Dan Kennedy - Copywriting Mastery

CD 01

Sometimes there are things that cannot be sold by copy. They are however very rare.
You can also use sales copy to sell on your terms and how you want to do business.
It is one thing to make money but another to make it how you want to do it.

Marketing is half behavioural psych and the other is maths. Human behaviour is
universal.

What Do We Do Before We Write:

 Do a lot of research into competitors
- You just know what your competition is doing even if they are doing it wrong
- Answer all the ads you see to see what their letters are like, their premiums &
bonuses, instalment payments, etc
 Do a lot of research into and comparables
- You also need to know about anyone who is selling to the same market,
- at the same price point as you to your market
- or same methodology as you.
- Answer all the ads you see to see what their letters are like, their premiums &
bonuses, instalment payments, etc
 Proof
- You need as much validation as you can get
- This section often includes the hook which the whole pitch is based
around.

As you are collecting information about your clients, you must separate opinion from
fact. You must know how the really behave, what they respond to, what they don’t
respond to, etc

You need to talk specifically to your market in their language with your crafted message.

One of DK’s clients found that 74% of his clients were long haul truck drivers so he
created a parallel business where it was specifically tailored towards truck drivers and
this runs in tandem with the generic. He now spends more on advertising to truck
drivers so he advertises in trade journals, truck driver magazines, have literature put at
truck stops and he advertises on country & western radio channels.

Joe Polish has found that people with companies that have the name Inc or Cleaning in
their names are a lot more willing to buy from him.

 
 
Looking for the Hook
 Personal mission story is a good start.
- Glen Turners story was that he had a really hard hairs-lip and his story
was about how his family was very poor and his relatives were richer and
they would go there for Xmas dinner. He would ask Santa for a bicycle
and he copied his relatives letters and they would get the bike and he
wouldn’t. After 5 years of this he breaks down and says screw Santa, he is
going to be his own Santa.
- The premise is the gut wrenching emotional experience that has me doing
this thing that I want you to give me money for it. If you have a story like
this then you should use it.
 James Bond analogy
- Michael Kimble uses this hook to sell his seminar recordings. He also
reuses it when they new Bond movie comes out
- This is a link to familiar

Establish Authority
 This is something that is missed when you are constantly marketing to a prospect
universe that you assume knows your story.
- We get tired of telling our own story and then stop using it
- You should tell your story every single time
 Selling to your peers if often a tough situation. To some degree it takes a bit of
arrogance to do this.
- The only time DK hasn’t done well with his own speaking herd was when
he neglected to include his story, credentials, accomplishment, etc
- You may not like doing it but you must do it a lot
- You must answer the questions of why should I listen to you and why
should I listen to you about how I should run my business
- You may have to call them out on their bad behaviours such as
procrastination
- You must lord all over them and don’t be modest.
- Don’t underestimate things like before/after story such as if you were
broke before because you want people to resonate with it.
- The tougher the market the heavier the hand you have to be with this
 Don’t slack off on this

 
 
CD 02

Explaining What Something Is Not:

 This should be used a lot
- Often used in opportunity ads
 You should keep swipes on weight loss and money making opportunity because
they often include the best copy of all
- Trying to sell things that are unbelievable requires excellent copy that is
extremely useful for things that are believable
 The NOT list is the list of things that your prospects don’t want it to be
- Example: weight loss would include no exercise, not a diet and not pre-
packaged food
- You need to get this list together
 Another way of doing this is the WITHOUT List
- Example: Ways to lose weight without exercise, without going on a diet,
etc

It Not Being Their Fault

 Used a lot in weight loss
 One of the first things DK does in his copy
 Let the person off the hook
- No one wants to admit that the situation they are in is their responsibility
- The reason you are broke is....
 Make it very clear that it isn’t their fault at all
 Have a blame factor in your copy and it must be somewhere else and not on the
prospect
 It’s not your fault, You are a victim of the conspiracy of the .... industry
 We all have very fragile self images and are easily wounded
- Tell them the world is conspired against you

Sell From The Perspective Of Fear & Anxiety

 Often easier to sell with fear than benefits
 Sometimes it’s hard to sell without it
 Have a Fear statement: summarises the fear you which you want to stimulate in
them and hit them over the head with time and time again
- The opposite of this is prevention and is one of the hardest things to sell
such as fire alarms
- You want to be as far away from prevention as is possible

