Today we have the third and final part of my recent interview with copywriter Pete Godfrey in which we conclude our discussion of his “Business Profits Triangle”.
The focus is on copywriting and how the 3 sides of the triangle inter-relate.
Let’s rejoin the discussion…
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Kevin Francis:
As you have pointed out. Alright and then on the final leg of the triangle, side of the triangle I should say, copywriting. Again, what are the most important things that people need to keep in mind about effective copy?
Pete Godfrey:
OK, well here’s the thing. And anyone who listens to this call and contacts you Kev, I should send you there my 7 steps I do before writing a word…
Kevin Francis:
No, no! Pete, sorry that’s secret insider stuff. I’m not going to allow you to give that away! It’s too important.
Pete Godfrey:
No, come on, just do it. Now when it comes to copy the offer is everything; well we could take it a step further and go, the list is everything…who’s going to read your message? But let’s just stick with the copy. The offer is everything, so the offer is what the customer gets, OK? So in our world we don’t make a sale, we don’t get a customer to make a sale, we get a sale to make a customer.
So we want to make sure that we’ve got absolute great value to start with, especially with new customers. You leave them with a great taste in their mouth they’re going to be more inclined to purchase again.
So we make our offer, we do our numbers about how much can we afford to give away to get this customer who will then become a lifetime customer of ours. So we do our numbers and we put in as much value as we can.
Now if you want to see a great offer, if your listeners go to www.emotionaladwritingletter.com they can see where I lead that sales letter, and that’s for my newsletter by the way, and where I lead with the free offer, I lead with all the good stuff they’re going to get just for signing up to my newsletter. So that’s a great offer.
Kevin Francis:
It is, let me interject here. I’m obviously a subscriber to Pete’s newsletter and have been for many years. In fact it’s one of the few newsletters I actually subscribe to because it’s one of the few that’s actually worth the subscription.
And look, I have to say Pete re-launched his newsletter a few months back with that new offer and even though I’ve been a long time subscriber I looked at what he was giving there and it was astonishing even to me what Pete had included in that offer.
So look, have a look at that because it is an excellent example of the kind of offer that’s going to produce results and the kind of thing you want to be putting together for your own clients.
Sorry Pete, I interrupted there mate.
Pete Godfrey:
So your offers are king but coming in a close second would be your headline. And this is where we spend a lot of our time, on headlines now. And I go as far as saying it’s that top third of the page, that top half page of the sales letter, or the first screen they see on the website, that’s where I spend the most time.
Like on the headline, the pre head above the headline, the headline itself, the sub heads, how am I going to get them into this letter so it’s the “Greased slide” that I teach. So that’s where I spend a hell of a lot of time. But before even that I’ve got my offer already sorted.
Kevin Francis:
Pete when you talk about the offer, I mean we’re getting into a bit of advanced copy stuff here but I think it’s important for listeners. You’re not just talking about the physical product are you, or the actually content? The offer’s more than that isn’t it?
Pete Godfrey:
Yeah it’s more than that. The offer includes a guarantee as well.
Because it all comes back to what they’re going to get. Now okay, you can put all these great bonuses that you know that they’ll love, but also the guarantee comes in and it says you know, and if you don’t like it you can keep the bonuses as my way of apologizing for wasting your time; something like that. So the guarantee is, I’ve always said it and always believe it, the guarantee is part of the offer as well.
Because it all comes down to what the customer gets.
Kevin Francis:
Yeah. What they get and what it’s going to do for them, isn’t it?
Pete Godfrey:
So I like, you know we use a lot of “clicks” in copywriting and one that I usually use a lot is future pacing. And that’s where I take them into the future and show them what their lives could be like when they’ve actually got the benefits of the product that I’m selling.
Now here’s a great tip for anyone on the call. It’s a question I developed a few years ago that really clarified what it was I was really selling and the question is simply to ask yourself before you write a word of copy “What am I really selling?”
Now to explain this I’ve got a couple of ways. Say you’re selling diets. There were a couple of years there where I was doing a lot of weight loss promotions and so for a couple of days I was on the phone to a lot of women that have been on weigh loss diets. They’ve lost some weight, they’ve put it back on so this was my ideal market. So I was writing to women who have been on diets before. So I had to understand Kev exactly what it is about these women, what do they feel, what do they think.
All that stuff, otherwise as a mere male I wouldn’t had a hope in hell of selling my client’s products. But one statement out of all those women really hit me in the gut and she said “Pete I just want to be able to leave the lights on as I undress in front of my husband”. Now that’s a very, very, very emotional statement.
But I realized there in that particular second what I was really selling wasn’t a diet. What I was really selling was sexiness, what I was really selling was self confidence, what I was really selling was the dream of her being down the beach this summer in a pair of bikinis.
So I get very, very clear and say selling home insurance, or burglar alarms, or something like that, what you’re really selling is peace of mind. You’re not selling what the thing is, what you’re really selling is the feeling it’s going to give your prospects.
Now this is where I see so many mistakes in copy. You see it all the time Kev, they’re selling the product, they’re not selling that end benefit, that hidden benefit that my good old mate Ted Nicholas calls it, you know, the hidden benefit.
So get very clear, if there’s one big tip out of this call for any copywriters or anyone on the call that are making their own offers, that is it. What am I really selling? Once you get clear on that you know, you’re half way there.
Kevin Francis:
Yeah, okay, that’s a great point for people and if they grasp that then they’ll see an immediate increase in their response.
Pete Godfrey:
Yeah, don’t try selling your product, sell the feelings that your prospect’s going to get from the product.
