Marketing is about knowing what you want to tell and who you want to tell it to–and doing it only in the most captivating and honest way possible.

That’s from an interview with Ryan Holiday, Director of Marketing at American Apparel. He’s one of the smartest, most hard-working guys around, and when he talks, we should all listen.

Read the whole interview here.

Part 2: It’s not about you

Without taking our reader into consideration, we’re heading for trouble. All we can do is talk about ourselves – and we know what happens to people like that at parties. – Andy Maslen

The hardest thing about copywriting (particularly online) is that your reader literally has millions of other options. Every website in the world is a click away. So why are they going to stop and read what you have to say to them?

You get and keep the reader’s attention by giving them a message aimed squarely at them – their interests, their concerns, their lives. A message delivered in such effortlessly good English that they don’t notice the writing, just the content. – Andy Maslen

When you’re writing copy, remember, your readers will always be thinking “What’s in it for me?” So if you’re trying to sell your new fitness program, you don’t spend ages telling everyone how you came up with the idea, how you researched the market first, where your suppliers are based, etc – you focus on telling them how your product or service will make them lose weight, gain muscle, look more attractive, become healthier, and so on. Your readers are always asking, “What’s in it for me?”, and you need to constantly be answering this question.

How to sell to Jared

A good place to start is by putting together a basic profile of your reader. This is the same sort of process that Proctor and Gamble go through when they’re producing and marketing new products. How old is your customer? Are they male or female? What job are they in? What do they want from their life right now? What are they struggling with, what do they need help with? What are their values? How do they see themselves?

Example: you’re writing copy for a new fitness product aimed at reducing body fat and giving people six-pack abs. What does your customer profile look like? He’s probably someone like me, actually. Let’s call him Jared.

Jared is a single 25-year-old male, a college graduate who went to work in financial services. He lives in a large city with his room-mate, and likes going to bars after work. He used to work out a bit in college, but he’s working a lot now, and it’s hard for him to find the time. He’s not hugely overweight, and goes to the gym once or twice a week, but he would love to get back to the body he had when he played football in high school. He would feel much more confident if he had lean, six-pack abs. He’d feel more attractive to the opposite sex, and he would probably get laid more (or at least he thinks he would). He has a good amount of disposable income, but can’t quite afford a personal trainer. He’s worried that if he doesn’t do something about his physique now, then the problem will get worse over the next few years, and he’ll suddenly wake up, middle-aged and overweight. He wants a solution that won’t take over his life, but will give him the results he needs, and he’s happy to spend money to do it.

Write about your product or service from your reader’s perspective. Don’t tell them what it is: tell them what it does for them. Tell them how your product will make their life easier, better or more rewarding. - Andy Maslen

Now that we have a good idea of who our customer is, we can think about what effective copy would look like. But it is IMPOSSIBLE to write good copy without this first step. We need to know about the customer so we can write copy that appeals directly to them and will capture their attention. If Jared hears me talking about removing fat in order to tone up his bum and fit into that old pair of jeans, then he’s going to get bored. That’s not what he wants to hear. But if you start talking to him about how good he’ll look on the beach, how good he’ll feel, and how much attention he’ll get with his new body, then Jared starts to get interested real quick.

Knowing your customer will make you rich

Of course, the best way to get to know your reader or customer is simple: talk to them. Do some research and find out what your customers really want, or what they’re worried about. What keeps them awake at 3am?

Ramit Sethi is a perfect example of this. On the subject, he says:

When you can truly deeply understand people, in fact better than they understand themselves, then your sales skyrocket – Ramit Sethi

Ramit spoke to hundreds of his readers on his book tour, and found that they really wanted to learn more about freelancing as a way to earn more money and give them an escape route from their day jobs. So Ramit went away, created a fantastic course to help them do just that, and then wrote amazing copy to convince people to buy it. Then he released that product, called Earn 1k, and promptly took over $100k in the first hour.

That’s the power of getting inside people’s heads.

(Quick note: on Ramit’s email signup page for Earn 1k, he has a quote from the Wall Street Journal. That’s another important marketing concept called social proof – I’ll be posting about that soon as well.)

Benefits vs. Features

ALWAYS talk benefits. Your customer wants to know what’s in it for them, so you should spell it out for them. Here’s the difference. Say you’re writing copy for a new sports car.

