The Fundamentals of Writ…

The Fundamentals of Writing to Sell By

Alex Myatt
Index
Important Points to Know

Direct-Response Copywriting

5 General Psychological Rules to Keep in Mind

5 Stages of Awareness

How to Tackle These Stages of Awareness?

The Secret Weapon Most Marketers Are Afraid to Use

Research - The Foundation of Every Successful Campaign

The Sticky Research Process

Product Research

Research Template and Resources

The Ideal Client

The Existing Brand

Competitor Research

Market Research

VOC

Final Research Steps

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So, How Important Is Research?

The 5 Subconscious Questions

Planning Copy Step 1- Laying out RIOA

2 Formulas to Craft Ideas

Offer Building

The Attention Span Fallacy

Copywriters Are Attention Managers

Structuring a Copy

Step 2: Messaging Hierarchy

Step 3: Spit Drafting

Turning Your Research and Planning into Copy

Adapting IVOC Data

Dimensionalisation

The Core Copywriting Structure

The Lead

What Does a Headline Need to Do?

The Body

The Close

Editing Copy

A/B Testing (Split Testing)

The Wider Marketing Strategy

Improving Your Copywriting, Long Term

Important Points to Know

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 - People think about entertainment, and marketers should think about the
sales.
- Direct response is an objective: we are asking our prospect to do something
straight away.
- Only sales ultimately is a measure of a good copy.
- Copywriters write to please two people: the clients and the audience.
- Likes and global reach don’t equate to sales.
- Most marketing underperforms because copywriters are taught to write for
the company, and not for the prospect.
- Creativity and entertainment don’t usually equal sales.
- The difference between indirect-response and direct-response advertising
comes down to immediate action (buttons, coupons, etc).
- Copy that aims to convert should take its inspiration from direct-response
advertising.
- Your copy’s purpose is to “connect your product to your prospect’s
dominating, conscious desire, using only your advertising message.”

Direct-Response Copywriting
● Find what goals your audience cares about and how your product can
accomplish them.
○ Most marketers focus on what they like about their products. Not
what their audience cares about.
● Never advertise/market something in a way that you want to advertise it,
make sure you are focusing on the prospect.
How does any prospect decide what they’re going to buy, or how
people make buying decisions?
● When we understand how people make buying decisions, we can reverse
engineer it and use it in our copywriting process. To understand it, read these
books:
● The Psychology of Judgement and decision making - Scott Plous,
1993
● Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain - Antonio
Damasio, 1994
● Thinking, fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman. 2011

But, right now, here are 5 general psychological rules to keep

in mind:
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 in mind:
1. Our brains are wired to categorise things immediately
2. The longer we take to make decisions, the less confident we are
about them to survive
3. We reply on ‘Herd Mentality’ more than we’d like to admit
4. Logic is secondary
5. Decision-making is based on emotion*

● Each of them are important in their own right, but we really care about the
last one.
● Because we have evolved to make quick judgments to survive.
● Emotions have developed to take from past experiences and things we
hold dear to bring those up quickly so we can make the decision.
● According to Alex (in the context of copywriting): Emotions are anything
that the prospect knows they already care about, and if you bring it up they’ll
find it immediately interesting because they view it as relevant.
● It can be a desire, a deeply held belief, a problem/pain, a prejudice,
whatever they have a stake in, then that is emotional.
- Okay, basically things dear to prospect creates a certain emotion.
● We want to join the conversation already happening in their head.
● We want to pick on points that they already know they care about, have
problems in and desires of.
● And then we want to bring those up.
● That’s a sure fire way to make people listen to what we have to say.

● We don’t want to introduce a new angle or want to make them work,

because it rarely works.
Discord Notes*
I'm out today so apologies for the late reply. I go into detail about emotional
decision making in the first (or second) section of the video, so rewatch that
bit if you need a full explanation.
But TLDR: People make most of their decisions immediately, according to
what they already value, believe, and desire. In other words, they make
decisions driven by personal bias rather than objective logic - they only
apply the logic afterwards (if at all).
We need to tap into their existing thoughts so we know what will immediately
resonate with them.
Piotr provided some good examples.

When we are advertising a product, this is effectively what we are

doing:
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 ● There are a set number of facts about a product. Like the iphone has a
certain level of camera, screen etc (circle on the left).
○ We can twist those facts in ways to make them feel more appealing.
(will expand on that later).
● There are beliefs, problems, and desires a certain person has. They
already have issues they want to fix, things they care about, they have deep
held beliefs and opinions.
● What we are trying to do as a marketer is to hit the sweet spot in the
middle: where we can take an objective fact about a product and we can
twist it in an emotionally appealing way to align with something they also
already care about.
● For example, let’s say that a person’s camera takes crappy photos at night.
If we talk about new colours of iphone, they’re gonna ignore it. But if we talk
about how the camera has been tweaked to take good quality pictures at
night, suddenly it becomes more relevant.
Example:
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 ● Here, the copy on the left is a “fluff” copy. It is written to be clever and
doesn’t convey anything.
● The copy on the right is researched and relevant:
○ The business is the owner of a Pub supplier.
○ While researching the market, he found a Big complaint about how
the pub's owners were forced to lock into confusing contracts which
were hard to get out of and edit and they didn’t know what was
coming.
○ When Alex rewrote the landing page, he included that in the centre:
the main value proposition.

● On the left, the new vegan food takeaway created a leaflet about their
products and shared it. It wasn’t really relevant.
● So, Alex thought about what people cared about and decided to go with
how to stay healthy after lockdown, gave relevant value, and connected what
prospect cared to the objective facts of the take away which drove up sales
by ~594%!
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 ● Nick Clegg spoke about the statistical facts and date while Nigel Farage spoke
about issues of immigration and EU legislation over the United kingdom.
● Nick Clegg spoke about the things that people should care about because they
are going to impact them, and Nigel Farage spoke about what people already
cared about and played on the emotion that they were already feeling.
● Results are clear.
● So, talking about what people already care about is far more effective than
talking with logic.
● People make decisions based on the things they care about, and because they
care about certain things emotions are attached to them, and they make decisions
based on their emotions and the things they care about.
○ My example: back in 2017, I couldn’t play high end video games because
the price of good graphics cards was very high. This caused a certain pain
(emotion). When they released nVidia RTX 3060 ti, which is almost as
good as a 2080 and at almost ¼ of its price. Having a good card was
something I care about already, so 3060 ti made me super happy!
● Important: According to Alex, Logic is described as marketers assuming what
people care about, or what they should care about instead of researching what
people really care about.
○ Anything that marketers assume sounds good because it rhymes. It’s
never based on research and it’s never grounded in the emotions of their
prospects.
○ Basically focus on what people already care about.
● Shift your mindset from “people should be caring about this so that’s why I am
gonna talk about it” to “let me find about what people really care about/ I know
they already care about it so I am going talk about that”
○ Don’t guess what people care about; know what they really care about.
● This is not seen anywhere better than in headlines. They are insteadly read and
emotional decisions are immediate.
● Headlines should say what prospects care about otherwise they won’t
give you a second chance.
● Our brains are fine-tuned to understand headlines: whether it’s email headlines,
article headlines. That first big block of text, bigger than the rest of them, is what
we are conditioned to judge things: the headline. (will cover them in detail later)
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 ● There are two responses after reading this headline:
1. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe I do make those mistakes, let me check it
out…”

or
2. “I don’t give job interviews so I don't bother reading this.”
● The first reaction is primarily given by people who are actively looking for jobs
and giving interviews or by people who are going to start their careers.
○ So, they’ll think “this is on my mind right now. So, I am going to read it.”
○ This headline is super relevant to active job seekers and it’s clearly
intended to target them/call out to them; people who are in-between jobs;
people who are in-between careers; people who do want to feel confident
who want to go for job interviews.

○ The headline makes them read the article.

○ Headlines shouldn’t appeal to everyone but the target audience.
○ Like people who are happy in their jobs aren’t likely to read the article.
They’ll know it’s not relevant to them.
● This is a bad example of a headline:

○ What the hell does the headline mean?

○ Who is it targeted to?

○ Alex has not seen this company before, he doesn’t know what they do or
what their product is, and it’s not revealing it either.
○ Worst of all, it’s not relevant to Alex's pain points, desires, or beliefs.
○ It’s neither repulsing him or attracting him. It’s completely irrelevant.
○ It gets ignored, which is the default state of mind, so Alex is not going to
find out what it has to say either.
○ This headline is not going to work for their target audience too because it
doesn’t force an emotional decision, it’s not particularly intriguing, it’s not
calling to any particular desire, pain point or belief.
Is there an easy way to follow to make sure we are meeting them at the same
point/sweet spot? Especially for the first and every single time since the first point
of contact and as we continue our sales argument, and as we write our copy?

How to know where to start and continue?

Here’s the universal prospect journey that’s often overlooked in the
mainstream world of marketing:

5 Stages of Awareness (Eugene Shwarts)

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 5 Stages of Awareness (Eugene Shwarts)
● It’s market/product agnostic
● The prospects always fall within 5 stages of awareness.

● Every product solves a problem—it’s always fulfilling something for someone.

● You’ll rarely write to unaware audiences and they tend to be the most difficult
people to write to.
● Our objective as copywriters is to move prospects to the most aware so they
can buy.
● The stages of awareness differ from campaign to campaign.
● Read Break through advertising.
● We’ve to research to identify what level of awareness an audience has, but
that’ll be covered later.

How to tackle these stages of awareness?

● You intrigue unaware audiences by talking about what they already believe or
something that they already are.
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 something that they already are.
● You want to make sure that you hit the stage of awareness your audience is in
and do the right thing linked to it.
● If people are solution aware, you don’t want to write to them as if they are
problem aware because they have already been through that stage.
● We need to write in the stage they are at, we need to make them reach an
emotional decision straight away and we need to appeal to their emotion.

● Alex selected a product and an industry he has never written in to demonstrate

how universal the stages of awareness is when writing relevant headlines.
○ The 1st headline is calling out to their identity. So, it intrigues them.
○ The 2nd headline targets the problems of cutting handicaps, which he
knows his audience cares about.
○ The 3rd headline is targeting people who are solution aware, so they
already know that to cut their handicap they need to be better at putting.
So, this headline is super relevant to the solution aware audience. Alex is
hitting on the solution straight away. By showing that he understands he
knows what his audiences want to do, he is helping them by showing how
to do it.
○ The 4th headline is for product aware audiences. They know about their
problems and solutions, here he is iterating on his best claims and
promises.
○ The 5th headline is handling objections of the most aware audiences
(cash safety/guarantee).
● Stages of awareness can be used to guide the rest of the copy.
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 ● A headline can function in one or more stages of awareness.
For example:

Stream Clearly with Axeball’s Unique Soundwave 2.0 Technology

This is for someone who is looking for a better mic (solution aware) or someone
who has bad stream quality (problem aware).
How to avoid the BIGGEST mistake new real estate investors make…
● Targeting unaware audiences by calling out to new real estate investors who
have no issues (unaware), and to new real estate investors who are worried about
making mistakes (problem aware).

