6 Weeks to Masterful Copywriting

The Why, How and Who of This Course

wizardry with words earns more for you, your company and your clients than just about any other skill. If you want to try your hand at practical assignments in six weeks, you will have the fundamental principles of copywriting down cold and know many advanced techniques of orchestrating words for profit.

What You Learn in the Copywriting Course

A course based on a live, interactive course with a small group of students provides plenty of practice in how to analyze poorly written or misdirected sales copy, and what to add, take away or change to improve its effectiveness. Along with a deeper understanding of the nuances of words, you end the course with a much richer ability to turn words into leads and orders. You absorb points.

• Whether cute and catchy is more powerful than simply factual, or vice versa
• Two techniques that bring even the most complicated abstract concept down to earth
• Questions that help you tell whether or not you’ve dug down far enough to reach the advantages that make the greatest difference to buyers
• Ways to make copy that’s already full of appealing benefits even more targeted
• The most powerful verb tense on the planet – not the one you’d predict
• How a literal-minded reading helps you catch missing or confusing information so you can plug gaping holes in copy
• Why trying to be all things to all people dooms promotional efforts
• A five-step process for meaningfully differentiating a business or an offering
• Ten ways to make points of difference come alive for the reader
• Examples of using a theme to make the reader smile while reading and become more predisposed to buy
• How to rise above the worse-than-useless “Hello, I exist” approach
• The difference between one-step and two-step marketing, and the world of trouble you enter when you confuse them
• Seven criteria that help you evaluate an offer
• Doubts and wonderings that can make free giveaways flop
• Why photos matter in helping readers understand – or misunderstand – what you mean
• A seven-step process for gathering juicy ingredients for bullets – including getting at crucial things to say that are nowhere in your source material
• Eight before-and-after bullets illustrating the transformation from plain to jazzy
• How seemingly straightforward bullets can be wildly off base or mind-numbing
• Why covering the basics in your sales copy is not anywhere near enough
• Thirty credibility builders that many web sites, catalog descriptions and sales letters overlook
• Eight credibility killers to avoid
• Criteria to use in assessing the usefulness of testimonials
• Common pitfalls in business bios that make credentialed backgrounds less impressive
• A discussion of credibility building efforts that backfire – and those that succeed
• Five factors that contribute to tone, and examples of quite distinct tones requested by or suitable to different clients
• Ways to create an impression of approachability or empathy
• Hidden dangers of the hard sell – and when it’s most appropriate
• Practice in tuning up or toning down hype in headlines
• A step-by-step demonstration of how to slim down a bloated document and edit it for effectiveness

Each Lesson Focuses on One or Two Crucial Skill Areas

In week one, articulate the what and the so what.

Simple clarity can sometimes be hard to achieve. Powerful copywriting makes explicit what a product or service does for the reader and how the reader is better off with than without it.

You bring fuzzily described offerings into sharp focus in this week’s assignment. Sometimes the hidden advantages and implications of what is for sale are put into words.

Don’t think you know everything there is to know about turning features into benefits. It is the equivalent of singing scales for an opera soloist.

Week 2: Differentiate and dramatize. One of the most common omissions in my reviews is information that answers the questions, How is this different from what else is on the market? and Why should I do business with you rather than your competitors? Sometimes you need to dig for differentiating points and other times you need to invent a way to make the same thing sound different.

This week’s assignment asks you to identify and fix the flaw in several kinds of marketing materials and to come up with ways of making standard, boring offerings stand out.

Week 3 has strong offers. What is the deal? Well-explained, exact descriptions of what is for sale and appealing sales proposition are included in effective copywriting. You can learn how to turn a suggestion like buy an X, get a Y free upside down, backwards and sideways.

In this week’s assignment, it involves adjusting, suck up or rearranging crucial sections for products and services in a variety of industries.

Week 4 is about tantalizing. The heart and soul of copywriting is how to make the reader smell, want and decide to buy from you. You may know how to add salt and pepper, but you can also add ginger and peppermint.

While the imaginative use of words is never an end in itself in copywriting, this week’s assignment challenges you to flex your creativity and inject fun and intensity into your reader’s experience.

Week 5: Bolster credibility. When the copy paints a believable picture, adds evidence and proof when needed, and heads off probable doubts, all of the skills lead to a sale. When this requires a couple of words here and there and when a large amount of additional text must be thrown into the pot.

The assignment this week is to turn a shifty-eyed sales letter into an upstanding one and vague, unconvincing copy into trustworthy testimony.

The tone needs to be adjusted to smooth the flow. Master the process of fine-tuning by getting rid of extra words, unnecessary repetition, inconsistencies and poorly phrased or boring passages, while adjusting paragraphing, subheads and other formatting elements. Tone and word choice should be adjusted for a certain audience.

polish copy to a warm, lemony shine is your final assignment. Wordsmithing skills from other types of writing can be used to get marketing material ready for a crowd.

There are additional answers to your questions. In addition to the class sessions listed above, you will receive a large, well-organized compendium of my answers to questions about copywriting and the copywriting business.

Learn by Doing, Listening and Reading

You have a rich educational experience in this course.

• Six 80-minute interactive audio lessons covering the topics above, for you to listen to at your convenience – and review as you like
• Six homework assignments, highly recommended for you to complete for a full learning experience while listening to the lessons
• Extensive handouts containing several versions of each homework assignment, including my version, so you can compare what you wrote with what others produced
• Answers to collected questions about the craft and business of copywriting
• The full text of the book Persuading on Paper and a PDF copy of Secrets of Mouthwatering Marketing Copy and Shorter: Say It in Fewer Words

Get Download Marcia Yudkin – 6 Weeks to Masterful Copywriting at nextskillup.com today!

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