The Golden Thread – The Week in Review
November 25 – December 1, 2007

Welcome to The Golden Thread Online, your free e-letter from American Writers & Artists Inc. Every Saturday, you will receive this recap of all the strategies, insights and opportunities we send to you and your fellow AWAIers each week. Whether it’s a message from a fellow writer about how he landed a new client … a technique from a Master copywriter for writing a control … an insight into how to succeed in a new market … news of a brand new writing job or business opportunity for you … you’ll find it here in this easy-to-access and always available “Week in Review.”

In This Issue:

• How to Fail Forward – to Ensure Success
  Michael Masterson reveals what to do when you get caught in a rewriting loop.
• Quick Tip: The AWAI Peer Review System
  An explanation of the peer review system Michael Masterson recommends.
• Industry Spotlight: Exercise
  Find out about trends and statistics in the exercise market.
• Dr. Sears Reveals the Challenges of Writing for the Exercise Industry … And How to Overcome Them
  PACE program creator, Dr. Sears shares what challenges face a copywriter in the exercise industry and gives strategies for success.
• Fitness Guru Matthew Furey Gives You the Secrets to His Success
  In an interview, fitness expert Matthew Furey shows how direct response marketing works to build an exercise business.
• Exercise Products: 4 Ways to Overcome Your Prospect’s Objections
  Heather Robson gives you four strategies to overcome objections in health and fitness promotions.

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How to Fail Forward – to Ensure Success by Michael Masterson

I recently received the following email …

Dear Mr. Masterson:

My name is Carol and I am enrolled in your Advanced Program for Six-Figure Copywriting.

I am overwhelmed at this point. I thought I was doing well with each assignment, but now that I have my letter pretty much in order and complete, I find myself reading and re-reading – which leads to writing and re-writing. I just feel like I can’t get it together anymore.

Am I the only one who is overwhelmed or do others get this way?

I keep reading and re-reading information in the lessons and I get more confused. What can I do? Do you have a suggestion for me?

I appreciate any thoughts you can give me. Again, thank you.

Carol Snyder
Yuma, AZ

Here’s my advice for Carol – and anyone else who may be feeling the same way …

First, I can’t say the AWAI copywriting program is mine. It was originally based on my observations about good copy. But it has been consistently improved since then to include the insights and specific copywriting techniques of many of today’s most successful Master Copywriters, including Bill Bonner, Bob Bly, Paul Hollingshead, Don Mahoney, John Forde, Clayton Makepeace, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Jennifer Stevens and others.

Carol’s problem is not uncommon. At this year’s Bootcamp, I had a conversation with a young man who was dealing with the same issues. He called himself a “perfectionist.”

I told him what I’m going to tell you now.

When you’re writing copy, you can’t know what perfect is until you test it in the marketplace. Copywriter A may believe his copy is better than Copywriter B’s, but if the latter outpulls the former, then copy B is better.

Direct-response copywriting is not a subjective arena. It’s like sports. The team with the most points at the end of the game is the better team.

When you find yourself rewriting and re-editing your copy constantly, it is because of one of three things:

• You have the idea that there is some ideal, perfect copy out there that you can achieve by refining your copy

• You are writing copy before you have identified your prospect’s core complex.

• You lack self-confidence and are afraid to subject your writing to criticism.

Do any of these reasons seem relevant to you?

If so, here’s what to do about them:

1. Banish the idea that you can create perfect copy.

   There is no such thing as “perfect copy.” There is only copy that works well and copy that works less well. The marketplace is the judge of copy, not you and not anyone else you know – not even your mentor.

   The closest approximation you can get to the market is by doing a peer review (properly) with five or six people. Create a network or support group of fellow copywriters and subject your leads to peer reviews as soon as they are pretty good. Don’t wait for them to be perfect!

   The great thing about peer reviews is that if the copy rates a 2.8 or above on a scale of 1 to 4, you can usually bump it up a little in less than half an hour – in other words, take it from good to very good. Remember, very good is good enough to mail. Nobody – no matter how experienced – can predict how well very good copy will perform. Good marketers know this. They know that their job is to get good copy up to very good and then test that very good copy as soon as possible.

2. Discover your prospect’s deep core complex.

   Sometimes you end up rewriting copy a lot because deep down you know the copy is mediocre. Rather than wasting a lot of time on revisions, subject it to a peer review after you’ve completed the first draft.

