I remem­ber 10 years ago.

In the wake of rumored pro­pos­als to reg­u­late the web, in 1999 the CRTC, com­pa­ra­ble to America’s FCC, offi­cially declared that the Inter­net is not a broad­cast medium.

Now, that rul­ing was sig­nif­i­cant for many reasons.

Tech­ni­cally, the Inter­net is a medium. But the gov­ern­ment based its deci­sion on the fact that the web is inter­ac­tive with its audi­ence — unlike other uni­di­rec­tional, one-​​way broad­cast media such as the TV or radio. As a result, reg­u­la­tors con­cluded the Inter­net could there­fore police itself.

(The “Net Neu­tral­ity” debate of late is a per­fect exam­ple that it is different.)

Nev­er­the­less, my point here is not a polit­i­cal one but a marketing-​​related one.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Lately, I’m see­ing a lot of posts in pub­lic forums and blogs these days about peo­ple get­ting sick and tired of see­ing “crappy,” “hypey,” used-​​car, Ginsu-​​like, looooong copy.

Some of them come from guru-​​bashing naysay­ers who hate mar­ket­ing, which I always take with a grain of salt.

But some are intel­li­gent, mature, and com­mon­sen­si­cal. They are inter­est­ing because I believe that, while neg­a­tive feed­back does have its place, it’s often misplaced.

Here’s why. They blame long copy when all too often it’s not the copy’s fault. More impor­tantly, it’s not because of the length. Let’s get some­thing clear off the bat: long, Ginsu-​​like copy does work. It has always worked. It will always work. And it’s here to stay.

But (and it’s a big “but”)…

Read the rest of this post or share it »

A stu­dent, who is an upcom­ing copy­writer, recently asked where he could find clients will­ing to pay higher rates for his skills.

Hav­ing built a client base through net­work­ing on Inter­net forums geared towards start-​​up busi­ness own­ers, he now wanted to find oppor­tu­ni­ties that would allow for upward mobil­ity within his craft.

This is a com­mon sce­nario, because local and espe­cially start-​​up busi­nesses are easy to find, and pro­vide plenty of oppor­tu­ni­ties to prac­tice your emerg­ing copy­writ­ing skills.

In a pre­vi­ous arti­cle, I talked about three tips for aspir­ing copy­writ­ers. I rec­om­mend any new copy­writer to fol­low these three tips to start build­ing a track record and get to a level that makes them appeal­ing to higher-​​paying clients.

But after your copy­writ­ing skills are devel­oped, how­ever, it becomes desir­able if not nec­es­sary to seek out clients — bet­ter, more lucra­tive clients — who are estab­lished enough to pay a fair wage for your skills and, above all, your results.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Most of the copy peo­ple ask me to rewrite seem to offer great prod­ucts and ser­vices. In fact, some offers are so good, prospects would be crazy to turn them down.

But they do.

And these sales pieces end up falling on my lap because they’re des­per­ately unpro­duc­tive. When clients ask me to cri­tique or rewrite copy, one of the biggest prob­lems I see is the fact that the copy is stale, limp, and anemic.

Copy so down­right dull, the only response it gets are yawns.

You’ve heard the adage, “copy­writ­ing is sales­man­ship in print.” This is noth­ing new. It comes from the age­less teach­ings of the mas­ters, like Hop­kins, Bar­ton, Col­lier, and oth­ers, which still ring true today. Includ­ing the Internet.

But peo­ple tend to for­get this axiom. Here’s why…

Read the rest of this post or share it »

A dis­grun­tled, aspir­ing copy­writer wrote me demand­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tions. He believes most copy­writ­ers lie and exag­ger­ate their claims of wealth. Let’s call him “Chuck.”

I under­stand where Chuck is com­ing from. Because I’ve been where he is. So I responded, not because I wanted to acqui­esce to his demands but because I wanted to give him hope, ideas, and, dare I say it, a million-​​dollar education.

He says he will be ask­ing other copy­writ­ers the same ques­tion, and even threat­ened (although, that may be too harsh of a word) to pub­lish my reply. I’ve decided to take the lead myself, and pub­lish it here.

For all I know, this copy­writer may be gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion to cre­ate his own prod­uct. Who knows? If he is, I must say that his strat­egy is bril­liant. A tad decep­tive, but bril­liant. Regard­less, if he does cre­ate a prod­uct out of this, good for him!

But I’m reprint­ing the con­ver­sa­tion here not just to take the lead but also because I believe it will help a lot of other strug­gling copy­writ­ers out there. Also, I’m open­ing myself a lit­tle more than usual. I guess you can say that I’m expos­ing the real “Michel Fortin.”

My answer might sur­prise you…

Read the rest of this post or share it »

I used to teach mar­ket­ing and sell­ing part-​​time at a local col­lege. One day, one of my stu­dents made me real­ize some­thing important.

Dur­ing my lec­ture, he offered an exam­ple to illus­trate his under­stand­ing of a con­cept I was teach­ing. While it was gen­eral in nature, I real­ized how beau­ti­fully his exam­ple applied to copy. Par­tic­u­larly web copy.

In fact, his point was so well made because he drove it home using the very idea he was illustrating.

But before I explain it to you, let me put the story in con­text so you can understand.

In my Per­sonal Sell­ing class, we were dis­cussing the nat­ural human incli­na­tion to illog­i­cally and uncon­sciously assume that there is a par­al­lel between a part and its whole — even when the two are totally unre­lated or irrel­e­vant to each other.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

I first taught this tech­nique in 1998. While there have been tons of improve­ments since then, today I still see copy on so many web­sites, sales let­ters, or emails using a lan­guage that only the per­son who wrote them understands.

The bot­tom line is, most mar­keters and copy­writ­ers still seem to ignore the most impor­tant part of their sales copy…

… Their readers.

Abra­ham Maslow once com­mented, “If all you have is a ham­mer, every­thing looks like a nail.” Abra­ham Maslow may have been a psy­chol­o­gist, but he prob­a­bly knew more about copy­writ­ing and par­tic­u­larly sell­ing than what most peo­ple cared to admit.

Even now, most of the copy I cri­tique dis­obey this impor­tant rule the most. Their sales mes­sage doesn’t com­mu­ni­cate with their read­ers, par­tic­u­larly at their level. Now, I’m not talk­ing about a socioe­co­nomic or edu­ca­tional level. I’m talk­ing about the level at which they under­stand and, above all, make buy­ing decisions.

They fail to use what I call “upwords.” It’s an acronym that means…

Read the rest of this post or share it »