5 things I wish I knew before I learned copywriting

Happy Wednesday! I'm Jim Hamilton. Over the past 7 years, my copy has contributed to $10m+ in sales for clients across health, biz opp, and B2B.

Each week, I send out 1 short-form copywriting tip to help you write ads, emails, and social content that sells.

I started copywriting in 2016.

Since then, I’ve:

→ Written 1,000+ broadcast emails
→ Produced two 7-figure sales letters
→ Cranked out 100s of Facebook ads
→ Helped generate $10m+ in sales for clients

But I made a ton of mistakes along the way.

So today, I’m going to reveal the 5 things I wish I knew before I learned copywriting.

Let’s dive in.

Read time: 2 minutes and 22 seconds

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1) You are not the customer

First things first:

Never make assumptions about the person you're writing for.

Projecting your own thoughts, feelings, and beliefs onto the customer is a huge mistake.

Instead, see the world through their eyes and try to understand why.

Empathy is a superpower.

2) Trigger moments bring pain to the forefront

People are great at ignoring their problems.

It's not until they step on the scale, check their bank account, or get laid off that pain moves to center stage.

So map out your customer’s day-to-day life and identify their trigger moments before you write.

These create windows of opportunity for attention and conversion.

3) Chunking up & down are key to making the sale

Human psychology hasn’t changed much in the last 35,000 years.

Nobody wants to do the work.

But everyone wants a life-changing transformation.

So learn how to boil down cost and commitment into atomic form.

• How many minutes per day will it take?

• How many dollars a day does it come out to?

• How many DMs do they have to send to land their first client?

• How many posts do they have to write to get their first email subscriber?

The smaller, faster, and easier, the better.

But when it comes to the future they want…

Raise the stakes and blow it up into the biggest vision they can possibly imagine.

Extrapolate the benefits and make it exponential.

4) Curiosity is your best friend

In a 3-second world, the hook is king.

This is why learning how to write with curiosity is one of the most important aspects of copywriting.

Curiosity just means talking about something without revealing what it is.

Here are 4 ways to do it:

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1. What your solution is not

HINT: It’s not compound lifts, isolation work, or running on the treadmill…

2. What your solution is better than

Better than Twitter, LinkedIn, and IG for organic growth? (here’s why)

3. What you can avoid with your solution

How to get your first 1,000 followers without carousels, engagement pods, or posting daily

4. What not to do

What NEVER to do when writing a weekly newsletter…

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The more specific you can get, the more intriguing your copy will be.

Ultimately, you’ve gotta do something to stand out.

Because if you can't get attention, nothing else matters.

5) Copywriting is 10% creativity and 90% communicating clearly

Spend less time trying to come up with new ideas…

Especially in the beginning.

You’re not Don Draper. And you don’t need to be.

Instead, spend more time distilling things down and getting really freaking good at explaining it to them like they're 5.

Simplicity is divine.

That’s it.

Thanks for reading!

See you next week.

Jim Hamilton