red hot copywriting bootcamp class one: behind the scenes ... files/rhc bootcamp/rhc class one...

Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero | Red Hot Copy ™ | www.red-hot-copy.com Copyright © |

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Class One: Behind the Scenes of Writing World Class Copy

By: Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero www.red-hot-copy.com © All Rights Reserved Hi everybody! This is Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero. We are here at the very 1st Copywriting Bootcamp that I’ve ever done in this format. I am so excited. What I’ve really done is to put a lot of modalities of learning together and best practices of different business sectors. And I put them all together under one roof to make this kind of learning is this virtual environment. I’m super excited about it and of course, I have successful processes from top copywriters as well. Let me just jump right in as to why Michele is on this call with me. It’s because Michele is the expert in creativity and her website by the way is cool. It is www.theartistsoul.com and www.writingusa.com. Of course my website is www.red-hot-copy.com. So you can find us all if you’re listening to this audio later. Michele is an expert at creativity and I used to always undervalue how important creativity is in copywriting. So this class in particular I’ve drawn a lot of processes of creativity into my copywriting system. Michele has given me a lot of terrific ideas about how to stimulate that. She’s on to share her expertise in creativity as well as to keep me on track because I need that sometimes. So that’s why we have Michele. Let me explain how this is going to work. It’s a teeny bit different than your average teleseminar and I like it that way.


First of all, I want to recommend if you haven’t already listened to the recorded call that I’ve posted “The 10 Commandments of Copywriting” that you get around to doing that this week. It’s going to make everything come to life for you in the Workbook and it’s really an important part of listening to the call. Also those MP3s are downloadable and they’re posted at my website at www.red-hot-copy.com/rhcbootcampstart.htm and you can also skim the 1st half of your notebook and you’ll get a running start of what this is all about. We’re going to go into those areas much, much deeper in the bootcamp. But you do want to know what the 10 Commandments are and

the 1st is Research; then the 2nd is Defining your product or your service; The 3rd is Keywords and Phrases; the 4th is Headlines and Sub Headlines; the 5th is Bullets and White Space; the 6th is Your Copy Flow; the 7th is Credibility; 8th is a Strong Call to Action; 9 is Enticement; and 10 is Proofreading, Editing, & Revising.

We’re going to cover all of those on a much deeper level. And I’m going to show you how. Just a second before I get into that I want to make sure that you’re signed up for the Copy Campus and I think that most of the people on the call are. And that’s at www.copycampus.com. The reason I really want you to do that is we’re going to use the Forum a lot. If you have any trouble getting in please email me as [email protected] and I’ll get back to you no problem at all. Make sure that you introduce yourself to the group once you’re in the Forum. You have a group specifically and you’ve probably discovered that already. We’re on teams. We’re on teams and they all have fun and fiery names that Michele and I actually dreamed up together. It was fun. Michele: It was. We all need fun fiery teams.


Lorrie: We have some for the next one too that we didn’t even get to use. Very funny. So look and see where your group is. There are some people who signed up who are new or are not yet on the list. I have assigned you to a group. I will let you know who your group is after the call. Make sure you introduce yourself to the rest of the group because you’re going to get to know each other’s work a little bit and it really is going to speed up the learning curve for learning. When you learn from another person it really doesn’t matter what business you’re in honestly. You really do learn faster. It’s like the levels go much quicker when there’s other people involved.

There’s also a portion in the Forum for Copy Critique. Right now there’s nothing there but I’m totally sure there will be because some of the people on this call. I say that so affectionately, that some people are very active on the forums and I’m so happy about that because like I said, we really learn from each other. You’ll have an opportunity to put your copy either a link to it or cut and paste it into the forum and have other people critique it for you. And these are other people who could be your potential target market. They could be potential sales people. They could spot holes in your copy that you may not see. It’s an amazing opportunity for some free consulting. I also pop into the forum several times a week. I have other professional copywriters who are in this group who have volunteered to help as well. But whether you do it for a living or you don’t do it for a living the truth is that we’re all prospects of somebody. So what we see from somebody else is really going to help in the copy. It can help you avoid the pitfalls. So it’s a really great opportunity. Make sure you’re signed up. Now this is the really fun part. This is what makes it a little bit different besides the forum. We have during the week days, not on the weekends, just on the week days


Michele has helped me come up with some daily challenges, daily bite-sized pieces of how a real copywriter, or anybody would look at a piece of copy and go okay what do I do with this? Where do I start? We have exercises that we use when we’re writing and also Michele has made really creative ones that take it to another level that’s a plus to whatever you put into your copy. So every day in the email you’re going to get one little bite-size piece that’s going to take you 15 minutes or less. Isn’t that right, Michele?

Michele: Yes it’s going to be really short.

Lorrie: And you want to explain quickly what that’s like? What’s

going to happen? Michele: A lot of it is broken down into 15 minutes to make it

really easy. And it does follow the processes of actually building a sales letter. So there’s one for features and benefits. There’s a target market one. And I encourage you to do it with a pen and paper, not on the computer. I think that is going to it seems to me to be more to get touch with your muse more.

Lorrie: I agree with you. I’m sorry I’m talking right over you. I

completely agree with you and I’ve heard that from a lot of different writers that even though they craft it on the computer at the end of the day they tend to write free hand because there’s something between your brain and your hand that is closer to your brain than the keyboard.

Michele: Yes. I think it really done. So find some scratch paper

and a pen and set a timer. Get a kitchen timer and set it. Make this for only 15 minutes and then go. If you think too much about the writing process and the creativity process it has a tendency to not work as good.

Lorrie: You’re so right. That’s when you get caught up in writer’s

block. This frees you up because it’s only 15 minutes a


day. So that’s an hour and 15 minutes a week extra outside this time we’re asking for. That’s all. If you do that it will dramatically improve your writing. Dramatically. I guarantee it. There’s no way it won’t. So thank you, Michele. Perfect. Plus I’m also going to share with you exercises that I’ve used personally in my copy and that Michele uses. And also people like Dan Kennedy and John Carlton that I’ve met one on one and heard some of the big guns that have worked for years to increase their conversion rates.

