Mike: 00:02 – All right, we’ve left the fitness machine on and it is cranking out so much fitness we have to give this stuff away. For this month only, buy a membership and get a free toaster? Do people still do this? I need help. Mateo, Mateo. Should I give away toasters in my ad like for free?
Mateo: 00:16 – Well Mike, actually to answer that question, it’s a little bit more complicated than just saying yes or no. I think that toaster might make your ad a little bit more compelling, but there’s definitely a certain group of people who would advise you to not give stuff away. So we should probably talk about it.
Mike: 00:34 – Yeah. And the low-carb guys aren’t going to want the toaster. I might have to have a back-up. Let’s talk about it. Tell you what we’ll do. We’ll devote this week’s episode of Two-Brain Radio, we’ll devote it to writing ad copy. Mateo Lopez has written thousands of ads. We’re going to talk to him and get some advice. I’m Mike Warkentin, I’ll be your host for this week and we’ll be back with Two-Brain Radio right after this.
Mike: 00:52 – If you want to add $5,000 in monthly revenue to your gym, it can be done. If you want to know exactly how, talk to a Two-Brain mentor for free. Book a call it at twobrainbusiness.com and we’ll tell you how to add $5,000 to your monthly revenue. Mateo, have you seen a gym do that, add five grand in revenue?
Mateo: 01:09 – Oh, countless.
Mike: 01:11 – Countless. It is not a gimmick, it is actually a thing. So book that call. Now we’re going to tell you how to make some money via some ads. We’re talking about ad copy. I’ve written a few of these. My claim to fame, Mateo, is actually in the advertising industry. I once wrote a 30-second car commercial in less than 30 seconds. That’s probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done.
Mateo: 01:31 – That actually is pretty cool.
Mike: 01:32 – Yeah, I thought it was funny cause I got so sick of writing them, I just started hammering them out and I thought I could do it one time and I actually managed to do it. I don’t know if it sold any cars, but it was fun for me.
Mateo: 01:42 – Oh no, that’s awesome. That’s great. You should probably just do this whole episode without me. That sounds amazing.
Mike: 01:48 – Well I don’t think it was a very good ad. So I think I’m gonna need you. You’ve probably made more sales than I have. So let me ask you the first question right off the top. Do you need to be a professional writer to write a good ad? What’s your background?
Mateo: 02:00 – No. The answer your question is no, that’s the short answer. So the long answer is also no. Keep going, Mike. The long answer is also no.
Mike: 02:16 – So how did you get into it? Cause I know like we’ve talked on previous shows, you worked at a gym and you know, you do a lot of different things. But when did you decide that you were going to be able to write advertising copy?
Mateo: 02:27 – Well, I want to put a quick caveat in here. John Franklin, my partner, writes a lot of the ad copy for sure. He’s kind of the brains behind that operation. I’ve written some ads though before and definitely feel confident in giving you all the tips on the ins and outs of copywriting 101. But I just wanted to throw that out there.
Mike: 02:50 – But you told me that you guys are basically two halves of one amulet, right? Like I put you guys together, I don’t even need to talk to both of you. I just talk to one of you.
Mateo: 02:55 – No, a hundred, 100%. Yeah, in terms of my background. Yeah, no, I think I was, I don’t know, in school—I think I can toot my own horn a little that I was pretty good at writing essays, and you know, I think critical reading on the SAT was probably my highest score. So reading and writing, I would say I’m pretty confident in spelling and writing and reading, but yes, copywriting is a totally different art and something that honestly, I wish you did learn in school. Because it’s one of those skills that I think is really important to learn and develop. There’s a guy does a copywriting course, but he spells it with a K, I think his name is Neville Medhora. He says “copywriting is the rearranging of words to make things sell better.”
Mateo: 03:52 – And it’s just the text form of sales. So, you know, it’s a really awesome and vital skill to develop and to learn. Having said that, you don’t need to be a pro at it. You don’t need to put in what is it? You have to put in 10,000 hours to become a master or a professional of some thing, right? You don’t need to put in your 10,000 hours. Because I think the most important part about creating a successful ad campaign, a successful ad, period, is the offer. Right? It doesn’t really matter how many, you know, references you’re able to weave into pop culture to make it sound more relatable. It doesn’t matter how many jokes you can squeeze in or wordplay, it really just comes down to the offer. That would kind of be my stance on it. So, you know, you can have some ad copy with spelling mistakes. I know we’ve had some and it won’t matter if your offer is amazing, it really won’t matter. So that’s kinda my take on it.
