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The Limitations of Copywriting, Sales, and Marketing

Marketing, social media, advertising

Black_Dragon43

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If there is one set of skills that are frequently promoted as the ONE key to making money by almost everyone online, it's either copywriting, sales or marketing. According to these people, if you learn this skill, you can PRINT your checkbook - and it can be whatever you set it to be. And it sounds obvious - no business exists without sales, and you make money when you make sales. Therefore, the most important thing is to make sales, and the most important skill is the one that helps you make sales. If you're running an online business, that is copywriting, if you're running a brick and mortar business that is sales & marketing.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13_O9yEOo4g

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM401lk1794

Well, I hate to break it to you but, if that was the key, then the richest people in the world would all be copywriters. They would all be trained salesmen. But fact is that most billionaires out there are not salesmen, and they are not copywriters. That is not the factor that separated them from the rest of the pack at least. Some, like Dane Maxwell above, like to make the claim that copywriting and sales also enable you to identify needs, and then you can just create a solution, and boom - billionaire. But this is wrong, and you will soon understand why if you read to the end.

This is not to say that copywriting, sales and marketing are not important. They are. They do make a big difference, especially at the lower levels of wealth. It's not hard to make 100K-1M with these skills alone. You can even get to 10M. The problem comes when you try to scale higher and reach 100M+ or keep the results consistent over time.

Why am I making this post?

To dispel a lot of misunderstandings, on both the entrepreneur and the client-side, about what marketing and copywriting can and cannot do. And this matters because (1) you can have the wrong expectations about it as an entrepreneur and then invest a ton of time only to be disappointed, and (2) as a client, you may think that if you only get this right, then your product or service would finally take off and succeed - this can cause you to waste a lot of resources and still fail big.

First - what can copywriting, sales and marketing do?

It can help open up an already existing market and help you fulfill already existing demand. It can even help you increase demand given an already existing demand for the product/service.

This means that once you have a product or service for which there is demand, provided that your product or service is competitive, copywriting, sales and marketing can help you scale and gain a positioning edge over the competition. How much can you scale? As much as the market size, and level of competition permits you.

Second - what can copywriting, sales and marketing NOT do?

Most importantly, they cannot create desire or demand. They may increase desire or demand, or move it to take action, but they cannot create it. What this means is that if your product or service does not have a sufficiently INTENSE appeal or the appeal is not BROAD enough, then you will fail. And better sales, marketing and copywriting will not save you, they will just "help" you fail faster.

What creates desire and demand is the market. And the market is formed of millions of individuals with their own specific needs and desires. The number of people who have the needs and desires your product can satisfy is the breadth of your market. And the average intensity of those desires represents the inherent appeal of your product - how easy it is to convince someone that they need it. Then the level of competition determines your initial probability of being the go-to choice for a customer.

Broad market + intense desire + low competition = big profits

Copywriting, sales and marketing will not help you get any of these determining factors though. Copywriting won't give you a broad market, it will not help your product have an inherently intense appeal, and it will not lower your competition. What copywriting can do is help you scale once you have that foundation right. Often we call that foundation product-market fit.

I've worked with more than 100+ businesses to grow their sales. And here's what I noticed: products and businesses with a broad market, high intensity desire, and low competition can grow quite a lot even with BAD & MEDIOCRE copywriting. With great copywriting, they scale like crazy. On the other hand, BAD businesses, with a small market, low intensity desire, and high competition require Gary Halbert level copywriting JUST TO COMPETE & STAY AFLOAT. So it's important to get the right foundation. Getting the right foundation is MORE important for an entrepreneur than sales and marketing if you want to become really really really rich - not just 1M rich.

Now, I said earlier that copywriting, sales and marketing skills cannot help you get the above foundation right. And here's why - the approach many people suggest for identifying a niche, pain-point or problem, based on the consultative selling approach, is NOT effective at determining the BREADTH of the potential market, NOR for that matter the AVERAGE inherent appeal of a solution to the problem. What very often ends up happening is that you identify a unique need which is common to just a few market players, and with a high individual appeal, but low average appeal.

Our brains are not good at thinking in statistics. We're prone to be emotionally influenced by one conversation, the needs of one person, and we're prone to overgeneralize, and focus on what is ultimately small stuff in the big picture. Even talking with 100 people in your niche does not give you sufficient statistical depth to be able to draw conclusions with much accuracy.

That's why those courses and similar, while increasing your chances of success, still don't take them above 10-20% max.

