Andy’s books occupy the ‘must read and refer to often’ section of the essential reading list for copywriters here at Haydn Grey (you can tell this by the fact that their spines are broken and they’re covered in pencil marks).

I asked Andy to tell us a bit more about what’s happening.

“Hi Katherine,

OK, here goes…

What is The Andy Maslen Copywriting Academy?

It’s a website for copywriters. There are tons of free resources including a monthly newsletter, community, videos, webinars, podcasts,blog posts and longer articles. Plus a paid-for video course that we run twice a year.

Who is it for?

It’s for anyone who wants to sell more by writing better copy. That could be someone looking for a change in career. Existing in-house or agency copywriters who want to get noticed, paid more or promoted by writing better copy. Freelance copywriters who want to grow their business by being a more powerful copywriter. And entrepreneurs who are writing their own copy and want to bring in more sales.

What can people learn from the Copywriting Academy that they can’t get from reading your books on copywriting?

That’s a very good question.

If you take a look around at all the blogs and books on copywriting, you’ll notice that they all purvey similar ideas. That’s because there aren’t really that many ideas you need to know about.

Just today I received emails from two respected copywriting bloggers advising me to tell stories. It’s good advice, but new?

My new course does contain similar information as Write to Sell and my other books, although there are couple of important caveats.

One, I wrote the bulk of Write to Sell nearly ten years ago. That’s a whole decade of experience missing that the course covers. Two, in order to film the course I first wrote a 41,000-word manual, from scratch. That means that even where it touches on similar ideas like KFC, it does so with a fresh perspective.

Then there is the fact that video is a more immersive medium. Given that the point of buying books OR attending courses is to change the way you write copy, the question is, how do you prefer to learn?

If you like to read a book and internalise its messages, a video course may be an expensive option for you.

If, on the other hand, you like the feeling of being tutored by me, in person, and hearing my stories, the course would probably seem like a wise investment.

The elevator pitch – the one big thing you get out of this course that the books don’t cover – is the experience of hearing it direct from me, in person, in real time and having the ability to discuss it on the forum with other students.

How long does the course take?

The course takes ten weeks. Each week you watch a video – about 26 minutes on average – and do an average of 3 exercises – they could take anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of hours.

How much does it cost?

It’s £497 + VAT.

When does it launch?

Very soon – 10th September.

I mentioned my essential reading list for copywriters. What are your favourite top 5 copywriting books (excluding your own)?

Ogilvy on Advertising, David Ogilvy

How to Write Sales Letters That Sell, Drayton Bird

Tested Advertising Methods, John Caples

The Solid Gold Mailbox, Walter Weintz

The Adweek Copywriting Handbook, Joseph Sugarman

(At this point Katherine adds The Solid Gold Mailbox by Walter Weintz to the Haydn Grey Amazon order form!)

What’s the best bit about being a copywriter?

The buzz from selling stuff “just” by writing to people. Over the years, hundreds of thousands of people have bought stuff and done stuff because of the words I chose to put together.

Your books make it very clear which words you don’t like (‘exciting’ and ‘strategy’ being possibly the top two). Thinking outside of work, what’s your favourite word – and why?

I couldn’t possibly give you an all-time favourite – they change, don’t they?  My favourite word right now is “fubbly”. My son used it to describe the texture of a Weird Fish sweater. If you’ve seen or felt one, you’ll know he’s got it spot-on.

One thing I want to know – what’s your favourite ad campaign of all time. And why?

Oh lordy – more tough questions! Can I choose two?

My favourite ad campaign of all time on personal grounds is the Cinzano ads starring Leonard Rossiter, the late, great, British comic actor. I have no idea whether they shifted much hooch but they made me laugh and Rossiter’s gaffe-strewn on-screen relationship with Joan Collins was priceless.

For a campaign that did, definitely, shift merchandise, DDB’s for the VW Beetle in the gas-guzzling US of the 1960s. Sales went from pretty much zero to 500,000 a year.”

Thanks Andy – we’re looking forward to the start of the course!