Benefits are what make the sale. You’re not buying a car, you’re buying the feeling you get when you’re cruising at 75 with the top down on a gorgeous summer’s day. You’re buying the feeling you get when you drive through town and a hot blonde girl checks out your sweet ride.

Summary

• Write for your reader – you need a direct, relevant message to capture and keep their attention
• Your reader is a normal person with hopes, fears, desires and vices.
• Do the research and find out what your reader is like. Put together a reader profile – what are they like?
• Appeal to your reader by talking about benefits, and how it will help them

That’s it for part 2 of my intro to copywriting series – look out for part 3 soon.

4 things you should always remember about copywriting:

1. Copywriting is about selling

It’s a world apart from academic writing, business memos, or fiction. Copywriting simply means writing in a persuasive way to convince someone to do something that they wouldn’t have done otherwise. That’s it.

2. Focus on the reader

Don’t get carried away with telling everyone when your company was founded, your career background, what you think about the economy at the moment – it’s not about you. You have to focus on the reader – what do they want to hear? What are their fears or needs, their hopes and dreams? What will motivate them to pay attention to your sales message and then act upon it?

3. Beautiful things come in small packages

Focus on using simple, easy-to-understand language. You don’t win points for using multi-clausal sentences and trying to sound like James Joyce. Keep it simple. Bigger is not always better.

4. Most people suck at copywriting

Most writers don’t have any sales experience; and most salesmen aren’t good writers. To write really good copy, you have to combine these two skillsets effectively. You need to look at your writing as a sales process. The good news is that if you can do this, you will be better than 95% of people out there.

If you can remember these 4 simple rules, you’re on your way to writing good copy.

Why? Is this not the worst recession since the Great Depression? Could this not be The End of the Eurozone?

Yeah, maybe. But ask yourself this:

Can you do anything to change it?

You can’t set fiscal and monetary policy. You can’t force Greece or Portugal (or the US) to cut spending. You can’t force companies to invest more.

So stop worrying about it. It’s out of your control.

What should you worry about? I’m glad you asked.

People: get your finances in order. Stop overspending. Look at earning more money through a second job or freelancing if you need to. Start eating healthily and exercising regularly. Take time every day to be grateful for the good things in your life. Think how you can do your job better: make a list of ideas and pick the best two, and start doing that.

Businesses: stay focused on your customer. Always think what they would want you to do. Even in this economy there are opportunities – Groupon is the fastest-growing company in history by revenues, and was formed in November 2008. There is money to be made, and people will fall over themselves to give you their money, if you can give them what they want or need.

In other words, focus on things you can control. Forget about things you can’t.

Time is like a river that will take you forward into encounters with reality that will require you to make decisions. You can’t stop the movement down this river, and you can’t avoid the encounters. You can only approach these encounters in the best way possible.

- Ray Dalio, Principles (pdf)

I wrote about this a little recently, but the fact that I’ve finally finished university and will soon be starting a job has really impacted me mentally. I’m suddenly viscerally aware of the fact that, one day, I will die. My time on earth is limited, and no-one can stop that. There is nothing I can do to prevent it – I can only try to make the most of my time here.

I’ve always been a fan of video games. I’m a bit of a perfectionist. When I was about 9 years old, I wanted to catch 150 pokémon on my Gameboy, which I did. When I was 14 or 15, I wanted to complete GTA 3 100%, doing all the side missions and all the hidden packages. I did it. When I was 17 I played The Godfather on PS2, and I played it probably 3 or 4 times through to make sure I did all the missions in the “right” order, the way they were intended to be done so I could get the most XP and money and make the game as easy as possible. I did it. Each time, I was left thinking, OK, now what? Then I’d play the game through again, doing things differently, each time trying something slightly different.

Unfortunately, life isn’t like that. Time is like a river. My four years at university were the best of my life (so far), but now they’re done. There’s no second playthrough. No saving at a certain point and resetting if things don’t go your way.

