The Secret to Writing Great Copy

How many times have you read something – maybe on a website or in a sales letter and thought “that doesn't make sense” or found it hard to concentrate because the way it was written wasn't very interesting?

Well, let me tell you something. When I first started my business, that’s how the information that I wrote down used to be all the time. It was full of jargon, didn't make sense and was written in business English – great for reports, but not for getting the sale in through the door.

In fact, it was sooo bad, that I wish I’d kept some of it to show you how NOT to do it, but I think I was so embarrassed that I destroyed it forever!

So, what happened? How did I learn the secret to changing the way I wrote to appeal to my audience? And, don’t get me wrong. I’m not an expert at this – I just learnt a few secrets and then practiced and practiced!

Well, the secret is this – imagine that the person that you want to talk to is sat next to you on a sofa. You’re both warm, comfy and this person is dying to know all about your business and how you can help them. And so, you talk to them, you ask them questions and find out as much about them as you can to help them make a decision to buy from you.

Now all you do is write down what you talk to them about. Write it down exactly as you've spoken to them. That means, don’t be tempted to start sentences in the correct grammatical way – start them with and or but, because that’s how you’d speak to someone.

As I’m writing this article, I’m imaging that I’m talking to you and we’re just having a chat.

Once you've got that technique into your head, now all you need to do is practice. Take a blank sheet of paper and just write for 10-15 minutes or so and see how far you get. (By the way, I've done this exercise many, many times with different groups and some of them have been amazed how great what they write is when they use this technique).

When I was taught this technique, it changed the style and the way I write forever and obviously, the more I've used it, the easier it’s become.

Combine what you've written with a great headline and you’re well away to getting some not just great, but amazing copy out there.

And the secret to writing a great headline? Just use prefixes to make it sound more interesting. Things like “10 ways to…”, “How to….”, “7 secrets to….” Or use suffixes like “….ways to save your marriage”

You can use any combination of prefixes and suffixes that you can think of like warning, danger, How I…, Confused? – and when you do, you can’t fail to come up with an interesting and really different title.

The title for a call I did previously was “7 secrets to doubling your turnover and stepping up in your business next year” and I had several people commenting that it was a really great title that got them excited. All I did was follow the rules.

Try it! You might be very pleasantly surprised!