 
 
 Jeff Paul - Headlines
 Buy a Red Book, Glamour or Cosmopolitan
- Good books for headline templates
- Example: Flat Abs Fast Your 10 Minute Plan could be changed to Quick
Profits Fast Your 10 minute Plan
 They laughed when...but it....
- They laughed at my idea but it increased my pay by $4k a month
 Use the words showed rather than taught because taught implies work
 Use sub heads to tell the whole story
 Use bullets as mini headlines
 You must have clarity in your copy, no guessing
 Headlines, sub heads & bullets need to have emotional impact

Dan Kennedy

Answering Questions & Objections

 One of the most common objections is the how come my expert hasn’t told
me about this??
- How come no one has done this before?
- You need a pretty good answer to it
- You have to get at that they can’t trust anyone around them with historical
references to ineptitude

The use of a damaging admission

 There is no such thing as a perfect product so ignoring it isn’t an option
- When you acknowledge that something is wrong they will believe
everything else you say
- TJ Rodheler admission is that they get $32K for little money and his
reason is because the $32K is actually downplayed and is actually
worth more but because it already sounds too good to be true they
undervalued it!!

Reasons not to copy

 Bullets that answers the reasons why they wouldn’t buy it

 
 
 Risk Reversal
 Most risk is emotional than financial
- Can all be addressed by guarantees
 Write really aggressive & bold guarantees
- From a competitive stand point you want to be doing things that your
competition is afraid of
- The more you press the boundaries the better
- You can make guarantees sound better through language such as
more than your money back guarantee, money back plus you keep all
the bonus gifts, etc
- Guarantee the sales letter. It always bumps response
- Guarantee the appointments.
- $10 bill & Fedex got a 30% response rate. Leave it and mail more!!

CD 03

The Power Of The Common Enemy

 Every group has someone they all hate
- It is a massive advantage to be on the same side
- Example: Harley Bikers & helmet law
- The most successful fund raising copy is stopping an enemy from
doing something
- There is a demon that must be stopped
- The question is who can you attack that your prospects will enjoy
- Example: Get clients as often as the sun rises and Clinton lies
- Carpet cleaners hate franchises, aurid vacuum cleaners, competition.
If you don’t have one, manufacture one.
- Ad agencies are a universal one.

Romancing The Stone

 This is making the mundane sound exciting
- Use the story of how it was discovered via the expense, trial &
tribulations, pain & suffering, etc
- Exotic location – used a lot in cosmetics
- Build an experience around it
- Story of the inventor
- Story of its user
- Story of how it is made

 
 
 - Limitations
- Example: Swiss anti ageing crème secret learned from alpine
mountaineers. And they say international research team rather than
American. What so important about the Swiss that makes them so
happy & healthy?? This question puts people in agreement with the
fabricated fact that the supposed creme mountaineers use for high
altitude also keeps you young. If you want to get acceptance put it into
a question.
- JP Petermans catalogue is a good example of this. He delivers a
shopping experience.

Storytelling
 Types of stories:
- The discovery story
- The blackie story – the 2 sisters investment story
- The first person before after story – Charles Atlas – I was broke now
I’m rich
- The troubled prospect – the story of the guru who is sitting at lunch
who is a carpet cleaner and begs the guru to help him. The guru lists 3
things and his friend takes the list and goes off and gets rich and now
the guru feels he needs to tell everyone after being nudged by his
friend
- 3rd Person testimonial - Really Sceptical to true believer
- Dramatic news story
- Celebrity story
 Be careful with stories as you don’t want them too long or the reader will get
lost in them and forget to buy anything

Contest Entries
 Insurance agent sells auto policies to current home owner policy holders
 He has a 64% response on a 3 step sequence
 He uses guilt in his copy
- The first letter comes from him
- The second letter comes from a CSR who helps them with the policy.
- The third letter is again from the CSR and it says you haven’t replied
and I must have done something wrong.
- They answer because they want to get the CSR out of trouble

 
 
 CD 04

Q&A
 DK uses template all the time and you can get any letter, get the guts and
fill in the blanks. Leverage comes from recycling.
 Don’t be shy about letting the prospect know you want their money
 Don’t attack competition by name but you can attack it by category
 If someone has an interest in what you are selling then there is no limit to
what they will read. Economics tends to be the factor in how long the copy
is.
 Cheap way to personalise direct mail is personalise the lift note and leave
the rest the same.
 All Ads die as they are used over and over again. The best way to do it is
have a rotation system of ads that have fundamentally the same results.
- General tweaks are headlines changes
- Change of paper colour
- Joe Polish’s first full page ad lasted 2 years
- You usually don’t get much warning when they die because it is
usually sudden