Now these challenges, these little bite-sized pieces that

you’re going to get are the same for everybody. It’s not like you’re going to get a unique one. Your team all has the same challenge in each bite-size piece. But if you miss posting on one day it’s going to be a team effort that’s going to be let down. So you want to make sure that everybody gets the post everyday.

And again we’re talking only 15 minutes a day just on the week days. You get the weekends off. And we’re going to keep a tally of how many people in each team participate in each exercise. The winner of that group each week is going to get a surprise. I haven’t decided exactly what it is yet. It’s downloadable, one of my teleseminars that I’ve done one of those that I’ve done on my business building aspects. I haven’t decided which one yet so I don’t want to reveal it until I’m 100% sure but everyone in that team will get it and it will be something that would have cost you between $27--$37. Each week the losing team is going to be sent to the BBQ pit which sounds so horrible but if your team is in last place it means somebody’s not pulling their weight. And it is possible that nobody will have to go into the BBQ pit. It’s sort of like a hall of fame to get you motivated. I want people to get involved because that’s what’s going to influence your copy.


The next step is that I want you to look at the download page at the “Start Page” is what I’m going to call it from now on at www.red-hot-copy.com/rhcbootcampstart.htm. There’s a pledge that I want commit mentally to in this copywriting process. And that truly is the most important part of anything is your mental attitude. It’s no brain, no gain. So you want to be focused and be ready to get this drilled down. I tell you this is 4 weeks of immersing yourself in a skill that may or may not be something that feels comfortable for you, but everyone who’s on this call knows how important it is to your bottom line business. So let’s get in and get this skill and be done with it. If you follow this process, that’s what’s going to happen. So make sure you’re mentally prepared. Another point that I want to bring up is that I’m going to post the audio as soon as it’s done on the start page every day. Also it’ll be on the forum. Those will be the only 2 places. I’ll send you an email and let you know. Finally, we will stop for questions and answers throughout the call because I want this to be interactive. I definitely want to know what’s going on in your minds too. I’m ready to get started. Michele, do you have anything to add?

Michele: No. I think that all sounds good. Lorrie: Okay! Okay great. Let me give you the framework for

what this is all about. We’re not so much working on our own projects because there are so many of us as we are working on a fantasy project. It’s a project that Michele and I invented but what it’s going to do is show you how to write copy from A to Z. You can truthfully work on your own stuff. Take an extra 15 minutes and work on your own stuff in a parallel fashion. I would recommend doing that if you have the discipline and the time to do


it. But 1st make sure that you get this filled out by following the processes that we’ve put into play.

Imagine you have a product or service which everybody

on this call does. There it is sitting in front of you and now what. That’s what we want to talk about, now what? Michele and I created this product that really has a lot of leg more or less. It has a broad appeal to a lot of different markets and we called it “Hot Socks” and it’s a fictitious product. Although it may very well be created into something real, because I thought it was kind of a cool idea.

You know how when you have to go to the airport and

you have to take off your shoes? Well, I thought it would be kind of cool if you had messages on your socks like tee shirt messages. Like “I do all my own suns”; or “as a matter of fact, the world does revolve around me” whatever your slogan is they would be on your socks.

What we did was we created a fact sheet about this

product and we’re going to start building copy from the ground up. We’re going to put you through the paces. Michele? Do you have the Fact Sheet?

Michele: Yes I do. I think they also should be trendy. I think they

should be “Red Hot Socks” to go with Red Hot Copy. Make all this bright red or have bright red sayings.

Lorrie: See now that’s another market. See how broad this is?

That could very well be your “red hot” market. You’re red hot! I like it.

Michele: The cool thing is you can break these down into

different customer bases. You could do by age; some for high school students; some for college students; senior citizens, break it down that way or you could break it down by profession depending on where they work. Like secretaries, office managers, bosses, teachers, parents,


aunts, uncles. I wasn’t sure what to do that’s not really a profession. Parenting is kind of a profession.

Lorrie: It is a profession and it’s segmenting your market. Michele: Or you could do it by hobby like golfers or fans of a

sports team or Harley riders, pet owners. There are so many of these and they could all have different ones. You could have border collies on the socks. I have border collies.

Lorrie: Exactly. And there you go. There are people who have

dogs or German shepherds, poodles or yorkies. There are so many target markets that you could narrow down.

Michele: And people especially the hobbies, my friend who’s got

a standard schnauzer. If it’s got standard schnauzer on it he buys it. That’s it.

Lorrie: Yes that’s it. You’re right. Hobbyists are very fanatical.

They’re good buyers. Michele: And they would love socks that have things on it. Lorrie: Yes and it would go a long way. There are facts that you

can look at when you have this product then what’s your next step. Right? That’s basically what we’re getting to.

Michele: You have the product and then as a team pick the kind

of target market you’re going after because this is so broad. The ones that I said are just to get you going. You don’t have to pick mine. You can pick something completely different if you want.

Lorrie: Yes. Actually that was a really good range. I was thinking

and I’ll bet other people on the call were too when you were saying seniors I was thinking, it’s not even seniors that I was thinking you know women who don’t shave


their legs? And have hairy socks on the top. [Laughter] I have a good imagination. But it can be fun. I mean Hot Socks can be fun in general, wouldn’t they?

Michele: Yes. That’s the point. To make this fun. As fun as

possible. Lorrie: So that’s going to be our product for the 4 week process.

We’re going to go through This is what you’ve got How do we get that in copy? How do we get there?

