I stayed at a Holiday Inn a couple of weeks ago. Here’s the text from a little note (business card size) tucked into my room key folder:
The tone is spot on and the inclusion of her phone and email is perfect.
I’d probably say “sort things out for you” rather than “address your issues” but it’s pretty good and certainly feels like she means it.
In the past, I have suggested that the reason most freelance copywriters don’t make enough money (as they see it) is because they don’t price their services properly. Which is part of the answer. But I am guilty of implying that this is the ONLY reason.
In conversation with one of my heroes – Drayton Bird – we reflected on this problem again. My answer to him – possibly more candid than my usual – is that most freelance copywriters simply aren’t good enough at their trade.
There are various routes into freelance copywriting. Our copywriter may have been an agency copywriter, an in-house writer for a corporate, a journalist, creative writing teacher or just someone who thought it might be a fine way to make a living.
None of these is a guarantee of either excellence or inability as a freelance copywriter, but the ones who will succeed will be those who dedicate themselves to their craft.
That means reading, practising and working on any areas of weakness they possess. The latter involves a degree of introspection and a willingness to admit mistakes.
On a copywriting workshop I was running some years ago, I was shocked when not one of the 16 copywriters in the room admitted to owning a single book about copywriting, advertising, selling or marketing. They just picked it up as they went along.
Do they think that this is how other wannabe highly-paid professionals go about their business? Barristers? Heart surgeons? Airline pilots? And how happy would they be to be defended in court, operated on or flown across the Atlantic by someone who claimed they’d just picked it up as they went along?
The two-pronged approach to earning a decent living as a freelance copywriter is to charge fully what you are worth. AND to make sure you are worth a lot in the first place.
If you get results for your clients, they will be glad to pay you what you ask.
I was speaking with a client on Monday whose American parent company insists on the use of exclamation marks in sales copy. Huh?
Didn’t they read their F. Scott Fitzgerald? I love his take on the dreaded “dog’s dick”:
“Exclamation marks are the sound of the writer applauding himself”. Canned laughter, in other words.
If you feel you must emphasise a phrase or passage in your copy, are you sure it’s strong enough?
Powerful copy emphasises itelf in the selection and arrangement of the words alone.
I had a meeting with Drayton Bird yesterday to discuss the content of the
masterclass we’re running this September.
In passing, he mentioned that once, when he was talking to his old boss, David Ogilvy, the great man had described a visit to Claude Hopkins’s mansion in Chicago.
It made me think – three degrees of separation between me and the original copywriting superhero.
Yesterday I sent out the April issue of our membership newsletter, Maslen on Marketing.
I was in a hurry, so I didn’t proofread it.
Guess what? I included two errors. A missing word and a mispunctuated its.
To err is human, to check, divine.
Drayton Bird, copywriting legend
It’s not often you get to sit down with one of the true masters of the art of copywriting and hear them explain how to do it right. And no, I’m not talking about myself here.
I’ve just agreed a deal with Drayton Bird – the godfather of direct marketing – for him to speak at my copywriting masterclass in September.
These sorts of opportunities don’t come up that often, but they pay for themselves many times over.
I’ve outlined the masterclass on the Sunfish website. Please take a look.
It’s a good thing to admit one’s shortcomings – failings, even – now and again. Today I feel the need to confess.
I have spent years running workshops and writing books in which I have advised copywriters to forget about writing to an “audience” and, instead, focus on their “reader”.
That’s OK as far as it goes because my intention was to implant the idea of a single person not multiples when you’re selling.
The problem is, “reader” itself implies a level of commitment that may not (probably doesn’t) exist.
It also can suggest that you are a “writer”, which in turn leads us into murky waters where creativity takes precedence over cold, hard cash.
I am writing the student workbook for my new online copywriting course we’re launching in September, and I have made a conscious decision NOT to use the term reader for the person on the other end of your copy.
From now on, I am using a very old term that every sales person would use and understand…
Prospect.
Prospects are still individuals, but they are potential buyers of your stuff, not consumers of your writing.
Prospects have needs: readers don’t. Prospects have objections that you need to overcome: readers don’t.
Prospects are what you have just before you have customers. And customers pay the bills.
