Copywriters Podcast

Last fall, our returning champion Glenn Fisher and his business partner Nick O’Connor teamed up with mega financial publisher Marketwise for a bold experiment: Offer FREE training in financial copywriting to 12 people who competed for the spots. There were 500 people applied. Of the 12 who were selected, Glenn says, four were offered jobs… and two are being mentored by financial copywriting legend Mike Palmer. You know, in many stupid businesses, when something works, the business immediately stops doing it and decides to try something else. Lucky for you, Marketwise is anything but a stupid business. They know a good thing when they see it. So they decided to keep working with Glenn and Nick and run more programs through 2026. And Glenn’s back on the show to tell us what they learned and what’s next… and how you might be one of the lucky 12 in a future cohort! Links: Financial Copy U: https://www.financialcopyu.com/ The Fix, Glenn’s and Nick’s other program: https://thefixcopywriting.com/ d.]]>

So a lot of people are building their brand by pouring tons of money into traffic… A/B testing… tracking every click… but deep down, you feel that something’s not landing. It’s almost like you wonder if you’re coming across as desperate, rather than confident. Maybe it’s time to take a look at a cherished assumption in online marketing: Namely, that more information and more volume equals more authority. Not really, says our own Nathan Fraser. He’s given me an advance peek at his new book, The Signal. I was so excited by the refreshing ideas he has in there that I wanted him to talk about it on today’s show… and he agreed. Look. Nathan says you should stop begging the algorithm and start commanding attention. And he has some proven ideas on how to do that. Which he’ll share with us today. Here are the questions I asked him: 1. In your book, you say, “Marketing that begs for attention becomes noise. Marketing grounded in conviction becomes signal.” What do you mean by this, and how can someone make sure their marketing has minimum noise and maximum signal? 2. You talk about the Pratfall Effect and how not coming across as “perfect,” or trying to, actually bonds a business with its customers better than trying to appear cool and flawless. How does this work? 3. I love what you say about overexplaining–that it indicates insecurity and this repels rather than attracts the right people. Could you talk about that? 4. So there are two philosophies I’ve seen these days: Omnipresence, where you show up everywhere all the time, and being very selective and making it difficult to get access to you. You’re in favor of the second approach. Why do you feel that way? 5. Your advice for building an attractive signal that draws the right customers to you is to “select, not sell.” What does this look like? 6. You identify five buyer beliefs in a very interesting chapter called “Belief is the Real Funnel.” This is so different from what anyone else I have heard says. I notice that in the five-step funnel you outline, Apple somehow got the first belief to become part of the popular culture. Could you go through these beliefs and make some suggestions about how to create them in an actual funnel? 7. You write "Identity closes deals long before logic ever enters the room." How do you determine how your product changes your prospect’s sense of identity? Get your copy of The Signal at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G5FGMH21 Visit Nathan's site at CultishContent.comd.]]>

What was discovered and perfected over 100 years ago, that is one of the most important marketing strategies online today? We have a special Old Masters Series show today. It’s a hybrid between marketing discoveries of the early 1900s, and top moneymakers of 2025. Our old Master is Claude Hopkins. Most people don’t realize that there’s a strong connection between two of the most important principles he wrote about and used – sampling, and demonstration – and what makes for an effective lead magnet in today’s world. For this episode, I went back into two of his most important books, Scientific Advertising and My Life in Advertising. We’ll talk about those first. There are tons of gems in there and these books are well worth reading many times, which I have done myself. So we’re going to focus on a narrow slice of the wisdom on today’s hybrid Old Masters Series show. And then, we’ll catapult into 2025 to see how those ideas have evolved. My Life in Advertising/Scientific Advertising, by Claude Hopkins https://www.amazon.com/dp/0844231010/ Sample Lead Magnet: First Two Chapters Of The Persuasion Story Code https://PersuasionStoryCode.com d.]]>

Our returning champion today, Dr. Doug Pew, is well known in two different worlds: The world of high-powered copywriting for online course creators, where he has done many six and seven figure launches. And the other world where Doug is known is that of music. He is a composer whose work was actually performed at Carnegie Hall! And he wrote an opera that was performed at the Kennedy Center. Those worlds overlap in certain ways sometimes for Doug, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today. He’s written copy for music businesses like Creative Piano Academy, Lauren Bateman Guitar, Become A Bassist, and J209, an a cappella singing group, who he helped grow their Instagram following to over 15,000 in a couple of months. Most of his work for these businesses has been to create sales, and, as you might expect, selling students into an online music instruction business is different in some ways than other types of copywriting. Yet the differences are fascinating, and they may help you with your own copy, even in non-musical niches. Contact Information: Doug’s Copywriter website is where you can book a call about a copy project: www.dougpewcopywriting.com or can email him directly at [email protected] If you want to check out the music business, you can visit… https://latterdaymusiversity.com/ d.]]>

Do you have an imaginary friend? Whether you do or not, today we’re going to talk about why a particular imaginary friend can solve one of the biggest problems copywriters are having today. And that problem is, your copy’s not connecting with the right target group of prospects. So your conversions are way lower than you’d like them to be. Now, the perfect solution to that would be to have a real-live focus group of honest, unflinching prospects available to you 24/7. People you could ask about their problems, their fears, their hopes, their dreams. But… sorry. You can’t. However, what we’re going to talk about today is the next best thing. And the good news is, you can build this imaginary friend pretty easily from real-world data. So you get the equivalent of your 24/7 focus group, but it’s not high-maintenance. In fact, it doesn’t require any care and feeding at all. d.]]>