Secret weapon (5/7)
How to be a great online salesman?
We were on our 2nd bottle of red, so the conversation was getting more open and fluid. For some reason —in between discussing girls and ordering the next round— the conversation shifted to startup marketing…
Caspar, a good friend of mine, was intrigued.
I told him how one of our earliest clients spent nearly $500k to build a product, and we just couldn’t get any traction on it. It just didn’t work.
At the end of our line—only 2 weeks of runway at hand—we decided to “pivot”, and do things entirely different. Over the course of the next few months we’d acquire over 5,000 paying subscribers using paid ads alone. That company is a happy, profitable company now… and the biggest player in its niche!
It’s funny how things like that can happen, and by the end of it Caspar was hooked.
He loved the story, and he wanted his piece of that…
To get an idea and more context of where he would need to focus his attention, he asked me an interesting question:
“If you could pick only 1 skill to be absolutely killer at, what would it be?”
Smart reframe.
Got me thinking…
But even through the fog of the wine, the answer was pretty obvious to me. There is only one skill that clearly stands above anything else.
So I zoomed out, and gave Caspar my ‘overview’ of how you build growth quickly.
First, you need to think in terms of systems. But that’s not really a skill.
There’s only a few of them, and once you know them, you’re good.
But the systems alone are not enough. On top of the systems you need the ‘magic sauce’.
The tomato sauce that makes (or breaks) your lasagna, so to speak…
There’s one skill that I continuously keep investing in, because whenever I do that I see my growth rates bump up.
It’s the only skill that I know that could literally add an extra zero to your bank account.
So what’s that skill?
What’s the magic sauce of growth…?
.
.
.
Copywriting.
Copywriting is the backbone skill of every growth marketer, and — by far and away — the most profitable skill you could ever hope to acquire.
Copywriting is writing with the purpose of selling. Simple as that. (simple, but not easy)
It’s the equivalent of great salesmanship but put online.
It’s automated sales.
Caspar was blown away. He’d been a successful salesman almost his entire career but had never heard about it.
“Tell me more…"
So I gave Caspar an overview of everything I knew about copywriting. And even though there’s a lot to it, and it takes years and years to attain mastery…. It's surprisingly simple to get pretty good at it.
The truth is, copywriting is just one of those skills where you need to really nail the essentials.
Back to basics.
Catch. Pass. Shoot.
Once you have that…
It’s just incredible what happens:
Your ads convert better (thus clicks become cheaper)
Your email open rates go up
Your website starts to convert better… way better, actually
You craft better offers, that people love
All your advertising costs drop, while conversions rise
Channels that previously were too expensive, now become profitable
People ‘get it’ when you talk about your product
Finally, you get that viral loop to work… referrals start working
Etc.
Etc.
I can’t say enough good things about copywriting. If there’s only one skill you’re gonna master, then copywriting is the most profitable one.
Imagine what would happen if every conversion rate across your funnel would go up 20-30%. It compounds. It adds up quickly!
Anyway… I’m losing track here!
I haven’t told you the most interesting thing yet…
Copywriting is a skill that hardly changes over time. Stuff that was relevant in the ‘30s still works today. It’s all human psychology.
Some of the best resources on copywriting are quite old… yet anything but dated. That’s why I always make the same recommendation to everyone who wants to learn copywriting:
Study the masters.
More specifically, here’s how I recommend you start:
Get a copy of ‘Ogilvy on Advertising’ :: a book by David Ogilvy, the godfather of advertising… Click here to order it on Amazon
Read the ‘Gary Halbert Letters’ :: written by -surprise, surprise- Gary Halbert, who is without a doubt the most famous direct-response copywriter. This one is a great start!
Until next time,
—Team Double
P.S.
As a marketer, you would need to have lived under a rock to not have noticed the changes that AI brought—and will almost certainly continue to bring—to content creation and writing.
Although this email is entirely hand-crafted, the process of content creation and production is changing dramatically.
But, surprisingly, that barely depreciates the value of learning copywriting. More than anything, copywriting is the act of orchestrating persuasion at scale — and that will stay relevant for as long as marketing stays relevant.
Figuring out how to find the right angle to tell a story, how to position a product, and how to persuade with emotion to drive conversion are incredibly helpful skills to master.
With increasingly sophisticated tools, your leverage as a copywriter is ever-increasing. At the end of the day, copywriting is “expert salesmanship, expressed at scale”.
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