Obviously the Features and Benefits are a huge part. Here’re several different places you could start, but before you write any copy there’s a lot of research and legwork that’s got to be done. And Features and Benefits are one of those components. The features are the adjective of the product. The descriptive part, like ‘the socks are red’. If they had toes sewn into them or whatever the features are. And then of course the benefits are what sells it. The benefits are the emotional part of it. What Mark Twain says, “There are 2 reasons a man buys anything, the reason he tells his wife, and the real reason.” We’re still like that and it was 100 years ago. We don’t change physiologically. We’re still hard wired the same way. We’re pulled by what’s in it for me and that’s what your copy should always be oriented to is ‘what’s in it for me’. When someone’s looking at your business or what you’re offering they’re trying to figure out if I read this copy is that going to make me happier or thinner, or richer or am I going to become faster or slower. How is it going to benefit me? A lot of people make this mistake in their copy. They 1st focus on how great the product is because it lasts so long. Maybe you don’t get


holes in your socks or something like that. That they are doubly reinforced. Well, that’s really a feature. How would that be a benefit? It would be a benefit if you don’t have to go out and buy socks all the time. If you fall in love with your favorite pair of socks and you don’t get embarrassed at the airport by having holes in the socks. You’ve got to take it to the next level when you list a feature. You have to connect the dots to the benefits. Don’t make the reader work. Don’t make them have to think, well how’s that going to serve me? Because they won’t, they won’t make the connection. You’ve got to really take them by the hand. You really have to. Now a great way to get into basic psychology, into the basic hard wiring is to kind of make like a caveman. This is in your Home Study Book but if you think the way a caveman thought several thousand years ago and obviously you have to go to great pains with the imagination here, but if you were to wake up and you were a cave person and you didn’t have a cell phone. You didn’t have Internet. You didn’t have television or even a door, what would be the 1st thing on your mind? If you just start thinking of that aspect and start thinking what it would be. It would be self-preservation. You definitely want to stay away from the saber-tooth tiger. You want to have enough to eat. Self-preservation would translate to sort of a fear of losing something now. It’s our survival instinct. It’s so in us. That’s something that copy can still teach you because it’s in us. Another thing would be financial gain or staying ahead of the other people so you have a better chance of surviving, right? So emotional gain, physical gain, to get ahead of the other tribe members.


Another thing you want to look at so you can connect your copy with people’s psychises is they look for higher group status. We look for higher group status. We tend to want to have some nicer things; some finer things that we tend to want approval of society. You have to fit in and to fit in you have to have the nicer things. So you kind of take that to the next level and put it into your copy. Another aspect is love and attraction. Mating and being together with somebody that’s procreating and having your DNA go on and that’s another viable aspect to our personalities, to our survival instincts. Another is duty and guilt. People feel responsible for and here’s a word I can write it but I can’t say it – reciprocity. I think I did say it right. When you give somebody something, they tend to want to give you something back. That’s why there are a lot of places where people will give information for free to stimulate the reciprocity in their fellow human beings. And it works because that’s how we’re wired. So if you get into a very simplistic approach with your features and benefits, strip away the outside features and benefits. Talk almost as if you are talking to a child when you’re actually writing your copy. And we’ll get more into that soon. We’ll get right to blocks of copy in the 3rd week. You’re really tapping into the prospect at the very visceral level at a very guttural level. So it’s real important. There’s a great features and benefits brainstorm exercise in your workbook too. And Michele is that one of our exercises?

Michele: Yes. They will get that tomorrow. Lorrie: Yes. So basically what you do with that and it is in your

workbook but I’ll be explaining it tomorrow. You’re going


to spend 5 minutes really brainstorming about how to get deeper into the features and benefits of your product.

Another way to get started with your writing, your features and benefits writing is to get ideas from an object like swipe files. I’d better explain what swipe files are. Swipe files are advertising that attracted you. Swipe files are things that have worked in magazines, in newspapers, in direct mail, even on the websites where you would want to print out a website that has attracted you or that you actually bought from. That’s field tested. That means that it works if it made you spend money then you might want to put it in your swipe file. If you’re on this call there may have been something in that copy that made you want to buy. And it may be something you may want to consider for your swipe file. What’s great about swipe files is that you don’t have to start from a blank slate. You can look at other people’s copy and you can tinker it around to make it work for you and it gets that creativity flowing. Right, Michele? Is that something that you use?

Michele: Swipe files? Reading other people’s stuff. Yes. It works

for all kinds of writing. Lorrie: That’s good. You’re saying reading other people’s writing.

That’s a great way to get started too when you’re just getting ready to go. It gets you in the mood and in the frame of mind. Yes. That’s a good one too. Or you can for instance I was just at the Dan Kennedy workshop. He looks at the Oriental trading magazines. Oriental Trading Company, that novelty direct mail company. He’ll look through there and he’ll think if I were mailing out a letter what sort of things would I attach to the letter that might make it interesting. We did an exercise on genealogy for instance. We went through little toy dinosaurs, there were little hour glasses that you could turn upside down like time is running out. You start getting these mental


pictures and you can apply them to copy whether or not you do a direct mail campaign or not. It just gets the creativity flowing. And it’s brilliant.

Another thing you can do to get ideas for features and

benefits is look at comparable businesses. There is a martial arts publisher who is also a client of mine who has a product that appeals to martial artists but who else is his target market? Its policemen, firemen, military security officers, motorcycle owners. You just start opening your mind a little and you just use your awareness to what’s out there when you get to the features and benefits portion.

Before I go to the next part, I think I’m going to open it

up and see if anybody has any questions or any comments about the features and benefits. You got anything to say on the course, Michele?

Michele: No it sounds great. Lorrie: We’re doing good? Okay, we’ll open it up. If you have a

question about features and benefits say you name and I will take you questions. Are you guys there?

Audience: Hello. We’re here. Lorrie: Okay. Thank you. Maybe we’re doing fine and that’s great

too. But if anybody has a question or comment please go ahead about features and benefits. We’ll have some other times for questions too.

Caller: Am I too late? This is Michelle in Seattle. We’re talking

about an assignment on features and benefits that we’re going to do tomorrow? Is that right? You’re going to email us the assignment or to do it on the spot?

Lorrie: Exactly. It’ll all come through your email. It’ll be there in

the morning first thing. I know you’re on the west coast


like Michele and I are, but some people are on the east coast. We’re going to make sure we get it out in the email early on so you can have it.

Michelle: Is it just me as far as the forms go, I’m really very new

using them. So when we are working with our teams may I ask will our communication be through the forums with our teams?

