(hype music)
(applause)
- Okay, now I wanna talk about,
have my mentee Stephen come up here.
He's gonna share with you what I believe
the most important part of copywriting.
The most... so I've been training Stephen for
now a number of months now on how to write copy.
Now here's the thing:
What I want you to do,
I want him to walk you,
you can see he'll walk you
through the process of what he does.
What you want to...
Pay attention to this.
What you want to get out of this
is when you work with a copywriter, ask yourself
does your copywriter go through the same process?
So I'm giving you an almost a buying criteria,
does that make sense?
So pay attention.
So Stephen, come on up.
(applause) - Thank you, thank you.
Wait that's not the one, this one, this one.
Okay.
Alright so,
how many people have ever fell in love before?
Put up your hand.
(crowd laugh)
Yeah, excellent.
Now did you know that
people say
'love
is one of the only socially acceptable forms of insanity.'
(crowd laugh)
I know right?
So a couple of years ago,
back when I was still in university,
I made one of the best decisions.
I took in a,
exchange program to Singapore
and stayed there for one semester.
Now the second day I got there,
I met this girl and I fell madly, madly in love with her.
Her name was Lena,
so a cute Korean girl,
looked like she was half European half Asian.
(crowd laugh)
Yeah, you guys back there like that?
(laughs)
And she had the cutest Australian accent,
'cause she was from exchange from Sydney.
Now I just absolutely adored this girl.
Right it off...
Right off the bat, we just hit it off.
Y'know we just started hanging out every single day,
and one day, just in the next week, we were on the computer,
and right in the hear of the moment,
we bought a plane ticket to Thailand, for seven full days.
Now after I made that decision,
I was like 'Holy shit, what did I just do?'
I just met this person and on top of that,
I have never ever spent seven full days
with another human being before.
So I'm like, okay, two things are gonna happen.
Number one, either we're gonna kill each other
or number two, we're gonna fall madly in love.
And of course, you know it's a love story,
so we did fall in love.
And after we came back, we did everything together.
We had breakfast together, we studied together.
Y'know we hung out with friends.
We took like a million selfies every single day.
(crowd laughs)
Now there's this one trip that I remember in particular.
After we came back from Thailand,
we booked a couple of other ones.
One trip in particular.
And we're in this tiny little island in the Philippines.
And we just went to dinner at this restaurant.
They had live music, they got some fresh mangoes,
they have fresh fish.
And after we exit that restaurant,
I remember I looked up into the sky,
and it was completely, completely filled with stars.
Just full of these, full of stars,
and every ten to fifteen seconds
I would see a shooting star go by.
Now I remember I was holding Lena's hand,
and we're talking about life,
we're talking about our biggest dreams.
We're talking about our relationships
with our family members.
And in that moment,
I just felt present.
I've completely forgot that I was on exchange.
I completely forgot that I just met this girl.
And right then and there, I made a promise to myself
that I was gonna do whatever it takes,
just to spend a little bit time with her.
So after we went back to Singapore from the Philippines,
the semester just flew by, four months went by so fast.
And it was time for a reality check,
I obviously had to go back to Vancouver,
and she had to go back to Sydney.
And Singapore was about to kick us out within a week.
But I was thinking, you know what?
I'm not ready to let go at this point.
I want to spend just a little bit more time,
I'd do whatever it takes,
just to spend a little bit more time with Lena.
So out of desperation, I'm like, okay...
I came up with this plan.
I was thinking, 'okay,
I'm gonna contact the host families in Sydney.'
You know how these families they have an extra room
for students that you can rent?
So I was thinking, 'okay, I'm gonna write up this email,
and I'm going to
try to whatever I can, say whatever I can,
to persuade them to let me stay at their place for free.'
Because at this point, I was completely out of money.
(laughs)
But I made a promise to myself,
I wanted to do whatever it takes.
So I pulled up the email, in the subject line I wrote:
'be the reason two dumb lovers can stay together'.
(crowd laughs)
'Be the reason two dumb lovers can stay together'.
And that's when I started writing this email.
I spent a good six hours writing this email,
just completely pouting my heart out into this email,
because I knew, okay this is the difference between me
going back home, never seeing this girl again,
or just me buying just a little bit more time with her.
Alright, so I edited it, I poured out a lot of emotion,
tried to add some value to the host families,
so I was saying how I can cook for you too,
I can help you clean your house,
I can teach your friends
and your kids Mandarin if you have kids.