But the problem isn’t necessarily the fact that I will die one day. The worry is that I’ll die, and my children and grandchildren will die, and a hundred years later, no-one will give a shit. Neil Strauss touched on this in his new book. He was interviewing Chris Rock, who said this:

The weirdest thing about being successful is that you are kind of ready to die. Especially now that I’ve got kids. I mean, I want to live. Don’t get me wrong. But I’m not in fear of dying. I’ve made my mark. Death is the enemy of my family – of my wife and my daughters.

Maybe that’s the aim. To make your mark. Or at least to strive for it, lest you be one of those timid souls who knows neither victory nor defeat.

On top of the whole “what the fuck am I doing in life”, there are a million other different worries. What if I suck at my job? What if there’s an asshole in my office who, for whatever reason, just doesn’t like me? What if I get ousted in some sort of office coup, despite my love of Robert Greene? I can easily rationalise these as the standard going-into-a-new-place worries, the same worries that every fresher or new kid at school has, that almost always prove to be either unfounded or irrelevant.

But that large, looming worry, the fact that I am slowly transitioning from being a child to an adult, is unavoidable. All my life I’ve thought of myself as a smart kid, someone with “potential”. Now comes the time when I have to actually do something. And I’m scared.

One of the simplest lessons you can take from it is this: complaining about anything is ultimately pointless. Any problem will fall into one of two categories. There’s either something you can do about it, or nothing you can do about it.

If there’s something you can do about it, stop complaining and go and do it.

If there’s nothing you can do about it, then complaining about it is a waste of energy. In typical stoic fashion, use this to your advantage. Use this problem as an opportunity to practice humility or patience.

Once you start framing problems in this way, they become much simpler to deal with. Note: simple does not always mean easy.

An entrepreneur has a positive, flexible and adaptable disposition towards change, seeing it as normal, and as an opportunity rather than a problem. To see change in this way, an entrepreneur has a security, born of self-confidence, and is at ease when dealing with insecurity, risks, difficulty and the unknown. An entrepreneur has the capacity to initiate creative ideas…develop them, and see them through to action in a determined manner. An entrepreneur is able, even anxious, to take responsibility and is an effective communicator, negotiator, influencer, planner and organiser. An entrepreneur is active, confident [and] purposeful, not passive, uncertain or dependent.

- OECD, quoted in Ball, Knight and Plant, “New goals for an enterprise culture”.

Here is the exact email I sent to him, and his exact response. Note: I mean every word I say in my email.

Me to James:

James,

I found your blog a couple of months ago. It’s absolutely fantastic. I really admire the honesty you display in your writing.

I wanted to ask you a couple of things. I’m about to graduate with a BS Economics degree from Leeds University, UK. I don’t have the best grades in the world, but I’m pretty confident, I’m smart, and I’m ambitious.

Do you have any advice for someone who is just graduating and doesn’t want to go into a traditional graduate scheme-type role? I genuinely don’t know what I want to do with my life, apart from start a company at some point. I’d love to work for a startup or something, but I have very few technical skills, so it might be a bit harder for me to get involved in that sort of area.

I really appreciate any advice you can give me. And I’ve bookmarked your ebook online – the daily practice advice is brilliant. I’ve only been doing it for a couple of weeks and already I feel better about the future.

Thanks James
Andy

And his response:

There’s some good news and some bad news.

The bad news is you’re stressed. How come? You’re 22 or so. You have about 10-20 years before you need to figure out a career. There’s no reason to get rich so fast (what would you do with the money except guarantee your future?). I’m not saying “how come” flippantly, by the way. Are your parents stressed about your future? Were they stressed about their own futures when you were younger? Is your girlfriend shaky? Your other friends? Not that you need an excuse to be stressed. Its reasonable at this stage also to wonder, “What’s next?”

What if nothing was next? What if you worked as a waiter for a year and took painting and photography classes for a year? Write a comic book script based on a spiderman and submit it to marvel comics? Work in a factory? Go to India for a year and study yoga (you would get in shape, feel spiritual, make great friends, see the world, etc) while giving English lessons and “getting by”. Like young people do.

Next level: find something your mildly interested in and work for a mega corporation. What’s your favorite TV show? Who produces it. Work for them. They are obviously good at what they do. Its never bad to be the janitor at the best company in the world. You learn how to clean up their shit. Which makes you CEO-level for just about any other company. This is really true.

