Copywriting for Dummies – 7 Ways to Improve Your Skills

Copywriting for Dummies – 7 Ways to Improve Your Skills

Copywriting is the most important skill that you need to have if you want to make money online. Why?

Because you can have the best product in the world but if you don’t know how to sell it, you’ll be outcompeted by businesses with inferior products.

So how can you improve your copywriting skills?

Here are seven ways to do it…

#1 Master Customer Research

Master Customer Research

The better you understand your ideal customers, the more effective you will be at writing copy that converts.

Yes, having a talent for writing is helpful. Yes, you need to learn copywriting techniques. Yes, you want to memorize headline formulas. 

But all of that is secondary to understanding your target audience. 

Ultimately, if you want to persuade someone to take action, you need to understand what drives them. 

No amount of talent, techniques, or formulas will help if you can’t empathize with your dream customers. 

That’s why the most important skill a copywriter can have is customer research. 

Online Research

Online Research

The easiest way to get started with customer research is to figure out where your dream customers hang out online and then observe the conversations happening there.

That could mean:

  • Joining Discord servers.
  • Subscribing to subreddits.
  • Registering to online forums.
  • Paying for memberships in online communities. 
  • Keeping an eye on relevant hashtags on social media. 

You also want to consume the content that your dream customers consume – blog articles, podcasts, YouTube and TikTok videos, etc. 

Text Analysis 

Text Analysis

Text analysis is a machine learning technique used to analyze large quantities of data and extract valuable information from it.

For example, text analytics software can help you analyze all tweets that include a specific hashtag, then provide information such as overall emotional sentiment, commonly used words, commonly used phrases, etc. 

This can be extremely valuable because it can help you understand the language your dream customers are using to express themselves.

You can then use that knowledge to connect with them by using the same words, expressions, and metaphors in your copy. 

Customer Interviews

Customer Interviews

You can also learn a lot by talking to your dream customers one-on-one. 

According to Gerald Zaltman, professor emeritus at the Harvard Business School, one-on-one customer interviews can yield deep insights:

“Many researchers tell us that one-on-one interviews are superior to focus groups. 

That is, even a few conventional one-on-one interviews yield essentially the same data as several focus groups.

Additionally, there is now a lot of evidence that personal interviews yield deep insights that can’t be obtained from focus groups. 

So, my preference is to conduct in-depth, one-on-one interviews that are enriched by using various techniques from clinical psychology and sociology. 

Often, the results of such interviews can be used to design more comprehensive surveys. And properly designed surveys, when subjected to careful statistical analyses, can yield further insights into unconscious consumer thinking.”

Something to keep in mind here is that people want to feel heard, so getting potential customers to talk to you might be easier than you think.

Online, you can reach out to people and ask if it would be okay to pick their brain, whether via chat or via voice call. 

Offline, you can simply go to industry events that your dream customers attend and casually chat with people there. 

Just don’t try to sell during customer interviews – that will immediately put people on guard, which beats the whole purpose.

#2 Read “Copywriting Secrets”

Now let’s get into the technical side of copywriting. You understand your dream customers, but what is the optimal way to use that knowledge?

Our friend Jim Edwards wrote a book called “Copywriting Secrets” that includes everything you need to know to get started.

This book was designed to be as practical as possible – Jim gives you actionable advice that you can implement in your own copy.

In fact, you don’t even need to read the entire book to start putting his tips into practice, you can begin implementing them ASAP. 

“Copywriting Secrets” is the single best resource that we are aware of for someone who wants to go from a complete novice to an effective copywriter in the shortest time possible. Interested?

You can get “Copywriting Secrets” for free – all Jim asks is that you cover the shipping!

Read "Copywriting Secrets"

Get “Copywriting Secrets” for FREE!

#3 Read Copywriting Classics

Once you are done with “Copywriting Secrets”, we recommend reading these copywriting classics:

David Ogilvy “Ogilvy on Advertising”

David Ogilvy is widely considered to be one of the best copywriters that ever lived. 

In this book, he discusses everything from research to copywriting techniques to potential problems in your sales pitches. 

David Ogilvy “Ogilvy on Advertising”

Gary C. Halbert “The Boron Letters”

This book is a collection of letters that Gary C. Halbert, another legendary copywriter, wrote to his son while in prison. 

As such, it’s written in a unique, heartfelt style and offers a mix between copywriting and marketing insights, prison stories, and life lessons. If you want “street smart” advice on persuasion then this is the book for you.

Make sure to get the edition with commentary from Halbert’s son who himself is an expert copywriter – he explains how to implement this advice today!

Gary C. Halbert “The Boron Letters”

Claude Hopkins “Scientific Advertising” 

Claude Hopkins’ “Scientific Advertising”, which was published in 1923, is considered to be the foundational text of direct response marketing. 

As the title suggests, this book outlines a scientific approach to advertising based on experimentation, split testing, and continuous optimization. 

