- Seven copywriting exercises you can do right now
to become a copywriter.
Now, first of all, I want to you to understand
that copywriting is a learnable skill.
How do I know it's a learnable skill?
Because I learned it.
When I first immigrated to Vancouver, Canada,
I couldn't speak a word of English, right?
So, English is not my first language.
So I know for a fact that if I could learn this skill,
if English is not your first language
or it is your first language, you can learn this skill.
It's very much like a muscle, right?
You can go to the gym, you can bench press,
you can do push-ups, you can do curls.
You can work that muscle.
So today I want to give you seven exercises
that you could do that you could exercise
your copywriting muscles
so you can become a better copywriter.
Sound good? Here we go.
Exercise number one, and that is I want you
to sign up for what I call a learning email address.
It's not your primary email address.
A learning email address
and you would use the email address
to subscribe to everyone's list.
Everyone has got a learning page,
some kind of offer. Subscribe to their stuff.
So what happens is, you could use gmail,
I like to use gmail,
when you get the email addresses,
you can then filter them and sort of put them
in different folders so you're collecting different emails
from different people, different learning pages.
So you would see other people's work.
When you do this, you are building your email archive
of other people's work like naturally.
So that's exercise number one.
Sign up for other people's stuff.
Do not use your primary email address.
You'll be bombarded with thousands and thousands of emails
everyday and you'll come back to my channel
and comment and you bitch about it. Don't do that, okay?
Copywriting exercise number two
and that is go to www.swiped, S-W-I-P-E-D, .co
I'll put a link somewhere on this page
You go there and you see a lot of different white files
and sales letters and what you want to look for
is look for what I call control,
write it down, control pieces.
Meaning that it's a marketing piece
that has been proven to convert sales.
Proven to generate revenue. Look at those control pieces
and then you want to save them, you can print them out
I like to print them out because I am old school, right?
So I like to print them out and I like to look at them
and I like to dissect "okay here's the headline."
"Oh here's the storytelling part"
"Oh here's the guarantee"
and you're looking at other people,
other master's work, right?
And this will give you a better understanding of,
"Oh I can see that this is what makes it good."
or "I really like this headline here." Right?
If you like it, copy and paste
maybe put it in your work document, organize it nicely.
Then you're building your own little virtual library
if that makes sense.
Copywriting exercise number three,
now this is so simple but this is one of my secrets.
When I had clients who were contacting me
and they hired me to write copy,
one of the first things that I do
is always ask them and say
"hey can I talk to some of your existing customers?"
You will be shocked how many entrepreneurs
and business owners, they don't ask.
They don't talk to their customers.
So here's what I do
this is what makes me look like a genius, right?
In my early twenties, I would say, "okay
give me a few of your best customer's contact information
I will go and talk to them."
So then I would settle a time, I work on the phone with them
and I simply ask them "Hey, you know,
why did you do business with this company?"
"what motivated you to buy from them?"
"Why didn't you just buy from everybody else?"
And most of the time you'll find out
they'll tell you everything.
"Oh I love about the customer service."
"I love the brand."
"I love this, like how this product works."
And all of that, I wrote all of those things down.
And I went back and I talked to my client and said
"Hey you know, do you know why people buy from you?"
and usually they would say "Oh they buy from us
because of A, B, C, and D" and I said
"That's not true. Let me share with you
exactly why they buy from you."
and I show them X, Y, Z and they're like
"Oh my God, you're a genius. How come we didn't know this?
How come we never find out about
all these things about customers?"
And I mumble "because you never asked." Like duh!
So then all I need to do as a copywriter
is taking what is obvious like "Duh! Hello?"
You take in what's obvious and then you craft a message
'cause if I'm talking to three, four, five people
that's why they bought from this person? This company?
I took all that and guess what?
Most of the time, other people
they're buying for the same reason!
Like, craft marketing message
then you send out to a market place
and it works. And then you look like a hero.
So it's not so much about writing,
it's about doing the research
It's about understanding the customers.
Most people don't do this.
So that's exercise number three.
Exercise number four
and this I actually learned it from my mentor Alan
and Alan's the one who had taught me copywriting.
And he actually learned this from the great Gary Halbert
Which Gary Halbert, when he was alive,
arguably one of the, if not thee greatest,
copywriter of our time.
Kind of the Michael Jordan of copywriting.
Gary Halbert used to have this exercise
and he said "Okay after you've finished a marketing piece"
and Gary usually sells to the masses, right? Like everybody.
"Once you've finished your marketing piece,
and backed in a direct real piece,"
and he said "here's what you wanna do"
"You wanna go to a bar, go to a pub."
"Go somewhere public and you show people what you wrote"
"About the author, about the letter, about the campaign."
You show people, and he asked people
"What do you think about this?"
And they would read it and if they say to you
"Oh this is really good!"
This is like "yeah, yeah this is cool!"
It means it's shit. It means this is shit
It means your stuff is not good.
That's not the reaction you want. If they say to you,
they're reading your letter, they're reading your offer
"Where can I buy this?" "I want to buy some of this."
Then you know you got something
'cause people vote with their wallets.
So show your work to people
who may not even be your ideal customers.
Have them look at it, get some feedback
'cause they would give you feedback
that you may not even be aware, you may not even think of!
Just ask them and say "I don't understand this."
"This is totally confusing to me."
What do you mean it's confusing? It's so obvious.
Like one of the things I'll share quickly with you
when I talk about closing, in my mind
because I've been in the industry for so long
I thought everybody knows what closing is.
Now when I talk to people outside of business
outside of sales, you know what they think closing is?
They think closing is this.
They think it's closing the door.
I say "What the hell? Closing, sales!"
"Oh! Sales! You mean like selling, yeah!"