Tom Schmidt - Photographers

 The mailer he does is for high school seniors
 Has visual testimonials due to photographs
 Born to play sequence got one complaint due to the sexiness of the young
women in the photo
- He used then used the complaint as a lead article in his newsletter
 He profiles some of the students
 He uses advertorial and long copy

Tom Orent
 Giant postcard
 He marketed a seminar and made the bonuses meet the same price so
they effectively get the seminar for free
- A great strategy for seminars is to make the bonuses the same
or exceed the value of the main product

 
 
 John Carlton

3 basic parts to writing:

1) Theatre
 Having a piece that arrives in the prospects life that is the most exciting
part of their day
 Lumpy mail
2) Salesmanship
 Bonding with prospects is essential
- Buzz words
- You have to get in bed with your market
- They need to know how passionate you are about your product
 You have to love humanity
 What you sell is a dream

Product
 If your product does what you claim, then have swagger and be
outrageous in your advertising
 Cultivate your own edginess- the best writers are edgy
 You need to know if people are using

CD 05

3) The Hook
 The hook is the part that grabs the reader and doesn’t let go
 National Enquirer Headlines: Preacher Explodes On Pulpit, Boy Eats
Own Head
 When looking for a hook, you are looking for human interest tid-bits
that are unusual (accidental discovery), provocative (smuggled or
stolen info), titillating (gossip worthy rumours) or intriguing (eccentric
habit).
 You got your hook when you come across something that makes you
say – “you gotta be kiddin’ me”
 Example is the one legged golfer ad
 The other part of this is you need a genuine payoff. In this case it was
a balance secret for the golfer. You can’t be outrageous just for the
sake of being outrageous.
 Don’t stretch too far
 A good hook is good for selling dry stuff

 
 
  Tax Slashing Secrets Of A College Drop Out That Scares The IRS To
Death
 Local Carpet Cleaner Promises To Cure Your Allergies Or He Will
Clean Every Room In Your House For Free
 Wife Of Auto Parts Store Owner From Swears Under Oath That She
Didn’t Use Sex To Get These Great Deals From Suppliers

Power Words
 They pack an emotional wollop
 They are generally adverbs
 Use story telling verbs
 Get rid of the adjectives
- Bad writers rely on adjectives
 Humiliate is a good word as everyone has a personal history with it

Rhythm of Copy
 A cadence (de da - de da – de da)
 I came – I saw – I conquered
 It’s easy – It’s free - it’ll change your life
 Always read your copy aloud first
 If you do listen to music, listen to music without words
 Copy should have a sing song quality
 Reading is a passive behaviour so you need to explain everything

Theatre
 Drama
 1, 2 or 3 word subheads
 It almost killed me...
 Because he can...
 By the time you finish reading this, I will be dead
 Jesus Wept

 
 
 Effective Slang
 Mild swearing such as Kick Ass & Friggin’
 Used for mild shock effect and keeping them engaged

Just you and me sitting down & talking

 This should be how your copy reads to the prospects
 Write to one guy not to an niche
 Personalise your stuff – Dear Joe & Mary

Selling The Simple

 The closer you get to the magic pill the better you will do
 It’s not gonna take much time, effort or blood and tear, trial
and error
 Getting a how to book and not have to read it!!

2 Philosophies
1) Write like you have a gun to your head
2) Imagine them as huge gelatinous blobs who will barely move to do
basic hygiene never mind get out their wallet and make a call. You
have to tell then what to do.

Bullets
 The heart and soul of the pitch is in the bullets
 Write the bullets first
 Write out the features and then the benefits
 Do not misdiagnose the reason why people will buy from bullets.
It’s what your stuff offers the human being buying it. Never
underestimate the greed or need of them. Offer solutions.
 1-2 Punch bullets
- 2 minute training techniques that is guaranteed to make you
look ridiculous and that will pump up your confidence 1000%
over night
- New and simple exercises that install animal quickness
directly into your nerves & muscles leaving it locked there
until you need to spring it loose.
- You can keep almost keep everything in your current swing
the same and just make an easy, quick and single

 
 
 adjustment just by watching what Bobby has to show you
(implies you learn just by watching)
- What women really want from men but will never come out
and tell you

2 Reasons People Buy

 The reasons that they use to pull out their wallet
- You need to give them a good reason to get out their wallet
and give you money
- They need to be able to tell their spouse, peers, etc
 The real reason

Q&A
 Star story solution is about making a start out of anybody
- Lazy geek from Arizona discovers....
 Celebrities are good for making a hook but you still need to do the
rest.
 If in doubt about names and gender, use Dear Friend.