Both Gary Halbert and David Ogilvy have cited this book as a “must-read book”, the latter saying that:

 “Nobody should be allowed to have anything to do with advertising until he has read this book seven times. It changed the course of my life.”

Claude Hopkins “Scientific Advertising”

What’s the Point of Reading Old Copywriting Books?

All these books were written and published in the 20th century and primarily discuss print advertising. So why read them if you want to build an online business?

Because the men who wrote these books were advertising pioneers and have helped develop copywriting as we know it today.

This means that reading their work can give you a solid understanding of copywriting fundamentals – not just what works but also why it works. 

Is everything in these books applicable to online marketing? 

Of course not. 

But once you learn copywriting fundamentals, you can easily figure out how to apply these principles in your own copy, whatever medium you are using. 

After all, copywriting is about persuasion, which means that it deals with human psychology. And that hasn’t changed in the last hundred years. 

#4 Memorize Headline Formulas

The headline is the most important element of any copy – whether it’s an ad, an email, or a sales page. 

David Ogilvy is quoted as having said:

“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

It’s probably safe to say that today’s headlines are even more important than they were back then because we are all so distracted.

The potential customer probably has a bunch of tabs open in their browser, is chatting with a friend on a messaging app, and is listening to a podcast all at the same time. 

This means that you only have a few seconds to grab their attention before they get distracted by something else.

Fortunately, marketers have been split testing headlines for a century now, ever since Claude Hopkins published “Scientific Advertising”.

And in the last two decades, this process of headline optimization was drastically accelerated by the advent of digital A/B testing. 

That’s why today most copywriters use headline formulas. Why waste time reinventing the wheel when you can simply do what’s been proven to work?

Jon Morrow’s “Headline Hacks” is a great free resource that features the most popular headline formulas.

We recommend downloading ”Headline Hacks” and memorizing these formulas because it will enable you to start writing solid headlines immediately. 

Jon Morrow’s “Headline Hacks” is a great free resource that features the most popular headline formulas.

#5 Write 100 Headlines Per Day

Just reading about copywriting isn’t enough if you want to get good at it – it’s a skill, so if you want to improve at it, you need to practice it.

As we just explained, the headline is the most important element of any copy, which is why it makes sense to prioritize mastering headlines. 

The best way to do it that we are aware of is writing 100 headlines per day for 100 companies in 100 days.

Yes, it sounds insane, but it’s the fastest way to get good at writing headlines. 

That’s what copywriter Justin Blackman did – you can read about his experience in this article:

“These are the 16 painful lessons I learned writing 10,211 headlines in 100 days”

#6 Copy Proven Sales Pages by Hand

Okay, so you have mastered writing headlines, but how can you get good at writing sales pages?

The best way to do it that we are aware of is to copy proven sales pages by hand – yes, it’s old school, but it works. 

Find sales pages for products that are doing well, get a pen and a piece of paper, and copy the text by hand.

The more you do this, the better you will understand the way effective copywriters think, which will help you become one yourself. 

We recommend first doing this with sales pages in a wide variety of industries, then focusing on the industry that you are interested in. 

If you can copy one proven sales page by hand per day and keep that up for a year, you will develop not just technical skills but also an intuitive understanding of how to write copy that converts. 

#7 Become a Freelance Copywriter

Finally, the most effective way to improve your overall copywriting skills is to become a freelance copywriter. 

You don’t need to choose this as a long-term career path, but even a year or two of freelance copywriting can be invaluable in terms of developing this skill. 

Also, let’s be real, the copywriting exercises that we just discussed are great but it can be difficult to stay motivated to write copy when you aren’t getting paid for it.

Moreover, writing copy as a copywriting exercise is not the same thing as writing copy for clients that expect measurable results. 

Freelance copywriting provides real stakes – real businesses, real products, and real sales. 

Copywriter Laura Lopuch has written an article that you might find helpful when it comes to kickstarting a freelance copywriting business:

“I used cold emails to 14x my freelance copywriting business. Here’s how. (Includes templates.)”

Get Started With “Copywriting Secrets”!

Implementing the advice in this article should help you improve your copywriting skills FAST. But we understand that it can feel overwhelming. So where should you start?

You should start by reading “Copywriting Secrets” because it’s a SHORTCUT.

Here’s how its author Jim Edwards explains it:

This is not a book about “how to get rich”… but, if you do what it says, you will definitely make more money than you’re making right now in your existing business. Why can I say that?

Because this IS a book about how everyone can use the power of words to get more clicks, make more sales, and get more subscribers… no matter what you sell or who you sell it to!

If you’ve ever been frustrated by lack of sales, lack of clicks, or lack of subscribers… This is the book you’ve been looking for!

And the best thing is this:

You can get a paperback copy of “Copywriting Secrets” for FREE – all Jim asks is that you cover the shipping. 

So what are you waiting for?

Get Started With "Copywriting Secrets"!

Get “Copywriting Secrets” for FREE!

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