Hey, it’s Paul.
I want to do two things in this email.
First, I want to invite you to listen to this audio training with Jorden Roper:
>> How Jorden Built a $5,000/month Writing Biz in 4 Months (click to listen)
If you don’t know Jorden’s story the gist is this:
Jorden is a college dropout who got canned from a crummy job. Kinda scary, right?
But she turned fear into HUSTLE and built a thriving freelance writing business in just four months.
And since you’re working on building (or growing) a freelance writing biz of your own, you’ll definitely get volumes of value from this audio training.
So grab a pencil and paper and get yo’ ears here:
>> How Jorden Built a $5,000/month Writing Biz in 4 Months (click to listen)
Okey dokey, that’s the first thing.
The second thing I want to do is ask you a question:
Do you commute to a 9-to-5?
Well, if you’re going to be in the car anyway, why not listen to this audio training with Jorden?
I mean, what are your alternatives?
Top 40 radio? Talk radio? Boring conversation with your carpool mates?
But if you listen to this free audio training with Jorden, you’ll learn strategies for your writing business that could help you escape the grind of your 9-to-5.
Okay. Now listen up.
What I showed you right there is an example of a powerful copywriting technique called “grasping the advantage”.
You’ve probably heard that you should translate features to benefits, right?
In most cases (business-to-business copy is an exception) this is a good idea. But it’s also what every decent copywriter does. You want to be an EXCELLENT copywriter.
And one way to go from decent to excellent as a copywriter is to get your readers to grasp the advantage.
Let me show you another example of grasping the advantage.
Say you’ve got a software client. And this client sells an accounting software similar to FreshBooks.
A feature of the software might be that it allows you to process invoices 50% faster.
You could translate that into a benefit like “Users save an average of 5 hours per week processing invoices with this software.”
The benefit is the 5 hours you’ll save. That’s specific. It’s not bad. But let’s try to get readers to grasp the advantage and see which one we like better.
You could get a reader to grasp the advantage by saying something like:
“What would you do with an extra 5 hours per week? Would you get caught up on projects? Take an actual lunch break? Spend more time with your kids?
“Our users save an average of 5 hours per week processing invoices with this software. So they can spend more time on the things that really matter.”
Which one do you think is stronger?
And you don’t need a bunch of words to get readers to grasp the advantage. You can do it with a itty-bitty three-word phrase. Let me show you:
“This magic pill reduces cravings so you can slim faster than ever before.”
“These shoes instantly make you 6 inches taller so you can dunk like Jordan on the basketball court.”
“This is the purest, most nutritious organic dog food on the market so you can enjoy Fido’s friendship for many years to come.”
So a simple formula is:
[BENEFIT] so you can [Get the reader to grasp the advantage by showing what the benefit will do for him / her.]
Grasping the advantage first appeared (as fas as I know) in Victor O. Schwab’s book How To Write A Good Advertisement: A Short Course In Copywriting.
If you haven’t read this book yet, you need to. Like, now.
In my opinion, it’s one of the most important books ever written on how to get really good at copywriting.
This book will make you a better copywriter.
Read it now so you can write the kind of copy that gets you gobs of clients and makes you more money doing something you love than you’ve ever made at your exhausting, pain-in-the-backside day job.
(D’you see what I did there?)
I know this email is a little bit off the beaten path.
And I don’t plan on offering copywriting tips throughout this 90 Day Writing Challenge. (Unless that’s something you want -- in which case, just let me know.)
But I wanted to share grasping the advantage with you because it’s such a simple, and powerful, copywriting technique.
Alright, ya’ll.
Wednesday is grocery day so I’m headed out the door.
Hope you’re having a happy hump day and I’ll see you tomorrow.
Until then…
Stay hungry and keep hustling!
Paul
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