Why are they so important?

● Because it takes out randomness out of copywriting; it allows us to be
confident in where we are starting and what we are doing in any stage of the
copy. We just need to look at our research and find out what stage of
awareness the prospect is in, we know what we need to do with the copy.
● People can jump through the stages of awareness within a few seconds. It can
take a whole sentence, a whole paragraph, or a whole document; it’s contextual.

This screenshot below clearly depicts that advertisers completely

understand the stages of awareness of their audience:
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 ● 15% OFF: Most aware - audience knows what the product does - they already
want it - leading with most advanced teeth whitening system - sell
● Have you taken out a loan - credit card - mortgage: doesn’t have a direct call
to action we can measure.

It’s not presenting a problem immediately or a solution, it's simply calling out to
people who have taken out a loan/credit/mortgage, and it’s relevant to them.

And so the audience will continue to watch the ad.

Stage: Unaware because it’s just calling out to a group of people.

○ Stages of awareness can be used in any kind of advertising, both direct

and indirect response.
● 28-Day Keto Diet Plan - 100% Made for beginners: not for an unaware
audience clearly because it is not presenting a solution; it’s not for someone who
is problem aware because it does not bring up a problem. Example: do you feel
fat or do you need to gain weight?

Instead, it’s for someone who is solution aware; people who already know what a
keto diet does but clearly they are not product aware because it’s not mentioning
a product.

It’s just introducing and saying we understand where you are. We are joining the
conversation in your head because we understand you've heard about the keto
diet before.

This headline is calling out to beginners who have never taken a keto diet before.
Summary
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 The Secret Weapon Most Marketers Are Afraid
to Use
● Use this with every copy you write: Rule of One (only top 5 percent of
copywriting agencies use this).

● This is Alex’s acronym.

● Each copy you write should touch only one of each of them because:
1. It keeps your advertising message organised so you understand what’s
driving your prospects and what they have already been exposed to, and
2. A confused mind or an overwhelmed mind doesn’t buy:
a. The more messages you throw at someone the less likely they are
to understand your main point,
b. The less likely they are to view it as important, and

c. The less likely they are to take action.

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 ● Don’t need to be ultra specific. Just that when we find the person who is
most likely to benefit from our product and buy it after our research, we know
that they are going to share many aspects with others, and it’s these we put
into our ideal customer—hence our one reader.
● There is always going to be one kind of person who may not make the
majority of our customers, but who is most perfect for the product.
● Imagining that we are just writing for this one person, our messages
become far more relatable from our perfect prospects’ point of view.
● And even for those who don’t fall into that category. Just by being clear we
get people outside of that perfect sphere to start to see the point you’re
making and say: “Okay, I don’t perfectly match that, but I do want that one
thing.”
● So it comes down to the core idea of copywriting: the wider you cast your
net, the less fish you’re gonna catch. We want to use a sniper, not a shotgun.
○ So, if we try to appeal to everyone we are not going to convince
anyone.
● It’s far better to go hard on specifics shared by our ideal clients, the kind of
person that we want to focus on because this is who we are most likely to
convince.

● It’s very important to boil down the one idea in a sentence.

● The sentence should be clear to you, and consequently will be clear in the
copy you write.
● By establishing the one idea i. e., what you want your reader to believe by
the time they finish reading. You focus your entire argument, and ultimately it
comes down to a single fact.
● The more things you’ll try to convince our readers of, the less likely they are
to believe you, and the less weight each point will hold.
● A fully believed idea is 100x more powerful than 10 partially believed
ideas.
● You can use other subsequent claims to support the central idea you are
going for, but a huge mistake marketers make is blasting prospects with
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 going for, but a huge mistake marketers make is blasting prospects with
loads of benefits straight away, which makes them instantly less believable
as it gives the reader too much to think about.
● Other benefits can and should form the part of your argument, but
everything you write should revolve around one common theme that’ll be
most ideal to convince your one reader—the ideal client.
● There are plenty of formulas that you can use to come up with your own
idea, all driven by the research you’ll do of course (it is the key to all of this).
● Similarly, there are ways to strengthen ideas and to use other messages to
support your one idea.
● Having your one idea doesn’t mean you can talk about anything else, and
you can’t talk about any other benefits. Just that everything needs to relate
back to your central theme.

Summary: you need to establish your one idea to focus your sales argument
and make it far more like that your prospect will buy.

What is the one main thing you’re promising them?

● The offer must be clear otherwise nobody will trust you to deliver on it.
Simply put, they must be able to picture exactly what they’ll gain and this
must be easily defined because a confused mind doesn’t buy/click/convert.
● Any piece of copy you’ll write always have a single offer on it. You’re
always going to ask them to do one thing and you need to frame exactly what
that is, how they are going to get it, and what it is going to cost them: money
or email.
● The one offer can be made more desirable through your copywriting skills,
and how you present it on a page. (We are going to talk about it when we
move on to writing a copy.)
● But you should only have one offer because you want it to directly support
your one idea. You are effectively showing your one reader how they can
take advantage of your one idea through your one offer—it is the key to
fulfilling the desire that has been affirmed by your copy.
● Make your offer as clear, as attractive, and as easy as possible to take you
up on.
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 up on.
● What is the one main thing you’re promising them?

● Too many people get this wrong.

● Only ask your reader to do one thing per page.
● The more opportunity you give them to stray away from your copy’s One
Offer, the less likely they’re gonna be to continue through your marketing
funnel.
● People need to be shown a single path.
● There are always exceptions to these rules; nothing in marketing is ever
set in stone.* Testing is only the right answer.
● But typically, you want to stick to the rule of one.

Discord Notes*
Alex - Because things could end up working (or not working) for completely
random reasons
Okay, so there are too many factors that we can't control?
Alex - Exactly. We can try to build campaigns and write copy according to
principles we know tend to work, but sometimes things just won't work out.
So we should always base our work on the context of each project at the
time (which is why research is so important). No matter what we've learned
before, we can never guarantee that a certain principle or practice will be
best to use.

BUT, we should use these principles as a starting point. It's good to use the
knowledge we already have. We just also need to be open to new findings as
we research and learn.

● When a single piece of copy adheres to all the four rules of RIOA:
○ It will be far easier for the prospect to understand
○ More persuasive for your ideal client
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 ○ More persuasive for your ideal client
○ More conversion rates
○ And it will make the entire process easier for YOU
● It focuses on every aspect of your copy and it makes the rest of the journey
far easier to plan and write.

● If you have a firm understanding of stages of awareness or rule of one

(RIOA) and you apply them in your copywriting, you’ll be 90% more effective
than most copywriters out there.
● Understand these two important bits of theories perfectly. This is what most
copywriters lack.
End of theory here
● It was the minimum viable aspect of the theory that you want to understand
to be a good copywriter.

Research - The Foundation of Every Successful

Campaign
And the multi-million pound process that’ll win for you time and
time again…

● Every successful campaign is built on heavy hitting research.

● Copywriting is 80% research and 20% writing.
● Without understanding your product, customer, and the market you’re
writing in, you won’t be able to sell anything successfully.
● And unfortunately, it’s the very foundation because of which many
marketing campaigns fail.
● It’s an extremely broad term, and many processes that purport to be
research, don’t always give us what we need to write a winning copy.

● It’s important to research, but it is also important to research in the

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 ● It’s important to research, but it is also important to research in the
right way.

The Sticky Research Process

Product Research

● If the Image that aligns with the ideal client.

● What authority we can already take from the brand: what’s the status of
trust in the market? How much proof can you show that the brand you are
working with is good?
● The easiest way to think about product research, on the whole, is to
become an expert on the product to the extent that you know everything
about it from the manufacturing down to all the possible benefits that it could
provide someone with.
● Then you want to look at what kind of people use it or would recognise it as
something they could benefit from.
● You wanna have a firm understanding of the business presenting the
product, and how they’re viewed within the market.

Research Template and Resources

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 ● Facts and Features: List down everything that you can about the product,
any objective facts, or any features it has that are indisputable, that are cold
hard stone facts.
○ How long does it take to manufacture?
○ Where is it manufactured?
○ Who is it suitable for?
○ What are the ingredients?
○ If there’s anyone who can’t use it (allergies etc.)?
○ What is the storage size?

Example: Take toilet roll: How many apply is it? How long is it? How
long does it take to get delivered?
○ All of the facts and features must be noted down.
● How to turn a fact/feature into a Benefit?

Simply ask: the fact or feature has any benefits to someone? Can you
directly link that fact to what it would mean to someone in real life?

Example:
The touch screen (feature) makes switching and navigating the apps easier
(benefit).
Service that provides snacks to bars and pubs (fact), someone can add as
many baskets as they want and checkout (fact), and the buyer doesn’t have
to be locked in confusing contracts (benefit).
● You can reframe the benefits depending on who you are talking to, and
depending on the rest of the research.
● If you have any clear benefits that the facts and features have, note those
down; you can note down the benefits next to facts and features.
● USP is any facts, features, and benefits that are unique to the product, and
something that no other product has. You note that down, and you say what
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 something that no other product has. You note that down, and you say what
makes it unique.

The Ideal Client

● There are two ways you can go about working who your ideal client
is:
a. If the business you’re working with already has an existing audience,
or has a fair pool of customers to pull from already—look at the people
who buy most frequently, people who buy repeatedly or people who
spend the most.
■ Get the top 15 profiles of those people, if you have access to
the information of course, and it’s always handy if you have
access to as much information as possible: their emails, how
much they’ve bought, where they’re from, where they are
located, their Facebook/LinkedIn profiles.
■ And go through their details and notice their similarities. There
is no sure-fire way to do this; you just need to investigate each
person as much as you can and see what they have in common
with each other.
■ That’ll give you an idea of who is already buying it, and who
you can clearly appeal to.
■ Do this if you already have an existing audience.
b. If you don’t have an existing audience, if the business is new, if
you don’t have the data or you don’t have access to the data. The
best thing you can do is look at who the product is designed for.
■ If you are going with this approach, conduct competitor and
market research before completing this, just so you have a
better view of everything else.
■ But you want to do in this case is note down your ideal client's
gender, age, job and income, family status, location, what social
media they use and how often they use it, the #1 reason they
need the product, and their stage of awareness.
■ Talk to the person who designed the product and ask them:
● Why did they create it?
● Who did they have in mind when they were creating it?
● And ask them to imagine: if it was a person, who would
they be and how would you answer all these questions?
■ Once you’ve gone through all this data in option 1, or once you
have completed all the other research in option 2, then you need
to complete the ideal profile in the second part of the second
page.
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 ● The first section is for asking the client and the second section is for your
own research.
● Keep adding to the research you’ve done already cause you’ll always pick
on things that you didn’t see before. And keep a record of everything you’re
doing so you can go back to it and adjust it if need be.
● The Ideal client is your One Reader.

