I believe one of the best copywriters who ever lived was Gary Halbert. He wrote some of the most profitable letters and space ads on history. And, on top of all that, he was a fantastic teacher of copywriting as well.
Gary was all about leveraging resources to make life easy. For instance, imagine you decide to write a book about getting healthy and fit.
What should you do?
Well, maybe you can study horse racing. Maybe you can spend years around the best horse trainers to find out what their secrets are. Maybe you can get in with the inner circle of horse racing. But is all of that time, work and stress necessary? Not at all. There is a much more hassle-free method to getting everything you need to know about horse racing.
Instead of doing things the hard way, Gary would recommend you go out and buy the top selling books and ebooks on dieting. Then you clam up in your office or the library and read. While reading jot down notes. Lots of them. And take out all of the unique, exclusive dieting tips, tricks and secrets in each of those best sellers.
Take your notes and write that report on horse racing. And this report will contain the best of the best tips, secrets and tricks that you took out of the books and reports you read. The final result is a valuable report packed with great information horse racing fans will love.
That’s the way to do it.
You can do the same thing when creating advertising. In fact, this works great if you have to craft a sales message on the fly for any kind of media.
The formal name for this strategy is… swiping ads. And it really does make it easier. Back in 1996, Gary taught a little bit about swiping during a seminar in Florida. The main focus of the seminar was on swiping great ads for your own promotions.
Look, if you don’t want to become a top notch copywriter and don’t have time to learn all the formulas, etc. then swiping is the way to go. All you have do is learn how to do it right.
Learn to swipe and life gets easier when preparing ads…
** Writer’s block will no longer exist. You’ll know where to start and ad. You’ll no longer be figuring out what to say. Because the swipe ads give you all that information.
** Ad writing will be much faster. All you do is model your ad after the swipe. Therefore, the guessing element is taken out of the equation. It’s like using a proven template to write your ads.
** Your copy will be up to 300% more effective. Whenever you model success the odds of success are on your side. When modeling a successful ad you stand a much better chance of writing a winner.
So the idea is to build a swipe file and use it when creating ads.