Next level: startup world. You’re obviously self-motivated and good at sales (you wrote to me. I’m responding. I got 1500 emails today). Go to any startup and tell them you’ll work for free until you get them a $1000 in revenues. And then go out and get them revenues. This focuses you on finding a good startup that you know you can sell their product. You become like a venture capitalist of sorts.

Next level: start your own company. I don’t like that. Maybe you need experience and something you’re a bit more passionate about.

Keep with the daily practice. Start stretching that idea muscle out a little bit more. Make lists of the craziest things you can do. I wasted the ages of 22-26. Or did I? In other words, nothing you do those years will be that important for later on. Meaning, you can explore yourself, make sure you have the right values and know how to be happy, make sure your brain is as big as possible (the mental practices), make sure you know how to save lives by surrending to whatever force you can help.

These are more important than finding the exact right job now. I made the equivalent of 14k euros a year from the ages of 22-26. I lived like a king because I lived cheap. Then I made more and it ruined my life.

This might’ve been a bit of a ramble. But there might be a few things here useful. Thanks for writing me and I’m glad you are doing the daily practice. Please keep in touch and let me know what happens next?

- James

Me to him:

James,

Thanks, I really appreciate the advice. I think the reason I’m feeling stressed right now is that there seems to be pressure from my parents and my credit card company to get a job and start earning money RIGHT NOW or the world will end. I guess I feel like I’ll be a failure if I’m not earning good money by the time I’m 25, which I know is ridiculous. I feel like I have the ability to do great things and that I’ll be wasting it if I take even six months of my life to do nothing. I feel like I have to do something impressive right away, or else the chance will be gone forever.

Does that sound stupid?

Andy

And his reply:

It doesn’t sound stupid at all. But it does sound like something that might not be the best way to be happy right now. A lot of that pressure is external. I was really a miserable failure at 25. And then again at 32.

Employment rates for new college graduates have fallen sharply in the last two years, as have starting salaries for those who can find work. What’s more, only half of the jobs landed by these new graduates even require a college degree, reviving debates about whether higher education is “worth it” after all.

The people profiled in the article aren’t the only ones struggling. I have tons of friends (subtle brag) who either graduated last summer, or are about to graduate this summer, and have few, if any, job prospects. I’m one of them.

So is the economy to blame? Partly, sure. It’s a hell of a lot harder to walk into a £30k a yearjob straight after graduation than it was in 2006. Any foray into the job market will likely mean competing either with literally hundreds of other graduates, or people with 5 years of experience who have been laid off recently. And if you just want to earn some spare change while you look for your REAL career, say, as a temporary receptionist, you’re competing with over 80 other people for one spot. Good luck!

But why should anyone hire me over anyone else? Are my grades that much better? No. Do I have incredible work experience that gives me social proof and is a clear indicator that I know what I’m doing? No. Do I have high-value skills that no-one else has? No.

Sure, companies are still hiring people, but you have to be exceptional to cut through the swathes of candidates with identical CVs and land that coveted graduate scheme role. Are you exceptional? I know I’m not. Fuck it, if you were really brilliant, you wouldn’t even have a CV.

So what’s the solution? I’m not sure, because I’m one of the unemployed people at the moment. But from stealing the ideas of people smarter than I am, I can guess it has something to do with:

• Doing something, anything, to show that you’re not just sitting on your arse, i.e. volunteer work, working for a non-profit.
• Reaching out to people who you admire, and offering to work for them for free, if you can learn something while doing it
• Taking the ridiculous amount of free time you have and doing something productive with it: if you have no skills, it’s time to learn some.
• Create something: you’re young, and have no family to support, no mortgage to pay or house to lose if you go broke, so why not start a company? Even if it fails (which it probably will), an attempt to start a business would sure look better on a CV than “was an integral part of the team at Wetherspoon’s pub”.

I’m having trouble finding a job at the moment, and it’s because I haven’t done any of these things. None of these have any barriers to entry: if you want to learn to program, there’s probably a thousand different sites to teach you how. If you want to start a company, the government will walk you through the process. It costs nothing to send an email to someone you admire and offer to work for them. The only barrier to entry is having the motivation and the desire to try something different, to challenge yourself, to follow a difficult path without knowing exactly where you will end up.

Or there’s always law.