One of the things I do to improve my copywriting skills is hand copy ads.
You may be wondering, why?
Here’s my theory that I believe to be 100% true.
Think about this:
Have you ever spent so much time around someone that you begin to adopt their own mannerisms?
I’m sure I’m not the only one who experienced it. Besides, it’s like how the saying goes,
“You are the sum of the five people closest to you.”
Sometimes, I’d hand copy entire ads until my hand falls off. Other times I’d focus on a specific component, like bullet points for example.
I’d pull up an ad with bullet points and start copying away in my good ol’ black and white composition notebook.
Once you do it for a while, you start to notice some patterns on how they’re structured.
However, once in a while, I’d come across bullet points that I just don’t agree with.
Let me explain.
Sometimes I’d study ads for products I already own, and some of the bullets can be a bit… (For lack of a better term) overexaggerated.
Here, let me show an example.
Let’s say I’m selling a book and the sales letter has the following bullet:
“How to use a regular household item you already use everyday to bring your business tons of new leads and clients. You’ll be swamped with so much work that you’re going to have to start rejecting them.”
But the information I’m teasing can just be:
“Using the telephone and making cold calls to get clients is sometimes still the best way to go.”
It’s no different than resume bullet points. People can write something like,
“I handle transactions for a multi-billion dollar company on a daily basis and help bring in over $20 billion dollars annually.”
When it really means,
“I work as a cashier in Burger King.”
So my point is, if you’re going to write bullets to tease information in your products, at least tease more worthwhile information.
And what’s the point of me sharing this with you?
Well, I’m not even sure if there is one, but do what you want with the information.
But the good news is, you don’t have to do any of the overexaggeration nonsense in emails. You can be raw n’ real and you can still make sales.
To learn more, check out How to Become an Email Titan.