The Existing Brand

● Does the public image of the existing brand align with the ideal client?
● Do you find that the people who engage with the brand, and the public
image it seems to have, the reactions it seems to get, and the general image
it’s trying to portray in its advertising, could the brand be trying harder to link
to the ideal client that you’ve identified?
● This is for clients whose brand is already established.
● If you find that the ideal is someone different to who they are trying to
appeal to, then you need to put down whether or not the image is doing a
good job of representing or appealing to the ideal client.
● And if it isn’t, then why isn’t doing it?
● If you find that actually, the clients are men but all the branding is trying to
appeal to the women. Clearly, you need to do something about that.
What aspects of the business (or individual client) could be viewed as a
reason to trust their expertise?
○ Do they have qualifications?
○ Do they have X number of sales?
○ Have they got X number of testimonials?
○ How many years of experience do they have?
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 ○ How many years of experience do they have?
○ What are their satisfaction percentages?

This wraps up Product Research.

Competitor Research

● It’s about understanding what’s already taking place in the market. You
want to know what kinds of things your audience is exposed to by other
businesses.
a. It allows you to see things that are already working or not working.
b. It allows you to keep an eye on your competitors to see if they are
missing any opportunities or if they’re capitalising continuously on a
specific topic or a specific medium.
● Competitor research is quite free-flowing: find competitors outside of the
ones that will be obvious to you, but the best way to find the competitors
and see what your audience is being exposed to by them, is to act as
your idealt. clien
● Set up new accounts on Facebook, YouTube, Google and Reddit then
dedicate them to that project. In these accounts, you only want to be
searching as if you’re the ideal client.
● Use search terms as similar to as your ideal client likely has (this will be
from the ideal client profile that you have), but if you don’t have it nailed down
just yet, you just want to search the terms around the kind of products and
problems that you’ll know that your competitors are solving. And the
problems that you want to solve for your audience.
● Search on google as similar, click into the ads (eventually, these will show
up on Facebook as well), join Facebook groups, do as much as you can to
act as your ideal client and record as you see as you’re going through.
● You just wanna see what your audience is exposed to.
● As you go through with this, you can make specific screenshots and notes
of the funnels that you’re traversing.
a. What was the ad that got you to click?
b. What did it say?
c. Where did that lead you?
d. What did you see when you were there?
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 d. What did you see when you were there?
e. What was the next link that they offered?
f. How many things are they showing you?
g. What kind of emails are they sending?
h. How frequently are they sending emails?
i. What kind of points are they hitting on?

● Understand what your top 2-3 competitors are doing and how their
approach is.
● This isn’t going to be all useful straightway, but as you go on, you write for
the project, and create new things for the project—it will be stuff that you’ll
constantly go back to and keep an eye on to see what others have done.
● This is something you want to continuously keep up with, and this will help
you to highlight competitors who are selling a similar product to a similar
audience as yours.
● Make use of the points that they are hitting on in your own copy.
● Also, identify different bands that are selling to the same audience because
they might be using language that hits the points that you could be making as
well.
For example:

If your product is pregnancy clothes for women, even though some brand like
pampers, they are not necessarily selling the same thing as you, they may be
using a kind of similar language because they are selling to mothers or
people who are preparing to be parents.
So, you may wanna use what kind of language they’re using.
Never underestimate the power of looking at businesses that aren’t
competitors but are selling to the same audience.
● Generally, get an idea of how businesses are operating in the market and
what kind of messages they are using.
● You can never be certain of how their ads are performing but a good rule of
thumb is that once you’ve signed up for their lists, once you’ve opted for their
ads and maybe you’ve got lead magnets or you’ve bought from them the
things that you see quite regularly from them: the same kinds of emails or
ads coming up a lot, those kinds of things work!
● Usually, they work. You need to be careful, but it is always a good bet.
● Especially, if they are a bigger business. If they’re using a certain piece of
ad a lot and the things that are repeating probably are doing quite well.
● As you go on researching and writing, you can always link back to
competitor research because it will always be useful.
Alex’s template for a Competitor Research
:
 ● Alex generally focuses on summing up the competitor's main messages.
○ USP - Do they have something that we don’t have? Something which
makes them unique?
■ What do customers get if they go to them that they may not
get anywhere else?
○ Pain Focus and Desire Focus - These are more subjective. Alex
just has a look at if there seems to be a pain they keep talking about if
the competitors are trying to appeal to some kind of problem.
■ Or if they’re trying to be more positive, and appeal to a desire
which more of a positive want rather than a negative want.

Example: We give you these good things that you don’t currently
have.

*make sure you've done research on the right target market

enough to understand what their specific pains and desires
are.
■ Don’t fill these if there is nothing obvious.
○ Social media: A short summary of what kinds of things they tend to
post?
○ Ads: Use the Facebook ad library to search for the ads of your
competitors.
■ If an ad is running for a long time, particularly more than 3
months then it’s probably performing quite well. Deconstruct and
analyse it to see what kind of things they’re hitting on in the ad.
○ Praise and complaints: find these in reviews, feedback, and
forums: What good or bad things are people saying about this
company?
■ We can use those when we are writing our copy.
Research is a fluid process. So, go with the flow and take down anything you feel
might be of note. At a minimum try to get everything down that’s laid out in the
research docs, but don’t limit yourself—go down the path your research leads.
:
We don’t want to get too mechanical. It’s helpful to have guidelines and to know the
rough stages we need to complete, but ultimately nothing is ever set in stone.
You should always allow yourself to use instincts based on the fundamentals that
we have discussed. Allow yourself to get lost down the rabbit holes when you’re
researching competitors.

Market Research

● The copy should connect the product with prospects' conscious and
dominating desire.
○ This is where we’ll discover what that desire is,
○ Their stage of awareness for our ideal clients, and
○ The best messages to use in our copy.
○ This is the start of really nailing down what we are talking about
when we are writing our copy.
● To write a winning campaign, we need to have a deep knowledge of your
market/audience.
● Looking at formulas and other businesses can be helpful, but everything
that you need to succeed in marketing is wrapped up in your product and in
your market.
● The tools and data are given above in the screenshot.
○ Existing Audience Data: If your clients have CRM logs of all their
customers: they know more about an audience than just what they
bought.
○ If they’ve got information about where they’re from, what kinds of
things they like, how often they buy, their demographics, etc.
○ Use other tools mentioned in the list, but by no means this is a
limited list.
● What exactly are we looking for in market research?

VOC
:
 ● The information which will give us the best idea about what would
work best for our audience and market comes from prospects
themselves.
● It’s the prospects and how they make decisions, the beliefs, the desires, the
emotions they already hold really matter.
○ It’s from those conscious desires that they have and the words they
use to express those desires is how you should approach copy.
○ This information that the audience says themselves is called the
Voice of Customer data.
○ The best way to know what the market wants is to get the market to
tell us what it wants.
○ When people see their conscious desires reflected in the copy they
are more likely to respond positively to it.
○ Relevance and intrigue are the keys used to establish the connection
initially and there is no better way to establish than using what your
customers/prospects decide on the messaging for a campaign and the
messaging for your copy.
○ So, the voice of customer data is invaluable to you as a copywriter.
○ We just want to know what prospects actually say about what they
want: we need to know that from them directly.
● Do we simply ask the market what it wants?

Consider what the father of marketing, Ogilvy said:

● Getting information that you know will resonate with what people actually
want is quite tricky.
● It can be valuable to ask people their opinion, but the failure rate is
:
 ● It can be valuable to ask people their opinion, but the failure rate is
disproportionately high, for products that purely go out of asking people.
● Much like overlying on logic which is seemingly sensible, it can lead to
failure.
● People don’t always say what they actually want, and often, they will say
things that you want to hear or what they think they want is not what they
actually want.
● That’s why we cannot always go with a direct kind of VoC data.

For example:
● If the red bull had listened to their direct market research, they would have
never even gone to trial. The feedback was overwhelmingly bad.
Reviewers said it didn’t taste good, it made them feel gross, and it could
never compete with brands like Coca-Cola considering the price per unit and
how small the amounts were.

But they found their niche and have dominated ever since, and they are now
a multibillion-dollar company.
● Despite the bad reviews, red bull is one of the most successful brands in
the world.
:
 ● On the other hand, we have a product where the market research was
overwhelmingly positive: surveys, test groups, and direct questioning gave
team OUYA (a small affordable game console) real confidence about the
potential of their product.
● They raised millions of dollars in funding only for the product to completely
flop.
● Initially, it was successful, but as soon as it came into the market based on
the research—it was a disaster.
● People just weren’t interested, the best selling game on the device only
sold around 7000 dollars despite their extensive market research.
● And those who did buy it, felt like OUYA is not something they want.
● An example of feedback is given on the screenshot attached.
● Good reviews don’t always lead to success.
A perfect example of ignoring direct market research in practice comes
from the dollar shave club

● Their initial research showed that the spoken demand was for razors that
lasted longer or were far cheaper.
● It seemed logical and it married up to what people were saying.
● But the founders, instead, decided to launch the company based on what
they thought was actually behind those statements.
● And by digging deeper into what people actually cared and complained
about when not asking their opinion directly.
● What they discovered is that the core issue was that buying razors is
inconvenient; it’s not that people want them to last longer necessarily, or they
need to be cheaper.
● Actually, it’s irritating and inconvenient to buy razors because you feel like
you’re spending a lot of money on something that is a necessity and you
:
 you’re spending a lot of money on something that is a necessity and you
have to guess or remember every one, two, or three months how many you
want to buy.
● People weren’t opening admitting to this.