CD 06

Yanik Silver – Internet Copy

 The web is just another media

 Don’t use italics or underlines on the web
 Do use:
- Bolding
- All CAPS very sparingly
- Yellow highlighter
- Shaded Boxes
- Don’t use ridiculous colour
- Use dark blue, red colours and black text
 Use arial, time new roman or courier fonts
 Put a big emphasis on testimonials
- Put best ones up front as people are very sceptical when
browsing
- Use pictures with them

 
 
  Don’t have them scrolling left to right
 Don’t have the cliffhangers for next page
- Just have a long letter
 Have your website to load quickly
 Make money link for Affiliates
 You need stuff on your site that establishes you as a real person
 Call to action should be strong and be explicit
- Click here
 Lift Note
- Click here if you don’t want to order
- Have more testimonials and answer objections
 Secondary responses
- You need to capture name & email address by getting them
to sign up for
- The pop up comes up after 7 seconds
 Exit pop up
- If they try and leave the site this pops up with a sell down
offer
- If cash is a problem try this
- Select your own price
- Save $100 and get the cd rom version
- Try it now for $1 dollar
 Have upsells on your order form
 Have upsells on an intermediate page
 Have pop ups that look like system folders

Google PPC
 Pay Per Click
 Classified ad format

Q&A
 Use Elance.com to outsource
 Drive traffic to your site using
- Affiliate network & viral ebooks
- Search engines
- Publicity & articles for ezines
- Director of ezines.com and you submit articles for publishing
 He only gives away free content to capture email

 
 
 CD 07

Email
 Can create cash on demand
 Website is passive but email is active. Like a village in the desert
and you need to build roads to get there.

3 Critical components of an email

1) Subject Line
 Curiosity
 Straight to the point – announcing product
 Same as Headlines
 Don’t use dollar signs more than one time
 Don’t use multiple exclamation marks
 Don’t use ALL CAPS
2) From field
 Avoid having a company name or sales@ or offers@
 Should be from a name
3) Opening paragraph
 Good idea to restate your relationship
- Hi John, It’s Yanik from Instant Sales Letters again
 Use stories & hooks
- I stumbled on something interesting recently

Jeff Paul

Copywriting Checklist
 Headlines
- Do Multiple Headline Ideas Written Down
- Make sure they reflect the copy
- Will the offer & guarantee be in the headline (such as free report
reveals.......)
- Quotations on headlines (possibly bump response)
- Bolded headline
- Lead In Headlines & Follow Up Headlines
- Diary of a frustrated financial Planner (came from Diary of a
Lonely Housewife 1920’S Ad)

 
 
  USP
- Why should I buy from you??
- The Why Me Story.
- The USP should stand alone. Ask your clients specifically what
they like about.
- Can be based on an experience or reframed service
- If you are just delivering products & services you have problems in
that you are commoditising yourself. Provide your clients an
experience.
- Example that is JP’s wife goes in to get an oil change, when she
gets back the car is also slightly serviced, washed and polished
and there is a tape in the player that explains what they have done
 Envelopes
- Hand addressed
- Live stamp
- Plain white envelope
- Return address hand written
- If you are going to do teaser copy cover the entire envelope
- Magalog – letter without envelope
 Guarantees
- More than your money back guarantee
- The more outrageous the guarantee the better the bottom line
 Offer
- Offer Basic vs Deluxe
 Believability
- Who are you and why should people believe you
- Empathy – will cut through all the barriers to gaining trust
- Get your best clients to get testimonials for you from other
Clients. JP has a client that calls his testimonials spokespeople

 
 