Kevin Francis:
Alright, well Pete, let’s summarize here briefly. You know you’ve explained the 3 elements of the business profits triangle. Why it’s essential to have all 3. Can you just recap for us, you know typically how these in the typical business all work together and flow together.
Pete Godfrey:
Well you know, when I do a copy job I don’t just do copy, I do the whole strategy, the works. So when I take on a client, say he wants to do a teleseminar. OK what’s the strategy behind that teleseminar? That’s the marketing…we’ve got to get the strategy and the objective worked out right from the word go. So the objective might be we give them great content and then we try to sell them into a live event. OK that is the strategy, that’s the objective. So I will then craft the content for the teleseminar so everything builds to a natural conclusion of the offer to attend the live event.
So the copy involved in this would include emails, emails to the list, might include JV emails, it could include postcards or direct mail, it could include a lot of things, but that’s the copy. But the marketing strategy behind the copy is what’s going to get bums on seats to the teleseminar.
That’s sort of, and with the mindset my biggest job, and I’ll bet you get this too Kev, is managing clients’ expectations.
Now the clients I deal with these days don’t need to do much of that, they’re pragmatic, they know if they send 500 letters out that they’re not going to get 498 orders. So they’re very pragmatic.
But when dealing with new clients they’ve got the strange idea that if they send out 1,000 emails, or 1,000 postcards, they’re going to get like a 50% response rate or something like that. So the mindset side of that for a copywriter and for yourself if you’re doing it yourself is manage your own expectations you know, and don’t believe in the tooth fairy.
I mean this stuff works if you get it right but you know, as I always say Kev…I’ll pop the champagne…when I do a letter for a client or something, or do some strategy, I send it to the client, he gets on the phone, or she gets on the phone, she’s wrapped, you know it’s excellent Pete, you know I’ll do a dance.
And I’ll say, well you know let’s run it first and then I’ll pop the champagne cork. Because it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been doing this stuff, you can put every element in there but you still won’t know whether it’s going to work or not, okay.
Thankfully my batting average is pretty damn good and I get more winners than losers, but it’s all a test. And that’s the beauty about direct response mate, you know it’s not failing, it’s just a test.
Kevin Francis:
Well it strikes me as we’re discussing this here that I mean you’re probably familiar with the ultimate success formula that’s often talked about by people like Tony Robbins. Which if people are not clear, you know just so we’re clear on what we’re talking about, in a nutshell Step 1 is decide what it is you want, or be clear on what it is you want. Step 2 is take action. Step 3 then is get feedback and see if what you’re doing is actually getting you closer to your objective and then Step 4 is if what you’re doing is not getting you closer to your objective do something else and start again and check if that’s getting you closer to your objective.
And it seems to me when we’re marketing you know the direct response methodology is obviously ideally suited to that framework.
Pete Godfrey:
Of course and that’s the beauty of it mate. You know we deal in principles.
Techniques come and go. Yeah I keep up with techniques that a lot of young people are obsessed with every last technique that Google’s doing, or Facebook’s doing, or what everyone else is doing and I buy a couple of the new courses from the so-called gurus like Frank Kern and Jeff Walker and people like that. But I’m plugged in to principles too and that’s why I spend a lot of money with Dan Kennedy each month.
But you know principles is where the money is and these principles of direct response if you follow them and get it right it does work and as you said you’ve got to analyse your results. If they’re not working what can we do to change it?
Because as you know yourself Kev, if you’re doing a copywriting job you know sometimes you’ll have 2 or 3 ways in your head how you could lead with this, or how you could structure things. As a copywriter with experience you get better and better at picking what you think is the best one.
But I’ve always got a plan B and a plan C for a client, and sometimes I’ll send him multiple different headlines and multiple structures as well so he can quickly test one against the other. And these days online you can do split testing you know live can’t you Kev, that’s even better.
Kevin Francis:
Alright Pete, look that’s fantastic, I mean we’ve gone 45 minutes now, that’s great, that’s a lot more than I was expecting, thank you for that.
Pete Godfrey:
OK Kev.
Kevin Francis:
Now how do people find out more about how they can put your business profits triangle in their own business and find out more about what you’re doing and how you can help them?
Pete Godfrey:
OK. They go to www.petegodfrey.com. I’ve got a great free gift there for them just by putting their email address in. That plugs you into Pete’s world so you hear from me.
Also if you want my newsletter that actually gets posted out every month, it’s a printed newsletter and this is what the triangle was based on, the newsletter. You can go to www.emotionaladwritingletter.com and it’s a yearly subscription fee so there’s no recurring fees, it’s just a one off payment and you get 12 months subscription, plus you get a smorgasbord of bonuses because I practice what I preach with offers.
Actually, what I did put in there Kev that’s been extremely valuable to my members is one of the bonuses is 20 minutes on the phone with me. So in 20 minutes we can cover a lot of ground and it gives me a great opportunity to get to know new members as they come in. So www.petegodfrey.com that’s my blog and www.emotionaladwritingletter.com is for my newsletter.
Kevin Francis:
OK. And I can highly recommend Pete’s newsletter; as I say I subscribe to it, it’s one of the few marketing letters I actually do bother to subscribe to cause it’s well worth the content and it’s one of those when it comes in the mail each month it gets ripped open straight away and I sit down and start reading it you know without delay.
So I can highly recommend it so go and check out the newsletter there at www.emotionaladwritingletter.com and Pete’s blog is over at www.petegodfrey.com.
Well Pete look thanks once again, that was excellent, some excellent stuff in there and I very much appreciate you being here with us today, thank you.
Pete Godfrey:
That’s fine Kev, we’ll have to do it again another time buddy, thanks.
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You can find the first 2 parts of this interview at the links below…