So, if you're not making sufficient sales, or your costs of advertising are too high, better copywriting or marketing may not be able to save you. It may be time to look at the fundamentals of your business and your product-market fit and decide if it's worth persisting.

Likewise, if you want to be an entrepreneur, and you want to create a product/service, you may want to invest more in product/service development until you get a solid product-market fit, and less in copywriting/sales/marketing. Invest more in creating new capacities that can help a big market rather than sales.

TL;DR: Sales is essential to make money fast, but getting the right product-market fit is the key differentiator between successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs in the long run.
 
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The-J

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I've worked with a lot of businesses in various marketing capacities. There are BIG differences between the ones that make millions quickly and the ones that go nowhere, even if they had the same person (me) doing their marketing for them.

Sales and marketing are excellent skills, though, mainly because you can use them to promote other people's offers and make a living doing that. For someone just starting and not knowing what to do, and needing to make money now, learning how to sell on the phone and in writing is an excellent way to get started.

It's not sufficient though.
 

Black_Dragon43

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Sales and marketing are excellent skills, though, mainly because you can use them to promote other people's offers and make a living doing that. For someone just starting and not knowing what to do, and needing to make money now, learning how to sell on the phone and in writing is an excellent way to get started.
Right, I agree 100% with this. In fact, it is how I got started as well. I learned copywriting, which enabled me to get started right away helping people. Then I slowly expanded into other areas and built my agency to cover other marketing needs that clients were having.

I would say it's the best thing for someone with no real world experience, who has never worked a job before (which was my case).
 
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If there is one set of skills that are frequently promoted as the ONE key to making money by almost everyone online, it's either copywriting, sales or marketing. According to these people, if you learn this skill, you can PRINT your checkbook - and it can be whatever you set it to be. And it sounds obvious - no business exists without sales, and you make money when you make sales. Therefore, the most important thing is to make sales, and the most important skill is the one that helps you make sales. If you're running an online business, that is copywriting, if you're running a brick and mortar business that is sales & marketing.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13_O9yEOo4g

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM401lk1794

Well, I hate to break it to you but, if that was the key, then the richest people in the world would all be copywriters. They would all be trained salesmen. But fact is that most billionaires out there are not salesmen, and they are not copywriters. That is not the factor that separated them from the rest of the pack at least. Some, like Dane Maxwell above, like to make the claim that copywriting and sales also enable you to identify needs, and then you can just create a solution, and boom - billionaire. But this is wrong, and you will soon understand why if you read to the end.

This is not to say that copywriting, sales and marketing are not important. They are. They do make a big difference, especially at the lower levels of wealth. It's not hard to make 100K-1M with these skills alone. You can even get to 10M. The problem comes when you try to scale higher and reach 100M+ or keep the results consistent over time.

Why am I making this post?

To dispel a lot of misunderstandings, on both the entrepreneur and the client-side, about what marketing and copywriting can and cannot do. And this matters because (1) you can have the wrong expectations about it as an entrepreneur and then invest a ton of time only to be disappointed, and (2) as a client, you may think that if you only get this right, then your product or service would finally take off and succeed - this can cause you to waste a lot of resources and still fail big.

First - what can copywriting, sales and marketing do?

It can help open up an already existing market and help you fulfill already existing demand. It can even help you increase demand given an already existing demand for the product/service.

This means that once you have a product or service for which there is demand, provided that your product or service is competitive, copywriting, sales and marketing can help you scale and gain a positioning edge over the competition. How much can you scale? As much as the market size, and level of competition permits you.

Second - what can copywriting, sales and marketing NOT do?

Most importantly, they cannot create desire or demand. They may increase desire or demand, or move it to take action, but they cannot create it. What this means is that if your product or service does not have a sufficiently INTENSE appeal or the appeal is not BROAD enough, then you will fail. And better sales, marketing and copywriting will not save you, they will just "help" you fail faster.

What creates desire and demand is the market. And the market is formed of millions of individuals with their own specific needs and desires. The number of people who have the needs and desires your product can satisfy is the breadth of your market. And the average intensity of those desires represents the inherent appeal of your product - how easy it is to convince someone that they need it. Then the level of competition determines your initial probability of being the go-to choice for a customer.

Broad market + intense desire + low competition = big profits

Copywriting, sales and marketing will not help you get any of these determining factors though. Copywriting won't give you a broad market, it will not help your product have an inherently intense appeal, and it will not lower your competition. What copywriting can do is help you scale once you have that foundation right. Often we call that foundation product-market fit.