Lorrie: Yes. That’s one way. There also is a way you can hook up

your Instant Messenger if you have any kind of instant messaging programs. You can do that with your group if they’re open to it. Or other options as well.

Michelle: But we can communicate through the forum? Thank

you. Caller: This book that you’re talking about, is that in your

workbook? Lorrie: Say that again? Caller: The workbook. You say we have a workbook. Lorrie: Yes. That’s what I meant, the Home Study Workbook.

Exactly. Caller: And is that the book that we downloaded? The Red Hot

Copy book? Lorrie: Yes. That is it. Thanks. Caller: Lorrie? Phyllis here. I came across this statement the

other day and I actually printed it out and put it up on my wall. It’s about benefits. It’s very simple but it really helped a lot. “Benefits exist in the head and the heart and everything else is a feature.”


Lorrie: I love that. Thank you for sharing that. Very powerful. I knew if you put it on your wall, I knew it was going to be. Thank you. On that note I’m going to move on to the next bit. If you have questions hold them for the next round.

Michele, are you here? Great. I really love what Phyllis

about the benefits being the head and the heart. Everything else is the features.

Michele: Yes. That’s really cool. Lorrie: So once you have your features and benefits down if you

kind of explored your product and figured out what’s going to appeal to people about it. Who are you going to sell it to? That’s our next portion. The next portion that you need to delve into before you start writing copy is to know who you’re going to sell to – who your target market is. And the more detailed you get, obviously the better. And this is a real opportunity with your potential clients. To really drill down into your target market and I go through this also in the workbook. There are specific exercises. There are quite a few about target markets and I really invite you to look at those.

But when you get this one concept, when you sit down to

write it’s going to make your copy so much better than 90% of the people who are writing copy out there. It was a big ‘Aha moment’ when I first figured it out. And everybody who I’ve talked to about it who hasn’t quite connected the dots goes ‘Wow. That’s amazing.’ What it is is that you write to one single person. Not to a mob of people, not to a group of people, but to one.

Even so when you’re looking at who your target market is, who will spend money on what it is that your selling, it’s still just one person in your mind. And that will make your copy so strong and so powerful. And I’m not the first person who thought of it. But I am the only person that I


know of who calls it a “tarket”. That’s a phrase that I coined by combining target and market because tarket sounded singular to me whereas target market sounded like a big group of people like your big marketplace. And “tarket” sounded like one. That’s what I want you to think about when you’re writing. It’s critical that you think in the singular. Not in the plural when you’re writing because guess what, only one person is doing the reading. So it’s a one-to-one relationship and the reader gets to decide when that relationship is over. You want to make sure that you connect. And tarketing or talking to one single person is a sure fire way to do that. Other corporations do this in their profiling or their personas, I believe Adele told me that’s what it’s called, right Adele? She can’t say yes but I know you are there. Companies create what they call a persona which is the same thing as a tarket. And what they do is for example, Volvo. Volvo’s target market is a married mother of 2. That doesn’t mean by any stretch of the imagination that a man doesn’t buy a Volvo or that a single person doesn’t buy a Volvo. It means that Volvo’s smart enough to know that by connecting a small niche group they’re going to look like specialists to that group and draw that group in. Oddly enough, it happens every time. People are drawn in too because they know you are good at something and it’s a factor that happens in every business. A lot of my clients are afraid to niche. I frankly was too, but I find myself more and more cutting services out of what it is that I offer because I know I do something very well. I just think it’s the smartest way to go. So Volvo figured it out. USA Today figured it out. USA Today writes to a 40 year old male business traveler. That’s why you see so many of the USA Today newspapers in the hotels. They’ve marketed very specifically to a niche. They did it in their writing. They talk to one single person. So if big corporations are doing it, obviously it’s good enough for us. That’s what I think.


One of the things that I do when I’m writing for a client or for myself, and I recommend that you do is to create your own tarket. To create your own persona. I mean get it down to the gender, down to hair color, to what kind of job they have, to health, everything you can think of. And don’t be afraid to be really brutally narrow. That’s perfectly fine. The more narrow the better. It’s a fact, it’s really true. And once you’ve narrowed down your tarket. Once you’ve narrowed down who you’re talking to then name it. Give that person a name, a male or a female. And an age and find a picture of them in a magazine and have them represent your tarket. This is another exercise and it’s also in the workbook. It will be one of the exercises that you will get during the week is to create a tarket for the Hot Socks. We’ll give you details about that. Let me tell you who my tarket is. Her name is Nicki Stanton. She’s 37 years old and she’s an entrepreneur. She’s a brunette by the way. And she has a web conferencing business and she invests a lot of her profit right back into her business. She lives in San Diego with her 10 year old daughter, Madison. She’s involved in her daughter’s school. She drives her to dance lessons. She has a home office and she makes about $117,000 a year. She jogs 3 times a week in her neighborhood and she loves to find bargains on designer clothes. And she dreams of visiting Italy with her daughter some day. That’s Nicki. When I’m writing my ezine, I’m thinking of Nicki reading it. It doesn’t mean that men don’t read my ezine, but this is my tarket. So that’s what I want to guide you guys through. It’s to write to a single person and to create that person. Do it with your own product. Do it with your own services. Do it with the exercises that we’re going to do in bootcamp. There are other areas as well with how deep you can go with these questions about your target market of how in depth you can go. I have a huge list that’s in the notes


that’s on the start page. It’s on the very bottom that I got for you from Dan Kennedy’s workshop. I believe there are maybe 4 pages of notes just to stimulate your brain of questions to specifically ask about target marketing. It’ll really help you get very sharp clear copy if you can get to that. So that is target marketing. Now I’m going to open up for questions here and see what people are doing. Okay. So that was talking about target marketing and tarketing, narrowing it down to a single factor, a single person. Does anybody have any questions about that? Any comments about that?

Caller: Lorrie. Lorrie: Phyllis. Is that you? I hear 2 people. Caller: Lorrie, it’s Bernadette. I wanted to know if you have a

product, like my product is a girl from a 12 year old to an 80 year old could use my product. I mean how do you decide on what target market you want?

