Overthinking: The Copywriter’s Worst Enemy
By the time I met Wilma, she had studied literally thousands of pages of courses, books, and e-zine articles about copywriting. She had all the fundamentals down cold. She could recite Hopkins, Caples, Masterson, and Makepeace verbatim. But when I gave her her first paid assignment, she froze like a deer in the high beams of an oncoming Peterbilt.
Wilma’s problem wasn’t that she knew too much. Wilma’s problem was that she couldn’t stop thinking about all the stuff she’d learned – the techniques, formulas, and marketing philosophies.
My advice to Wilma: Forget everything you’ve learned about selling and especially about writing copy. Don’t worry – it’s still stored away in your brain.
Instead of strategy and tactics, try focusing on your prospect – his fears, frustrations, and desires. Think about how your product connects with his dominant emotions.
Then close your eyes and imagine that you’re in a room with him.
If you had to make the sale, what would you say? How would you begin the conversation? What would you say next? What would you have to prove to him? How would you prove it? How would he challenge your claims? How would you defuse his objections?
You’ll be astounded by how your brain feeds up dos and don’ts from your training to guide you as you work through the process.
[Ed. Note: Master copywriter Clayton Makepeace publishes the highly acclaimed e-zine The Total Package to help business owners and copywriters accelerate their sales and profits. Claim your 4 free moneymaking e-books – bursting with tips, tricks, and tactics that’ll skyrocket your response – at MakepeaceTotalPackage.comLearn how to overcome “overthinking” in all areas of your business with Michael Masterson’s Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Ready, Fire, Aim .]
Clayton Makepeace
In many of the 34 years since Clayton Makepeace began his career, his marketing brainstorms and sales copy have generated over 100 million dollars in sales for his clients - all told well over a billion dollars so far! Clayton's copy has generated as many as TWO MILLION NEW CUSTOMERS for a single product in just 36 months and doubled, tripled - and on four specific occasions, quadrupled - the number of paying customers on his clients house files in as little as a year or two.He has increased his client's sales revenues by up to 1,000 percent in a single month, and multiplied monthly sales revenues by up to 4,400 percent in one short year.Clayton's direct response copy has pulled in as much as $3.6 million in sales over a weekend $5 million in a few weeks and $16 MILLION in a single month!