● So they set up a subscription-based service where you would just get

delivered razors for however many weeks or months you’d pay, and it’d be
bought straight to your door. Therefore, the customers didn’t have to go out
and remember the amount you need and worry about running out.
What’s the thread here? What’s common behind all these examples?
● The only kind of research you can ALWAYS rely on is ‘indirect’.
● And so, we really care about the Indirect Voice of Customer (IVOC) Data.
● The results of the research for these campaigns, what actually didn’t work
and what did end up working, didn’t come from a direct questioning in a
marketing research context.
○ It wasn’t interviewing prospects and talking to them about what they
wanted that made these failures and successes what they were.
○ It wasn’t focus groups or market research or surveys that constructed
these winning conclusions, it was Voice of Customer data procured
through accidental, cloaked or lateral means.
○ The people who revealed the desire that proved to be the ones
shared by thousands or millions of others didn’t think that they were
being probed for opinions, they didn’t think that they were taking part in
market research.
○ Just in passing, they would mention it or someone would say I think
this might actually be what is driving people when we look at what
they’re saying.
○ But, It’s not necessarily taking things at face value.
○ Because when people don’t feel like they’re being questioned, they
don’t feel the need to change their answers consciously or
subconsciously to fit in with what they may view as a social norm.
○ It’s market research that comes from indirect means that provides
campaigns with winning messages time and time again.
■ Sometimes this will line up with the direct marketing
:
 ■ Sometimes this will line up with the direct marketing
research. It is not useless, and it can be very helpful, but I am
saying that it can’t be relied on.
■ The only thing that can be relied on is when it’s indirect
because people won’t change based on the fact that someone is
questioning them.
○ So, the type of data that you want to collect is an indirect type of
data.
○ There are a lot of tests that show how people change their outward
opinion depending on the context of the situation.
○ By far the best proof of this in action is just a simple thought
experiment:
■ Imagine that your partner asks you what your favourite film is,
and it’s Grown-Ups 2 and you share it genuinely with your
partner.
■ But say that you are talking to the film critiquing panel of the
Guardian newspaper or The New York Times who are trying to
get an idea of what films different kinds of people enjoy.
■ And if you are being questioned by them, you’ll rethink and
suddenly decide that Shawshank Redemption is actually your
favourite film and you happily tell them so.
■ But later on when you’re met with the choice to watch
Shawshank Redemption or Grown-Ups 2 with nobody to judge
you.
■ Then perhaps choosing a higher brow film in public, the actual
watch rates fall to perhaps half or lower, given the choice
between those two.
■ We want to tell people what they’ll expect to hear because we
don’t want to risk seeming odd, we want to impress, conform to
authority ultimately.
● So, people change their real opinions because of social
conformity.
■ And unfortunately, this goes even when we insist that they tell
the truth.
■ Consciously or subconsciously, their brain will always work to
put them in the most socially acceptable situation that they can
be in.
In a nutshell:
We need to source voice of customer data from places
where people have no idea that they’re being probed for
market research.
IVOC made Alex’s many campaigns successful.
By seeing what they say in places where they don’t know
they are being asked questions.
● That’s why we use tools like Quora, Amazon reviews, twitter, Forums, and
youtube video comments.
● There are places in which the target market feels safe, and you’ll have to
identify the right ones for your target audience.
:
 identify the right ones for your target audience.

● When we have identified the places where our target market is sharing their
unfiltered opinions, we just want to copy and paste their raw opinions.
● Word for word, you should copy down comments, posts, direct
quotes; anything that is our target marketing discussing things that are
relevant to our product.
● If you already have an idea of your ideal client and if you’ve established it
already, then you can use your and go to places where these kinds of people
hang out.
● But if you haven’t been able to construct an ideal client profile yet and
you only have an idea of who the product is designed for, then you can
use your research to inform your decision.*
I.e., what kind of person is having problems with the thing we know our
product can solve?
You can reverse engineer this from this research as well.

Just by researching the problem your product can solve and seeing who’s
reacting to that online and who’s asking questions in that area, you can
reverse engineer an ideal client.
● When you’re recording this raw IVOC data, it can be tempting to just copy
down swathes of comments without really knowing what’s useful.

Discord Notes*
@Piotr
Not Alex, but I can add my tidbit of knowledge. Reverse engineering a client
most likely means that their purchase is the end goal, and you go from that
point on back. So you think about what was their process, what has led them
to that moment (what is the reason, the emotional trigger for that purchase),
you can estimate if they know about the product, if they even know that they
:
 you can estimate if they know about the product, if they even know that they
have a problem, or if they already know the brand and are a recurring
customer.
I once found a “how to sell guide” where there was this exercise.
You sit at a bar, and you listen to someone explaining his issues to the
bartender. You try to come up with the way they are phrasing their sentences
(yeah Bob, I’m kinda sad today because our [put in problem] and I don’t
know what to do)
You can think about how your customer would phrase things, from what
background they would be, how their life looks like - and where you can
intercept their attention
If ever in doubt, you can always look at similar product, and see what kinds
of customers they attract
@Alex

Exactly what @Piotr said. It seems like you found his answer useful too so
I won't add much to it.
Put simply: once you've identified competition, have a look at who are buying
their products (if you're struggling to identify an ideal client on your own).
Then study the people who buy from their brand.
In other words, cyberstalk them. Look at what they're interested in and how
they tend to engage with things online.
I think Facebook business manager would be appropriate, is there any other
method you would recommend?
Honestly, I mainly do it organically. Open the profiles of a ton of people who I
see engaging in spaces that are relevant (like problem forums, Facebook
ads, review pages), then go through as much of their digital life as I can.
Facebook accounts, Twitter, LinkedIn, likes, shares, friends, photos, Google
reviews, Amazon reviews etc etc. As I say, cyberstalk them.
Then I note down whatever I see. (See IVOC data).
I probably do this for like 20-100 people depending on the project. Each one
can take anywhere between 5 minutes and an hour depending on how much
there is to see.
If you do this, you'll see patterns occur. People will use the same
phrases, discuss the same topics, complain about the same things.
Then you can reverse engineer an ideal client. Whatever points you see
come up the most frequently and intensely.
There's no exact formula. Just a bunch of digital profile immersion.
:
 There's no exact formula. Just a bunch of digital profile immersion.
Starting with competitors and problems is a safe bet.
Understood. How can I point out 3-5 relevant competitors?
Either they're selling the same thing, or they're solving the same problem.
(Or selling to the same people, but if you don't know who you're selling to yet
then this one is useless)

Which is why we have established 5 main categories that this

data fits into and then two more that help clean up the rest.

● Categorise the data as you do your research.

● Pains and fears: something which is negative in nature.
● Objections: what is stopping people from believing the solutions, what are
their reasons to not follow through with purchases, and not believe what a
video is telling them, etc.
● Desires: anything that people are saying that they really want, they can’t
wait to have, or anything positive that they can’t wait to secure themselves.
● Firm Beliefs: If you are talking to a christian audience and you say that
god doesn’t exist, for example. That is going to break any kind of relationship
that they’re going to have with you, and then they won’t buy anything from
you. Just record anything that they believe is 100% right.

Example in financial space, writing to republicans supporting retirees, you

don’t wanna come along and say hey! Biden and Hilary are great! Cause that
violates what they already believe in 100%.
● Shakable Belief: Opinions that people are happy to be convinced
otherwise/opinions they don’t mind changing. Things that they hold true but
they would rather have a reason not to believe in.
:
 they would rather have a reason not to believe in.

For example: It’s difficult to break plateaus in bodybuilding.

(This is actually a fact, but people don’t want this to be true.)

Difficult category to define sometimes, but don’t worry about it too often. But
this category comes up fairly regularly.
● in the last two categories, it is anything seemingly useful but doesn’t fit into
one of the categories above.
○ Any part of marketing vernacular that gets used frequently. This is
really useful just to understand what people are using and what kind of
words they respond to as they talk to each other.
● By knowing the ins and outs of these categories of these markets, you’ll be
in a better position than anyone else to really sell to them.

Because you are immersing yourself in the world of a prospect; you’re pulling
the most convincing points straight out of the market’s own mouth; you’re
getting the concerns directly from them.

Example from Alex’s research:

:
 ● After we are done with IVOC, we have a wealth of information for us.

● There are gonna be many messages, keywords, and phrases here that will
resonate with your target market because it’s coming from them and people
like them.
:
 Then we want to go ahead and groom through these data and we translate it
into easy to digest messages for us to look back to back on.
● The simplest way to do that is by using a spreadsheet, use the categories
as headers, and for each of the quotes, we translate them into sentiments,
into general messages that keep coming up, and put them in nugget sized
summaries of what they are.
● You want to summarise whatever sentiments are coming up with the most
intensity and frequency.
● You want to use a subjective measuring system to rank them, whatever that
comes up most frequently and intensity goes up on the top and then other
sentiments in descending order.
● Refer to the screenshot for complete assessment.
● After an hour or two of combing through the raw IVOC data, you’ll have a
series of sentiments: the emotional feeling that your target market has, and
recognize if mentioned because it’s what they themselves bring up of their
own accord.
● We can have 3 to 10 summaries per category depending on the market.
● But now we can see the basis of messaging that we are going to use in our
copy, we are gonna use messages that will allow the audience to see
themselves, and that’s going to be immediately relevant to their conscious
desires.
● You may even stumble upon new benefits that you didn’t even think of
before. By doing this research you may realise that certain features can
satisfy what the market wants, in ways you hadn’t even considered that will
become evident to you through IVOC data.
● Alex uses this spreadsheet to go back through every stage of a campaign
especially when he is part of a new campaign as well.

Final Research Steps

:
 ● Take the IVOC summaries and rank them according to their intensities and
frequencies, it doesn’t matter which category they’re in, view them all as
equal and have a look at which IVOC summary comes up most frequently
and most intensely of the raw data that you’ve recorded.
● There is no set rule for how to rank them, but right now you should have a
pretty good idea what your audience cares about.
● You should be pretty immersed in the market so somethings should be
clear winners because you’ve seen them come up time and time again and
they definitely come up the most: whether they are pains, problems, desires,
big objections, deeply held belief; whatever is coming the most frequently,
you should put it at the top in relation to the research your doing. You want to
put that IVOC summary at the top, and you should try to rank the others in as
best order as you can.
● Some may be hard to position in a precise way, so don’t worry about
getting the order spot on, just get the obvious things down first—the best one
placed and any that follow that, and you can throw the rest according to the
gut feeling.
● But the important thing is that you’re being led by things you have already
done.

● Fill in the right column ranking (intensity + frequency) the IVOC summary,
:
 ● Fill in the right column ranking (intensity + frequency) the IVOC summary,
then match each summary to a corresponding benefit.
● Go back to the product benefit list in the product research phase.
● Remember you may have filled more benefits as you’ve done more
research cause you’ve thought of more, or more may have cropped up
during the competitor research phase you may have been able to swipe what
they talk about as benefits that you didn’t consider. So, that list may have
grown.
● But, you want to go back to that list, and you want to match those up with
any IVOC summaries that you’ve ranked. So, keep them all in the order that
you’ve ranked them in before you even look for the benefit.
● Then look back to that benefits list, go through them, and have a look to
see if any of the benefits can in any way satisfy one of the summaries:
whether they solve, support, agree with them or in some ways related to the
IVOC summaries, then note them down.
● You want to find any point of commonality between your product and your
IVOC summary, that is what really what the Summary Rankings is about.
● Because as we know copywriting is simply connecting your product
to your prospects' conscious desire.
● When we have the summary ranking down, we can see how the prospects’
conscious desire or pains (or the IVOC summary) can link to the product, and
what our product can do.
● This is the practical purpose of fulfilling the mission of our copy.
● Some of the IVOC summaries maybe have a corresponding benefit and
that’s okay, not every single one needs to don’t force it isn’t there. It is just as
important to know what our product can’t do as compared to what it can do.
So, don’t expect every single IVOC summary to be satisfied by the benefits
that we can think of.
● But once you have ranked and matched each one, you decide which one to
use your One Idea.
● We will establish which message will be best to incorporate in our copy and
which one will be the one idea or if we can in any way, edit the IVOC
summaries that we have seen or combine any, and if they’d make a
good ONE IDEA.

