It's Frightening When You Can't Explain What You Do!

Next to the Valley View Ferry

Richmond, Kentucky

You know, it's a scary thing when people ask you what you do and you can't really explain it to them.

I often get asked what an ad copy writer does, and the problem is I really don't know exactly what to say to people when they ask me that.  The best thing that I can tell most people is that a good ad copy writer is a person that can sell using words. So, to make it really clear to you exactly how this works I'm going to offer you an illustration.

Let's say there's a salesman and he selling silver bracelets. He's going to go up and down the street selling door-to-door and he's going to be lugging his wares with him as he goes. These are beautiful silver bracelets with some nickel plating and other beautiful features that he is going to sell. Ladies will just love them.  He goes to the first house and he knocks on the door and a bachelor answers the door. He doesn't have a girlfriend he doesn't have the time for one and he's never been married, so, there is no sale there.  He goes to the next house and knocks on the door and there's a little old lady who was trying to get rid of her jewelry and she had the giving it away to all of her granddaughters great-granddaughter's. So, she's not a buyer and that means no sale. He goes to another house where there is a married couple, however, the wife is allergic to nickel plating silver so no sale again. One of the houses he knocks on the door and there is a family with four daughters that just love bracelets and jewelry, however their father just lost his job, so therefore they cannot afford to buy any bracelets at this time. No sale. He spends an entire day and evening going up and down the street trying sell his races and by the third day he sells two bracelets to two different families.

Now let's compare this to somebody who knows how to write ad copy. A good ad copy writer will understand how to craft a sales letter that is dynamic and powerful and will lead a prospect through a series of logical and seamless messages that will lead to a sale. He will also understand exactly what hot buttons to push in order to get a person that is interested in silver bracelets to buy from him.   A good ad copywriter will also understand what it takes to get a person to open an envelope or a magazine or navigate to a website where there is dynamic content that people are interested in reading. A good ad copywriter will also understand how to network with list sellers so that they can find people who are very interested in buying silver bracelets. He will know that a good list broker can sell him a list that is highly targeted people on that are very interested in buying silver bracelets and has bought them recently. A really good ad copywriter will also understand that the absolute best list is a list of people that have already bought from him and like him. He knows that he can sell them more bracelets, more bracelets trees to hang the bracelet on, or jewelry boxes and other back end products and that these people will buy from him over and over again, not just bracelets also other products but are very similar.

The most powerful part about this type of sewing, using words instead of going door-to-door is that you can sell to thousands of people just by sending out a pile of letters, or writing a great advertisement for a targeted magazine or create a dynamic and powerful website with great ad copy on it which leads to a sale. That is what a really good ad copy person can do and it beats going door-to-door day in and day out.

It is this ability to duplicate your sales that makes an ad copywriter very powerful in the world of marketing.