   If it scores low – below 2.7, say – then go back to your product and customer research and keep digging until you come up with a new and more exciting core complex. Remember, the core complex is a single, subtle feeling combined with a single tipping-point idea that, together, create an intellectual/emotional impulse to buy.

3. Often, rewriting is simply a way to avoid criticism.

   You don’t want to find out what you secretly suspect: that your writing isn’t so good. Nobody does. If you feel that way, consider this: Every Master Copywriter began as an incompetent copywriter. To become masterful at any skill, you have to be willing to endure the reality of being incompetent … and then the reality of being simply competent when you want to be better.

   You have to put in the time. With good instruction and mentorship, you can achieve competence in about 500 to 600 hours and mastery in 2,500 to 3,000 hours. And if you use the AWAI peer review system, you will avoid unnecessary and hurtful negative criticism and you will learn faster. I strongly recommend you master that.

In short – and as odd as it sounds – you should take a “ready … fire … aim” approach to your copy. Get it ready. But don’t spend too much time aiming it. After you fire, you can see where the bullet hits and make any necessary adjustments. Fail forward! It’s the fastest way to succeed.

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Quick Tip: The AWAI Peer Review System by Will Newman, Freelance Copywriter

Michael Masterson developed the AWAI peer review system to help copywriters get usable input for improving their copy. It is a way – as Michael said at this year’s Bootcamp – to avoid vague criticism that not only doesn’t improve the copy but also often leaves the copywriter’s ego ground in the dust.

The process has proven to be the most effective way to get B- or C-level copy to B+ or A- level. Fast.

I’ve been fortunate to be on both sides of this process: as a copywriter being reviewed and as a facilitator.

I used to dread critique sessions. (Who doesn’t?) But I now look forward to peer reviews of my copy because I know I’ll leave them with meaningful suggestions and not something like “This doesn’t work at all.”

I’ve seen peer reviews work for a wide range of copywriters, from the absolute novice to the most experienced. But to work, they must be done correctly. Here’s how:

1. The Peer Review Support Group

   Five or six people is ideal. Don’t hunt for the best or most skilled copywriters. You want honest, gut-level responses, not expert opinions. Form your group from copywriters you met at Bootcamp or on our online forum.

2. The Purpose of the Peer Review

   • To get a quick but realistic idea of whether the copy is working, and then to provide suggestions for improving it.
   • To do so without judging or criticizing. This is VERY important.
   • And to do so in ways that duplicate how the prospect responds to a sales letter … on a gut level, without analyzing it.

3. Peer Review “Rules”

   • No negative comments. Reviewers should avoid saying things like “I didn’t like XXX because it doesn’t grab me and it’s very weak.”
   • No explanations. The writer of the copy being reviewed is not given the opportunity to say things like “I did that because I wanted to …”

4. The Actual Process: The Headline

   • A facilitator is chosen to help move things along.
   • The first copywriter reads his own headline.
   • The rest of the group immediately rates the headline from 1 (low) to 4 (high) based on their gut level response.
   • The scores are added and averaged.
   • An average score of 3.2 or above indicates the headline doesn’t need changing, but the copywriter being reviewed can opt to get suggestions to strengthen it.
   • A headline below 3.2 is analyzed for ways to improve it.
   • To get recommendations for improving it, the facilitator asks: “Are there any copy specific suggestions for improving this headline?”
   • “Copy specific” means no comments. What you’re looking for is something like, “I suggest Joe say ‘$6.8 trillion instead of ‘trillions of dollars.’”
   • The facilitator then asks each participant (except the copywriter being reviewed) if the suggestion makes the headline stronger, weaker, or makes no difference.
   • The facilitator continues asking for copy specific suggestions until nobody has anything else to offer.
   • The copywriter does not have to take these suggestions. But if most of the participants agree with a suggestion for improving the headline, he should strongly consider it. (Getting a suggestion that the whole group pretty much agrees with is like having your prospect talk directly to you.)
   • If the group cannot come up with copy specific suggestions for the headline, they should then check to make sure (1) it has a big and deep promise and (2) it shows the Four U’s (Urgent, Unique, Useful, Ultra-specific). If the headline falls short in any of these areas, they should be able to come up with copy specific ways to improve it.