So, How Important is Research?

● Up to this point before the writing stage:
○ You now know your product better than the manufacturer.
○ You have researched your competition and made notes on what they
are doing, and you can even see where they are going wrong or where
they’re going right depending on how frequently their ads are coming
up.
○ You have a huge log of raw opinions from your market that you’ve
ranked, and you’ve summaried them, and you’ve made a note of how
frequently and intensely they come up.
○ you have linked these talking points and these issues to the possible
and potential benefits of your products and how they can satisfy them.
:
 and potential benefits of your products and how they can satisfy them.
● So, even though your copy isn’t written yet, and there is still a long way to
go before they are refined into perfect messaging, by simply completing this
research process, you’re better prepared than any other copywriter to
complete your brief.
○ You know the market inside out
○ you have a lot of their thoughts that show that you actually care
about them
○ you’re not relying on blind logic or tainted research that’s been
tampered by someone's unconscious
○ You have the resources to make the prospects see themselves in the
copy—to be at the forefront of their mind by bing relevant to what they
consider important important
○ And this is only possible through this level of research
● So, the most powerful tool for a copywriter is deep meaningful research.

● So, every single master copywriter that Alex has known spends more time
researching than anything else, including Alex himself.
● So, even if you don’t want to use the practices, and techniques that Alex is
going to reveal, just having this research process in your arsenal will give you
a better chance than anyone else of impacting a prospect’s life through
advertising.
● IVOC data is something that few copywriters bother to harness to this
extent and it means that they’re throwing away simple chances to connect
with readers by using their language and highlighting their direct concerns.
This is usually the end of day one.
:
This first half will be the foundation on which all of the copy you’ll write.
● The lessons that you have learned so far or you’re going to learn are
applied to all copywriting because they encompass psychological factors by
which people make decisions and respond to buying opportunities and share
their opinions out in the world.
● Have a clear understanding of how people make decisions, how you can
use that to your advantage when you’re trying to convince them to take
action, and how to conduct research so you get the most important points
that are reflective of your market across.
● Each of these things need to be established clearly for you to get most
value out of the writing and editing sessions.
● Everything you’ve learned is based on psychological research, behavioural
economics, years of trial and error, and Alex’s personal experience, which he
has used to lead successful campaigns that have led to 6 figures in sales.
The next sessions are going to be purely practical about how to write copy.

Second half of the Presentation: Application of

Everything You’ve Learned So Far
● Impotant: You’ll come across people who think they know how to
write copy just because they know how to write English, and it’s really
difficult to deal with as a freelancer because sometimes you’re trying to
please the client and the reader/prospect. It’s difficult to go against
what the client is suggesting.

If they are giving you an absolute to follow without any experience in

copywriting, then please don’t take it to heart.
● Only results (sales) make a good copy, so don’t let anyone skew
your mind. So, go with the things that work for a specific campaign,
even if it contradicts what you’ve learned so far because there are
exceptions (but generally you want to stick with the general rules).
● Now we know that:
copywriting is simply connecting your product to your prospects'
:
 copywriting is simply connecting your product to your prospects'
conscious desire.
● But what does that actually mean and how can we know that
we’ve done that?

According to Alex, it is important to have a benchmark to aim for,

because you need something to measure against.

We don’t know if the copy works until it is tested, but before we

can test it, we need to have some kind of indicator of whether
we think it will be good or not.

So, we are going to talk about the Indicators/questions that Alex

has developed over the years and uses to get a hold of answers
that the prospects need to take action.
● If a prospect can’t confidently answer one of these in their
mind when reading your copy or after reading your copy then
they are not going to buy.
● These are just in the subconscious of the prospects, they are
not going to sit down and answer these questions.
● But this is going to help us imagine what we are trying to do
and what level we’re trying to hit in relation to a prospect's
opinion on our copy.

The 5 Subconscious Questions

Inspired by Evaldo Albuquerque 16 Words Sales Letter, universal objections
in the financial niche.

Alex realised (again and again) that these are the things he needed to
answer in order for this copy to work.

These questions are used as benchmarks to satisfy prospects.

1. How is this relevant to me right now?

Alex gives a lot of value to this one because this is the emotional
decision or hitting on emotions that the prospects already feel. So, This
is the first thing anyone needs to know.

2. Why shouldn't I categorise this as something I know?

There is a fine line between acknowledging something that is relevant, and
boring people with something they already know. When we are hitting on that
relevant emotion, we need to connect with something that the prospect wants
to know about, and they feel is relevant.
:
 But that does mean we should repeat things that they already know.

We never want someone to think “I don’t need to read on because I already

know about that”.

Basically, you don’t want someone to see your copy and categorise it as “Oh,
I don’t need to read this because I already know that’s going to be”.

So, you need to show them a reason so that they know there’s something
new and relevant.

3. Do I understand the benefit will be delivered?

If your copy is going to show them how it is going to be useful for them, if
you’re not promising them something specific, if you are not gonna show how
their life is going to improve by taking action, then there is no reason for them
to take action.

This is the backbone of writing copy: making sure what you’re asking them to
do is going to be beneficial for them.

4. Do I understand how those benefits will be delivered?

A lot of people get obsessed with the third question, and that’s kind of all they
think about, and they layer on promises, claims, and they’ll talk about how
their product is the best thing ever.
● Something that is overlooked by juniors:
● explaining in a clear way how their prospects are gonna get those
benefits? In what way they’re gonna be delivered?
● Do they understand the process, the mechanisms, the product’s
function?
● Do they understand how the product is going to deliver those
benefits?
It’s okay to say “You’ll have the whitest teeth ever!”, and make no mention of
how it does that, you don’t talk about the product itself, and the reason it can
whiten your teeth or the chemical process that takes place to seem like you
really know what you’re talking about.

If you are not giving an indication of how it actually happens, then it doesn’t
matter if you have the best promises in the world, it doesn’t matter if they’re
true—people are going to think “Nah, I am okay cause it is not sufficiently
explained.”

So, never overlook the importance of people understanding how things work.

5. Do I trust the person/business talking to me?

Relationships are built on trust and sales are built on relationships and being
relevant. And if someone feels like they can’t trust you, if you don’t have
enough authority in that space, if they can’t see proof of you delivering on
:
 enough authority in that space, if they can’t see proof of you delivering on
these promises, then likely they are going to back away.

Infact, according to Alex, that is the biggest killer of conversions after

someone has started reading and someone has made that emotional
decision—it’s that lack of trust.

If the company doesn’t have a good enough reputation or they’re not quite
sure of the proof that you’re presenting, then they’re going to be cautious,
and decide not to buy.

These are the bare minimum questions that need to be answered to get
the prospect to take action.

This is not all you need to do (as it isn’t), and you need to do more, like
answering specific objections. But if you or the prospect can't answer these
questions or any one of them, then they are definitely not going to take
action.

You need to make sure that you check the box on each one of them for
anything to work.
Write these questions down and answer them in the copy you write.
Now that we have the benchmark, let’s look at the precise plan, which is
RIOA.

Planning Copy

Step 1- Laying out RIOA

It keeps your messaging focused, relevant, and workable, but also it

:
 It keeps your messaging focused, relevant, and workable, but also it
keeps everything under control for you; it makes the process easier.

We are going to look at what its practical application is going to look

like.
Remember this is just the planning stage.

It’s going to be brief, and having the brief and the document is really helpful.

● At this point, you might have done the research or you’ll have the reader in
mind already, or you’ve done the research and found out who’s the best
target, or you’ll have a hybrid of those and circle background, and have a
good idea.

It should look like the example given above.

● The One idea is something that we are trying our readers to believe; to get
:
 ● The One idea is something that we are trying our readers to believe; to get
our reader and agree with the reason to act on.
● This is broken down into 2 parts,
○ What main benefit your reader will get from taking action, and
○ What makes this benefit possible?
● At this stage we are not writing a copy, we’re just writing out the one idea
so it is clear in your mind. So, you can then write a copy around it, that’s the
most important thing.
● Alex finds two formulas great for crafting ideas.
○ Before going into those ideas, Alex recommended not to take his
ideas for granted, he is just giving the method that has been the most
beneficial for him.
○ He is not this methodical with ideas, sometimes it just comes with
research.
○ But start with this relatively methodical approach for planning it.

2 Formulas to Craft Ideas

1. This opportunity they’ve never seen before (facilitating the benefit) is
the key to the prospect’s desire and it’s only attainable through this
product (solution). (Taken from 16 Words Sales Letter)
2. Here’s the big and relevant benefit and this is the way it works.

● The second example is an advertisement for lead magnet.

● One idea is for anything, it is just to focus and complete a piece of copy no
matter where it is.
:
 ● In copywriting, an offer doesn’t mean a discount or a guarantee, it can
include those things, but this is what it means:
● What is the prospect giving me and what am I giving the prospect? In other
words, what are they getting from us for taking the action I am asking them to
take?
● This could be in exchange of anything: an email, clicking on a link, and it
doesn’t have to be purchasing something.
● This might be the simplest part of RIOA, but this is where the most
copywriters are confused.
● Because of what an offer is and what exactly it includes.
● Obviously there is this main and core part of it: what is the main, tangible
and deliverable part of it. But that is where most people stop.
For example, they are giving me 29 dollars and I am giving them this course.
:
 For example, they are giving me 29 dollars and I am giving them this course.
Or they are giving me 300 dollars and we give them this motorcycle part.
● The deliverable that we have decided on, we need to break that down into
parts that logically prove how the main benefit will be achieved.
● They are buying something that is effectively the core of our offer, that is we
are giving them a product. We, also, have in our research, and before this
and in our One Idea, have linked a benefit to that product.
● There is a reason someone is buying it, it is a functional product. What they
are getting from it actually is the main benefit, that is the reason they are
buying the main deliverable.
● Now we need to break down the main deliverable to explain how the
benefit will be achieved.
● This answers one of the subconscious questions: how will these benefits
be delivered to me?
● We need to break down the deliverables into different parts, that’ll help us
explain how they're going to benefit from it.
● What guarantee or policy makes this offer irresistible?
● This is where we can talk about money back guarantee, or 30-day money
back guarantee, is there anything we are lumping into it to make it more
desirable? etc.
● Are there any bonuses or sub-deliverables included? If yes, list them.
● You will see these most commonly in info products: free modules, extra
video courses, free pack of documents, etc. these can be made free or a part
of a bundle package (add this amount of money to get this cheaper).
For example, does an electric toothbrush come with a pack of 10 heads?
● What is the cost to the prospect for taking you up on this offer?
● This is pretty straight forward: is it 50 dollars? Email? What are they giving
up to get this offer?