I've worked with more than 100+ businesses to grow their sales. And here's what I noticed: products and businesses with a broad market, high intensity desire, and low competition can grow quite a lot even with BAD & MEDIOCRE copywriting. With great copywriting, they scale like crazy. On the other hand, BAD businesses, with a small market, low intensity desire, and high competition require Gary Halbert level copywriting JUST TO COMPETE & STAY AFLOAT. So it's important to get the right foundation. Getting the right foundation is MORE important for an entrepreneur than sales and marketing if you want to become really really really rich - not just 1M rich.

Now, I said earlier that copywriting, sales and marketing skills cannot help you get the above foundation right. And here's why - the approach many people suggest for identifying a niche, pain-point or problem, based on the consultative selling approach, is NOT effective at determining the BREADTH of the potential market, NOR for that matter the AVERAGE inherent appeal of a solution to the problem. What very often ends up happening is that you identify a unique need which is common to just a few market players, and with a high individual appeal, but low average appeal.

Our brains are not good at thinking in statistics. We're prone to be emotionally influenced by one conversation, the needs of one person, and we're prone to overgeneralize, and focus on what is ultimately small stuff in the big picture. Even talking with 100 people in your niche does not give you sufficient statistical depth to be able to draw conclusions with much accuracy.

That's why those courses and similar, while increasing your chances of success, still don't take them above 10-20% max.

So, if you're not making sufficient sales, or your costs of advertising are too high, better copywriting or marketing may not be able to save you. It may be time to look at the fundamentals of your business and your product-market fit and decide if it's worth persisting.

Likewise, if you want to be an entrepreneur, and you want to create a product/service, you may want to invest more in product/service development until you get a solid product-market fit, and less in copywriting/sales/marketing. Invest more in creating new capacities that can help a big market rather than sales.

TL;DR: Sales is essential to make money fast, but getting the right product-market fit is the key differentiator between successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs in the long run.

Thank you for this post. I remember after session of watching 4 Dan Lok videos in a row I felt "finally, I found this one skill that I just need to learn, and my life will be successful, driving blue maserati, dollars floating everywhere"

And the point you made, that if that was the case, all the people would be salesman, or copywriters. So simple, but after this brainwashing I never realized it.



Right, I agree 100% with this. In fact, it is how I got started as well. I learned copywriting, which enabled me to get started right away helping people. Then I slowly expanded into other areas and built my agency to cover other marketing needs that clients were having.

I would say it's the best thing for someone with no real world experience, who has never worked a job before (which was my case).

Great to see, that someone has walked the same path, as I'm about to take, and got through it on top. I was scared about "what do i do, what do i do, i can't do anything, how can I get a job" but then stumbled across copywriting, which hopefully will be the "best thing" as you said. Thank you for sharing.
 

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Gabe Newell (cofounder of Valve for people who don't know) said in an interview when he was working at Microsoft in 1995, Windows 95 was the second most downloaded software on PCs. The second.

You know what the first was? It was Doom.

At the time, Id Software was a small developer with less than 50 employees. They didn't even have a marketing department.

The execs at Microsoft said to take the No. 1 spot from Doom, they would have to create a new marketed department, hire at least 500 people, and MAYBE they could compete with Id Software.

It's probably no accident that GabeN left and founded Valve not long after...

I don't think there's a better example of a product doing it's own marketing than this.
 

Black_Dragon43

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Thank you for this post. I remember after session of watching 4 Dan Lok videos in a row I felt "finally, I found this one skill that I just need to learn, and my life will be successful, driving blue maserati, dollars floating everywhere"

And the point you made, that if that was the case, all the people would be salesman, or copywriters. So simple, but after this brainwashing I never realized it.
Right, thank you for sharing your experience. This actually brings up an important point. People who are selling selling have to heighten its perceived value, so that you think it's the ONE key thing you need to succeed. This makes you willing to flip out your wallet and pay them $2-3K, a cheap price for the key to success.

And notice how it's done. It starts out with a seemingly logical explanation. No business exists without sales, and you make money when you make sales. Therefore, the most important thing is to make sales, and the most important skill is the one that helps you make sales.

So it starts out with a series of things that are intuitive, and that you already believe, and extends them after validating your beliefs. Not only is sales a very important function in business, it is the most important. It is the ONE key.