5. The Actual Process: The Lead

   • Same process and ratings as for the headline – but the procedure for getting suggestions for improvements is slightly different.
   • If, after the average score is calculated, the lead scores below 3.2, the facilitator asks: “Is there some piece of copy, some words or phrases from further down in the sales letter, that you think would make the lead stronger if moved higher or to the top?”
   • If the group cannot come up with any useful suggestions, they should then check to make sure the lead shows the Four U’s and/or speaks to the prospect as a real individual. If it doesn’t, they should be able to come up with copy specific ways to improve it.

The first time you subject your copy to this process, it may be a bit awkward to have to rein in your desire to respond to the group’s suggestions by giving explanations for what you did. But when it’s over, you will walk away feeling that you have concrete ideas for improving your copy. And you will feel better about yourself as a copywriter.

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Industry Spotlight: Exercise

Americans love the idea of exercise. They want be physically fit, energetic, lean, and strong. And the exercise industry caters to these desires. Just take a look at these facts:

• On Amazon, you’ll find 403,475 books on exercise. There are 41 magazines on the topic. And there are almost 35,000 exercise products, including equipment and DVDs.
• The average single-location fitness club makes somewhere around $600,000 a year. Two locations, and that goes up to $1.8 million. Franchises bring in tens of millions.
• Direct mail is a leading marketing method among fitness club owners and online exercise experts.
• 72% of fitness clubs plan to expand their services this year. That means they’ll need more copywriting.

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Dr. Sears Reveals the Challenges of Writing for the Exercise Industry … And How to Overcome Them

Dr. Al Sears runs a successful medical practice, as well as a health and wellness business. Among his most successful programs is PACE, a patented exercise program. We asked him to share his experience with successfully promoting PACE through direct-response marketing.

CI: Why don’t you start by giving us a little background information on your PACE exercise program.

Dr. Sears: PACE has been around for about five years. We started promoting it with my own patients. We wrote a couple of free reports about it that we would give out. And we used those reports as premiums to market my newsletter and my e-letter service. Then the PACE book came out just last year.

PACE has become our number one selling product. We’ve never had another book or nutritional product that sold like PACE does. And it’s got legs. It is very sustainable. It continues to sell well. We’ve sold over a million dollars’ worth of these books.

It’s also led to several ancillary products. We’ve marketed a PACE DVD and two audio CDs. Then we had a similar idea about exercising above your current aerobic capacity. It’s kind of an outcropping of PACE, and it’s turned out to be our second-best-selling product. We are now doing a PACE video and working on the second edition of the PACE book and a few more audios. We’ve marketed several bundled packages that include PACE, and we now have Dr. Mercola and several other outside vendors selling PACE. PACE sales have grown on Amazon relatively organically, which we think is because of the basic idea of the book. It is selling more and more on Amazon with virtually no copy.

CI: What have been the most successful techniques for promoting and selling the PACE program?

Dr. Sears: To the exercise files that we’ve been able to sell it to, the rules are mostly the same: Good copy is good copy. The thing that was particularly successful with PACE was to make the idea appear very contrarian from the beginning. The approach is: “Everything you thought you knew about exercise turns out to be wrong.”

That has been the concept behind several of our promos. The most successful promo that we’ve had so far has the headline “Are Your Lungs Dying?” It carries through with the supposition that your lungs shrink with age. All the way through it is this contrarian focus – that what we have accepted as scientific knowledge of exercise was incomplete and mistaken in many important ways.

The contrarian nature of the idea seems to drive the promos. When we try a promo that’s based on the more typical benefit-driven approach, it does less well. Our next-best-selling headline, for instance, was “Throw Away Your Jogging Shoes.” The lead was focused on how everybody has been wrong about this important aspect of exercise. It used that surprising and contrarian you-thought-you-knew-but-I’m-here-to-tell-you-different kind of approach.

CI: What have been some of the unique challenges of writing a successful promo for the exercise industry?

Dr Sears: The first unique challenge is the obvious one – that nobody really wants to exercise. You’re trying to sell them something they don’t want to do, so you have to use what Michael Masterson the Principle of Transparency. You can’t focus on the fact that you’re selling them an exercise program. You have to see through that to the eventual benefit of the exercise program.

So you tell them what it’s going to do for them – not that they’re going to have to buy a book and actually read it and then actually work at the exercises. You tell them things like: it’s only 10 minutes a day, it’s easy, it’s fast, it’s fun, and you don’t have to do the grueling exercise.

The principle obstacle is the nature of what you’re selling. You’re selling exercise, and people would just as soon skip it. The way we got around that was to beat up on exercise. As a matter of fact, we never call our program exercise.