 CD 08

Dan Kennedy

Lead Generation
 Closest thing is a personals ad
 The effectiveness is either helped or hinder by how much you are
willing to repel lot
- The more you are willing to do this the better the ad will
perform in delivering the targeted profile
 A lot has to do with the leads when you get them
- Do you the infrastructure to handle them??
- If not you want to narrow the door so it’s a slam dunk when
you get them
 Define who you want & who you don’t want
- The more specific the ad the fewer but more qualified leads,
the higher the Cost Per Lead but the higher the conversion
rate and less work to convert them.
- Why they should pay attention
- What the offer is
- Exactly what you want them to do
- An additional reason to do it now not later
 Mistakes
- Whether it’s a free appointment or free offer the mistake is
assuming it’s going to be easy because it’s free.
- It’s just as hard and you have to sell the free appointment
- There needs to be a benefit for the prospect from the free
stuff whether the interaction goes further or not
- It’s important to sell the free appointment first and not
get ahead of yourself and try to sell the step after
 You have to make a decision whether to disclose if you are trying to
make a sale or not. No disclosure is a blind approach
 When being specific with your ad have testimonials only from
the target prospect and have the correct language
 If you have 6 target markets then rewrite your pitch for each one

 
 
 Second Notice Letters
 Take letter no. 1 and junk it up
- Sloppy Handwritten blue margin notes (the sloppier the
better)
- Circle, asterisks and stars
- Black underlining and
- Yellow Highlighter
 Rewrite the opening (acknowledging you are turning up again) and
end (upping the ante, change the offer around) and leave the
middle the same
 Write the entire piece in a different voice. Keep everything else the
same but in a wife’s voice, clients voice, kids voice, another experts
voice. If it was first person before, it’s third person now
 Isolate a different benefit and make it the focus.
- If you emphasised the guarantee last time, then you
emphasise the price drop this time and swap them around
 If you did a good job with subheads, all you have to do is rearrange
the letter
 Keep it the same and just ad a lift note or other loose pieces
 Put the letter on a CD and sent them the CD
 Sometimes just change the appearance of the piece and none of
the copy
- Change colour of paper
- Appearance of envelope
 To get more life out of your full page ad is to make it half size and
surround it with testimonials

Second or Third Notice Themes

 Frankly I’m puzzled
 Are you lost shall we send out the search party
 I am very concerned
 Only X number of reasons you wouldn’t have responded
- One of them is money and this is where you introduce a
further discount
 Boy are you stubborn but so am I
 Testimonial piece where he got 67 pieces from the guy and how the
guy didn’t give up on him and now he is rich because of it

 
 
  The Mouse letter in Dartnells
- should be personalised stationary and handwritten
- Could be a clients wife or your wife
- Employee
 I haven’t heard from you but it’s probably not your fault
- Give reasons such as unreliable post office

How To Do Interviews
Outline of interviews
 DK gives them the questions but doesn’t script the answers
because the interviewee will sound like it’s scripted

Formats
 Copy doesn’t stand alone
 You want to control the environment in which your copy is read
 The cosmetic appearance and format is as important as the copy
itself
 Stuff to think about:
- Pages end in incomplete sentences on a cliff-hangar
 Yellow legal paper (mr memo)
- Has massive readership rate as people can’t seem to not
read it
 Placemat mailing (Bill Glazer)
- Tri fold self mailer that looks like a cafe place mat with stains
and all
- Piece is handwritten
- Inside is the pitch
 Joe Polish fake movie poster
- Pitch on back
- He uses it as the 8th step for his bootcamp
- The purpose of the front is to get more people to read the
back
 Rory Fatt fake newspaper tear-sheet
- Trade Publication ad and is now a tearsheet with a post-it on
it saying “saw this and thought you might want to see this –
J”
- Recent law is that the post-it note must say advertisement

 
 
 CD 09
 Try this it works – J post it note on tear-sheet works best. Has to
be handwritten with blue ink and at the same time.
 Pay attention to the big players Agora, Roedale, Boardroom
Reports, George Tams
 Advertorial
- Manufactured piece to get people into the restaurants
- Gets higher readership because it looks like an article

Ron Ipach
 Trying postcards to move to a website which has the sales letter
that wouldn’t fit on the postcard

Give yourself deadlines to write copy faster

 DK writes to the clock or page count or by section
 The work expands into the time available to do it so you need
deadlines
 He also narrows the categories with in which he works
 JP had an extensive swipe file
 DK figures out what the end of the letter is like first and he works
backwards

A pitch that works somewhere else other than paper he wants to hear it.