Lorrie: Okay. What’s your product? Bernadette: All right. It’s a jewelry organizer. Lorrie: A jewelry organizer. Cool. Actually, you’re right. An 80

year old, a 12 year old could always use those, but when you’re actually sitting down to your copy you’re going.

Michele: Lorrie. I’ve got a comment too. This is Michele. You’re

right but the other thing to keep in mind is that they’re going to buy your jewelry organizer for different reasons, so the 80 year old wants to protect her jewelry and has more expensive jewelry whereas the 8 year old wants something that’s more of a plaything. Mothers might want something where they can grab their jewelry really fast as they’re running out the door. Versus having time


to really take care of their jewelry. That’s why you can just sell to everybody. You’ve got to narrow it down.

Caller: Yes. I totally see that. I mean I designed it actually for

myself because I hated my jewelry box so I should probably focus in on a person like myself because that’s why I designed it.

Lorrie: Interesting. And you know people do want to relate to

people like themselves. So you’ve got half the battle beaten. You know what attracts you and what repels you right away and you can reflect that in your copy. Great question.

Was there somebody else who had something to ask? Caller: Lorrie. This is Vicki. I am totally your target market. I’m

42. I’m entrepreneurial, work from home, single mom, girl 13, I’m a web conferencing trainer, coaching, developing, programmer, I write free lance in dentistry, and I’m currently putting together to import Italian lab coats into the USA. So I see how you attracted me, right? I’m definitely your target, how did that expand to include all the gentlemen who are on the call? What was the appeal? How is that? I’m on your tractor beam. How did you pull everybody else in?

Lorrie: No. It’s a great question. It’s a phenomenon that

happens with niche marketing. It’s true in many cases. Maybe some of the guys on the call might speak up and say why would you come to a call for 37 year old divorced women?

Caller: And I’m even brunette. [Laughter] Lorrie: Did somebody say they want to. Did any guys say they

want to address that?


Male: True. This is Andrew, Lorrie, in New York. Hi. You’re a darn good copywriter and I run a business school for people in the hair salon and baseball industry primarily seen now. And I have to really, I’m really interested in learning from women because I think they have a better clue as to my target market frankly than I do. I’m not going to say I’m clueless, but I have to write for them. I want to learn that. You’re welcome.

Lorrie: Thank you. Michele: This is Michele again and I have an idea as well. I think

when you write to one person people know that. Like they even tell you this with fiction and book writing to envision one person and write to them. And yes, all these other people are going to read it, but people will sense that you are only writing, you’re focused your language and you writing to only one person. When you write to a mass, you start to get really general. When you generalize your writing it doesn’t work, but when you really pinpoint and make it specific, then that’s what people are responding to.

Caller: This is James. As a male perspective on that issue, it’s

interesting because what happens is that there’s overlap. What I mean by that is, when I read your copy, Lorrie, there’s certain elements that respond to me. Because I’ll think I like this conversational style and I like your humor. Now you might have directed that towards your tarket but it overlapped into what I liked so there’s a connection between humans and the way we respond to different things, different elements of things.

Caller: Lorrie. This is Andrew again. I do have a question about

this tarket. I do have a female target – 70% female, 30% guys. Where would you suggest is the best source to swipe file, etc. Is it things that audience reads? Those things?


Lorrie: Well yes. It actually would be things that they read. If you go to a salon all the magazines that are littered around there are celebrity magazine. There are women’s magazines that tell us how to be thin and look beautiful. Look and see what ads are in those. Those are great places to swipe files. And all of the ads are not good. I promise you. So you’re going to have to see what appeals to you and use a little judgment. But here’s something you can do (dog barking) make it a little bit longer that is sure fire. If you start looking at certain magazines that have been around for a long time, and not just magazines, but websites. I will give you a website address that would be perfect for this. Start looking at them seeing which ads and what copy has been around and is used over and over again.

If it’s making money they’re going to keep on using it. If

it’s not, it’s not. Right. So there’s a website called waybackmachine.com and it is a live archive of every Internet page that has ever been posted online. So you can actually go back and see your website from whenever you got online. Mine is atrocious from what I had 5 years ago. It’s really scary. It’s going to take a little more time, but like I said, look at your competition. See how they have evolved over time and what they have left and what they have taken out. That will give you a fast education.

Andrew: That’s great. Thank you so much. Lorrie: You’re welcome. Anybody else? Caller: I have a question. I worked for several software

companies writing copy. In a corporate environment I’ve never come across the idea of a tarket before and I envision that I would have a hard time selling that to my boss that I should be writing copy that’s going to appeal to everybody all at the same time. Any tips on how to convince non-writers who are supervising you that this is a good idea?


Lorrie: Who is this? Caller: This is Veronica. Lorrie: That’s what I thought. Hi Veronica. You know, that is

very tough. I feel your pain on that. It’s hard because it doesn’t mean that it’s successful, that what they’ve done is successful.

Let me give you an example. Nike has spent how many millions of dollars to get you to see that little swoop and think Nike. Does that stimulate you to buy? It’s hard to separate that out. But it’s hard to tell just from how many millions of dollars that have been poured into advertising to say what works and what doesn’t.

Direct response copy it isn’t hard to tell because there are actual numbers. You can’t tell how many images have seen this Nike swoop, but you can tell how many people have actually read an ad and directly responded or not even just an ad. When I’m saying copy, I’m actually talking about a much broader sense of copy. It’s just that ad copy is what gets you the money so I like to focus on that. But it is a tough sell, Veronica. I have no doubt about it. The thing is if you can tell them this and see if this will appeal to them. At the end of the day the person reading the copy is one person. He still puts his pants on one leg at a time, or you know curls her eyelashes with that one hand or whatever. Whatever it is that we do we are still human and you want to have that connectedness. I know that sounds a little touchy feely for a CEO but if you let them do a test. If you let them try it, I guarantee they will see different results. They will see better results because when you connect with a human versus dry boring language there are too many people vying for our attention right now. There’s too much going on. We’re hit


with 3,500 minimum, 3,500 advertising messages a day. I’ve heard that figure, but that’s old. It’s got to be maybe 5,000—6,000 at this point. So he’s got a lot of competition. It would be nice if he would want to try it your way. I’ll talk to them.