The term PACE, when I originally conceived it, was Progressively Accelerated Cardiopulmonary Exercise. But then I started thinking, “How many people are going to say ‘Hey, what I really need is a new exercise program’?” So we called it Exertion instead of Exercise. And when we write about it, we use the word exercise when we’re beating up on the other guy. When we say, “You know, you don’t really need an hour of exercise” or “Exercise is grueling” or “Exercise is a waste of your time” or “You don’t really need to go out and pound the pavement.” We associate exercise with all the negatives – with the injuries and the boredom and the basic feeling among most people that they’d really rather be doing something else.

CI: So taking the contrarian point of view was how you overcame that initial objection.

Dr. Sears: Yes. Part of the contrarian point of view is that you don’t really need long-duration exercise – that shorter exercise works better. That’s one of the reasons for the success of PACE. You’re selling an idea that they already want. They would like to believe that they can get the benefit of exercise without spending an hour a day in the gym. And, of course, it’s easier to sell something that people already want rather than to try to create that want.

CI: Let’s switch gears a bit and focus on the copywriter. As somebody who hires copywriters, what do you think is the most valuable trait a copywriter can have when writing for the exercise industry?

Dr. Sears: In general, flexibility, rather than experience, is surprisingly important. Many times, I work with a writer and they want to write what they want to write. I want them to write what I want them to write, and that often means they lose future work with me. I expect that I can tell them what I want them to say and that they’ll try to understand what I want and do it to the best of their ability. Not to say, “Well, he wanted this, but I really think it should be this,” and then do it their way. It’s partly a matter of ego, but when you’re writing for someone else, you have to force yourself away from what you want to write. What you want to write doesn’t matter. You have to fully accept the role of writing for someone else, and write what they want in the way they want it. Your job is to figure out what they want and provide it.

You would think that goes without saying, but it’s surprising how often that becomes a make or break issue with a writer. If they do it the way I want it, we are probably going to give them more work. If they don’t, if they resist, we’re probably going to find somebody else.

Keep in mind that our approach is very contrarian. We pick out the things about exercise that we know to be true but convention doesn’t … and we focus on that. So if a writer is bringing along the baggage of what they believe to be true, what they’ve written about before, or what they read about somewhere else, it’s almost always going to contradict what we want to say. It’s unlikely they’re going to know or believe our point of view. They have to be willing to shift into what our experience and our specialized knowledge has taught us that no one else knows. Often, they want to tone it down, and I think that’s a big mistake when you’re writing copy to sell something. What works best in our industry, in most cases, is a very focused, single point of view that is contrarian and considered by most to be extreme.

CI: What do you like copywriters to understand about your audience?

Dr. Sears: Our audience can be broken into two broad groups. One group is those who are familiar with us. That would include the people who subscribe to my newsletter, get my e-zine, get my e-letters, and/or have read my books. The other group is those who don’t know about me yet – and we have to talk to them differently.

It’s a matter of preaching to the choir. When someone has already bought even one of my books, they usually become a convert. That means we can be more direct in approaching them with a new product, either an information product or a nutritional product. It’s important to tell them that this is my recommendation – and you only need to tell them a little bit of the why.

But when we’re going to an outside file and they don’t know me, we can’t just say, “Dr. Sears thinks you should do this.” Instead, we have to use a more indirect approach. You have to hook them and captivate them before you even let them know in the copy that there’s a product available.

I suppose that’s true for other industries as well, but I know it’s true for the healthcare industry. When the promo is going to people who know me, you can just start right away with the benefits of the offer. You can go with problem/solution, which is the basic structure for most direct-marketing sales in healthcare.

But when it’s going to people who don’t know me, the direct method doesn’t work at all. You need to do something like start with a story – maybe a testimonial from a patient. Or you can make a prediction – another indirect technique, where you don’t mention the offer until after you’ve got them interested.

CI: It’s important for our readers to understand the difference between writing to the front-end and to the back-end.

Dr. Sears: It’s like night and day. We’ll have a promotion that does $25,000 to our house file, and when we send it to an outside file it will do less than $1,000. We’ve been analyzing why certain promotions that were such big hits to our file failed so miserably to an outside file. We looked for common patterns – and what we found was that the promos that failed with an outside list used a direct sales approach. One of those promos started something like this: “I went to the rain forest and I found a product that I brought back for you that I want to tell you about.” When you put that to a file that’s not familiar with you, they know right away that you’re selling something. It’s too direct, and they are offended … because you haven’t yet hooked them.

