I used to teach mar­ket­ing and sell­ing at a local col­lege here in Ottawa. And one of the things I used to help teach with — I also use them all the time when I want to learn and remem­ber new things, too — was mnemonics.

Mnemon­ics are tools or devices that aid retention.

Do you remem­ber the lit­tle ditty to remem­ber all the plan­ets’ names, taught mostly in kinder­garten? It goes, “My very eager mother just served us nine piz­zas,” where the first let­ter of each word rep­re­sents the name of each planet in our solar sys­tem (i.e., Mer­cury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Sat­urn, Uranus, Nep­tune, and Pluto).

Songs, rhymes, for­mu­las, pic­tures, allit­er­a­tion, etc are often used as mnemonic devices. But my favorite form of mnemonic are acronyms. You’ve prob­a­bly seen a few of them on this blog. That’s because I often use acronyms to teach about copywriting.

I do this to help you remem­ber, appre­ci­ate, and under­stand the process I go through when I write copy. Here they are, with their mean­ing (plus, each mnemonic is linked to its respec­tive arti­cle on this blog, cov­er­ing the for­mula in more detail):

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One of the most pop­u­lar threads on my now defunct dis­cus­sion forum for copy­writ­ers was one started by my friend Dean Jack­son.

If you don’t know Dean Jack­son, he is a Toron­ton­ian, a real estate mogul, an infor­ma­tion mar­ket­ing mil­lion­aire (author of many pro­grams, includ­ing the highly suc­cess­ful “Stop Your Divorce!”), and a darn-​​fine copywriter.

This post was extremely pop­u­lar for a num­ber of reasons.

In it, Dean shared his quick-​​and-​​dirty for­mula for writ­ing saleslet­ters really fast. Of course, I’m a big fan of Robert Plank’s Speed Copy Secrets. But this for­mula is a great short­cut if you want to write a bare­bones saleslet­ter in less than an hour.

Above all, the idea behind this for­mula is to get you to start writ­ing. Too many mar­keters and copy­writ­ers get stuck at the begin­ning, such as at the head­line, and they fail to get any trac­tion. They often blame it on “writer’s block.”

Accord­ing to Dean, this for­mula has helped him write sev­eral million-​​dollar saleslet­ters for him­self and oth­ers. With his gra­cious per­mis­sion, I’m reprint­ing it here on this blog, along with some of my own edi­to­r­ial com­ments and tips…

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When a sales page is not per­form­ing or if it’s not per­form­ing up to your expec­ta­tions, the worst thing you can do is… nothing.

By tak­ing action and mak­ing changes, you can strengthen your copy quickly and improve your sales con­ver­sions. In most cases, there are rel­a­tively sim­ple steps you can take to alter the copy to improve your results immediately.

The key to this process is test­ing to boost your outcome.

The sad truth is, the vast major­ity of mar­keters don’t test. But if you are test­ing or about to, then con­grat­u­la­tions. Because you’re miles ahead of most peo­ple in this industry.

How­ever, when most peo­ple start test­ing, they imme­di­ately think of some­thing they can add or change. Or they’re con­fused as to what to test, par­tic­u­larly what to test first.

In my expe­ri­ence, I’ve found that the best and most effi­cient ele­ment to test is to actu­ally first remove the things that are stop­ping peo­ple from order­ing. In other words…

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Even though we decided to post­pone the mul­ti­me­dia copy­writ­ing sem­i­nar in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia due to the fires there, my friend, copy­writer David Garfinkel, asked me about it:

“(One of my coach­ing stu­dents) asked if you will share detailed test results like what to say vs. what not to say, what to wear in video, and other nitty-​​gritty like that, at your sem­i­nar when you resched­ule it. Those would be excel­lent points to cover for a seri­ous direct mar­keter. Any­thing you’d like me to tell him?”

Valid ques­tion. So here’s the answer I gave him, along with a few tips…

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Through­out my research, I’m always sur­prised when I stum­ble onto web­sites that are pro­fes­sion­ally designed and seem to offer great prod­ucts and ser­vices, but lack or fail in cer­tain impor­tant elements.

Ele­ments that, with just a few short changes, can help mul­ti­ply the results almost instan­ta­neously.

Gen­er­ally, I have found that there are seven com­mon mis­takes. I call them the “Seven Deadly Sins.” Is your web­site com­mit­ting any one of these?

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So, if you’re fol­low­ing the com­mand­ments, you should now have a unique name, pos­si­bly a tagline, and estab­lished your­self as the first or leader in your unique cat­e­gory. What about the ser­vice or prod­uct you offer? Do you offer an extra­or­di­nary prod­uct or ser­vice, or do you offer an ordi­nary one?

Even if the ser­vice you pro­vide is cus­tom­ary, tra­di­tional, and prob­a­bly offered by your com­pe­ti­tion, you should make it appear unique just as well.

Remem­ber that per­cep­tion is more pow­er­ful than truth. You don’t need to empha­size that your prod­uct or ser­vice is unique, bet­ter than the com­pe­ti­tion, or even the best for that mat­ter. Doing so by declar­ing that it is can some­times be worse than not say­ing any­thing at all, and the rea­son for that is that it makes your self-​​serving claim appear sus­pect or exaggerated.

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I’m back from Atlanta from attend­ing the Big Seminar.

I got to see my friends and some top mar­keters while there, includ­ing Jim Edwards, Mar­lon Sanders, Mike Woo-​​Ming, Brad Fal­lon, Jeff John­son, Ray Edwards, Eric Gra­ham, and more. (The pic­ture on the left is with Eric Gra­ham, one of my coach­ing stu­dents.)

The high­light of the week­end, aside from the great con­tent and the net­work­ing and shoulder-​​rubbing oppor­tu­ni­ties, was Sat­ur­day night. Dr. Scott Lewis, an Inter­net mar­keter as well, is a hyp­no­tist with a reg­u­lar show in Vegas. He gave a show on Sat­ur­day that was filled with surprises.

(My jaw still hurts from laugh­ing so much!)

Nev­er­the­less, I’m back in the office and now get­ting ready for a ton of events. May is shap­ing up to be quite a busy month, with webi­nars, tele­sem­i­nars, copy cri­tiques, and more.

First on the agenda…

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