I go through a few of these tactics in more depth in this thread: Promises Made, Promises Kept - Copywriting That Builds Trust

Thank you for sharing.
Glad you found it helpful, and wish you best of luck as you're starting :) . One piece of advice: don't be afraid to work for very low pay when you're starting out. I remember my very first job was an about page, that the client wanted to be 1000 words. He paid me $5 for it. But wow was that page amazing. So I earned $5, a piece I could use as portfolio, experience working, and a GLOWING testimonial, because he did NOT expect me to do such work for $5.
 
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Black_Dragon43

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I don't think there's a better example of a product doing it's own marketing than this.
Wow, that is an amazing example. How did Doom manage to pull it off? I'm not familiar with gaming or gaming companies, and I think all of us could be helped if you have more knowledge about it and are happy to share :)
 

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Glad you found it helpful, and wish you best of luck as you're starting :) . One piece of advice: don't be afraid to work for very low pay when you're starting out. I remember my very first job was an about page, that the client wanted to be 1000 words. He paid me $5 for it. But wow was that page amazing. So I earned $5, a piece I could use as portfolio, experience working, and a GLOWING testimonial, because he did NOT expect me to do such work for $5.

Thank you. That is so helpful, you just reinforced my belief. All this time I wasn't taking action, because "why would I even bother working for such a low pay" "waste of time" "I deserve better"

Until recently, when I read a story of a copywriter who started off writing a 5000 words copy for 1 penny (well, I'm not sure if it's necessaliry true, but I can go with it) and then just like you he got the ball rolling, getting the review and experience.

So right now I am even more than 100% sure, that it's useful approach, and I will not be afraid to take those opportunities, and actually surprise the client with the value, just like you provided. Haha like what a sane person expects hundreds worth of value from some 5$ gig.

let their eyes come out
 

Akpama Boris

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If there is one set of skills that are frequently promoted as the ONE key to making money by almost everyone online, it's either copywriting, sales or marketing. According to these people, if you learn this skill, you can PRINT your checkbook - and it can be whatever you set it to be. And it sounds obvious - no business exists without sales, and you make money when you make sales. Therefore, the most important thing is to make sales, and the most important skill is the one that helps you make sales. If you're running an online business, that is copywriting, if you're running a brick and mortar business that is sales & marketing.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13_O9yEOo4g

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM401lk1794

Well, I hate to break it to you but, if that was the key, then the richest people in the world would all be copywriters. They would all be trained salesmen. But fact is that most billionaires out there are not salesmen, and they are not copywriters. That is not the factor that separated them from the rest of the pack at least. Some, like Dane Maxwell above, like to make the claim that copywriting and sales also enable you to identify needs, and then you can just create a solution, and boom - billionaire. But this is wrong, and you will soon understand why if you read to the end.

This is not to say that copywriting, sales and marketing are not important. They are. They do make a big difference, especially at the lower levels of wealth. It's not hard to make 100K-1M with these skills alone. You can even get to 10M. The problem comes when you try to scale higher and reach 100M+ or keep the results consistent over time.

Why am I making this post?

To dispel a lot of misunderstandings, on both the entrepreneur and the client-side, about what marketing and copywriting can and cannot do. And this matters because (1) you can have the wrong expectations about it as an entrepreneur and then invest a ton of time only to be disappointed, and (2) as a client, you may think that if you only get this right, then your product or service would finally take off and succeed - this can cause you to waste a lot of resources and still fail big.

First - what can copywriting, sales and marketing do?

It can help open up an already existing market and help you fulfill already existing demand. It can even help you increase demand given an already existing demand for the product/service.

This means that once you have a product or service for which there is demand, provided that your product or service is competitive, copywriting, sales and marketing can help you scale and gain a positioning edge over the competition. How much can you scale? As much as the market size, and level of competition permits you.

Second - what can copywriting, sales and marketing NOT do?

Most importantly, they cannot create desire or demand. They may increase desire or demand, or move it to take action, but they cannot create it. What this means is that if your product or service does not have a sufficiently INTENSE appeal or the appeal is not BROAD enough, then you will fail. And better sales, marketing and copywriting will not save you, they will just "help" you fail faster.

What creates desire and demand is the market. And the market is formed of millions of individuals with their own specific needs and desires. The number of people who have the needs and desires your product can satisfy is the breadth of your market. And the average intensity of those desires represents the inherent appeal of your product - how easy it is to convince someone that they need it. Then the level of competition determines your initial probability of being the go-to choice for a customer.