So we converted that to “American doctor treks to the Amazon and finds medicine’s Holy Grail.” And then we told the story of being there in the jungle, the jungle noises. And how my friend from the University of Peru pointed at something and said, “There it is, see that bush,” and I put the nuts in my hand. The reader didn’t yet know that there was something for sale, but we got them interested. And then, when we got to the offer, it was the same as it was in the first version of the promo. We didn’t change that part. The price and everything else was the same.

We’ve had that same experience with several of our information and supplement products. And we’ve had the same thing with PACE. We can sell PACE – the PACE book – to our file by saying, “I’ve got a great program for you and I want you to try it out” very early on in the lead. But that doesn’t work to an outside file. We have to hook them first. So we do that by saying, “Do you like going to the gym for an hour? Do you like all that sweating? What if you found out that none of it is necessary?”

Then we say that we did a study on twins, and found that the twin who did six minutes of exercise a day lost more fat and built more muscle that the twin who did 45 minutes of exercise a day. And then we talk about the physiological reactions that occur with exercise, about how you store energy. You get them enthralled and interested in that before you let them know that there’s a book available.

Like you say, there’s a big difference between a back-end proposition and prospecting to a front-end file.

CI: Are there changes or trends affecting your industry that copywriters should be aware of?

Dr. Sears: The trend is that it’s getting harder to give headlines impact by pumping up the claim. I mean, how much more can we get from what is now ubiquitous out there. You know, “Cure cancer with delicious juice” or “Beat heart disease for less than a penny a day.” Headlines have become so dramatic and so exaggerated that you can’t trump them. You can’t say it more powerfully or louder and make it work anymore. Ten years ago, you could. It’s different now.

You have to have not a louder or more sensational claim, but a more unique one. We’ve know for some time that uniqueness sells in headlines. It’s one of the four U’s. My concept of uniqueness has evolved now to be even more specifically unique to me and my knowledge and my contact with my customers. You’ve got to think of a way of connecting with them that only you can do. Whatever your product is, whatever your expertise is, you’ve got to get that through as something that’s ultra-specific to you. You’re the only person who could tell them this. You are the only person who could say that. You are the only source that they can use for this particular information.

Then you don’t need all that hyperbole.

CI: So the unique selling proposition is growing in importance?

Dr. Sears: Yes. And it’s changed from being just unique, because too many people out there are already doing that. Now you have to take it a step beyond making the benefits of your product seem unique. You have to make it unique to you, connect it to something that only you can provide.

Unique has a new connotation. In the age of Internet marketing, you’ve got to think of how you can differentiate your unique claim from everyone else’s attempts to make their claims unique. In our case, it’s “Dr. Sears’ [product name]” or “Dr. Sears discovers …” It’s something that’s unique to your story, your travels, your experience, your knowledge that has to be brought forward immediately in the headline and in the lead.

CI: What other tips do you have for our readers today?

Dr. Sears: There’s no substitute for knowing your product. The best copywriting ideas seem to come out of a complete and thorough understanding of what you are trying to sell. There’s no substitute for doing the work and researching the product.

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Fitness Guru Matthew Furey Gives You the Secrets to His Success

Matthew Furey is a fitness expert renowned for both mental and physical training. His programs are wildly popular, so we went to him to learn some of the key secrets behind his success.

CI: How did you come to be an expert in physical and mental training?

MF: Well, I had a big interest in sports when I was a young kid. I studied everything I could about it. I was fortunate enough to have some very good coaches who taught physical and mental aspects of training. I read a lot of books. I studied a lot on my own as well as what I was taught from my coaches. It was basically just a passion that I had. The passion was anything that would help me become a better athlete. And later on, I turned it into a career.

CI: When did you decide to shift your expertise into a business?

MF: My first business was as a fitness trainer. That was in 1987, right out of college. Two months after I graduated, I started a gym in Southern California. I had to write some ads then to get people in the door. They weren’t good ads, but I was almost the only gig in town at the time. When that’s the case, even poor marketing, if you’re selling something people want, can work.

CI: When did you go into your current business and what was it like launching that business?