An example:
:
 ● The offer is free trial, and as you can see not all copywriting is all about
sale, it could be about leading up to sales as well.
● Product research helps cause you’ll know the steps that’ll help you achieve
the main benefits.
You have figured out matters to the reader, you’ve linked it to a benefit, and
now breaking down how that’s going to be delivered to them.

This will help us to explain it in our copy.

● But the key is becoming an expert on the product and really going hard on
the research.
● Bear in mind we are not going to mention these things in the copy, we don’t
need to cause, it’s not like we have to use that as copy, remember this is for
us to help understand what exactly what we are giving, and what exactly our
RIOA of our page and copy is going to be.

Offer Building
● If you’re a copywriter or a freelancer working with a client, you may not be
able to decide exactly what gets included in the offer.
● It’s still just as important to understand what an offer is so you can
manipulate the facts or move the facts around and frame it in the best
possible way that links to the reader.
● But offer building is a skill in itself, especially if you are going to own
businesses or launch products of your own, you’ll need to learn how to build
:
 businesses or launch products of your own, you’ll need to learn how to build
offers. We can’t dive into it right now because it is a skill unto itself.
● Don’t worry too much at this stage if you’re a bit confused about how do I
make an offer really good, but you can worry about reframing offers and
making sure that they seem as valuable as possible cause that if
effectively what you are doing in this stage, and what you’re gonna do if
you translate this into copy.
● You’re making sure that you understand exactly what the offer is so that
you can frame it in the best possible way, so you can framein the best
possible way and make the prospect feel like there’s tons more added value
than just that main tangible deliverable.
● That’s why we have gone into such detail to break it down to make sure
what bonuses there are or guarantees or anything like that because it’s not
just us saying: “Hey, here’s a free trial for you!”

Instead you are going to say:

Here’s a free trial, this is exactly how it’s going to work and why it’s great.

We’re giving you 30 days and you don’t have to commit to any kind of
purchase after that and you get this booklet for free and 24/7 support, which
is usually a part of the platinum package.
● When it comes to offer, it’s about understanding it clearly, but also seeming
like or putting across as much added value as possible. And reframing it in
the best possible way to make it attractive to readers.

One Action

● What they exactly need to do on a page.

Example:

● The one action is your guiding light, and that is what you’re getting your
customer to do nothing else, just that! Only one action per page.
:
:
customer to do nothing else, just that! Only one action per page.
 ● Once you fill your RIOA, and we have all of those parts of it working, and
when we put that in front of us, it becomes so much clearer what we need to
do to write the copy.
● We suddenly have tons of benchmarks we need to hit and it becomes
precise and we know who we are writing to and.
● Holy grail of writing copy as a beginner and well into your career.

Step 2 of Planning Copy

First of all don’t muddy your planning around this misconception:

The Attention Span Fallacy

:
 ● Not to dispute these claims if they are scientific.
● It’s not the fact about the attention span, but the perception of these
findings that causes the issues.
● Because people when they see something like this, they apply harmful
logic to it, and what they think instead of thinking that “I have shorter time to
get someone's attention and show how what I am saying is relevant” which
alex is more inclined to agree with, instead they only think “I only have a
certain amount of time to get all of my points across to someone.”

Like, people have only 6 seconds for people to understand what I am saying
otherwise they’re going to leave. So, I need to throw as much as I can into a
shorter space as possible and this is not the case.

This is not the case.

● A SHORTER ATTENTION SPAN SHOULD EQUAL NOT SHORTER
COPY
● Longer copy wins out a lot of the time cause you are giving your time for
someone to be convinced of something. But, nor does that mean it is
automatically better; the only rule is you write as much as you need to
convince.
● You have a short amount of time to get someone's attention, but that
does not put an actual limit on how much they are going to give you
after that fact.
● Copy doesn’t have to be short, it needs to be relevant.

Take this ad for example:

:
 ● This is a waste of an ad because:
○ It clearly wasn’t directed at people who knew the company
○ It throwing everything in a short space
○ It is not hitting on anything
○ It does made the reader to an emotional decision
○ It doesn’t talk about any benefits
○ it isn’t making the reader (Alex) understand how the store is unique
○ how it is better than anything else
● They are just chugging benefits at the reader, and it isn’t thought through in
any way when it comes to planning out.
● They have subscribed to the philosophy that we need to be quick and
concise with what we are saying, and we should squeeze it into 1 paragraph.
● We should be concise but we need to be clear, and clear doesn’t
necessarily equal short, but clear and relevant.
● If what you’re saying is relevant, interesting, or useful… you can keep a
prospect hooked for hours.
● Marketing is formed by human psychology; so don’t think that marketing
evolves in a way that’s different to the rest of the world.
● It’s because human psychology doesn’t really evolve, techniques evolve,
contexts evolve, but we don’t need to worry about tik tok influencers saying
we need to do everything in 7 seven seconds.
Here’s the proof of that:
:
 ● If It didn’t work, we didn’t have long form content and sales pages.
● So, be relevant and don’t worry about length.
● Just ask this question, is this something interesting and relevant to my
reader? Is it showing something useful? That is what you need to
understand.

Copywriters are Attention Managers

● We decide what our prospect sees, in what order they see it, and how
much information is communicated.
● And not putting our audience off in what we are saying.
● It’s our job to guide them to the path we know is going to convince them.
● We need to use the attention they give us to the best of our abilities.
● Humans lose interest very quickly.
● We know that people can focus effectively on one thing at a time, and we
know that cramming in an abundance of benefits, and messages and
options, dilutes the points we really want to get across. Therefore, making
the point far less convincing therefore less likely to keep the prospects
attention.
● So, use RIOA to focus and simplify the copy.

● Use this as a measure to streamline your copy, write more convincing

arguments, it strengthens your one idea, and it prevents overwhelm for the
prospect.
:
 ● You want to take your prospects from A, B, C, to D.

● I.E. Follow a linear path.

● It’s simply a game of evolving people’s beliefs: they need to go from one
stage to the next, we’re taking them through those stages of awareness.
○ The best way to do that is to make them understand what we have to
offer will help them one step at a time.
○ That’s why it is so vital that we rank all those research points we
came up with, (the IVOC summaries) because we know roughly in
what order people care about things.
● That does mean we include all of them in exactly that order, but we are
going to come on to how we manipulate that to make it a simple way to write
the copy.
● But by writing down those IVOC summaries and ranking them, we now
have a list of things that we know the market cares about, things they want,
the problems they have, the objections they harbour. Some of which we are
going to incorporate in our copy, in a linear fashion to help that one idea
(RIOA). The biggest thing we need to convince them of is for them to take
action.

● These are the key differences between an average copywriter and the ones
who win campaign after campaign.
● Once you go through this process a couple of times, it becomes second
nature, and it starts to become less mechanical, more methodical, it flows
more naturally, and you start to incorporate your own pieces of work into it as
well and ways that you like to do things.

● It takes months and years of testing to learn all this, and you won’t be
:
 ● It takes months and years of testing to learn all this, and you won’t be
learning this without a resource.

Structuring a Copy

● Many mentors introduce formulas, they can be helpful, in fact, many of

them are very useful in specific contexts. However, when it comes to
planning copy, there is no one formula for the structure that’s going to
automatically lead to success.
● And trying to stick to any of them entirely, especially the ones that are more
specific can hinder your chances of things working out.
● There is no universal formula for what order to present your messages in,
especially considering the number of markets and possible forms that the
copy can take.
● But there are formulas that are brilliant for facebook ads, lyft emails, sales
pages and everything you can imagine. There is always going to be one that
is good for each.
● But none of them are applicable in every situation.
● When it comes to writing and showing the prospect what they need to see,
it’s difficult to narrow down one specific formula. So, Alex will focus on
teaching the fundamentals that work time and time again.
● But before we move on to copywriting structure and the general structure
that most copywriters use, we are going to look at the final two steps of the
planning process.

Step 2: Messaging Hierarchy

:
 ● Crafting a messaging hierarchy.
● Step 1 was RIOA, which keeps you track and keeps you going in the right
direction, the messaging hierarchy helps you make sure that you actually
move forward.
● It’s all about knowing what you need to write; it’s figuring out roughly—
getting an overview of what kind of things you need to mention for the reader
to take action.
● It’s all about taking them down in a linear path, from A to B to C to D.
● We are going to use a few things we already have looked at: the IVOC
summary, RIOA, and the 5 subconscious questions as well.

This is what it ends up looking like:

:
 ● This is a real example from a project Alex worked on, and it’s not 100% a
precise way of what it should look like, it won’t make a lot of sense to you,
but it does to Alex.
● The point is that these overviews should just make sense to you, so you
understand what you need to say. You’re the one who is expert on your
audience and your product, so you are going to mention phrases and things
that won’t make sense to people who are looking at it.
● You just need to make it clear in your head, what you’re going to hit on
each point of the process.
● The example is for a 45 minute VSL. And these were just hitting on the
main sections.
● To lay out a messaging hierarchy it’s easiest to imagine it as a series of
steps, and the first one, this is useful especially if you are a beginner, cause it
keeps it clear of what exactly what you need to do:
● Use your one idea as your starting point, you’ve done all this research,
you’ve created all these IVOC summaries, and now you know which one is
your one idea: it the thing that is most relevant, the thing that you need to
prove to your prospects that you can deliver on, it’s that benefit that is benefit
that relevant to their conscious desire—their pains, belief, etc.
● Whatever it is that you’ve found comes up the most frequently and the most
intensely so it’s where you should start.
● It’s not that every single copywriting campaign has to start there to be
successful because Alex has seen ones that have come a completely
different way however they’re slightly more advanced and oftentimes rely on
the ability to just test willy-nilly and whatever.
● This is a proven and proven way and it’s the most, again never guaranteed
:
 ● This is a proven and proven way and it’s the most, again never guaranteed
but Alex thinks it’s the most guaranteed way possible of getting it right,
starting with your one idea.
● So, at the top of your messaging hierarchy, Alex has used desire as the
one idea: what’s that single desire and empathy hitting on relevance and
making sure it’s obvious to the reader that I know what they’re talking about
or they’re thinking about.

● If you look at these examples, they each start with the emotional decision
and hit on the main and big benefit, then they go on to prove and convince
the reader that they can get it as well.
● It is effectively saying: Hey, I know what your biggest concern, worry, desire
, belief is right now, I know that’s on your mind, and I am implying that I can
somehow fulfil it.
● That’s why at the start you wanna have the one idea that’s the number one
thing.
● The rest of the copy all goes into backing up and proving the emotional
decision.

