, such as “easy as pie” or “Every Tom, Dick, and Harry”, would make his sales letters digestible and easy to read.
While this may seem in itself cliche to suggest, remember: it was the 1960-70s. Nobody knew how to write effective copy back then. A lot of The Boron Letters can only be perceived as foundational rather than actionable, simply because it’s totally outdated. Cliches and “simple use” language is rampant on the internet. We’ve become saturated to the point of letting our eyes glaze by it now.
However the reason why it’s important is because cliches and idioms tickle the learning and memory part of your brain: the hippocampus.
Previously mentioned in a post I wrote about neuromarketing, recognizable phrases engage with the part of your brain that matches marketing copy with a vague memory of a memorable line.
For example, the subject line of this email, “I love the smell of good copywriting in the morning ☀️💣” is actually a play on the popular phrase “I love the smell of napalm in the morning”. If you had watched the movie Apocalypse Now, your eyes would have scanned your email inbox, matched the start of this phrase with a memory from the movie (or seeing it used elsewhere), and this subject line and email may have stuck out to you more than the rest of your inbox. Plus, it scores points for being emotional, acting out on your senses, and using emojis.
Marketers come in all shapes and sizes. Great marketers understand “how” to connect and engage with their customers, regardless if they’re hiring a copywriter to do so. Does that mean marketers need to be good copywriters? Not at all. It just means they understand the psychology behind their customer, and are able to connect with them.
HALT stands for hungry, angry, lonely and tired and you should never make a decision when you are any of those things.
Everyone wants to climb the mountain, but the big difference between those at the top and those still on the bottom is simply a matter of showing up tomorrow to give it just one more shot
― Gary Halbert, author
Handpicked Remote Marketing Jobs 👨💻
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