Veronica: Okay. That would be great. Lorrie: You’re welcome. It’s a tough call. I understand that. Caller: Lorrie, this is Ellie. I didn’t catch it the 1st time around

but I just realized it might be “.org” and not “.com”. Lorrie: Thank you so much. You are right.

www.waybackmachine.org. Thank you. Caller: Lorrie? Hi, this is Adele. I have another thought about the

value of the tarket to add on or give another perspective to Veronica’s excellent question. I was just talking to a colleague of mine who I’ve been collaborating with, trying to get her to think about a product she’s just created which is a physical children’s book. And to think about how she might market it online and one of the 1st steps we should think about is who her tarket is and to identify that persona that would represent probably the key person who’s been buying her book. Now her book is written for her niece who is 6 years old, but really what it’s turning out is that mothers and grandmothers and adults are buying it because of the social messages that she put into it. It’s really multi age attractive you might say. She’s now torn because even though she had picked the grandmotherly type that would buy it for her nieces or nephews or her grandchildren as the tarket, now she just doesn’t know who her market is anymore because so many different kinds of people are buying it. I tried to explain that it’s not the purpose of the exercise in the case of sales copy is really to pinpoint the absolute majority winner of who would actually buy your product. To simply come up with somebody that you can give a


space to as you have said before and a voice to that you can create a sense of familiarity with that person as if they were sitting across the kitchen table from you.

And in some ways it may not matter exactly who it is, whether it represents the people who demographically buy your product in droves or maybe not the majority buyers. I’m not sure. I don’t know if you pick exactly the right demographic description as long as you have given a personality to an imaginary human being that would represent your conversation partner. Does that make any sense?

Lorrie: That is well said. Just so I can explain who you are, Adele

has a lot of corporate background and a lot of technological background. As well as copy so I think that is perfect, well said. It doesn’t matter to the reader who the person is that you’re visualizing as a copywriter because they can’t necessarily see that. They get that vibe, they get the feeling that it’s somebody in particular, that it’s them; that you’re talking right to them.

Veronica: This is Veronica again. I think that’s a great point is

that the whole idea of the tarket isn’t to try to pinpoint your perfect demographic, it’s just to pinpoint somebody and it still works.

Lorrie: Yes. Exactly, thank you. Adele: Yes. Thank you, Veronica. This is Adele. It’s to create a

conversation mold of a familiar voice of a conversational partner. That’s what I learned from Lorrie. So that’s what I extracted.

Veronica: That’s great. That’s very helpful. Thank you. Lorrie: You’re welcome. Thank you. See how we learned

something today? I love that. Does anybody else have a


comment or a question? Then we’re going to get into the last bit of the call. Michele, are you there?

Michele: Yes I am. Lorrie: Great. Once you have your “tarket”, your target market

you need to know what they’re thinking so you can connect with them. So just to take it one step further this is stuff that needs to be done before you write your copy. So before you actually sit down and write it you want to think what are the questions in your target market’s mind?

And those become your Frequently Asked Questions. The reason frequently asked questions are so important is because they’re already thinking about it in their mind. They’re cutting off the sale. They’re raising objections about your product or your service before you even get to it. You have to anticipate what it is that they’re thinking if you’re going to connect with the prospect. And you want to really turn again into a reporter. Go into a deeper level and ask how, what, why, where, and how much. That’s what we want to know when we’re hooked in.

I’m going to teach you in the next class how to hook them in before we get there. This is before we write the copy so you’ve got to anticipate what your tarket is thinking. The purpose, in general, about frequently asked questions is overcome the objections before they think of them. It’s to build trust because you don’t have anything to hide, if you’re telling them what’s good and what’s bad about your product. You are laying it out there and that builds trust. It’s also a good place to outshine the competition. Not to ditch them, just to emphasize how much better your product is than theirs or how many more benefits you’re going to get by using that product. Frequently asked questions are highly respected. People read them very readily and we will get into this with


bullets later too. But frequently asked questions are very bite-sized to read; they’re easy on the eyes; and people will often scan the frequently asked questions just to look for their specific question. In fact, a test that I just gleaned from Dan Kennedy’s workshop again was that if you are going to have frequently asked questions consider having a list of the frequently asked questions before you answer them. So somebody can look at the list of questions before they actually get into the copy. They can click if it’s an online thing, or if it’s printed material either way they will see what questions there are so they don’t look into their long answers and lose interest. It lets you connect with their questions, their thought process. You have a much better chance of getting them to read farther. And the farther you get them to read, the better chance of them buying. That’s what copy’s all about. You might have discovered that a lot of the questions that I’m going to go into with the target market research is that this actually takes it really, really deep. And I mentioned this earlier that we got a checklist that I handed to you from the Dan Kennedy notes that I gave you at the Start Page of the Workshop. What Dan did and what I do, I will now influx his notes as well to my prospects to go even deeper, and to really look again about who your tarket is.

• the demographics of them; • the age, • gender, • marital status, • Do they have kids? • Do they have aging parents or grandparents? • What’s their education level? • What’s their occupation? • How many jobs have they held in their lives?


• How many kinds of jobs have they held? • Do they have pets?

Then in the psycho-graphics: What kind of magazines do they read? And think about these questions with your own product or service and when you’re doing the exercise, the small bites that we’re going to do for the Hot Socks. Think about these kinds of things.

• What TV shows does your tarket watch? • Who are their favorite celebrities? • What religion are they? • How do they feel about the hand they were dealt in

life? • How do they feel about things? • What do they get angry at? • What are they afraid of? • Do they have neurosis? • Who do they hate or fear or resent? • What are some of their hopes and dreams? • List 5 people they most admire.

