WBW: sign-up pages, accusation audits, customer lies & the power of framing

Welcome back to Write Better Wednesdays!

I’m Jim Hamilton. My writing has contributed to $30,000,000+ in sales across health, biz opp, and B2B in the last 8 years.

Writing is a keystone skill for anyone looking to grow & monetize their email newsletter.

So each week, I share 4 things to make you a better writer:

- 1 piece of copy to swipe
- 1 piece of content to consume
- 1 prompt to write
- 1 quote to ponder

Let’s dive in…

Read time: 2.5 minutes

Copy to swipe:

Newsletter Sign-Up Page - 1440 News

Simplicity is divine.

Especially when it comes to newsletter sign-up pages.

Despite having over 3.6 million subscribers, 1440’s sign-up page is incredibly simple:

• 8-word value proposition statement

• Social proof

• CTA

That’s it.

If you’re looking to improve the conversion rate on your newsletter sign-up page, this is a great example to swipe from.

Content to read:

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on it - Chris Voss

This book has been on my ‘to-read’ list for years.

Now that I’m finally going through it, I feel silly for not getting to it sooner.

Because there’s so much in it that applies to writing & persuasion.

For instance:

Accusation Audits.

Instead of avoiding the flaws in your argument, admit them up front to “take the sting out” of them.

It’s apparently what defense lawyers will do in court.

This is eerily similar to the concept of damaging admissions in copywriting, which are counterintuitively designed to create credibility.

Or leading with who it’s NOT for as opposed to who it is for.

If you’re interested, I’d also recommend Chris Voss’s interview on Huberman Lab.

Prompt to write:

“What lies are your ideal customers telling themselves that are keeping them from moving forward?

Objections are the tip of the iceberg in sales.

What’s much bigger and hidden beneath the surface are False Beliefs.

These are lies your ideal customers tell themselves, based on experiences they’ve had.

For example:

• If the only way they’ve ever been able to lose weight is by cutting carbs → that forms the belief of “I have to cut out carbs to lose weight”
  
  

• If every successful person they know owns a house → that forms the belief of “I have to buy a house if I want to get rich”
  
  

• If all the big creators they see on social media post everyday → that forms the belief of “I have to post daily if I want to grow my audience”

In many cases, you know these beliefs to be untrue…

(hence the “lies”)

Yet clinging to them is precisely what keeps these people stuck in place.

But if you fail to address them, then you’ll never get the sale.

Luckily, that’s where this writing prompt comes in.

Challenge yourself to list out all of your customers’ False Beliefs so you can uninstall them through your content & copy.

Quote to ponder:

In 2024, most people’s problems aren’t due to a lack of information.

It’s due to an inability to make sense of it all.

They have most (if not all) the pieces, they just don’t know how they fit together.

So think of your job as a writer not to blow someone’s mind with earth-shattering new information - aka stimuli…

But instead to help them reorganize & reframe the information they already have in new ways.

To provide context.

That’s it.

Thanks for reading!

See you next time.

Jim Hamilton