They don't make that connection.
So then I know from then on
every time I talk about closing,
I would explain what closing means. I would tell them
"Hey, you know how you have traditional sales?"
"The kind of people who are slimy, pushy, aggressive
like snake oil sales? Closing is a different form of sales."
"It's a higher level of sales."
"Oh!" Now they're curious, they're intrigued.
They want to know more.
So even simple things like that
'cause keep in mind in this day in and day out
we do this day in and day out,
sometimes we take ourself out of the picture.
Give yourself a little bit of distance
between what you do and what you sell.
You would be able to communicate your message
so much better to your ideal audience.
Copywriting exercise number five.
This you can do immediately
and that is after you've finish your copy,
get yourself a quiet room, okay?
Maybe in your bedroom, in your living room
and you want to read out your copy out loud. That's right.
So after you finish your letter, your message,
your email, your learning page, just read out loud.
When you read your copy out loud,
the spots that you feel like it doesn't flow?
If it doesn't flow when you are reading out loud,
it doesn't flow for your reader who is reading it mentally
as they're going it through, going through the copy.
So then you might want to change some of those segments
Or when you read it out loud
there's certain words you think
maybe that word is too complicated. It's confusing.
You can replace that word with easier to understand words.
Right? Simpler words. You can also do that.
So just by reading it out loud, I don't care what you wrote
Reading it out loud, you will find
that so many places and spots within the marketing message
that you could improve. So, very simple exercise
but very, very effective.
Copywriting exercise number six. Now this exercise
is probably one of the most important exercise
that I could teach you.
And I learned this from, again my copywriting mentor.
When he taught me this exercise
he said "I have taught this exercise to so many people"
"I've shared this with so many people over the years."
"No one does it. Dan, you're one of the very few people,
maybe the only one who actually does it."
I said, "Okay what is that?"
Right? Like why is that?
He said "I don't know, people are just too lazy."
Maybe? So here's the exercise.
You take winning, proven pieces
letters, marketing messages, copy,
and you copy them word for word in your own handwriting.
That's the very first thing that my mentor taught me.
So we'll take these marketing letters,
have a notepad here, the pieces,
and I would copy word for word in my own handwriting.
Notice I said handwriting. Not laptop, not computer,
not typing, none of that.
Good old paper and pen. Why?
Because when you do that,
you are rewiring your nervous system. You're learning.
There's something when you use the pen. When you write,
it connects to a different part in your brain.
So when I first did this, I thought it was kinda dumb.
I didn't understand how profound this is.
I was arguing a little bit with my mentor, I was like
"Why do I need to do this? Couldn't I just read it?"
"Couldn't I just type it so much faster?
Like, this is slow!" I could type pretty fast.
He said, "It's not how it works."
And I didn't quite understand. He just said
"Just keep doing it. Just keep doing it"
"Just keep doing it. Just keep doing it.
and I did. And it's not like different letters.
It's like the same freaking letter!
Do it two, three, four, ten times. The same letter.
And one day it clicked for me and here's what happened.
As I was copying the letter word for word,
Suddenly it's this bizarre experience, okay?
Because I've done it so many times
I could finish the sentences.
I would know what was coming up next, right?
Just by memory, but more than that you have this experience.
You gotta experience it. You gotta do it
I can't just describe it for you,
you gotta experience it for yourself.
Something will click and suddenly you will get
into the psyche and the psychology
and the mental state of the copywriter, back then.
It's just crazy experience.
That you would write and suddenly you kinda get a glimpse
of what that writer was thinking about.
And then once you do a little bit more
because you're kinda trying to imitate
you would kinda slowly picking up their voices.
They're like "Oh yeah, hmm I can see why he wrote this way."
"Why he thinks this way." and it's like
you're downloading their writing style to your brain.
It's the craziest thing, you gotta do it to experience it.
I cannot describe how it is.
Now, it's gonna take a while, right?
It took me quite a few months
before I had the "Ah ha" experience.
And that, from then on, this is my go to exercise
This is how I got good.
Look at great masters and what they have done
and you talk about modeling, just do this right?
Just do this, you do this ten, twenty, thirty times
you do it long enough, something will click.
Which leads to exercise number seven
which is devote some time every day to write.
If you're gonna be a professional copywriter,
well what's the difference between a professional
and an amateur, right?
An amateur kinda does it like hobby! Right?
You think about professional golfer, right?
If you golf infrequently, whenever you feel like it,
you're an amateur golfer.
If you're a professional golfer,
you do it all the time. Also you get paid doing it
but more so it's a part of your lifestyle.
So you would not be a very good writer
if you're not writing everyday. I don't care
if it's as little as ten, twenty, thirty minutes a day
let's say thirty minutes a day, let's have a deal.
Thirty minutes a day, you're gonna devote some time
maybe in the morning, in the evening, it doesn't matter
just to writing. The more you write, the better you get
the easier it is for you to write, the faster you'll write.
In the beginning maybe it takes you
I don't know, three hours to craft
like, a good ad, a good email.
You'll be able to do it faster and faster
when you write every day. Every single day.
Every single day. Every single day.
Then you'll do it in maybe two hours
and then one hour and before you know it,
I could right now write something in an email
send out to my list, it could be five, ten minutes
with a very very good email. It could be an ad.
Because of practice, right?
You could do it. It's a learnable skill.
So those are the seven copywriting exercises
you could do right now.
Now, besides exercise, if you want to learn techniques
if you want to learn strategies,
you want to learn how to do some of these things,
or how do you actually craft a headline?
How do you craft a compelling offer?
How to craft a compelling call to action?
If you want to learn how to do that, click the link below
and check on my free on demand training on copywriting.
I think you'll love it.