All you have to do is let me stay in your place.
So spent tons and tons of time on this email,
and after I proofread, proofread, read it, read it, read it,
I sent it off.
I sent it off to as many people as possible.
I'm like 'this is it, either I'm going to back to Vancouver,
or I'm gonna get a chance in Sydney.'
Sent it off, very next day got email in my inbox from Troy.
Troy said, 'Wow Stephen, couldn't stop reading your story,
saved you a room, I'll see you soon'.
In that moment, I learnt one of the most important lessons
of my life.
Because of my words,
going back to what we were talking about today.
Because of my words, I was able to influence someone else,
to do something for me.
And that was really really powerful.
In my case, I had influenced Troy
to be able to let me stay at his home.
But then I realized, 'You know what?
Words are worth so much more than that.'
We can turn, I can turn words into money.
And that's what we're here to talk about today.
How to turn words into cash, right?
So what I'm gonna do right now is I'm gonna give you,
five proven steps what I do as a copywriter.
And walk you step by step,
to tell you how to create compelling copy.
So, first step, very very important.
The first step is to do tons and tons of research
like a copywriter, okay.
So I'll walk you through step by step how I do it.
Right now I'm working with LaVigne Organic Skin Care,
and Linda's in the back over there.
And they sell organic skincare products.
Beauty and skincare products,
so it's a female demographic
and I'll tell you the first thing I did.
First thing that I did was,
I went to all the major beauty magazines
and woman magazines in general,
and subscribed to their newsletters.
So I went onto Oprah, I went to Cosmopolitan,
I went to Allure.
I checked out videos by Michelle Phan, on youtube.
All for the purpose of collecting all of these words,
that trigger action, build curiosity, spark...
Yeah trigger action, spark curiosity, grab attention.
And basically just start collecting 'em on a piece of paper,
because that's very very important.
You're gonna write all your copy based on this research
that you do.
Second step that I do is I go to Amazon.
I check out all the best selling products
and what kind of copy that they use.
Try to figure out,
'okay what kind of phrases really trigger people
to take action after reading this'.
Because after all, copywriting,
the only purpose of copywriting is to sell.
Third thing that I do for research
is I take a look at the customer reviews.
This is very very important,
because within the customer reviews,
what are you gonna find?
You're gonna find the deepest pain points.
You're gonna find the deepest desires.
You're gonna find all their objections.
And you're gonna figure out what kind of language
that your customer, your target market talks in.
You figure out the kind of conversations
that they have in their head.
So that is very very important.
You wanna be able to engage, with the reader
and the target audience in a way
that they wanna be spoken with to.
Because at the end of the day, everybody wants to buy it.
They just wanna be sold.
So you have to be able to connect with the audience.
Alright so after you do the research,
step number two is, I look into my swipe files.
So anybody know what a swipe file is?
Yeah?
- [Audience Member] No, need help.
- No, okay.
Anyway, a swipe file is a cheat sheet
that every copy writer has.
So it's a collection of the top proven words
and catchphrases that you can use
that are already proven in the market.
So Dan was talking about how you can,
he gave us a couple of examples of headlines that work.
So all you have to do, is you look at these headlines.
The, what was that called?
The, anyways.
That article about the big taller, meaner dude,
all the, pardon me?
- [Audience Member] The thing about martial arts?
- Yeah, the thing about martial arts, right.
What you do, is you take a look at these headlines,
and you take a look at the sub-headlines,
and see what worked for them to capture attention.
And all you have to do is swap in and out of the words
that apply to your industry.
So that's number two.
Step number three.
This is when you build the foundation of your copy.
So for copywriting
the words are extremely, extremely important.
But at the same time, you have to present your information
in a logical sequence.
So this is why I'm thinking about the structure of my copy,
whether I'm writing a long-form sales letter
or I'm writing an email sequence.
Whatever it, whatever message I'm writing,
I'm thinking about, 'okay, where should I put the story?
At the beginning, middle or end.'
'Where should I put the guarantee?'
'Where should I put the testimonials?'
Because you have to present your information
in a way that kind of flows and really connects.
So that is step number three.
Step number four,
is what I call 'write drunk, edit sober'
(crowd laughs)
So after you've done all of your research,
after you've built your foundation,
you know how you wanna structure your message,
what you wanna do, is you wanna put down everything
down on a piece of paper, you just start writing.