You can register for your free place on the Andy Maslen Copywriting Academy here and get:

Free resource #1 – Copywriting Newsletter Every month I send our members (over 3,000 marketeers, copywriters and entrepreneurs at the last count) our membership newsletter, Maslen on Marketing.In each issue you get a short but informative article giving you tools and techniques for writing better copy.It could be headline writing, SEO, tone of voice, writing case studies, direct marketing for the web … whatever takes my fancy.
Free resource #2 – Copywriting Resource Centre As a member, you also get access to our Resource Centre, containing an archive of recent articles, the advertising hall of shame, podcasts and more.As a “thank you” when you join, I would like to give you three more free resources that will all help you improve your copywriting skills.
Free resource #3 – Online Copywriting That Sells This is my special report on web copywriting.Forget all the smoke and mirrors, this is a straightforward guide to the techniques that really make a difference.It’s illustrated with screengrabs of actual websites and dispenses with a lot of the myths out there about what works online.

Free resource #4 – Scientific Advertising Written by Claude Hopkins, this is the original book on copywriting from one of the all-time greats.Even though he was writing copy many decades before the Internet, much of his advice and many of his techniques are still applicable today.Oh, and Hopkins was making $180,000 as a copywriter. In 1918.

Free resource #5 – 7 practical marketing checklists These seven checklists give you a great grounding in what you need to do to achieve specific marketing tasks.I’ll show you the key points about writing ads, order forms, flyers, proposals and postcards, giving presentations… even profiting from exhibitions.Each one is quick to read and has a straightforward takeaway message that you can apply to your own marketing.

 To register for your free place now visit www.andymaslen.co.uk

We’ll see you inside!

The post The Andy Maslen Copywriting Academy is Coming appeared first on Haydn Grey Ltd Copywriting Agency.

The staff in the branch are often doing amazing things for charity.

One woman abseiled down the side of the Baltic art gallery, another did something terrifying involving a zip wire and the Tyne River but this board really held my attention – and it got me to do more than just open my wallet at the counter.

Why?

As I stood and waited to see what variation of my name would be inscribed on the side of my cappuccino, I read what the board said.

It’s all in the details.

Consider this. The board could have said -

‘Starbucks is raising money for The Great North Air Ambulance. Please donate.’

And, yes, a fair few people would have thrown their spare change into the pot.

But what the author of this board does is so much more powerful than that. He (Frank) tells us a story. A story with a narrator and a story that has the gripping subject of a young life held in the balance.

Storytelling to engage your audience

Because we know Frank’s name – and his relationship to the young life that is at risk – we start to identify and empathise with him. What if the story was a member of our own family? How would we feel then? What’s going to happen to his niece?

We are engaged.

As I stood there listening to shouts of ‘grande latte for Bill’ and ‘toasted tea cake for Margaret’ I saw that air ambulance in my mind’s eye. I imagined it picking up Frank’s young niece and then flying hell-for-leather through the air over the hills and valleys of Cumbria and Northumberland. I pictured her parents, one of whom will be Frank’s brother or sister, and their anguish.

Penrith is a long way from Newcastle.

The 2 hour journey from Cumbria to Newcastle by car

Then comes Frank’s killer detail. The absolute punch-you-in-the-guts wake up call.

Use Details

The air ambulance delivered Frank’s niece to hospital in just 14 minutes.

14 minutes!

That same journey takes nearly 2 hours by car.

14 minutes is the same time that it takes to watch the first bit of the X-Factor, before the adverts come on and you realise you’ve been sucked into hell (again).

14 minutes is one hell of a good reason to support the Great North Air Ambulance.

Resolution

So we’ve had the details and we’ve had the drama. We’ve had the ER moment of the blades whirring in the sky, the helicopter swaying as it takes off and then the mad dash.

But then what happened?

Frank is kind to us (and would make a bloody good copywriter!).

In just 8 words he tells us how it is:

‘making all the difference, and a happy ending’

Without the air ambulance… our minds can imagine the outcome.

Frank is running the Great North Run in aid of The Great North Air Ambulance. If I knew him I would find his Just Giving page but as I don’t I welcome to you visit their donations page here.

You never know when you might need 14 minutes instead of 2 hours.

Can you use storytelling to provoke a response?

What about using storytelling in your own business? How could it help you to get a response from your customers?

Let’s talk about it.

The post How to Use Storytelling to Get a Response when you Write Copy appeared first on Haydn Grey Ltd Copywriting Agency.

My whole face hurts. It really, REALLY hurts. Even the drugs with the red warning stickers on that say ‘Warning: May Cause Addiction’ don’t really touch the pain I’m in. I’m rocking from side to side like an injured animal and wondering how much gin there is in the house. Something is moaning softly. That something is me.

The dentist takes an X-Ray.

I need to be referred. Deep joy.

I do as I am told and visit the specialist in endontics. As I wait to pay the consultation fee I notice that the table in his waiting room is covered in cards.

