Copywriting

Outsourced Thinking (and Why It’s a Good Thing)

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Thinking is hard work. Most people avoid it at all costs.

If you can earn someone’s trust, he’ll gladly allow you to do some of this thinking for him.

If you can display deep expertise on a topic he’s interested in, he’ll happily outsource some of his thinking to you.

If you can minimize the perceived risk or difficulty of changing perspectives/approaches, you may find you have a loyal convert… and a paying client.

[I took this picture earlier this month after speaking at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the city’s largest university.]

This may all sound kind of negative or “manipulative,” but there’s nothing wrong with outsourcing brain work. In fact, most people are craving this kind of leadership.

Nobody can know everything, and even if we could, it would take a lifetime to learn it.

Why do that when we can just plug into someone who’s already an expert?

With that in mind, you may want to:

1) Build your trustworthiness.

2) Demonstrate your expertise.

3) Think about how the person you want to persuade perceives risk as it relates to the topic you want him to think differently about. Can you minimize the risk or reframe it to make it less frightening?

Take these steps and you’ll amp up your persuasive abilities in a major way.

The Attention Game Starts Here

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Hooks that snag your reader instantly

Some days it seems like an impossible task, but…

Before you can accomplish ANYTHING with your copy, you have to win your reader’s attention.

Once you pull him in, you can take him wherever you want him to go.

With email, the subject line starts the attention-seeking mission.

On social media, you start with an arresting hook.

(As you may know, this falls under the category of Instigation, the first “I” in my 4-I Formula.)

Great hooks focus your attention, sparks strong curiosity and makes it hard for you to NOT invest a little time to find out what’s going on.

I recently did a training on copywriting for social media for a high-ticket coaching group.

I’d like to share the segment about writing hooks with you.

In the video, you’ll discover 12 hard-to-resist hooks ideas.

The training was specifically geared towards social media, but the ideas also work for email copy, articles, videos, etc.

I hope you find some inspiration – and that your engagement increases when you use these hook ideas.

Have a productive day!!

Stop Leaving Money on the Table: 3 Tips for Setting & Getting Maximum Fees

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Set your fees like your life depends on them. Because it does.

Here’s how to make sure you’re not leaving money on the table when working with clients:

1. Relentlessly build your visibility and authority. Your authority and visible expertise create more leverage than you may think when setting and getting fees.

Publish authoritative content. Be seen associating with (and working with) other respected authorities. Collect and showcase great testimonials.

2. Working with the “right” clients has a bigger impact on fee acceptance than almost any other factor.

You can get paid 10X more just by working with a client for whom it makes sense to pay well.

For example:

It doesn’t make much sense for a client to pay a copywriter $500 per email if he’s selling a $7 ebook and only has 100 people on his email list.

On the other hand, a client with half a million subscribers and product funnel with higher-priced upsells, it doesn’t make much sense to pinch pennies when hiring a copywriter.

No, he knows he needs to hire the best copywriter he can find… because weak copy will cost him a FORTUNE.

Adopting a rainmaker mindset can help you negotiate with these potential clients. In this livestream recording, I explain what I mean by that and how you can install the rainmaker mindset to set you up for success:

3. Try to find out the value (financial, emotional, time) of getting the job done right — and the cost (financial, emotional, time) of allowing the job to remain undone or to be done poorly.

Then set your fees boldly, understanding the true value you bring.

How valuable is it to the client to:

  • get the job done well?
  • get it done quickly?
  • find a provider he can trust?
  • begin a relationship that can last over the long term… instead of needing to start working with a new stranger in 30 days?
  • be able to move forward confidently?
  • get outside perspective that can help create even better results?
  • to finally have some peace of mind?

It’s worth a LOT.

Much more than the “sticker price” of the deliverable itself.

There’s a number where the value perceived by the client overlaps with what you feel it’s worth to you to invest your time and brainpower to the project.

Your fees should land somewhere in that overlap.

That’s how you can maximize your revenue per project and feel good about it in the process.

It works whether you quote a set fee or performance-based fee.

Hope this has been helpful. Took me YEARS to learn some of these lessons!