Example: “HOW NEVER TO BE TIRED” hits on the emotional idea and then
it all goes into proving that they have the answer of how never to be tired.

Same goes with the facebook Ads example. The marketers know what the
audience cares about through their research.
● The messaging hierarchy is an overview.
● You have the biggest point (One Idea) on the top, and the rest can be
tricky, which is what we will look into: what needs to be put into the rest of the
hierarchy.
:
 ● Present you one idea and prove it, that is the simplest way of thinking
about how you establish a hierarchy.
Stage 1: Relevant IVOC Summaries
● If you aren’t going through this in real time, this might be difficult to
comprehend, but once you’ve conducted the research process and you’ve
got the IVOC summaries and you’ve been through all of it, and all of the
points upto this place, it will become much easier to understand and
comprehend.
● Look at all the IVOC summaries you’ve got and see which ones link to your
one idea specifically.

For example, a dog gets older - his bones getting stiffer - how it manifests in
his behaviour - dog owners noticing new behaviour - owners not liking the
new behaviour.

Add any IVOC summary which supports the one idea or agrees with it. Also,
strictly narrow them down to related IVOC summaries.

For example: if you’ve decided that your one idea for your car ad is that it is
completely efficient with the energy, it has the best mile per gallon, and it’s
electric, and easy to fill then you don’t want to include an IVOC summary like
“it’s the fastest electric car in the world”.
Because it is not relevant to the biggest relevant IVOC summary.
Stage 2: Objections
● Get all the IVOC summaries which are objections in themselves.
● Also the objections that you’ve noticed elsewhere while doing the research:
are there more specific or general objections people are going to have?

For example: In the 5 subconscious questions ‘I don’t trust this business’ is a

very real objection. So, those kinds of objections you need to note down and
make sure you prove the 5 subconscious questions so we need to find
somewhere for those to link in (And that’S stage four).
Stage 3: Order what you’ve collated by their relevance to the previous
point
:
 point
● Start with the one idea and then look, and then look at the IVOC
summaries you’ve got and ask which one is next the most relevant?
● Which one relates to the one idea and which one relates to the previous
point best? Keep doing that until you’ve got them all ordered.
● Once done, they’ll all be, most likely, ordered in a way that your reader
wants them to be dealt with.
● Remember this isn’t final in this stage, it’s just putting them all together.

Stage 4: 5 subconscious questions

● If you manage to satisfy each of those points of your messaging hierarchy
would the 5 subconscious questions be satisfied as well.
● If not, then you need to look at what kind of things you need to touch on to
make sure they’re dealt with as well.
● Once you’ve got that set up and have got something that looks like this
(refer to the screenshot below) in some way and it is relevant to you, you
understand what you’re saying, and what you need to hit on.
:
 ● Then you’ll be ready to move on to the next stage—stage 3 of the planning.
● So, don’t worry too much if you feel overwhelmed right now. When you start
the process,it’ll be easier for you.

Step 3 - Spit Drafting

● It talks about what you’re saying, not how you say it. But the messaging
hierarchy is a bit of an overview.
● Messaging hierarchy is more prospect centric, it’s more about what kind of
points you need to hit on just for them to feel like the one idea is being
proved, whereas spit drafting is more about what you say in a slightly more
precise way.
● Also, spit drafting gives a clear purpose to each small section of copy and it
creates steps and deals with the points of your messaging hierarchy.
Example:
:
 ● This is about going slightly deeper and saying what you’re gonna be doing
to achieve those points of the messaging hierarchy.
● The phrases again might not make sense to you, but they do to Alex. The
idea here is to be clear about what you need to do, then that’s okay, cause
it’s just bridging the gap between research and copy itself.
● There are no specific instructions on how to write/include in a spit draft
because it depends on your research and the messaging hierarchy you’ve
produced knowing what kinds of bits you need to discuss to satisfy.
● But once you’ve gone back to your messaging hierarchy, you’ve edited it
and you’ve refined it, and you’ve decided yes, these are the points that I
definitely know people will need to have proven to them.
● How am I going to prove those points to them? And this is where you start
to link the benefits of the IVOC summaries together.
○ list of benefits combined with the list of IVOC summarised you’ve
already produced. You bring that back up and look at each benefit and
ask:
■ Do any of these prove the IVOC summaries?
■ Do I have actual proof that proves the IVOC summaries?
■ What am I going to do to fulfil this messaging hierarchy?
■ What steps do I actually need to take?
● This is just for you to understand what you need to do when it comes to
:
 ● This is just for you to understand what you need to do when it comes to
writing a copy itself.
@Alex
Spit drafting is all about planning what you're going to say. Not how you're
going to say it.
After you have the idea you're working with and have ranked the points that
most frequently and intensely come up in IVOC data, you need to work out
what you're actually going to say.
This is often the hardest part for beginners because there is no one answer.
It comes down to the research you've conducted (i.e. what your market wants
and what your product does)
When you know what IVOC points to use that will support your idea (that
you've put together in your messaging hierarchy), you need to work out how
to satisfy each one. This is what spit drafting is for.
What information can you use to counter the objections, settle the pains, and
confirm the desires of your audience? Comb back through your research and
find features from your product that will do this. Find common phrases in your
raw IVOC data that demonstrate you understand their problems. Look for
facts that help confirm their beliefs.
You don't need to worry about how you'll translate it into copy yet, you just
need to understand what kinds of things you can talk about that will convince
the reader you're right.
And remember, the 5 questions are a checking mechanism, not a step-by-
step path. You need to make sure your copy satisfies them in some way, but
don't worry about trying to hit them in a particular order (or all in one go). The
research you've done trumps everything else when it comes to structuring
and writing copy.

Example 2:
:
 ● Alex wrote them very freely.
● Taking what he needs to prove from my messaging hierarchy, this is
probably how he’s going to do it, so this is what he is going to write.
● Quotation marks for a line of copy that might work.
● Basically, they’re just clear steps on what he needs to write.

● When you are creating a spit draft, create a copy of the messaging
hierarchy, and type directly under each point. So you know what kind of IVOC
summary you’re trying to satisfy, and under each point you can write this is
what I need to do to satisfy it.
● Or just have the hierarchy open as you’re creating the spit draft.
● Create a spit draft however you want: as long you can edit easily, add
thoughts, comments and sections.
Planning ends here

● Everything that you have learned will apply to all kinds of direct response
copy in general.

Turning Your Research and Planning into Copy

:
 ● At this point, 80% percent of the work is done.
● The best copywriters are the best researchers, they do the best
preparation, and they don’t get stuck because they have a process that they
can rely on.

Best for Juniors:

○ Two techniques that pretty much encompass everything.
○ The 3 areas of the sales message structure so that you have a
backdrop in which you’re going to use these techniques.

The Two Techniques That Encompass everything:

● These two techniques are the ones you can always use to fulfil the plans
set out by your spit draft and to improve the plan set out by your RIOA plan.

Adapting IVOC DATA

● It means the process of using the best source that you have for what your
prospect would want to hear and translating that into copy.
● And the best source you have is the words of prospects: it’s what they say
when they don’t feel like they’re being questioned (IVOC).
● Then we will need our raw IVOC data, sticky research, and spit draft.
● Then go through the spit draft and the raw data beside it, and see which
samples of the raw data line up the messaging you’ve already decided on.
● The spit draft that you’ve done, there will be certain messages that you’ve
put in and the points you’ve decided on. Go back through the raw data and
match up them: annotate, comment, and label them. Then, you want to work
on translating them.
● And then you look for any key phrases, metaphors, adjectives, or ways of
describing something that IVOC uses that links to the specific messages as
you go through your spit draft.
● The job is to join the conversation that’s happening in the mind of the
prospect: highlighting pains or desires as they describe them or using words
that they often use themselves are easy ways to make the copy resonate.
And you have the full list, and all of those different categories as well that you
can easily go back through.
● In Particular, the common words and phrases are very useful.
● Example: We have all the work done, we just need to fit the style you’re
:
 ● Example: We have all the work done, we just need to fit the style you’re
writing in and putting it into context.

IVOC data (from people who have Celiac disease and can’t eat gluten) that
Alex decided on for a gluten free snack.

We had a point in our spit draft that said people don’t like changing plans and
they feel bad and embarrassed about it.
So, we went back through the IVOC data and looked at what direct quotes
match up to that and we merged them into a copy.
Example:

● This makes for concise and extremely relevant copy because we have
used audience words to write copy.
● This will feel very natural when you have the research, all the required work
done, and a campaign with a specific objective through RIOA.

Dimensionalisation

● Do the imagining for them: the after examples are far more evocative and
relatable than the before ones.
:
 relatable than the before ones.
● It immediately brings your messaging where your prospect can imagine
having an impact, the easier you will make imagination for them, the more
they will trust you and be convinced by your argument.
● It brings the message out of the ambiguous and into the dimension of
understanding and reference. So, naturally the more you know about who
you are writing to, the better.
● Use dimensionalisation wherever the message is bland or neutral where
you feel like it could be coloured in a slightly different way.

But how to Dimensionalise?

● What does that feel like for them? How can it have a positive impact?
● Go back to IVOC data to help with dimensionalization.

The Core Copywriting Structure

● Now the sales message structure, on which we can use the IVOC and
dimensionalisation, is the backdrop that we really need to understand.
● There is no one universal one that can explain everything, and the more
letters it includes the more confusing it becomes, and the less clear it is.
● What is the link in human psychology that we can take advantage of
copywriting?

Now, 90% percent of copywriting formulas revolve around this structure:

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 ● All copy pieces have these three things: a lead, body, and close.
● 3 distinct sections that copywriting greats have carved out for us over the
years:
○ Reaching that emotional decision,
○ Backing the emotional decision with facts, and
○ Taking an easy action.
● It works very well because it is pretty simple and it’s kinda how we are
wired to act.
● You will find that most copy pieces adhere to this basic structure, and we
will look at the fundamentals of each part.

The Lead (or ‘lede’ if you want to be fancy)

● As long as your lead is helping each of these things to happen, then it's a
good lead.
● The crucial indicator is whether or not it presents your one idea to your one
reader in a way, at the very least, that they want to read on.
● The most important part of copywriting really, without a doubt, is the
headline.
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 ● They always get read and the rest of the copy rarely does.
● Humans are conditioned to read them, and to make a judgement on the
rest of them accordingly because we don’t have the time to read the whole
piece before we decide whether or not it’s for us.
● Because headlines have the hooking power, they need to be studied
greatly.
● We wanna know what makes a headline work, and we want to make them
work in any circumstance, the examples shown above is not necessarily stuff
that Alex endorses, because it doesn’t necessarily work.
● There is no one formula for headlines that is 100% guaranteed.

What does a headline need to do?