When you start thinking in terms of these specifics and this is what’s true of copy as well, but imagine 5 people that somebody that wanted Hot Socks would admire. How would it be? And think of them when you get it down to the ‘tarket’ think in those specific terms. Would it be 5 different celebrities or would they admire their mom? Would they admire Donald Trump? Who is their favorite president? Really try to get into their minds. Another way to find out more about frequently asked questions is to look at your competition. We were talking about that earlier. Look at what other people are doing through the WayBackMachine. That www.waybackmachine.org, thank you very much. Go there and see what your competition has done over time.


What works and what doesn’t work. Spy on them basically. Find out what groups they join and join them. This is of course for your own products than maybe the Hot Socks product, but take it to that level. Do they go to Wal-Mart? Go to Wal-Mart. Do they go out to fine dining? Then go there. Go to where your target market is and study them and figure out what’s in their minds and what makes them tick. Because I’ve got to tell you it’s probably what you’re thinking makes you tick. Dan Kennedy said, and again I’m on this Dan Kennedy thing because I just went to his workshop, but he said “You are usually not your own customer.” even though we try to relate to our customers in copy. A lot of times we don’t do this deep work and that’s what’s critical to do to really, really have winning copy. You’ve got to do the ground work first. So ask them what they want as well. You can actually walk up to them and ask. You can do this in a lot of different ways. If you have past clients so you’re working with your own product or service and you have past clients you can actually call them on the phone or email them. Ask them to answer a question about what’s their most important question about jewelry boxes. Or what’s their most important question about racing horses. Or whatever it is that your industry does, ask them. There’s also the Ask Database where you can set up an entire ask campaign and I’m not even going to get into that, but it’s at www.askdatabase.com. It’s a very powerful search engine way of using keywords that people use when they’re answering your questions. You can use those words back in the copy that you want to write for them so they feel more connected. Very cool. Very powerful. You’d be surprised how much people want to tell you. How much they like things or how much they don’t like things. And that’s just as important, just as valid to listen to what they don’t like. To not take it personally, but use it as market research. It’s very critical. You can also find out FAQ’s and find out deeper


stuff by typing for keywords on the Internet. One of the guys in the class, Mark, I’ll talk to you if you’re here. Mark has a fantastic tool about how to find keywords for niche markets. I’m sure he can tell you more about that on the website too, on the Forum. A place to go to type keywords is the Overture search engine when it’s working. It’s not always working. It’s actually the advertiser’s big suggestion tool. It’s at this address and I will send this to you. It’s at http://inventory.overture.com and I will send that to you. What it will do is calculate how many times people have searched the Internet, specifically for search engines in the last month. So if you type in let’s say, ‘mom’. It’s going to tell you how many people search the term ‘mom’. More and more people are using more than one term to search. So it’s like ‘stay at home moms’ is searched more than ‘work at home moms,’ tremendously. So those might be words you might want to use in your copy. These kinds of little things all add up to making the layers of copy work. But they all are important. I can’t tell you that one’s more important than the other. Just all the legwork you have to do ahead of time. Michele, do you have anything to add about how to really spy on your competition or how to get deep into the patterns of your target market to find out what they’re thinking?

Michele: Yes. One thing that I like to do and I tell people to do is the magazine one. If you’ve got women’s magazines, go to the websites and look at the media kits because these magazines live or die by advertisers. They have to prove to the advertisers that certain people are reading their magazine. So they have collected tons of this information, this demographic information. So you can go and request it or look at it. And then you might end up


realizing that this is a magazine that you want to advertise in or that you want to send an article to. It’s like you may try to get a relationship with the reporter. So these are ways to use it as well, but to look at the demographic information is really valuable.

Lorrie: That’s an excellent point. I like that. That’s really good.

You can also gather catalogs of like The Pottery Barn or baby catalogs if you’re selling to babies. Look and see what’s selling and at what price points. That’s taps back into what is interesting to somebody. They wouldn’t be in a catalog for very long if it wasn’t interesting to somebody.

Michele: Also, I do have a little funny story about not being your

target market. I had a client and this client was on the radio but never heard her ad. Never heard her ad, but it was working. Every time it would come up she would always complain to me how she never heard her ad. I would say to her, you’re not your target market. Don’t worry about it.

Lorrie: Like she’s on the wrong radio station or something. Michele: Yes. She’s listening to some other station. [Laughter] Lorrie: That’s a great story. That’s totally true. I’m going to see

if anyone else has anything else to say because this is a huge broad topic to get into the frequently asked questions.

There are some copywriters that start by writing the frequently asked questions first because it’s such a powerful way to get into the thought patterns of who your target market is. That’s what you have to do to anchor your copy into the person who’s reading it. This is all stuff you’ve got to have done ahead of time. So I’m going to open up the lines to see what we have going on.


So does anyone have some questions or comments about frequently asked questions and getting into the heads of your markets?

Caller: Lorrie. Andrew again. Where did you say that Dan Kennedy’s 4 pages were?

Lorrie: That is in the notes that I gave you as a bonus for signing

up which is on the Start Page. At the very bottom of the page I believe it says Click Here for the Dan Kennedy notes from his seminar. Do you see it? It’s there. And it’s fabulous. There are things in there about how to write copy fast that I’ll be teaching to you guys, but it’s in there. So it’s just some amazing information.

Andrew: I will double check. Thank you. Caller: Lorrie, this is Maggie. Lorrie: Hi Maggie. Maggie: Lorrie, the workbook. Where do we find it because I

think I’ve misplaced it somehow? Lorrie: Oh. You’re from the Shared Vision so I thought I gave

you guys the link but I will make sure that you get that. Thank you, Maggie. I have a couple of people, not a couple; there are quite a few people. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.

Caller: This is Rebecca. I have a quick question. I’ve been seeing

FAQ’s for like software products on websites and what not on websites. Do you have an example of what that looks like for somebody that’s offering a service versus a product?

Lorrie: No. I’ll look through my swipe files and my bookmarks

and see what I have. I know that I do, but off the top of my head I can’t think of one. Thank you.


