Copywriting secret of the masters 14 tips copywriters can learn from professional storytellers - john forde
1. Copywriting Secret of the Masters:
14 Tips Copywriters Can Learn from Professional Storytellers
by: John Forde
www.ProCopyWritingTactics.com
2. 14 Tips Copywriters Can Learn from Professional
Storytellers
Any storyteller will tell you – Plot is essential.
But what else do storytellers do to engage an audience? And how can we
apply those secrets to writing better marketing copy?
Almost all agree on a long list of techniques that make stories sound good.
Below, is just a small sample of these techniques – along with ways you can
use them to improve your copy.
Good stories …
1. Appear spontaneous. In copy, the secret is to study the message,
the benefits, and the offer until they become second-nature.
2. Give hope. Good stories and good copy give the reader hope for
things to come.
3. Show passion. Passion in telling and selling is not an option, it's a
necessity. The key: Having faith in what you're selling.
4. Overcome obstacles. Drama is all about obstacles and how they're
overcome. So is copy.
5. Make it personal. From caveman to high intellectual, personal stories
have a way of proving a point that logic and rationalizations just can't
muster.
6. Name the hero. Court storytellers would make the hero resemble the
king. In copy, you can do the same – by showing your reader how he'll
triumph with the help of your product.
7. Name a villain. What keeps your prospect up at night? That's an ideal
villain for your sales message to attack.
8. Reward and tease. Reward listeners with progress and they'll be
grateful. Tease with more to come and they'll hang on for more.
9. Enlarge and enrich. Good stories and good copy remind you of
what's important. They raise the bar and inspire you to hop over it.
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3. 10. Build a relationship. Beneath the surface, a good story
strengthens the relationship between teller and listener. In sales copy,
it does the same between marketer and customer.
11. Commute facts to the subconscious. From the beginning,
good stories have been vehicles for ideas, logic, even moral messages.
Sales copy that engages with a story can commute facts just as
painlessly.
12. Have a good twist. A story twist: "The butler didn't do it after
all." A twist for an investment letter promo: "Oil is going up – but
though it's too late to buy oil companies, it's NOT too late to buy the
company that makes the drill bits that are attached to every drill bit in
the United Arab Emirates. Who else holds this company? Only the
richest energy investor on Wall Street, J.P. Calhoun …"
13. Make sense. "Realistic" stories aren't always real. They just
work harder to make elegant leaps of logic. In copy, the writer has to
understand his product well enough to make good sense, too.
Knowledgeable customers can spot a fake from a mile off.
14. Leave them wanting more. "What's the sendoff emotion for
your sales message?" asks colleague Addison Wiggin. "How do you
want them to feel when they're finished reading? If you know that, you
can write toward it from the beginning. But if you don't know, your
copy ends up going all over the place."
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4. John Forde:A Master at Writing
More Controls More Often
"If you write copy … how many chances to sell your talents to the businesses
you know and trust have you overlooked? Company websites … local sales
brochures … online ads and sales letters … print ads in local papers … even
P.R. pieces or ezine editorial.
It might be the small gigs that get you started. It might be the big
opportunities that let you smack the cover off the ball at your first at bat.
Either way, I’ve met plenty of people who had no grasp about what role
copywriters play.
Masterson’s [Accelerated Program for Six-Figure Copywriting] offers the
most thorough and well-organized approach to the subject I’ve seen
anywhere. There’s not a technique or secret in there that I haven’t found
helpful over the years. I owe a great deal of my own success to Mike
Masterson. And I tell him so regularly. As for the program, I’d recommend it
to anybody – not just direct-mail copywriters, but anyone who’s trying to get
a grip on what makes marketing work."
— John Forde
JOHN FORDE has been writing winning controls for going on two decades
now. He’s made untold millions for clients in the financial, health, and travel
industries. John also works as a copy coach, hosting intense seminars for
two or three hundred marketers and copywriters at a time.
John Forde also writes the successful and very useful eletter, The
Copywriter’s Roundtable.
www.ProCopyWritingTactics.com