What’s the different between success and failure? Or being the “best-of-the-best” and the dreaded somewhere in the middle? In my experience, it’s a combination of hard work and attention to detail. In a variation of the 80/20 rule, an extra 20% effort often places you in to the hallowed ground…

Whether you’re a copywriter or a marketer, conversion is ultimately your business. My goal as a direct response copywriter is to persuade as many readers/viewers/listeners to take the next step in the buying process. Your job as a marketer is to maximize ROI for your company or client. And that…

On occasion, I like to visit a local establishment called Sir Edmond Halley’s in my adopted home town of Charlotte, North Carolina. It’s a restaurant/pub and a favorite among locals. Look closely at the menu and you’ll find, under burgers and sandwiches, “The Award Winning Sir Edmond Halley’s Bacon Cheeseburger.”…

If you really want your marketing to rock, the last thing you should do is get a degree in marketing from a university. Yes, what I just wrote may lead to vitriolic hate mail and comments from university admissions offices around the world. But, based on my real-world experience, I…

“The problem with most copywriters is they don’t think in terms of selling,” says David Ogilvy in his video titled We Sell or Else. “They’ve never written direct response. They’ve never tasted blood.” When Ogilvy says, almost enthusiastically, “they’ve never tasted blood,” he’s talking about failure. Ogilvy founded one of the…

As a direct response copywriter, my job is to persuade people to buy a product or use a service. More specifically, I want the reader to provide their email, buy something on the spot, pick up the phone, or contact the company. Fortunately, there’s more than just one way to…

On the “most difficult tasks on the planet” scale, I place marketing toward the top. It’s not as difficult as brain surgery or growing grass in Phoenix in July. But successful marketing is certainly more difficult than memorizing entire Shakespeare sonnets or contemplating the origin of the solar system. Marketing—specifically…

Even if you rarely pay attention to marketing, I’m confident you’ve heard this fact (or a variation): the average American sees or hears 3,500+ advertising and marketing messages a day. As I write, I’m in New York City and I probably see well over 5,000 messages during my waking hours.…

Poke around the Internet and you’ll find articles and blogs detailing the death of copy and, much to my chagrin, copywriters. Writing in USA Today, Michael Wolff states: “We just don’t look at advertising, respond to it, or believe it, as much as we once did, wherever it appears. Maybe…