Writing Copy in a Post-Truth World

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Back in 2016, Oxford Dictionary made “post-truth” its Word of the Year.

Remember all the hullabaloo about that? In some circles, you’d’ve thought the world was about to end. What ground do we have to stand on if truth doesn’t really matter?

According to Oxford, post-truth refers to the condition in which “objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.'”

According to Donnie, this applies to the opinions and positions of individuals in addition to public opinion.

In other words, facts are less persuasive than stories.

YOUR story (your experience + perspective + wisdom) is what will attract your ideal clients and resonate with them in a way that makes you the obvious solution for their situation.

Not just “facts.”

Keep this in mind next time you ask ChatGPT to help you write something.

Have a productive day!

4 Copywriting Triggers for Instant Sales

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There are 4 triggers that instantly turn someone into a buyer:

Trigger 1: His wife says/implies “Bring home X and you’ll get… something special.”

Or on the flip side, “Bring home Y or I’m going to cry.”

Trigger 2: He sees your offer as an easy way to step into the identity he craves or amplify the part of his current identity he’s intensely passionate about.

You can make your reader connect the dots between your offer and his identity on his own…

Or you can make it more obvious.

Not enough copywriters intentionally appeal to identity. Most are too busy thinking about features and benefits.

I encourage you to be one of the elite few that leverage its power.

Trigger 3: When your copy reframes his problem in such a way that he realizes he’s been looking at it all wrong… but now that he understands, the solution (your product/service) is obvious.

Trigger 4: The Stack. There’s a lot of focus on what’s known as a value stack. I’m a fan of the lesser-known desire stack. Both work.

In the following video clip, I discuss these 4 triggers with copywriting expert Maria Lloyd.

Maria has written six-figure email campaigns for more than two dozen brands (you’d definitely recognize more than a few of them), with an average boost to ROI of more than 400 percent.

And now, for a limited time, Maria is teaching copywriters and ambitious entrepreneurs how to create and launch their own six figure email campaigns in her program, Crash Course to Cash.

To be more specific, the deadline is Friday, March 31 at 11:59PM Central.

When you sign up (for as little as $75 down), you’ll get access to a collection of deep-dive trainings to help you sharpen your copywriting sword and leverage those sales triggers we just talked about.

The, starting April 7, you’ll get 8 weeks of live, hands-on training with Maria and her team. She’ll work with you to help you learn the skills you need to write effective email copy AND you’ll actually be working as you go.

There’s no doubt in my mind this will be a life-changing training.

I’m excited to announce that I’ve partnered with Maria to help make Crash Course to Cash even more valuable. When you become part of this first cohort, you’ll also gain access to my Inbox X-Factor course.

Inbox X-Factor gives you 365 days’ worth of email ideas and inspiration… 100+ subject lines… and 10 video training modules revealing my personal strategies for writing emails with maximum selling power.

When I do make it available for sale again, I’m planning to charge between $200 and $300 for it. That’s a value stack for you.

You can’t buy Inbox X-Factor anywhere else right now, so if you’re interested in getting access, sign up here, plus get all the details about Crash Course to Cash.

Have a productive day!

5 Time-Warping Tips to Write Faster & Tune Up Your Actual Intelligence

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The biggest benefit I hear people talking about regarding artificial intelligence platforms like ChatGPT is speed.

You can get more done in your workday. Or you can just work less if you finish projects faster.

Pretty big benefit. But AI isn’t the only way to achieve it.

Today I want to share some thoughts on how to write faster using your built-in tech: your actual intelligence.

These tips can make a big difference in your life:

1) Shut off the filter.

Quick tangent. Generative AI tools work don’t really understand your topic. They’re highly trained at predicting what word you’re about to say next, based on all the sentences it’s seen before.

So if you’ve ever played that game where you make a post on social media using only autocomplete and suggestions… it’s basically an updated version of that.

Seriously. Same technology.

Here’s the key: it predicts words without judgement (or even knowledge)… without worrying if a reader will disagree or think it’s silly… none of the emotions that get in the way.

Which are some of the biggest obstacles to speed in our writing. It’s also what inbues our output with magical potential.

AI also doesn’t tend to use vocabulary flourishes like using “imbue” in a sentence. (It’s never the most-probable next word for the autocomplete.)