● As long as your headline does these 3 things (ideally), don’t let anyone tell
you that you need to improve or need to stick to a particular formula.
● There is no set count for headlines either.
● The most reliable way to write a good headline is to convert your One
Idea into one.
● And ensure that it is fulfilling these 3 objectives.
● But if you really want a formula to back your head line up, then use this
simple checking method:
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 ● Again, it’s not a sure fire way to make a headline successful, but it is a
pretty damn good indicator of which one is likely to work and to complete
those three objectives.
● If you appeal to as many of them as you can while fulfilling the 3 objectives,
you’re likely to have a good headline. You don’t need to check all 4, but the
more you have the better chances that you’ll have success.
● These are some of the good examples of headlines that made sales.

● An important thing to analyse any successful copy, is to point out the

psychological triggers that the words are appealing to and how we can adapt
such things for our audiences.
● For example:

The IRS Owes You 10,470 Dollars

It doesn’t matter if you find it clickbaity, it worked. And if it did work then why
did it work?
● Was it because it was new information that someone hadn’t heard before?
Was it because it drew in a common enemy—the IRS? Was it because it was
ultra specific in numbers? Was it because the subhead that could have it
within 90 days, which is a very specific time frame?
● Don’t look at the word and the font, look at what it's appealing to.
● And how we might be able to adapt those in the copy and context we are
working with.
● Again, it is really useful to study headlines, because they are very useful
pieces of copy to lookout for psychological triggers, just because of how
important they are.
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 ● The rest of your lead needs to satisfy the expectations your headline has
set, and ensure they don’t lose interest, it should really force them to make
an emotional decision.
● As long as you think you’ve done enough to make the reader want to
believe what you're telling them, your lead is complete.
● That, in Alex’s opinion, where a lead ends.
● Alex has seen ads with fantastic leads but average body and closes
converts like crazy, but never the opposite.
● Remember: get the reader to make an emotional decision, get them to
want to believe what you’re saying, and get them to say “I want you to
convince me now”. That’s how the lead should end.
● That’s how you need to think about it.

The Body

● Drawing the attention to other benefits of your products “just cause” harms
the chance of getting your reader to take action.
● More information doesn’t equal better arguments. Don’t think the piling on
more and more information is beneficial.
● Focus on one idea and proving it.
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 ● Let’s say that you love learning about history, particularly in the 1800s, and
recently you’ve become interested in the later years of Napoleon’s reign.
Suddenly, you are presented with two books, one that covers things that
you’re genuinely interested about, in general, but another that specifically
indulges in Napoleon’s defence of France in 1814. Which one you’re going to
pick?
● This is proof that when any topic is top of our mind, we have a bias towards
trusting sources that talk about it in isolation as opposed to things that delve
into other things as well.
● Even if the book on the left does a better job of going into the details about
going into Napoleon's later years, it hasn’t presented it as such, so we fail to
reach an emotional decision. Instead, we are far more drawn to the book on
the right that really hits on what we are thinking about.
● The more obvious that you make an effort to prove your one idea to
the reader, the one idea that has been born out of the research you’ve
done, the more likely you are to convince your prospects.
● It also has the added benefit of giving them less to focus on, which means
the whole thing will be easier for them since they have to deal with one thing
at a time.
● There us nothing wrong with including other messages

● Effectively this means that, it should give the reader more reasons to
believe the one idea that you’ve put forward or they should expel any
resistance your prospects will raise naturally.
● Objections that they already have including the 5 subconscious questions
or the ones that come up as a result of reading your copy.
● Also, never raise an objection that you know your one reader isn’t going to
bring up themselves because it’s a waste of words and it just distracts the
main message and potentially gives them something else to think about,
which is another reason not to buy.
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 ● If you have a strong one idea, fighting existing objections including ones
that form as a result of the one idea is all you need to do.
○ Because once someone has made that emotional decision in the
lead, and they’ve decided they want to know what you can do for them.
○ Then all you need to do is fight the objections they have to the
promise you’ve given, that's it.
● And there is a formula to fight objections:

● It is something we can use to combat every single objection that we have.

● Acknowledge their specific doubt or you can assume that they’re already
thinking it, and you make a claim to answer it, and a proof, you provide
evidence for that claim, and the benefit, show them what it would mean to
them.
● This can take a paragraph or a sentence; it depends on the extremity of the
objection.
● Proof doesn’t need to be a testimonial, sometimes it just needs to be a
presentation, a mechanism that supports the claim (a stronger proof will work
better though). You can just acknowledge it and say “hey, here’s the proof of
the patented solar grid” then you're providing that proof needed for
something like this.
● For example, the claim in the example below handles “can I rely on this?”
objection.
● You’ll never have that “Oh no, I forgot to charge it moment” (benefit +
dimensionalisation).
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 ● This is a far bigger objection we handing:

● Remember, you’re simply justifying their emotional decision in their body

copy.
● As long you can provide them with undeniable proof and
dimensionalise what it means for them, you’re doing your job as best you
can.
● As long as you’re hitting the core components of OCPB in some way, it
doesn’t matter what length it is or what form it takes.
● Thinking of sales messages that you are going to write in this way will keep
the whole process more focused.

The Close
● This is all about turning the prospect's justified emotional decision
into action.
● And despite it being called a close it can start relatively early on,
particularly in long form sales letters. Really wherever you begin telling the
prospect about what they need to do to satisfy their feelings they now have,
that when you start to do the close: it’s when you’re introducing the product
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 that when you start to do the close: it’s when you’re introducing the product
and laying out the offer.
● This section will come after you’ve dealt with the objections related to the
one idea.
● There are two main components of the close:

● This whole section is about making the reader understand how they can
get the things you’ve promised them and in what form they’ll be delivered,
and what they need to do to get it.
● So, this is effectively the offer in our RIOA.
● The key in the close is going all out and not holding back: if someone has
come this far in your copy, no matter how long your copy is and they’re still
on the edge, you need to give them an extra push, don’t be tepid with your
request for action.
● Many copywriters forget that it is their job to get a yes to make a sale in a
lot of cases and you can only do that while you have their attention.
● Give them a good reason to act while you have their attention. There are
many formulas to close but the two main components and the three points
beneath are the fundamentals.
● Sometimes it can be done in a single sentence and sometimes in several
pages, it depends on your one offer and your one reader.

● The One Offer is the gateway for them to get the stuff you’ve been hyping
up.
● The prospect needs to know how you are going to deliver on those
promises. So, you need to make the offer as clear as possible so they can
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 promises. So, you need to make the offer as clear as possible so they can
immediately understand what to expect and of course you’re going to
continue about it in a compelling way.
● Sometimes this is just maybe an obvious task because the product may be
a simple product that doesn’t need much explaining.
● But for complex products, the prospect may need a better idea of how it
works and what they can expect, and remember that it could take pages.
● This in itself is dealing with objections as well but not necessarily the ones
which relate to the one idea they’re just dealing with objections related to
how they’re going to get those benefits that you’ve promised.
● If they can see what’s included in your offer and they can see that it
matches up to how they believe the benefits could be delivered, then you’re
leaving them with very little opposition to doing what you ask.
● You really want to match up: hey these benefits that you want well this is
how you’re gonna get them, and i am making this very clear so you can see
that.

● As long as you are showing your one reader the way to achieve the one
idea and what they need to do to get it, then you’re all good.
● The presentation differs from medium to medium.
● Examples for laying out offer for a sales page for a book:
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:
:
:
 ● Include a P.S. at the bottom in a long form copy cause people love to scroll
down. So, you want to highlight the main benefit there, break down the
sections really briefly, just reiterate the best points and the objection fighting
you need to do in a really concise way. The point of this is to make them go
back up and read the rest of it.
More examples:
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 ● Clear offer - benefits - one action

● Make sure your CTA is clear and direct, the prospect should be in no doubt
of what to do next, and the close is no time to be vague, it is time to hit home
and really go for it.
● By now, your reader will know what is on offer to them, and why they
should take you up on it, all that is left is show them how to do it. Make it
clear, obvious, undoubtable, and singular.
● You can use urgency and scarcity but have a reason to do those things.
● For the most part, if you can justify why this urgency, you’re gonna get far
more reaction to it, and far more people take it seriously and click through.
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 more reaction to it, and far more people take it seriously and click through.
● The more you’ll justify it, the more likely it will work.

Why have we used this free flowing structure?

● Buying decisions: emotional decision, objection fighting, and taking action.

● There are specific formulas that do work better, but in specific
circumstances and specific campaigns, but we’re covering the fundamentals
here.
● As long as you’re following the guidelines that we’ve set out in each
section, you’ll know the reason behind each of them and what you need to do
in any copywriting task before you move on too quickly and you’re never
going to be stuck.
● You want to know what the purpose is of a section.
● Then you can use more formulas to enhance that, but knowing the
fundamentals is hugely important.

● After you’ve done everything we’ve talked about, you will have a draft
which is leagues ahead, but it is not as good as it can be.
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 Editing Copy

● Edit your copy in this sequence.

● These methods are to ensure that you’re hitting on the right persuasion
strategy and the right messaging in your copy.
● The CUP method comes from the book Copy Logic

● This will stop your ro read your copy.

● Give your draft to a few people you trust. If possible they should be in the
target market you’re writing for.
● Ask them to highlight any pieces of your copy that are confusing,
unbelievable or boring.
● 3 people is a good enough target (more the better).
● Remember, only cup highlights and not advice: because you’re the person
who knows their market the best.
● Look for any section where everyone has found issues (one person
pointing out is far less vital).
And this is how you fix your copy:
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 ● It stops our bias from healthy editing.

● This is a last chance editing technique.

● For every line of copy, you want to ask so what? (immediately link it to
something the reader cares about).
● If you are unsure what it is doing/why you’ve included it or stumbling,
remove it.
● Even if you can justify the reason by asking so what, then you need to
make sure that whatever you’re doing is backed up by something by some
kind of proof or logically.
● If you can’t give solid evidence try to do it, but if you can’t, cut it out.

Grammar and Punctuation

● The tone, punctuations, and grammar It depends on the audience.
● If the ideal client knows what you mean and doesn’t view you as any less
credible, then write however the hell you want to. That’s it.
● But this is a list that Alex tends to use:
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 ● Avoid humour, generally go for clarity and relevance.
● You can ignore the last one.

A/B Testing (Split testing)

● Test the noticeable things in your document.

The Wider Marketing Strategy

●

● Make sure the product is enough.

● Is the offer too similar or too different?
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 ● Is the offer too similar or too different?
● Is the copy different enough for you to write a good copy?
● Are you making it simple and easy for them to understand? Do they feel
good about what you’re telling them?
● If possible, you need to make sure that RIOA applies to the entire task.
Work with people who understand the importance of these concepts.

Improving Your Copywriting, Long Term

● Sign up to funnels, see what strategies they apply, and learn from them.

● Test and adapt, and keep learning. :)

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