How to Maximize Your Copywriting Skills
I was recently reading a book titled, “Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else.” In it, I learned a few lessons for copywriters.
The point of it was that it’s not innate talent or experience that determine greatness. Most people would say it’s hard work that makes people good at things but that’s not it either.
What is it that makes the difference? The author calls “deliberate practice.” It’s not just practice. A good example of it is how most adult city league soccer teams that I’ve observed practice.
Most soccer teams don’t have a coach. If they actually practice as a team they simply divide up into 2 groups, set up two small goals and then play until people get tired. Do we get better doing that? Not really. Is it fun? Usually so. That’s why we keep doing it.
A friend and I were able to convince the team we played with at the time that we needed to do some skill specific drills. We practiced playing “keep away” where the goal is for your team to maintain possession of the ball. Sometimes we put goals in the middle of the area to dribble through for points. Other times, we put a limit on the number of times we could touch the ball before passing. And we occasionally played offense against defense playing in our game formations.
All these drills challenged us in game specific ways. And while I played with that team, we moved up 4 divisions. I’ve seen other teams do that as well. It’s really not hard to be better than everyone else. It simply takes deliberate practice.
What about copywriters? You’ve probably been told you ought to copy other good letters so you get the language into your mind. Three models for practicing were suggested: the music model, the chess model and the sports model.
Music Model
When you perform music, you know exactly what it’s supposed to sound like and you rehearse it. If you get hung up at a part, you step back and rehearse that part until it’s perfect. In copywriting, that’s what we’re doing when we copy other good letters. But we have two other ways to improve as well.
Chess Model
This is the “what would you do in this situation” model. This is also how Harvard Business School teaches… through case studies. You look at specific scenarios and try to figure out what you would do. Then you compare that to what happened in real life.
For a copywriter, we can re-write letters. How would you have handled a particular selling approach differently? You can pick a product, write a letter for it and then see how it compares to the real one. You can critique letters if you don’t want to actually write an entirely new one.
If you’d like a quicker exercise, break it down to smaller elements. How would you rewrite just a headline or some bullets? There are plenty of smaller opportunities if you want to test yourself against PPC ads or catalog copy. Pick out something you own, write about it then compare that to how they describe it online somewhere.
Sports Model
Sports teams practice specific skills. In copywriting, you can build a swipe file and analyze each letter. You can take courses to improve. You can read books on marketing or writing style. You can cross train in other fields like sales, story telling, NLP and hypnosis, logic and debate. Get a mentor or a coach to help.
If you’ve only been reading books and copying good letters get excited. If you apply what you’ve learned in this article, you’ll guarantee yourself a place among the best.