This Simple New Copywriting Exercise Will Make You So Much Better At Marketing, It’s Unbelievable
Do you want a copywriting exercise that’s so powerful, it’ll make every single copywriting project you do in the future:
- Easier
- More effective
- More fun
- Less “hard sell”
- Morally easier
- Faster
… and a whole host of other benefits?
If you said “no” to the above, then you’re on the wrong blog.
If you said “yes” then this is the blog post for you.
The Exercise That’s Going To Make Everything So Simple, It’s Worth Its Weight in GOLD
So I was just writing up a sales letter this morning for a new service I’m going to offer, and you know what I thought?
I thought, “This service is pretty awesome, but I don’t know how to sell it.”
Sometimes, you’ll have a product that’s so terrible that you have to do fifty hours of research before you can find something good to say about it.
Other times, you have an awesome, high-end product to sell and you don’t know what to do.
You think, “How can I get the benefits across?”
Or…
“How do I sell this without being salesy?”
So here’s an exercise I thought of on the spot.
Imagine You’re Practically Giving Away Gold
Let’s call this the “Jamie McSloy Copywriting Gold Exercise.”
If you are stuck with your sales letter, put it down for a while.
Write a sales letter instead where you’re selling gold for $5 an ounce.
This isn’t hypothetical. Literally sit down and write a sales letter where you’re trying to convince a reader that you’re practically giving away solid gold nuggets.
What do you write?
You probably don’t go into hyper-salesy mode. You don’t need to! Everyone knows how awesome gold is.
You probably don’t start listing the features of gold… because it’s gold. It’s a precious metal that derives its worth from subjective benefits (which you will talk about.)
Probably, you will spend a lot of time selling yourself as a reliable trader of gold. You’ll talk the sceptical through the buying process and tell them how safe the transaction is… which is great.
You will find it easier to nail the core structural parts of a sales letter. You’ll get a person’s attention through the headline (because any headline where you give away gold will work) and you’ll get their interest during the lead-in. The benefits section will build desire and the call to action will focus on all the things it should do.
All in all, this is a splendid exercise that you can translate directly to any sales material. Speaking of which…
Taking It A Step Further
Everything in marketing leads to one place: The call to action on the sales letter. That final frontier is where the fun and games are over and they’re replaced with, “Hey… time to open your wallet or clear off!”
But there are millions of pathways to get to that point. You can put up an ad, link directly to a sales page and then throw traffic at it.
Or you can build a three hundred part email autoresponder with sixty forks in the road and cultivate leads for years.
But what can you do with all of these?
Use the Copywriting Gold exercise.
Imagine your email marketing funnel is five parts. How would you get someone to buy gold for $5 an ounce in 5 emails or less?
Chances are you’d spend an email talking about the offer with a link at the end. Then you’d send a couple of follow-up emails that build trust. Maybe for a longer sequence you’d build a relationship.
Would you use spammy titles? Probably not.
What about if you were an authority site; would you douse everyone in popups? Probably not.
Would you sell your list or fill your blog with cheap affiliate links for the sake of it? Probably not, because your offer is literal gold and you don’t want to ruin your relationship with the reader.
What about writing ads? Use the Copywriting Gold Exercise.
Social Media Lead Generation? Same thing.
The point of this exercise is to assume your offer is solid gold at a bargain price for your readers and clients. The hard sell isn’t necessary. Just a gentle prod.
Final Thoughts
This exercise is simple. Write a funnel, sales page and the whole of your project as though you were selling gold for a tiny amount. If you’re giving away free stuff, then imagine you’re giving away gold for free.
Do this exercise at least once in real life. As in actually sit down and write the letters and funnels as though you’re giving away gold.
Then you can use the concept in future projects mentally, but actually do the Copywriting Gold exercise at least once.
It’s simple, effective and won’t take you long, because let’s face it, how hard can it possibly be to give away solid gold for free?