Broad market + intense desire + low competition = big profits

Copywriting, sales and marketing will not help you get any of these determining factors though. Copywriting won't give you a broad market, it will not help your product have an inherently intense appeal, and it will not lower your competition. What copywriting can do is help you scale once you have that foundation right. Often we call that foundation product-market fit.

I've worked with more than 100+ businesses to grow their sales. And here's what I noticed: products and businesses with a broad market, high intensity desire, and low competition can grow quite a lot even with BAD & MEDIOCRE copywriting. With great copywriting, they scale like crazy. On the other hand, BAD businesses, with a small market, low intensity desire, and high competition require Gary Halbert level copywriting JUST TO COMPETE & STAY AFLOAT. So it's important to get the right foundation. Getting the right foundation is MORE important for an entrepreneur than sales and marketing if you want to become really really really rich - not just 1M rich.

Now, I said earlier that copywriting, sales and marketing skills cannot help you get the above foundation right. And here's why - the approach many people suggest for identifying a niche, pain-point or problem, based on the consultative selling approach, is NOT effective at determining the BREADTH of the potential market, NOR for that matter the AVERAGE inherent appeal of a solution to the problem. What very often ends up happening is that you identify a unique need which is common to just a few market players, and with a high individual appeal, but low average appeal.

Our brains are not good at thinking in statistics. We're prone to be emotionally influenced by one conversation, the needs of one person, and we're prone to overgeneralize, and focus on what is ultimately small stuff in the big picture. Even talking with 100 people in your niche does not give you sufficient statistical depth to be able to draw conclusions with much accuracy.

That's why those courses and similar, while increasing your chances of success, still don't take them above 10-20% max.

So, if you're not making sufficient sales, or your costs of advertising are too high, better copywriting or marketing may not be able to save you. It may be time to look at the fundamentals of your business and your product-market fit and decide if it's worth persisting.

Likewise, if you want to be an entrepreneur, and you want to create a product/service, you may want to invest more in product/service development until you get a solid product-market fit, and less in copywriting/sales/marketing. Invest more in creating new capacities that can help a big market rather than sales.

TL;DR: Sales is essential to make money fast, but getting the right product-market fit is the key differentiator between successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs in the long run.
Thank you for this reminder . It really resonated with me for some reason
 
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Ninjakid

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Wow, that is an amazing example. How did Doom manage to pull it off? I'm not familiar with gaming or gaming companies, and I think all of us could be helped if you have more knowledge about it and are happy to share :)
Well Doom is one of the most influential video games of all time. It's considered a pioneer of modern FPS games, in terms of gameplay, 3D graphics, and mod support. To put it simply, when Doom came out it was like people discovering Facebook for the first time... There was nothing really like it at the time and it spawned a TON of similar games built on its engine and even built around its concept.
 

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Great thread!

In my last "real job", I worked at an ultra-conservative executive search firm with a business model long past its prime.

Their biggest selling point (in their own eyes) was that every search was conducted completely from scratch, using the same exact process to generate completely original research from the ground up. Win search > take brief > draw up company target list > draw up prospect target list > approach and qualify prospects > arrange interviews > create longlist > etc.

In the 1990s, that was a huge deal because that kind of information was really hard to access. The only way to do it was through either a) painstaking and laborious phone research or b) having a big Rolodex already.

They were also generalists who didn't specialize in any industry because with their "research-driven methodology", they don't need to. Again, you could swing that one in the 1990s.

Nowadays, any idiot can get that same target list of companies and prospects in the space of a few hours or less browsing Linkedin, and it will be about 95% as good as the list generated from making hundreds of phone calls over weeks of full time work. What was once the key benefit of engaging that firm is now of almost no value whatsoever.

Rival firms that specialize in an industry already have relationships with large numbers of those prospects which gives them an instant advantage. So in competitive terms they were sandwiched between niche specialists and big name firms like Korn & Ferry who have instant brand recognition, even among laypeople. Not a corner of the market you want to occupy.

And yet, not only had they not evolved their product offering in 30 years, they also believed that marketing was a complete waste of time. After nearly 40 years in business, they had pretty much zero name recognition.

The entire business model revolved around a floor full of people making 100 cold calls a day. Which seemed to accomplish nothing. Sure enough, when I looked at a year's worth of won assignments, I figured out that almost all of them came from past clients, past contacts and referrals. This giant cold calling engine was an almost total waste of time, doubly so considering they only successfully delivered about 60% of searches, but still charged the final stage fees regardless - alienating many a would-be or once- repeat customer.

