Very Good Copy: 207 Micro-Lessons on Thinking and Writing Like a Copywriter

It can’t crawl your brain, regurgitating your personal experiences and emotions. Only you can access yourself. Only you can share your life, the happenstance moments, the trials and triumphs, the details that are unique to you but understood by all, felt by all. Because we’re all the same.

Seth Godin said, “Crafting a story that tricks people into making short-term decisions they regret in the long run is the worst kind of marketing sin.” Ads make promises. Promises bring people hope. Don’t mess with a person’s hope.

AI can help writers and copywriters establish the dots to help us start writing (which is often the hardest part). But it cannot connect the dots like we can. It can’t be personal like us, human like us.

“Write to please just one person,” said Kurt Vonnegut. He was a novelist. But copywriters say this, too: “Never write for anyone; always write for someone.”

But do you want to? This is the question. Do you want to write about yourself, who you are? Terrifying as it is, will you be a writer who does this? Because then we’re fascinated—we’re in.

Art is self-indulgent: you can’t make art with someone else in mind. Copywriting is the opposite: you can’t make an ad without someone else in mind.

So many businesses make the fatal mistake of trying to ram a product down the throats of a market because they think it’s a great product. It never works,” he said. “What does work—and what produces phenomenal results—is getting to know the demand and the needs and wants and dreams and desires of people, then crafting products that satisfy those ne

He used a seven-step formula to outline his copy. This formula is now called “Bob Stone’s Gem.” It’s simple: Benefit: begin with your strongest benefit. Expansion: expand on your strongest benefit. Positive: explain what the prospect will get. Proof: prove the value with past experience. Negative: explain the consequences of inaction. Summary: sum

5. Explain the consequences of inaction: People jog to pleasure, but we sprint from pain. Indeed, we are all far more driven to avoid discomfort and suffering than to acquire satisfaction and delight.