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It's not just what you write, it's how you package and sell it.
I subscribe to a number of e-newsletters and feeds from serious, mainline business copywriters and marketers.
It keeps me in touch with what my peers and colleagues are up to.
But I also have a separate folder in my inbox for emails and promotions from the "dark side".
By that I mean the online marketers who sell programs and packages to aspiring internet marketers. "How I made over a million dollars online in just 16 hours."
That kind of thing.
Some of it is pure hype and nonsense.
But some of it is brilliant.
I have been watching this guy Frank Kern.
He's an enormously talented copywriter who writes about a copy style that is sincere, genuine and personal. He talks about being a friend to your reader. About being honest, helpful and generous. About building a list of people who just love to hear from you, and want to buy from you.
Sound familiar? It does to me. Because I have been saying and teaching the exact same thing about online copywriting since 1998.
But here is the difference. I have built my freelance business on this message. But I'm guessing that Frank has made ten times as much simply by packaging and presenting the same message in a better way.
Am I jealous of Frank? Sure I am. But I admire him as well.
I admire him because he is not only an outstanding copywriter, he is also a brilliant marketer.
He knows how to package a message and sell it.
He's not the first person to take a product or message that is already out there on the market and make it "bigger".
Remember Ginsu knives? Well, you can buy knives at Wal Mart too. But that's not the point. The marketers of Ginsu knives took an ordinary product and packaged and marketed it in an extraordinary way.
That's what Frank does with copywriting.
And it's what we can all do when we sit down to write a sales page for a web site.
On the face of it, it may seem like we are having to write a page about a fairly ordinary product or service.
But we should pause and think.
Maybe there is a remarkable way in which we can present our message.
What I'm saying is that a copywriter shouldn't confine his or her ambitions to simply being a great copywriter.
We should also aspire to be great marketers.
It's the combination of copywriting AND marketing skills that delivers remarkable results.
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