Of course, the only solution they ever came up with to their woes was that we all just needed to cold call harder.

They really didn't like it when I pointed out that they didn't have a sales problem, they had a product problem followed by a marketing problem.

Damn, maybe I should go back as a consultant and charge £100k for that same insight... :D
 

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So perhaps just showing up is half the battle? Having a mediocre marketing plan in action is better than nothing. That's what I gathered from your post.

I think people on this forum often recommend marketing, sales, and copywriting to beginners because it's a great place to start. Obviously getting to a billion net worth will require more than copywriting yourself. You'll likely pay others to do that.

There is no one skill that guarantees success, wouldn't you agree? Success is two parts hard work and one part luck. Most people that work hard and smart over a long period of time are successful but not all successful people work hard.

At it's core copywriting is about understanding people and why they buy. If one can do that then they are on the right track.

Thanks for the post!
 
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I think the claim that copywriting cannot create demand is misleading.

Take the Febreze story (from "The Power of Habit", I think) for example. The product was there. Users had tested it and it flopped, but a twist in how it was sold created demand. You could argue that it did not create demand, it just unlocked it, but when it comes to the utility of copywriting and marketing, then it hardly makes a difference.
 
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So perhaps just showing up is half the battle? Having a mediocre marketing plan in action is better than nothing. That's what I gathered from your post.
I think the point is that there is something more important than copywriting. And that is a consistent and relentless will to improve on your product-market fit, and having a competitive product that actually fulfills needs. Such a product does not require much effort to sell. It does not require "genius" copywriting. It will sell with mediocre copywriting.

A bad product, on the other hand, does require genius copywriting to sell, because there is not much else apart from copywriting there. There is no market demand for it, nothing for copywriting to increase and expand on. 0 times 10,000 is still 0.

There is no one skill that guarantees success, wouldn't you agree?
I agree. I also agree that success is two parts hard work, and one part luck. It takes hard work, after all, for luck to strike you.

At it's core copywriting is about understanding people and why they buy. If one can do that then they are on the right track.
I think copywriting requires an understanding of why people could buy. The problem with copywriting is that copywriting is just a tool. Copywriting basically says, OK, given this product, what can we tell people to convince them to buy? But it does NOT tell you if your product solves a need, or if there is market demand for it. It does NOT tell you if that's the right product that you should be selling. That's where your vision & hustle come into play.

The test can always be run. Have two companies start at the same time, in the same niche. One of them relentless at improving product/market fit and giving value with poor marketing written by someone who has never studied copywriting, and the other with amazing marketing, written by Gary Halbert, but the same old product that never improves, never changes, never gets better.

Who will win?

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4
 

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You can't sell or market your way out of an operations, margin, people, product, or market problem. Eventually it will come crashing down. There is no magic bullet, and that's one of the reasons why CENTS exists-- you need more than just one element. That's why business and entrepreneurship is so complicated. You solve one problem just for another to pop up. You have to do it continuously until you get all the elements right, and many don't survive to make it through.

The Bottleneck Breakthrough is a great book that talks about this concept. There's always one element that is holding any business back, but it's likely different for every business. Being able to identify them one by one, and successfully making the adjustments will be the difference. It may very well be marketing and sales, which can be a great superpower to have in the right context.

The PPP loan debacle is a great example. The banks were overrun with demand-- they had no need to market or "sell" what was essentially free money. Theirs was an operations and customer service problem. Paypal and the other fintechs had their ducks in a row and utilized technology to solve the operations bottleneck that was plaguing the big guys.
 
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You can't sell or market your way out of an operations, margin, people, product, or market problem.
I'd be careful with that belief. There would be many false negatives if people had given up because of little initial demand. How could there be dental hygiene issues and still many solutions failed to gain traction?

How do you differentiate between market problems and the wrong sales / marketing strategy?
 

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You can't sell or market your way out of an operations, margin, people, product, or market problem. Eventually it will come crashing down. There is no magic bullet, and that's one of the reasons why CENTS exists-- you need more than just one element. That's why business and entrepreneurship is so complicated. You solve one problem just for another to pop up. You have to do it continuously until you get all the elements right, and many don't survive to make it through.

The Bottleneck Breakthrough is a great book that talks about this concept. There's always one element that is holding any business back, but it's likely different for every business. Being able to identify them one by one, and successfully making the adjustments will be the difference. It may very well be marketing and sales, which can be a great superpower to have in the right context.

