In this clip from his Simple Writing System course, John Carlton leads students through the creation of their basic sales message, the key to marketing their product or service.
His comments:
Dan: Hi, I’m Dan Ritchey and I am CEO of XX Marketing Services. We are a team of highly-trained professionals who specialize in transitioning an offline business to prepare for an online presence that multiplies its customer base and, more importantly, its sales.
John: OK, Stop right there. That is pretty good. Did anybody catch what the problem might be with what he is writing down? The word there. Was everybody listening to him? There was a word there, like a trigger word.
The word “transition”. His whole USP, everything that he is, everything he is presenting to the reader, hinges on that word. What does that word mean? It doesn’t mean much to me. It does technically mean “change”. One of the things, when you become a writer, words really matter. And, what I would do with a hot seat with Dan, is I would go back and say “stop right there and think about that word”.
You may want to change that word, because that is where you are going to lose people, or that is where you are going to catch people and bring them in. “Transition” is a 25-cent corporate word that is almost meaningless any more. However, other words, like “transformation” can be used, though they are quickly becoming almost a mockery type of thing.
But, when you think about what is it that you do, and…how many of you use “transition”, or some form of that word in your stuff? A lot of the stuff you are going to do hinges on this. The information age is all about taking people who are here and moving them, sometimes with problems, over to here. And, that is essentially change. How many ways can you say that, without blending in with the crowd?
So, that’s where you would put me right to sleep, on that “transition” thing. That is good, that we are able to identify this kind of stuff.
Did you get down to the part of “how is this important to your life right now”?
Dan: Unintelligible
John: Mumbling…that’s fine. Do you know that one of the best things you can do when you are writing or when you are trying to change from being just a businessman to a businessman who writes his own copy? Do you know what the best thing that can happen to you is? It’s to screw up and recognize that you have a problem.
Because, once you do that…what happens once you identify the problem? You can fix it. And, that’s what’s great about the information age. The fact that you’re here…most of you…how many consider yourselves pretty d**n good copywriters right now?
OK. That’s good. You guys came here and thought “I can get good now”. That’s excellent. When you are doing this kind of stuff. When you identify this stuff…I can tell you that even A-list writers started out fixing the holes in their skill set. In their tool belt. In their bag of tricks. Finding out where the holes were, filling the holes, finding out what they were doing wrong, fixing it, finding out where the blunders were.
Things like what Dan is doing. I don’t mean to pick on you, Dan, but it is just an excellent example of that
To learn more about John’s Simple Writing System, go to www.SimpleWritingSystem.com
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