MF: It is a publishing business, primarily. I started it in late 1995 after reading and completing a course by Ted Nicholas on writing your own book and publishing it and making large sums of money. So that course really got me started. In 1996, when my first product was done, I wrote the ads and sales letter for it, ignoring Ted’s advice to write the ad first and then create the product. I thought I knew better. It was a very painful lesson.

Since then, I don’t break this rule unless I absolutely know my market and they’ve bought something I’ve been selling numerous times and I know it’s a variation on the theme and the theme works every time. That’s the only exception.

CI: When you write your sales letter before creating the product, do you test the letter to see what kind of response you get?

MF: I actually use the letter as a guide for the creation of the product. I pretty much get it ready. I won’t market it yet, I’ll just get the whole sales letter ready. It basically serves as almost a table of contents. It says, “Here’s what you’re gonna learn.”

The speed with which products can be created today is pretty phenomenal, especially if you’re selling a continuity product or newsletter. The only thing you really need initially is that month’s issue. It’s a lot easier than people think.

If you’re planning on doing a 500-page course, though, and you run the ad and people order it, you’ve got 30 days to get it to them – so you’d better be really, really fast if you haven’t written the course at all.

I advise, pretty much, that you have an unpublished copy ready to go. But make sure the thing sells before you print it. Otherwise you might sit on some inventory for quite a while, and it’s painful to have that happen.

CI: What aspects of your industry do you find most challenging as far as writing promotions and making sales?

MF: With weight loss, people don’t generally like to buy a diet program unless they see pictures of all the foods that they’re not supposed to eat and are then told, “Hey, you can eat all these foods. That’s part of the diet.” That’s a challenge. But it’s doable.

With exercise, though, we’ve been told by all the researchers that nobody wants to exercise – that they want a program they can follow that’s easy and doesn’t require any work or any sweat and basically all they’ve got to do is watch some DVDs and all the fat and excess weight will just fly off their body, and so on and so forth.

I think that’s not the case.

But with exercise, you’ve got a couple of different types of people. You’ve got the person who really wants a kick-ass workout, who wants to break a sweat and feel like he’s been pushed. Then you have the people who want to get in shape without doing anything. Finding out which one you’re talking to – I’d say that’s probably the biggest challenge.

CI: When you’ve got an audience that falls into that second category – people who want to exercise without actually exercising – how do you approach them in your copy.

MF: I usually avoid them. My programs require work, and I like to just be straight up and tell people the truth.

One exception is that I do have some exercise programs that are for longevity. My Chinese Long Life system has done very well. It doesn’t require you to break a heavy sweat, and it doesn’t require you to do so many repetitions that you fall on the floor exhausted. It’s completely different, because it works the internal energy of the body and the meridians of the body and the organs.

So that’s got to be explained in the copy – that it’s different. I’d go so far as to say that you let people know that with some exercise programs – where they are overly vigorous or go on too long – you may be doing harm to your body, whereas this program gives you only what you need.

Still, that’s a far cry from saying you don’t need to do anything or that 30 seconds a week is all you need. The key there is to recognize the age of the people and the benefits they are looking for. Write the copy to get their attention, but tell them the truth about the program. The last thing you want is for a bunch of people to order the program and get something completely different from what they were promised. Then your credibility is just shot forever.

CI: From a copywriting standpoint, what are the most important things to keep in mind when promoting an exercise program?

MF: Well, you write an ad to make money. You’re not writing your ad just to write an ad. That seems like a really simple and obvious point, but I think a lot of copywriters miss this. They get caught up in “Oh, I need to write the copy, oh, I need to write the ad” – and then the focus isn’t on “What do I need to say in order to get people to say yes.” So they’re just writing what they think sounds good or looks good, but the objective is to bring in money. That’s how the ad ultimately should be judged.

It’s easy to get caught up in what you’re doing, the mechanics of what you’re doing rather than the result the mechanics are supposed to create. So sit with a pen and paper before you write the ad and get clarity on how much money you want this ad to make and how well you want your writing to do. Have a vision or picture in your mind of that … then you write the ad. I think if you do that, the ad is better. There’s just more passion in it.

It’s like you’re going to go out and run a mile. Let’s say before you run your mile you say to yourself, “I want to run this mile in five minutes and 10 seconds. My best before was five minutes and 15 seconds.” Well, you’re going to run harder because you have a goal in mind. And so if you have a goal in mind regarding the amount of money you’re going to make with your ad, you’ll write it with more passion – just like you would run that mile with more passion if you know you were being timed.