Anyway… when you turn down the volume on your emotional filter, you automatically write faster.

So that’s something you can work on. Criticize yourself less. Trust yourself to create something great. And don’t worry about getting it perfect in the first draft.

Pretend you’re a bot for 20 minutes. Let the words flow and see what happens.

2) Delete the Speed Limit.

One of the things that may be slowing you down is the belief that it’s going to take a long time, or the belief that you’re a slow writer.

If you believe that, you will experience that.

I’ve been saying “I’m not a fast writer” for YEARS. But when I stopped saying that about myself, I was shocked by how much more productive I became.

I have to give credit to Kevin Bullard for helping me get unstuck on this point.

(There’s a lot more to the advice Kevin gave me, but we won’t get into that here.)

3) Remember Law #4.

In Robert Greene’s classic book The 48 Laws of Power, the 4th axiom is 

“Always say less than necessary.“

Greene wasn’t talking to writers, but there’s a kernel of truth hidden in this law specifically for us writers.

Deciding what to exclude is one of the most important parts of a writer’s job.

The point I want to make here is this: decide in advance that you don’t have to cover every aspect of the topic you’re writing about.

(Make the decision in advance to avoid questioning yourself mid-writing.)

Depending on the project, you can often make a snap judgement: “There are probably 20 aspects to this topic, but I’m just going to highlight X of them in this piece.” X= the number of angles you instantly know you can cover with confidence.

You can always change the number as you write.

You come to a point where you know you want/need to add more details. Or you feel like you’re going down a meerkat hole that you can skip entirely.

You’re the creative. Make the choice that makes the most sense.

Speed isn’t everything (which is why human copywriters can’t be totally replaced by AI in most instances). But it’s definitely a bonus if you can get it.

4) Talk It Out

I usually give this advice to people who tell me they don’t like to write or don’t think they’re good writers. But it can work well for anyone.

It can be a good way to shut off the filter that automatically switches on when we sit down to write.

If you’ve ever known exactly what you wanted to say… then spent hours figuring out how to get the words onto your computer screen, you’ve felt the filter at work.

Do yourself a favor. Talk it out. Google Docs or Microsoft Word have built in voice typing functionality.

screenshot of Google Doc with Tool >> Voice Typing visible

Here’s a weird trick if you’re still stuck.

Call up a friend and explain your idea to him. That can trick your mind into thinking you’re having a regular ol’ conversation. The filter will relax.

Edit the text and you’re good to go.

5) Never Start from Scratch

Templates, writing prompts and swipe-worthy examples are speed-boosting tools just like AI.

Good ones can put rocket fuel in your tank.

Whether you’re just getting started as a copywriter or you’ve been cruising along for years — or if you’re an entrepreneur who wants to write better copy faster…

This could change everything for you.

You’ll write faster and more confidently… and more persuasively.

That means more money in your account in less time. And that’s the name of the game.

Have a productive day!

Beat Burnout & Breathe Life Into Your Day

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Today’s email is inspired by an important question a fellow copywriter asked me:

“I know we get paid to write… but I’m writing more than I ever have right now and I’m getting burnt out.

How do you stay fresh?”

I have a 5-part response to this question. These are helpful tips if you feel burnout creeping in… but you can also do them proactively to help prevent burnout before it starts.

1) Consume as much as you write. 

I don’t know if it’s true across the board, but in my experience, you need more fuel in the tank when you increase your creative workload.

Sometimes that means doing research. Sometimes it’s just going down the dark alleys of the internet (or Netflix) reading about things you’re interested in.

When you’re lucky, you can find places where work-related research overlaps with topics that interest and entertain you.

Looking for some good recreational material to consume? I’ve been sharing some of my favorite business books written by Black authors on social media.

2) Give yourself good breaks. 

You’re not ChatGPT, right? Your brain isn’t designed to write for 4 hours straight.

I took a full day off last week to take my son to the Chicago Auto Show (the biggest car show in the nation).

Copywriter Donnie Bryant and his son at the Chicago Auto Show

On the rare occasion you have the momentum for long writing sessions, go for it. Momentum is your best friend. (It can also be your worst enemy, but that’s a different conversation.)