Rebecca: I’m looking for a good swipe. Okay! [Laughter] Lorrie: You know they say that if writers write, do copywriters

copy? [Laughter] Rebecca: But they do it with integrity. Lorrie: Absolutely. That’s the key. You’ve got that right. Another

thing about frequently asked questions is that there are so many different ways that they can be used. They can be used on their own page. Or they can be used as part of a sales letter. You can be writing the sales letter and you can just shift into the frequently asked questions. Or you can have a list at the start of a page like I was saying and have them drop down to view them there. There’s lots of different ways to display them. Or you don’t even necessarily have to have them listed as a Q&A although I think it’s a valuable thing to do.

You could just do this exercise. Just figure out what’s in your target market’s head and then work those objections into the copy. You overcome them. It costs too much. Then you would overcome that by expressing how valuable it is. Anyone else have some comments, questions, feedback on the frequently asked questions?

Caller: Lorrie, what email did you send the notes from Dan Kennedy? I’m looking at it.

Lorrie: That is all on the Start Page where everything’s at. It’s in

there. There’s a list of the things that you’re supposed to do, the MP3s and signing up for Copy Campus. It’s down there if you keep on moving.

Frank: Hi Lorrie. This is Frank. Somebody asked for an FAQ for

software?


Caller: No for surveys. Lorrie: But I would like the one for software. What is it, Ask

Database? Frank: Yeah. Ask Database and there’s an FAQ link at the top. Lorrie: Thank you. That’s actually an excellent one because

doesn’t that also employ audio? Frank: Not on that FAQ we don’t. Lorrie: Okay. Thank you Frank, I appreciate it. We’re going to

actually get into that with the interactivity of audio by the way because I think audio’s cool. Anybody else?

Andrew: Lorrie, this is Andrew. I went back to ‘You’re in

Bootcamp’. That one with all the instructions and still can’t find it.

Lorrie: Okay. I’m sorry. It’s a great resource and I want you to

be able to find it. It’s actually on my website and it’s at www.red-hot-copy.com/rhcbootcampstart.htm. When you’re there it’s actually in the PS. You’re supposed to read the PS, didn’t you know that? [Laughing] They are excellent notes and you will definitely get a lot out of them, a reading list that he recommends. Lots of good stuff.

Caller: Hi. A question? This is Michelle in Seattle. Speaking of the

notes, did you win? Lorrie: No! You know what he did? He really bagged out. He

made us vote for everybody in the room except for ourselves. Then he just tallied the votes. It had nothing to do with how good or how bad your notes were. I lost by one vote. I did take great notes.


Caller: Hi Lorrie. It’s Mark Widawer. I came on the call a little late. I was with a client. Question about FAQ’s. Sometimes I see FAQ’s right in the sales letter and it’s almost conversational where it’s not presented as an FAQ but the sales letter’s written as someone said and here’s my answer. Do you have any comment on whether that’s more effective than just having a page called FAQ’s?

Lorrie: I like the way you’re saying that actually imagining

examples in my mind that goes both ways. I actually personally think you should work the FAQ’s in the copy without taking them to a separate page in most cases. But what copy does is that it reiterates itself. And every little piece of it, every chunk of it should stand alone. And so it’s okay if you work it into the copy and then you reiterate it on another page. That’s fine.

Mark: I hadn’t even considered that. That’s a good idea. Lorrie: Yes. And that comes from the direct mail pieces where

you never know if you’re going to lose a page. Just reiterate the copy on a website you never know when you’re going to lose the reader because there are so many opportunities to jump around. So the more concise you can be with whatever it is you’re doing – wash, rinse, repeat. That’s it – wash, rinse, repeat. You would obviously test different methods of it but you can’t give too many FAQ’s as far as I’m concerned because you never know what’s going on in somebody’s head. You can’t see their face to tell so you’ve got to hit all the bases. Thank you.

Mark: Okay. Perfect. Thanks. Lorrie: How about any other questions? Any other comments? Caller: Lorrie. This is Linda. On that link to the

rhcbootcamp.com. you said start.htm?


Caller: Send it out to everybody. Linda: Yes. Just send it out because I can’t get it. I thought I

had it. Lorrie: I sure will. I put that in your notes to get you back here

and I want you to bookmark the page too when I do because this is where I’m going to upload the audio and everything that’s new is going to be on this page. So I will absolutely send it out again and I’ll just send a link to the forum just to make sure that nobody loses the link so they can be active on it. I’m going to wind it up and if anybody has anything they want to add or ask I’m here.

I want to reinforce how important it is to do the little exercises you’re going to get in your email. They’re not going to take you longer than 15 minutes. And they’re critical to the writing process that we would go to or any copywriter would go to when you’re writing a piece of copy. It’s stuff that you’re going to get in your own arsenal to add when you’re writing your own sales copy. So I want to encourage you to do those exercises and to post them with your team. We have a short week this week because they are going to come out today and yesterday. So you’re only going to get 3 this week. And we’ll have the rest of them next week and every week. It’s going to be so much fun. [ring] Somebody’s calling me. So does anybody have any questions about the process? About how it’s working with what you’re supposed to do as far as your team?

Michele: I just had another little thought on that 15 minute

exercise. I know it is a commitment but really if you can write every day, even if it’s just a little bit, you’re really going to see things improve. You’re also going to -- it’s going to be a lot easier for you to write all these things.


Lorrie: That’s very true. There was another exercise that I

learned from Dan Kennedy. I’ve got to tell you, I completely underestimated how important it was being creative when I was writing copy all these years. I used to brag about how ‘Well I’m a writer, but I’m not really creative. Because I have a journalism background and that’s not creative, that’s just facts, man. That’s just stuff I do.’

The truth is the more you read other people’s writing and the more you get into that creative sphere, the better your writing is. It captivates people. There’s so much competition for your attention right now, that the more you can tap into somebody’s energy the more likely you are to build the relationship with them to get them involved in your copy.

Well, I think then we’re going to call it a night. Everybody

look out for the emails that are going to be coming to them and if anyone has any issues or problems go ahead and email me at [email protected] and we’re going to meet again on Tuesday. Of course, we’ll be talking quite a bit between to reinforce our learning at the Forum. This has been such a great call. I’ve had such a great time. I’ll talk to you guys next Tuesday. Goodnight everybody.

END OF CLASS

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