The PPP loan debacle is a great example. The banks were overrun with demand-- they had no need to market or "sell" what was essentially free money. Theirs was an operations and customer service problem. Paypal and the other fintechs had their ducks in a row and utilized technology to solve the operations bottleneck that was plaguing the big guys.

Great post. Just ordered that book.

A successful business has to do a satisfactory or excellent job at every element to last. Business owner must wear a dozen hats.
 

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I think the claim that copywriting cannot create demand is misleading.

Take the Febreze story (from "The Power of Habit", I think) for example. The product was there. Users had tested it but a twist in how it was sold created demand. You could argue that it did not create demand, it just unlocked it, but when it comes to the utility of copywriting and marketing, then it hardly makes a difference.
That's a GREAT example, thanks for bringing it up :)

Here's the story: Marketing – the Febreze story

If copywriting is capable of creating demand, why did they have to go to see what buyers were doing with it, and then remake the product around what they saw that buyers needed to satisfy a different group of needs? Why couldn't they just, you know, hire Gary Halbert, pay him $1 million, and get him to change their copy so that it would persuade anyone to buy Febreeze just as it was?

Let me tell you why: because copy cannot create demand. Demand already exists, and it is tapped into through product-market fit. Change your copy till you're blue in the face, that's not going to persuade people to buy if they have no interest in what the product does for them.

If you still think otherwise, I will give you a challenge. It's a simple one. Go to WP Engine, and sign up as an affiliate. Your goal is, by driving traffic with ads, to get even ONE profitable sale (and it must be a real one, no cheating by buying yourself with the link, or asking your mother to buy). You have nothing to work with but copywriting. You can write an advertorial, do a video, anything you want. Let's see how well copywriting by itself can help you sell a decent product profitably, that is also quite expensive in a tough market.
 
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That's a GREAT example, thanks for bringing it up :)

Here's the story: Marketing – the Febreze story

If copywriting is capable of creating demand, why did they have to go to see what buyers were doing with it, and then remake the product around what they saw that buyers needed to satisfy a different group of needs? Why couldn't they just, you know, hire Gary Halbert, pay him $1 million, and get him to change their copy so that it would persuade anyone to buy Febreeze just as it was?

Let me tell you why: because copy cannot create demand. Demand already exists, and it is tapped into through product-market fit. Change your copy till you're blue in the face, that's not going to persuade people to buy if they have no interest in what the product does for them.

If you still think otherwise, I will give you a challenge. It's a simple one. Go to WP Engine, and sign up as an affiliate. Your goal is, by driving traffic with ads, to get even ONE profitable sale (and it must be a real one, no cheating by buying yourself with the link, or asking your mother to buy). You have nothing to work with but copywriting. You can write an advertorial, do a video, anything you want. Let's see how well copywriting by itself can help you sell a decent product profitably, that is also quite expensive in a tough market.
I get what you mean. I am not saying you are wrong.

I decided to write the words of caution because I saw the takeaway:
So perhaps just showing up is half the battle? Having a mediocre marketing plan in action is better than nothing

But the changes to the product were the kind that a salesperson would suggest. For the inventor to even come up the idea for that change, they need to be aware of what makes buyers tick. I worry about false negatives.
You worry about twisted priorities. I think we both have a point in the respective area.
 

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You can't sell or market your way out of an operations, margin, people, product, or market problem. Eventually it will come crashing down. There is no magic bullet, and that's one of the reasons why CENTS exists-- you need more than just one element. That's why business and entrepreneurship is so complicated. You solve one problem just for another to pop up. You have to do it continuously until you get all the elements right, and many don't survive to make it through.

The Bottleneck Breakthrough is a great book that talks about this concept. There's always one element that is holding any business back, but it's likely different for every business. Being able to identify them one by one, and successfully making the adjustments will be the difference. It may very well be marketing and sales, which can be a great superpower to have in the right context.

The PPP loan debacle is a great example. The banks were overrun with demand-- they had no need to market or "sell" what was essentially free money. Theirs was an operations and customer service problem. Paypal and the other fintechs had their ducks in a row and utilized technology to solve the operations bottleneck that was plaguing the big guys.

Thanks for the book recommendation, I've just ordered a copy too. Next time I hit a plateau I'll know exactly where to turn. :thumbsup:
 

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I'd be careful with that belief. There would be many false negatives if people had given up because of little initial demand. How could there be dental hygiene issues and still many solutions failed to gain traction?

How do you differentiate between market problems and the wrong sales / marketing strategy?


