Lessons Learned From Hand-Copying Some Of The Most Successful Ads Ever
We’re over halfway through January 2017. It’s crazy how time flies. What’s also crazy is that I’m supposed to be halfway through the 30 Day Copywriting Challenge.
For those of you who’ve stumbled across this blog post unaware of what that entails, go here.
In short, copying out successful adverts by hand is a go-to exercise that many of the best copywriters recommend would-be ad-writers to try, in order to absorb the information and style presented within them.
You might think that’s a load of rubbish. I’m not sure how copying out ads by hand works, but here’s what happens.
What Happens When You Hand-Copy Adverts?
You’re going to pick up the “language of sales” if you copy out ads by hand. You’ll also learn about the structure of sales pages, and the constituent parts of an advert. Those are obvious examples of things you’ll learn. Here are some other ones that are not mentioned quite so often.
Lesson One: There’s Nothing Quite Like Doing
You can analyse adverts to death. You can say, “This is good” or “This is bad” and you can definitely say, “I could do better than this.”
Can you?
Most sales material seems really cheesy. That’s because we read it at a certain level. It’s easy to be in critical mode and think, “Yeah, I can do better than that!”
When you copy ads by hand, you’ll start to appreciate the mechanics behind writing a sales letter in a way you can’t understand until you actually do it.
There are plenty of wantrepreneurs who don’t actually do anything. They sit and think about what they’re going to do and time goes by and nothing gets done.
Copying out ads by hand… you either do that or you don’t. There’s learning, but it’s not by analysing. There’s work done at the end, and you either finish the task or you don’t.
You cannot just read an advert and think you understand what it’s about. It’s weird, because it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why writing the ads out by hand works and not resort to saying, “Try it and see” … but you should try it and see because it’s hard to explain otherwise.
Lesson Two: Your Brain Will Start To Write Its Own Copy
This is the big win from copying ads by hand.
Copying ads by hand is time consuming. You can’t skip ahead (more on that in the next section) and you have to concentrate.
Reading word-by-word and copying word-by-word mean that you have to pay attention. You also have to let the voice of the writer you’re copying into your head. That sounds weird, but it makes sense when you do it.
As you’re doing this, you’ll imagine what else the voices of these copywriters could say. Before you know it, you’ll be generating lines of copy that you wouldn’t ever have thought of otherwise.
Fun fact: The BeeGees started out as songwriters with a fun little game. They used to write what they thought their favourite bands’ next songs would sound like.
So, they would write what they thought the next Beatles record would sound like. Then the next Rolling Stones song. This is how they became songwriters.
This is a similar process to copying out ads by hand. Eventually you’ll start thinking, “What would X copywriter say to sell Y product?”
Lesson Three: Your Hands Will Hurt, You’ll Make Mistakes and You’ll Use a Ton of Paper
The above sub-heading does not sound like a benefit. It sounds horrible. In some ways, it is. I’m 90% sure that spending the day copying out ads by hand has ruined my index finger forever. (I’m exaggerating (hopefully) but you’re certainly going to feel it.)
However, I’ve found a positive in all of this: the mistakes you make and the corners that you want to cut show weaknesses within you. When we browse the internet for information, entertainment and gossip, we think that we’re paying attention.
Every time you try and write something out by hand and copy it like you had to in school, you’ll make mistakes. You’ll think you knew what you were reading, but you were wrong. Your attention skipped. Every time your brain says, “Ok… we’ve got the gist of this, we can stop” is a place for you to fight back and take control of yourself.
Lesson Four, or, “Can I Do Something Else?”
Faced with the onslaught that is copying out ads by hand, many people say, “Can I do something else?” Copying out ads by hand is time consuming and it’s hard to see the immediate benefits.
However, I’ve found no other way to get the benefits described above to the extent that you get them with copying out ads by hand.
Sure, you can read an analysis – you can even analyse ads yourself. But it won’t work as well, and here’s why.
When you are writing, you’re engaged in a creative activity. (If I were smarter, I’d say it was a left-brain or right-brain activity – but I don’t know which side is which.) When you analyse something, you are using your critical faculties.
Analysing an ad, therefore, gets you practiced at picking things apart. When it comes to writing good ads though, you need to generate and not deconstruct.
Also… if you want to see masters of deconstructing ideas and a conspicuous lack of ability to generate ideas, check out Reddit’s Entrepreneur section. It’s a perfect example.
Back on topic – copying out ads by hand will force you to pay attention to what you’re reading, and this attention (in a non-critical capacity) will help you generate good copy, which is what we want.
Final Thoughts
Writing out ads by hand is a fulfilling thing to do. It’s kind of like those mindfulness colouring-books that were the craze this time last year. Except this activity isn’t about painting a pretty picture, it’s about getting good at selling stuff.
Obviously, getting good at selling stuff is a good thing to do.
By writing out some of the best ads in the world, you’re downloading the best parts of the best sales minds into your head for use later.
This will help you in ways that you simply can’t get elsewhere. Sure, you could read a hundred books on copywriting, you can analyse the ads and you can learn by writing your own – and you could and probably should do all of those things. But hand-copying ads will confer unique benefits.
So you should do it.