But unless you have a screeching deadline, I encourage you not to force it.

3) Get sleep. 

I’m terrible at this, but it makes a huge difference.

I’m the king of the all-nighter. Ask any of my friends. So I can tell you as well as anyone (outside, you know, sleep scientists) that skipping sleep take a significant toll.

Especially after 30.

Double especially after 40.

Sure, you may pick up 8 extra hours of work, but if you’re like me, you’re basically useless for 12 hours after that.

Again, unless your deadline is tomorrow, I advise against skipping sleep.

4) Switch between tasks when you start hitting a wall.

Sometimes that looks like writing for a different project, sometimes it’s doing the laundry you know is piling up.

You’re able to keep working… but refocusing your brain can breathe some life back into your day.

5) Spend as much time as possible working on work that matters to you.

We don’t always have the luxury of doing this. But whenever you can, say “no” to work that drains you so you can make room for work you feel is meaningful, dare I say enjoyable.

Work you can wake up in the morning excited about.

Doing work that feels pointless sucks life out of you.

I don’t have statistics, but I reckon this could be the biggest cause of burnout on micro (getting tired of a particular task) and macro (general burnout that singes every part of your life) levels.

If you can swing it, just say “no.”

— — —

— — —
Hopefully those tips are helpful for you.

Have a productive day!

Live Demo: Bing’s New AI-Powered Search

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Since we’ve been talking about how AI will change search, I thought you may be interested in watching a live demo of the new ChatGPT-powered Bing.

I meant to make a 5 minute video… but it kept pulling me back in.

There are some really impressive features (you get conversational AI that will follow commands like ChatGPT, but plugged into the web)

And some really glaring problems (which you kinda have to see to believe).

Check out the video here.

Have a productive day!

Is Search Dead? Answering the Question on Everybody’s Mind

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Are you tired of hearing about AI yet?

Or are you voraciously consuming everything in sight on the subject?

My wife said I’m “obsessed,” which can’t possibly be true. And I really think things went too far when the whole family got together to do an intervention.

Now, it’s not that I can’t talk about anything else… but a friend asked me a question about AI-powered search, and I thought I’d share the answer with you.

Because a) there was already a lot of chatter about ChatGPT destroying Google… and b) now Microsoft has announced an AI-powered version of Bing that has even more people shook.

Don’t worry, Google won’t be far behind. They announced their ChatGPT competitor, called Bard, this week. But Big G actually demonstrated an AI-infused search at their I/O conference back in 2021!

Anyway… here’s the question I got:

What’s the long-term importance of (written) content marketing now that search engines will give AI-powered synthesized answers to questions with no need to click through to a content publisher’s site?

Good question, right?!

Here’s my response:

Based on my interactions, most of the big dogs are still trying to figure out exactly what the impact of AI-powered search will be.
I don’t know of any publisher or copy guru who’s freaking out, though. (Although some gurus are promoting fear to sell their latest training)

Here’s my take:

1) People still love their people.

The AI-generated “answers” will, by definition, lack personality. Not saying the language won’t be personal-sounding, but it’s not created by a person.

People who love Dave Ramsey, for example, will continue looking to Dave Ramsey for his specific advice on issues.

So even though there will surely be a significant decline in clickthroughs from search inquiries… people will still want to be connected to their favorite experts on topics that intrigue them the most.

2) As smart as AI is, I don’t think the synthesized answers will satisfy anyone looking to really explore a topic. It will be perfect for quick answers, overviews of subjects, etc…

But at some point, deep divers will need to click over to real websites with more comprehensive coverage.

Google has already been prioritizing real expert-level content in search, and it will continue to do so.

Search results will be able to skip over websites that doesn’t offer in-depth content because the AI will be able to handle quick questions itself.

3) Publishers/content creators/entrepreneurs will HAVE to focus more on capturing email addresses.

Because you don’t want your fate completely in the hands of the fast-changing world of search.

Securing email addresses gives you a captive audience that you can push information to.

I see “push content” as a trend that’s been growing anyway.

When TikTok overtook Google as the most popular website on earth, you see that search barely exists.