I don't think there's an exact science to it. It's a combination of intuition, common sense, and metrics, and lots of testing.

I would say that if you can successfully sell a product one on one with any sort of volume, but are not getting traction, that could be indicative of a marketing/sales problem rather than one of the other issues.

If there are no repeat buyers, that could be a customer service or product problem.

If you're selling and customers are happy, but you're losing money, that's a margin issue.

High turnover of employees...that's obvious.

If you're selling an undifferentiated product, then marketing is more important. Most businesses have multiple problems that need to be solved.
 
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Billionaires are worth billions because they have built assets.

Most entrepreneurs are building puzzles. They start putting pieces together to get the beach, Japanese garden, circus, etc.

Billionaires are puzzle designers. They don’t concern themselves with finding pieces, they concern themselves with creating new ones altogether.
 

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I learned copywriting, which enabled me to get started right away helping people.

If you don't mind sharing, can you tell us which books/courses helped you the most to reach your current level in copywriting? I'm aware that you've shared some copywriting books in another thread. But, I'm asking which books/courses helped you throughout your career.
 

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Well Doom is one of the most influential video games of all time. It's considered a pioneer of modern FPS games, in terms of gameplay, 3D graphics, and mod support. To put it simply, when Doom came out it was like people discovering Facebook for the first time... There was nothing really like it at the time and it spawned a TON of similar games built on its engine and even built around its concept.
Now, Doom Eternal is somehow a lot more different than the old classic...speedrunners finding and exploiting every glitch and exploit lol.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH2-oM7IWpY
 
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If you don't mind sharing, can you tell us which books/courses helped you the most to reach your current level in copywriting? I'm aware that you've shared some copywriting books in another thread. But, I'm asking which books/courses helped you throughout your career.
Books give you some general guidance, but skill is developed by actually selling something and putting your skin in the game. I was never a good copywriter selling products for clients (they were paying me but that's not what being good means) until I started setting up my own systems and selling stuff as an affiliate for practice.

Books that have helped are the familiar ones:
• How to Write a Good Advertisement by Victor Schwab
• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Influence by Robert Cialdini
• Web Copy That Sells by Maria Veloso
• Made to Stick by the Heath Bros
• The Robert Collier Letter Book By... Robert Collier
• Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins
• Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples
• Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz
• Ca$hvertising by Drew Eric Whitman
• The Boron Letters by Gary Halbert
• The True Believer by Eric Hoffer

But reading all those books is meaningless. You won't become a good copywriter like that. The way you become good is that you pick a product that is DAMN HARD to sell, become an affiliate for it, and then build your own direct response system to sell it successfully for a profit. If you can do that, then consider yourself a pro. Trying to do that will teach you everything you need. Stuff that you won't find in the books. If you can show a client, look what I can do - that's it, instant hire!

It was too hard to become a "practice" direct mail copywriter in the past. You couldn't do it by yourself. That's why Gary Halbert and everyone else asks you to copy ads and do other stupid things. No. Start selling. Do it now. Today it's easy to become the equivalent of a direct mail copywriter online.

Until you put your own $$ in the game and prove your worth you're a dabbler, not a player.
 
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My brother currently is obsessed with the Todd McFarlane story. He could be seen as somebody who is not the best in the technical execution department but gets incredible results because of the distinct marketing / sales approach.

I think The ID story (not just Doom) also contains several interesting examples. Comparing John Romero's approach with Carmack's priorities is interesting. John Carmack can be seen as representing the no marketing, perfecting the product - eliminating every little kink - camp, also with countless "starting from scratch" successes (VR currently ongoing and very exciting). I suppose there is an aspect to productocracies where marketing topics and engineering overlap to a point, that it is hard to separate them.

I think it is valuable to at least have the birds eye view over such case studies. Thanks for the book recommendations. I feel this is an extremely valuable thread.

Another cool one to look into is the rise and fall of Sega. I think there even is a book with pretty much that as a title. But that is another one that my brother has looked into. I just know what he told me.
 

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@Neko this thread could help you, some interesting ideas.
But reading all those books is meaningless. You won't become a good copywriter like that. The way you become good is that you pick a product that is DAMN HARD to sell, become an affiliate for it, and then build your own direct response system to sell it successfully for a profit. If you can do that, then consider yourself a pro. Trying to do that will teach you everything you need. Stuff that you won't find in the books. If you can show a client, look what I can do - that's it, instant hire!

Good thread BD, food for thought.
 

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