Thank you cards.

There are lots of thank you cards and they all mention ‘pain free treatment’ and ‘saved teeth’. This is, I think to myself, what is called a good sign.

The endontist uses a hi-tech dental microscope (who knew?) with a video screen (Ew! No, thank you) on my molar and tells me that he will write to me with my results. The pain has subsided… But I know it will be back.

The solution

Three days later the letter arrives. It’s written on thick, cream vellum paper and lands with a satisfying ‘thud’ on the doormat. It has been addressed by hand in black ink. It feels … expensive.

This letter will take the pain away. This letter will allow me to eat more than soup and soft, squishy bread. This letter is ‘The Solution’.

Except it isn’t. Not really.

The Copywriter’s Point of Pain

Copywriters like to know about pain points – and I’m not talking about teeth here. Pain points tell us what your customers want you to solve for them. What is the problem that they have and that they want to go away?

• You sell double-glazing? Your customer’s pain points include a cold house and crippling gas bills

• You fix people’s computers? Your customer’s pain points include computers that take an age to load, the loss of precious photographs and dodgy broadband connections that cut out halfway through their Amazon order

• You’re an endontist? Your customer’s pain points are physical agony (so much physical agony) – and mental anguish. How much is this thing going to hurt to fix and what will happen after I have sat down in that big leather chair?

Here’s the thing. I am worried about my tooth. I am worried about the sheer amount of pain I have been in (comparable to stage two childbirth with not a sniff of gas and air).

I have – quite literally – a point of pain that I want to be taken away and solved quickly and yet, and yet … this letter, this much-anticipated letter with its three paragraphs of black glossy ink written in an elegant font does not help.

Why?

Because I don’t understand a word of it.

How to turn your customers off

I understand the price that is quoted (ouch again).

I understand that I need root canal work.

I understand that I need to make an appointment – perhaps two – but I don’t understand what will happen, how – and why.

I have no idea what ‘considerable swelling in the buccal sulcus’ means (although I suspect it is linked to the fact that it hurts to brush my teeth).

I have no idea what a ‘vertical crack distally’ is.

I don’t know what a ‘bonded core restoration in the access cavity’ is – but I’m starting to think that I might need one.

And that is not taking my point of pain away. It is, in fact, adding a whole heap of fear and confusion onto my point of pain. This is not what communication is about.

The point of communication in all its forms is to transmit information from one person to another, preferably in a form that can be understood by both parties. What I have just experienced is the very worst form of endontic ‘jargon’. And jargon turns people – including your prospective customers – OFF.

Non-Comprendez?

Wikipedia defines jargon as:

“Terminology which is especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, group, or event.”

Copywriters define jargon as:

“The reason why your prospects can’t work out what on earth you do – and (vitally) why they are not spending their money with you.”

(Even when they spend half an hour on your website and try really hard to work out what your ‘blue-sky thinking’, ‘deadline-led processes’ or ‘revolutionary executive solutions’ actually mean.)

Why Jargon is a Pain

Every business has its own jargon, its own obscure terms and its own phrases. Jargon in some industries is like a secret language or a quick shorthand for complicated concepts.

It has its place. But that place is never, ever in external communications.

Back to me, me, me and my delightfully swollen – if obscure – ‘buccal sulcus’.

The letter I received created a barrier. It created a barrier between me (the prospective patient) and the endontist.

I wanted to know what is wrong in terms I can understand. I wanted to know why I have ‘considerable swelling’ and a ‘vertical crack distally’ and most of all – let’s face it – I wanted to know “Will it hurt?”

How to make sure your customers know you can help them

The need for a prospective customer to know just how a company or business can help them is true for every business out there.

We’re a selfish lot, us consumers. We want to know what’s in it for us.

You may chat about ‘blue-sky thinking’, ‘end user perspectives’ and ‘accurate innovative employer empowerment’ in your meetings (I hope you don’t, but still…) but your customer wants to know what all that means for him – in terms he can understand.

Over to you

So, how do you take your customer’s pain away? What is it that you can do, what do you offer that can make their lives better?

Can you talk about ‘saving money on gas bills and staying warm this winter’, instead of ‘glass-based home improvement solutions’?

Can you let your customers know that you can ‘keep their precious photographs and data safe’ and ‘save them time’, instead of talking about ‘RAM’ and ‘advanced network solutions’?