People are deciding the kind of content they want to consume via engagement over time — and having that type of content pushed to them, via TikTok, email, SMS.

I think this will be an increasingly influential part of content marketing, which has been thought of as more passive up til now.

4) The other thing is that AI, in its current form, can’t be forward looking or truly creative. 

As you said in the question, it “synthesizes” what it consumes from human creators.

So in that respect, it’s going to lag behind humans until it figures out how to create something authentically new.

Also, AI can crunch economic and housing market data, for example, and even make predictions about where the market will go in the next 12 months…

But that info won’t be available in search anytime soon. Readers will still have to go to publishers to get trustworthy, contextually accurate insight into future developments.

So publishers/creators who are pushing their industries forward and helping their audience navigate a changing world will also be ahead of AI for the foreseeable future.

(Admittedly, the foreseeable future is probably like 90 days lol)

As you’re creating content, think about how you can push your industry forward and prepare your readers/viewers for what they’re likely to face in their uncertain tomorrows.

As you’re planning out products, a minimum viable product (MVP) may be less appealing. Because people can get so much from search, so much from AI.

You gotta bring the “A game” pretty quickly.

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Hope that’s helpful for you. Go capture some email addresses.

I have to get back to my intervention. Sounds like the family is starting to look for me.

Have a productive day.

Donnie

P.S. I clearly lied to you. I said Inbox X-Factor would be available in January. I missed my deadline. But it’s coming soon.

Thanks for your patience!

Don’t Let AI Do This to You

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What’s up, my friend?!

I should’ve said it sooner: happy new year. Hope you’ve been able to kick off 2023 with gusto.

After guzzling all that sparkling grape juice, I realized I left out an important point in my previous email about my 3 predictions for the year.

The major distinction I need to add pertains to the first part of Prediction #3:

The value of real expertise will increase.

Here’s how I see this playing out in 2023…

There will be an avalanche of mostly mediocre AI-generated content published.

Quantity will likely increase every day, but quality will lag for a while. It’ll be at least 6 to 12 months before folks get over their giddiness and notice the diminishing returns.

That means two things:

1) High quality human-generated content will become rarer relative to speed-focused stuff spit out by AI… and

2) Human buyers (because bots have no money) will be increasingly impacted by marketing that feels authentically personal and/or delivers entertainment as part of the interaction.

Remember: TikTok gets more visitors than Google for a reason. Humans crave entertainment. They DEMAND it. That won’t change anytime soon.

AI is great at putting together information. It’s nowhere near ready for prime time when it comes to entertainment, especially in smaller niches.

Here’s the takeaway. Two things.

First, I encourage you to get familiar with AI tools. There’s some incredible stuff out there. I’m especially fond of HelloScribe for writing purposes.

But don’t let AI do all the work for you. I’ve had too many conversations with entrepreneurs who are overly optimistic about the copy-pasteability of AI output. 

Don’t fall for it.

It’s true. You can get decent content/copy from AI. It will continue to get better over time.

But it’ll be a long time before it’s great. A long time before it’s authentically personal, especially in certain situations…

Secondly, the time of being Switzerland and playing it safe is over.

Work on adding personality and, yes, even entertainment into your content and copy.

Copywriting is no longer “salesmanship in print.” It’s SHOWMANSHIP in print.

I’ll be talking more about this in the coming days and weeks.

For now, I’ll point you to a conversation I had with copywriting legend John Forde on the topic. (The video should start at 32:01.)

Have a productive day!

P.S. Even as artificial intelligence platforms improve their copy-pasteability, it’s still going to be a LONG time before they’re able to tap into the pure creativity of human copywriters.

Here’s a quick illustration using curiosity-drenched bullets:

AI can’t touch copy like this for multiple reasons.

Firstly, these bullets draw on context not included in the content itself. Particularly the one about the curse.

Secondly, AI still has a way to go into understanding why people use language the way we do. The bot is programmed to predict what word will follow the previous word, based on a bank of words it’s been trained on.

But it doesn’t understand what it’s saying, let alone why we say what we say or how to phrase copy/content for a particular emotional effect.

That’s why, for now, copywriters can still do what AI can’t do.

Long live the humans!