CI: That’s a very good analogy. What sets the audience for exercise programs apart from other health-oriented audiences?

MF: I don’t really know the answer to that question. I wish I did, but I think both audiences are probably the same. I’d say when it comes to exercise – and when it comes to specific types of supplements that improve health – you need the same factors. You need a story, you need some proof, testimonials.

I think health is health is health. Whether it’s a personal fitness program, whether it’s a book, whether it’s supplements, or even a back brace or some machine … I’ve sold all these things. I’ve sold personal training, I’ve sold fitness coaching, my book, my newsletter, supplements, and machines and devices … and it’s the same. It’s just a matter of knowing what you’re talking about, knowing the product and having a story, having a hook, having a great headline and lead, a strong close, bullets, testimonials … it’s always the same.

CI: Can you take us through the process you use when writing copy for one of your programs?

MF: My process … well, it depends.

There are times when I’ll have an idea for a product and inspiration just strikes like thunder and lightning and hail and rain all at the same time. Then I’ll just sit with my laptop and, from start to finish, I’ll crank out an ad. Or a sales letter. I’ve done that many times.

There are other times where I’ll write the headline, the sub-headline, and the opening paragraph. Then I’ll send it to a few people that I like to have look at my copy and ask them to tell me if it grabs them, if they keep reading, if I’m on the right track, if I make them feel like “Oh my god, what is this thing!” I get their feedback, and then I let it sit for a day or two or three. Then I come back to it, crank out a few more pages, send that, and get a feeling for if I’m still on the right track. Then, maybe two or three days later, I’ll come back and finish the whole thing.

It all depends on the product and the benefits I’m trying to explain.

Another way is to start with what I’m selling. I always begin with that in my mind, but sometimes I like to write the closing part first, when I have the highest amount of energy. I spell out the offer, A to Z. Here’s what you get.

I’m the wrong guy to ask for a single process. I’ve used all sorts of methods successfully. I think what I said earlier about having a vision of your result in mind is key. I really do think that’s resulted in the best promotions I’ve ever done.

In some circumstances, it almost defies logic; it almost defies the words themselves. When you’re really, really focused, when you’re really picturing something you want with a lot of intensity, sometimes you write technically bad copy – but you write it with passion and people feel that passion and I believe it translates into more sales.

CI: My final question for you today: What traits does a copywriter in your industry need to possess?

MF: I think you have to be a writer who is down-to-earth, who speaks and writes in the language of the common people, who doesn’t use highfalutin language or show-off language. If you’re using technical or medical or scientific terms, you’re careful to explain them in layman’s terms so that it’s easy to relate to you and easy to follow what you’re saying. That’s the biggest thing.

So many people want to impress and prove how smart they are and how much they know, but your job is not to do that. Your job is to communicate effectively to people in a way that will keep them reading. If you use jargon or language that your reader finds boring or dull, you’re gonna lose the guy. There are a lot of health-related newsletters. The great ones – and the promotions for them – are great because of the language they’re written in, the language of a friend. So they’re enjoyable. They’re a delight to read rather than being dull.

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Exercise Products: 4 Ways to Overcome Your Prospect’s Objections by Heather Robson, Freelance Copywriter

Let’s face it. People don’t like to exercise. Some dislike it more than others, but almost everyone feels like they should exercise … but they just don’t want to. So you have to be prepared to overcome all of their negative associations when you’re writing for the exercise industry. Here are four strategies to get your prospect ready to make a buying decision.

1. Use words that resonate positively. One of the first things you should do is establish the kind of language you plan to use in your promotion, and then be consistent. Try to avoid words that have a negative connotation – like “exercise.” Instead use positive (or even neutral) words – like “workout” or “conditioning.”
2. Focus on benefits rather than features. This is hardly original advice, but it’s especially important in this industry. The features of your exercise program may very well include hard work and sweat. You don’t want to sell those features. You want to sell more energy, a slimmer waist, and a healthier heart.
3. Call on the power of the average Joe. Endorsements are great. Even better is a before-and-after story – especially one with before-and-after pictures – from someone who fits right in with your target audience.
4. Create a powerful guarantee. Reaping the benefits of exercise takes time. So encourage your client to offer a more-powerful-than usual guarantee with his program. If, for example, your client usually offers a 30-day guarantee, encourage him to extend it to 60 days. This shows your prospects that you have confidence in the program, and puts to rest fears that they won’t have time to determine if the program will work for them.