Start writing, start writing and you keep on writing
your sales copy.
And you just let it all out, onto the page.
And after that, that's when you start editing.
I'm sure everyone in the room has written something before,
you understand how important
the editing process actually is.
This is where you trim the fat,
you take out the unnecessary words.
And what I'd call this is,
this is actually called 'wordsmithing'.
So you know how a blacksmith hits the iron repeatedly?
And until you hit it,
you hit it until that iron becomes some very
very strong weapon, right?
Same thing with copywriting.
After you write it, you keep on hitting the words,
you keep on hitting the words.
You keep on refining it, make the message tighter,
make it more compelling,
until you have something that is perfect.
So that's what I do, 'write drunk, edit sober'.
Step five, this is the last step.
At this point, the copy is very very well put together,
and usually what I do for a bigger project,
a bigger client is I send it to Dan,
because Dan is a master copywriter.
Gives me feedback on what to change,
maybe change a headline word here or there.
And then I send it to the client.
After we send it to the client, what happens is that,
the copy will do well,
but the marketplace never lies.
So what that means is that, once you've put it out there,
you'll see that it'll perform
but if I feel like it can do even better,
that's when I go back
and I start changing things here and there,
just to test it out even more,
until you get to a point
where you feel like your copy is doing outstanding.
And like we talked about before,
the great thing about copywriting is that,
once you go through all of these steps that I went through,
all the research, going through the swipe files,
building a structure, writing and editing it like crazy,
what happens is that, you have salesmanship in print.
You have print that sells for you online 24/7,
around the clock.
Whenever anybody visits your website, your advertising,
or sees your written words online,
they will be compelled to buy.
So basically that's the research process that I do,
and the step by step of everything I do,
with every client that I work with.
So that's about it.
- [Dan] Round of applause!
(crowd applauds)
Was...
Was that helpful?
- [All Crowd] Yes. - Yes.
So five steps.
Now again when you work with a copywriter,
you should think okay, are they doing the research?
Are they putting, do they have a swipe file?
I have actually in my home, true story.
In my home I have these
the three ringed binders,
about two inch thick.
And over the years I've collected all these proven ads,
and letters and all these things.
And I have about a hundred of them.
A hundred of them.
I've actually had a marketer offer me a thousand dollars,
just to sit in my library for one day
to go through these swipe files.
And I took the money.
Yes, and that's how valuable...
Like I could pull out one binder,
and I could see these ads within a binder
have produced over a billion dollars in revenue.
(crowd murmurs)
Good copywriters, write this down.
Good copywriters
copy,
great copywriters steal.
(crowd murmurs)
I do not look at a blank piece of paper
and try to come up with a concept, nah nah nah.
I go through what is proven to work,
and I massage, I piece them together and I make it work.
I don't look at a blank sheet of paper, I don't do that.
I do not do that.
Okay, so stay with me here.
So now, here's a good question.
How long should my copy be, Dan?
How long should my copy be?
The general, general rule of thumb depends
on stage one, two, three, four five, yes?
If it's later stage, usually the rule of thumb,
general rule of thumb is,
the more you tell, the more you sell.
The more you tell, the more you sell.
Usually.
Copy should be long enough to emotionally engage,
and prosper and give them enough rational reasons,
to back the emotional decisions to purchase.
If it's good enough copy,
the message is going to the right person,
the market in the right format, the media,
then you are onto a winner.
It means that, 'how long should my copy be?'
As long as it takes to get the job done,
to make that sale.
Don't be afraid of,
'oh you know people don't read that long copy anymore
and this...'
Well if your stuff is boring,
it doesn't matter if it's one page or ten page.
But if it's something that interesting,
and if it's engaging and it's compelling,
they will read if they can see
that this could potentially solve their problems.
How many follow what I'm saying?
If it's boring, two words is too long.
If it's interesting and exciting, do enough,
write long enough so you can get the results you want.
Does that make sense?
That's the key, that's the key.
So take two minutes, how long?
- [All Crowd] Two minutes.
- Discuss, what Stephen just said, the five steps.
Okay, two minutes, go!
(assorted crowd discussion)
Okay, thirty seconds.
Thirty seconds.
Okay...
Stop.
Give your partner a high ten
and say 'thank you for sharing'.
(crowd whoop and high five)
- [Narrator] Ten times your finances,
ten times your business,
ten times your marketing,
ten times your life.
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(hype music)