Can you (please) tell your prospective patients that you are ‘gentle’, that you use ‘lots of anaesthetic’ and that ‘patients shouldn’t feel a thing’?

Can you make sure that your website turns your customers ON to doing business with you?

Do let me know in the comments section below…

The post On root canals, pain points and why your website is turning your customers off appeared first on Haydn Grey Ltd Copywriting Agency.

But, like most things to do with writing great copy – the same rules apply whether you’re a one-man-band or a multi-national business with branches everywhere from Covent Garden to Malibu.

Here’s a link to the article. I hope you enjoy it.

Katherine

P.S. Are there any secrets that you use to make sure your business writing shines?

The post Now, 5 Copywriting Secrets Every Business Owner Should Know appeared first on Haydn Grey Ltd Copywriting Agency.

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Copywriting classics

In fact, looking at the inside cover of our well-thumbed copy of Schwab’s book, 2012 marks its 50th year in print.

Great timing then for a reminder of the principles of a great headline, according to Schwab.

This is taken from the chapter on ‘Get Attention – How important is the headline?’

‘Worth recounting is the story of Max Hart (of Hart, Schaffner & Marx) and his advertising manager, the late and great George L. Dyer. They were arguing about long copy. To clinch the argument Mr. Dyer said, “I’ll bet you $10 I can write a newspaper page of solid type and you’d read every word of it.”

Mr. Hart scoffed at the idea. “I don’t have to write a line of it to prove my point,” Mr. Dyer responded. “I’ll only tell you the headline. That would be “This page is all about Max Hart!”‘

How to Write a Good Advertisement – A Short Course in Copywriting by Victor O. Schwab

The main job of any headline is to get the reader to read the copy that follows it. Its purpose is to stop the reader from turning the page, from walking away, from switching the channel or from tuning out from what you want to say.

If you can craft a headline that speaks directly to your reader, that addresses his concerns or promises him a benefit in a way that’s so personal you might as well have shouted out his name across a crowded room – then you’re on to a winner.

What’s the best headline you’ve ever written – and why? Tell us in the comments below.

The post The Art of Great Headlines – according to Victor O. Schwab appeared first on Haydn Grey Ltd Copywriting Agency.

Like this infographic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.

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Like this graphic? Get more creativity and content marketing tips from Copyblogger.

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This picture of a bar menu was taken in a very, very smart hotel.

Just who do the liqueurs belong to?

Now, it may be a small thing but getting your apostrophes in the right place counts. It ensures that what you’re trying to say is communicated clearly and correctly to your audience. It makes sure that you’re making sense and that you are listened to.

And if you’re writing to sell you can see why that might be important.

The Art of The Apostrophe

Use 1: An apostrophe shows that letters have been left out of a word, so -

‘She has got my wine glass!’ becomes ‘She’s got my wine glass!’

‘It is time for a nightcap’ becomes ‘It’s time for a nightcap.’

‘Do not let me forget my bag.’ becomes ‘Don’t let me forget my bag.’

‘They are paying the bill.’ becomes ‘They’re paying the bill.’

(Always nice, thanks boys!)

Use 2: An apostrophe shows that something belongs to someone, so -

Richard’s glasses

Dominic’s coat

The apostrophe goes after the ‘s’ if the word ends in ‘s’ already, so -

The tourists’ fancy cameras.

Remember: There are no apostrophes in the possessive pronouns his, hers, its, yours, ours, theirs.

Got it?

Great.

How about these examples? Where should you use an apostrophe?

(The answers are at the bottom of the page)

1. Its a crying shame.
2. The hotel has its own drinking policy.
3. I want a gin and tonic like hers.
4. Mines a white wine.
5. Olives for sale.

Answers:

1.Its a crying shame.

It’s a crying shame. (The ‘ replaces the ‘i’ in ‘is’)

2.The hotel has its own drinking policy.

Not for a possessive pronoun.

3.I want a gin and tonic like hers.

Not for a possessive pronoun.

4.Mines a white wine.

Mine’s a white wine. (Short for mine is)

5.Olives for sale.

Never for a simple plural.

How did you do?

Getting you’re apostrophes in a muddle confuses you’re audience. Its a sure fire way to muddle up you’re message and detract from what it is thats at the heart of your message. Its a simple but easy way to ensure your reader’s know what you want to say and arent tripped up by you’re words.

Get it?

Got it?

Great : )

The post It’s or its? The Art of the Apostrophe appeared first on Haydn Grey Ltd Copywriting Agency.