Why Asking These Seven Questions Before
You Write a Single Word
Makes Your First Draft 95% Accurate
Dear Copywriting Genius,
Imagine having a secret copy formula that virtually makes every copy project you take on a winning package.
You’d have so many clients chasing you down to write copy, you’d have to turn some away.
Well, that’s exactly what I’m going to show you. You see this month’s copywriting genius has taken her 26 years of copywriting experience and boiled it down to a formula that works without fail.
And get this: It all comes down to seven questions. I’ll tell you about the structure she creates with the answers to those questions… but first, let’s meet a superstar of business-to-business copywriting, Susan Fantle.
Stepping Up From a Small Ad Agency to Selling Air Time
Susan Fantle’s career as a copywriter began right after she graduated from college. She got a job with a very small 2-man ad agency. From there, she moved on to a larger agency. But the work environment was quite strange.
Susan says, “The agency was so large, someone would bring the projects to me in a folder with some explanation and some forms and stuff stuck to the outside, I would write the copy and then someone would come take it away. I never got to meet with the art director, or sit in on brainstorming sessions, or be involved in the strategy for the campaign.”
Susan left the agency to become the Continuity Director for a local rock and roll radio station. She wrote ads for the commercial messages that ran on the station.
Writing the ads was fun, but when she saw how much money the sales people were making, Susan stepped into sales. It was the best decision she ever made. In fact, she says, “Being in sales was the best training for what I do now that I could ever imagine in my life. I actually went into radio sales and I sold radio for eight years.”
For Susan, copywriting is nothing more than putting on paper everything she did in sales. When Susan writes copy, she imagines herself sitting across the desk from the person she’s writing to and making the pitch right to the prospect, face to face.
A Business-to-Business Specialist
Susan is a copywriter who specializes in business-to-business. She picked business because it’s the area she’s most comfortable with.
Susan tells us, “The consumer’s decision-making process is an absolute mystery to me. I could never write for non-profit. Non-profit requires a personal, softer communication. It's building a relationship.
Ninety percent of what I do is not selling the product. It’s generating leads for companies that are selling high-ticket items.”
Susan is one of the best business-to-business copywriters in the country. She’s reached the point in her career where she can afford to turn clients down.
She’s gotten so good at what she does, Susan has even created a proven formula that works for her without fail. It’s a series of questions she asks the client during one of their initial conversations.
Let me stop here and suggest that if you’re reading this issue online, print it out. Then get a yellow highlighter and underline each one of Susan’s questions. Then be sure to try them on the next project you take on.
Susan finds these questions are so crucial, that she doesn’t consider herself creative at all. In other words, once she has the answers, she makes sure every letter she writes carries the answers.
A Direct Response “Technologist”
With A Proven System
Susan explains, “I do not consider myself a creative person. I do not consider myself creative. I don't brainstorm and I don't have themes. The direct marketing I do has been tested and proven. There are the elements that must be in every message and there is the order in which the elements must appear.
And she continues, “Once I know the pains of the individual I'm marketing to, once I know who I am talking to, what their pains are and how the product solves those pains, that's all I need to know. I consider myself a technologist.”
When you take a look at the control Susan wrote for Proxima, you’ll see what she’s talking about. Susan structures every letter she writes in a certain way. You’ll also notice that the booklet is filled with benefit after benefit.
At the top of the letter, Susan includes a Johnson Box (copy at the top of letter set off in a box or indented). Then in the letter she addresses the readers’ biggest pain, then moves on to show how easily this product eliminates that pain, then tells the reader, “Here’s what you’re going to learn if you ask for this information or make this phone call, etc.” Then she dives into the benefits the reader will get out of it. Finally, she wraps up with a push to take action now.
Now here’s what I find so amazing about Susan’s methodology: It’s 95% on-target with the very first draft she submits to the client.
Rarely does she have to re-write or make extensive edits to her draft. As long as she follows her proven system, she knows the letter is dead on.
That’s probably why her booklet for Proxima became the company’s control. Susan says, “I don’t have quantitative details, but I know that it was like all the things I do. It was spectacularly successful.”
Susan does a great job of providing lots of information to her reader. It’s almost as if she gives just enough information away to make you want more. That “wanting more” turns into a phone call or request for more information.
Besides giving us the details on her methodology for writing controls, Susan also shared with us how she drums up clients. And as you might guess, she does it in a very systematic way.
You’ll read about each detailed step in the interview. I also think the advice on using guided phone messages is excellent.
The truth is, there’s lots of good information in Susan’s interview. Please make sure you read it through… along with her booklet for Proxima.
Until next month,
Sincerely,
Sandy Franks
Editor, Copywriting Genius
P.S. I’m considering using guided voice mail messages as a sales tactic for one of the products I market. The company Susan suggests is Box Pilot. I “Googled” them, and they’re easy to find. That’s just one more valuable tip she shared with us in this month’s issue of Copywriting Genius.
