The late, Gary C. Halbert, is my favorite copywriting mentor. Not only was he ultra-successful but he could teach the art and science of crafting ad copy like nobody’s business. A great lesson Gary taught was how to use winning advertising and business models. Instead of creating your own from scratch. Pretend you decide to write a special report on horse racing. How could you make things easy on yourself? Should you study weight loss science? Should you spend years doing clinical trials? Should you roam the world looking for the perfect diet plan or diet pill? Well not really. Because there is a much easier way to access the most cutting edge weight loss science, clinical trials, and new diet breakthroughs. Without doing all the work yourself. Curious? Then listen to this.
Rather than doing things the old school way, Gary might tell you to go out and get the best sellers on health and fitness. Take all these books and start reading them. As you do so, write down notes in a notebook. Make sure to extract all the juicy stuff readers would be hot read about. Then you take all that information and write your dieting book including only the unique and exclusive stuff from each book. The stuff that does not overlap. What you are left with is a compact book on dieting with all the filler taken out.
Easy does it best. This lesson applies to craft promotions. You can shortcut the entire process and create great space ads… websites… and… other forms of advertising quickly.
The technical term for this copywriting technique is called… swiping. And boy does it ever work! Gary even held an entire seminar on copywriting. The bulk of that seminar focused on how to swipe blockbuster ads ethically and legally. Forget about learning how to write like the best copywriters. That takes way too much time and is unnecessary. Once you learn how to swipe putting together promotions that bring in money is much easier.
Learn to swipe and life gets easier when preparing ads:
Thing’s like writer’s block will no longer plague you. Everything you need to begin writing a great ad will be there in the swipe. Blundering your way through thinking about what to write won’t be a problem either. The swipe contains everything you need.
You’ll write promotions at warp speed. Swiping allows you to write faster. Again, part of the reason is that you won’t have to guess. You can look at a great ad and almost fill in the blanks with your copy.
The ads you write could be three times more responsive. Think about it. You are essentially modeling success. When you do that success is on your side.
Don’t even think about writing another ad before you have a swipe at your side.