Mike: 04:58 – Yeah, that’s fascinating cause I’ve had the same experience where I spent 20 years doing journalism, things like that and brief periods here and there running a business and a working radio for a bit, I did write some ad copy and it’s completely different and it’s almost I have to take off one hat and completely put on a different one because it is not the same language anymore. And again, like you said, spelling mistakes, sometimes the way that you would write quote unquote grammatically correct is not how you want to do it in an ad. I’ve seen lots of ads that use much more casual language or even insert errors on sometimes on purpose just to like pique up someone’s ears. So yeah, it’s a fascinating thing.
Mateo: 05:30 – Especially if we’re talking about Facebook ads and Instagram, you’re using emojis, you know, you’re not using emoji in your college application letter.
Mike: 05:39 – Modern hieroglyphics, that’s how we communicate now.
Mateo: 05:42 – No, you’re not doing that. And you mentioned journalism. I mean, yeah, headlines, they’re most of the time not grammatically correct. Purposely so, they want to be short and punchy and eye-catching. So, it’s a weird kind of sphere of writing. You can be really good at writing sales copy in wood and would write a terrible poem or a terrible piece in a journalistic newspaper and you can have an amazing journalist who would probably be really bad at, you know, selling that free toaster online.
Mike: 06:17 – We’ve seen some amazing, amazing ad copy people come out of just the marketing group. Like we look at some of the stuff that I see our people go through. And these are just gym owners. Some of them obviously have some writing skills, some of them have some training and so forth, but many of them are just gym owners who have gone through the course that you guys do, learn how to do it and they’re creating some amazing stuff. So it can be learned, too.
Mateo: 06:37 – Oh yeah, it can definitely be learned. The tricky bit is, you know, and that’s why when you called me about doing this episode on copywriting, I was a little bit intimidated because, you know, there are people who have dedicated their own online course seminars, hundreds and hundreds and thousands of books dedicated to this subject alone. So squeezing it into a 30-minute podcast is going to be tough, but we’re going to try.
Mike: 07:05 – Let’s go right into it and I’ll ask you. So you know, you and John have written thousands of ads. Give me the 10,000-foot view of what does your process look like? Where does your idea come from? How do you sit down and start doing this thing? Like do you have offer first or copy first or what do you do?
Mateo: 07:17 – Yeah, you definitely want the—it’s easier when you have your offer and kind of the, you know, we can even talk about some of the stuff we’ve created for Two-Brain. You know, it’s typically, you know, Chris wants to offer some kind of piece of valuable information to the gym owners in our audience. And then from there we’re able to craft the copy and it’s like, all right, well what’s the actual end result that, you know, this video, this webinar, this ebook, this PDF guide that you’ve designed, Mike, what is the value that we’re gonna give away here? What’s the end result for the gym owner after they read this or watch this or consume this piece of media? And once we have that we can more effectively, you know, write the ad copy. So yeah, it’s definitely easy to—
Mike: 08:06 – Like what you’re solving, you’re figuring out like this thing is—people want to click on this thing for a reason. They’re called lead magnets. We’re going to get into that in another show, but they’re clicking on this thing that once you know why this person might want this thing, you’re probably able to then start framing your copy around their emotions, their needs, their wants.
Mateo: 08:24 – Yeah, exactly. And again the more compelling or rather the more attractive, the more value you’re giving away in the offer, the more attractive the offer is, the more compelling the offer is, you know, the easier it is to write the copy. I mean, you know, you’ve seen the ads for the free six-week challenge. It’s not hard to write ad copy for that because that’s pretty awesome. Especially if it’s at a CrossFit gym. You know, people have now come to understand CrossFit gyms are you know, a little bit more expensive than your Planet Fitness, your Blink, your, you know, whatever have you. And so if people see they’re going to get six weeks free at like this really expensive place or they know CrossFit’s expensive, yeah, I’m going to click on that all day. So, you know, again, it all really comes down to the offer.
Mike: 09:10 – OK. So you’ve got either like a lead magnet or some kind of offer or in some cases your offering, like you just want people, you’re gonna motivate people to book a free call or something like that.
Mateo: 09:20 – Yeah. If you’re talking in the gym space, even other businesses, you know, think about dentists or doctors, you know, free consultation, free evaluation, free in our world, body-fat test or you know, free, I don’t know, running a Spartan race? Come take our free, you know, Spartan race test to see how ready you are or whatever it is. I don’t know, I just made that up. But that kind of a, yes. So you want to have the offer first and then you’re able to kind of go from there.
Mike: 09:54 – Okay. So you’ve got your offer in place. At that point, are you thinking about like the voice that you’re using for, say the audience, like say my ad is going to be targeted at, you know, 18 to 45 or 45 to 60. Are you tailoring things that way or are you kind of just writing in a language that you know, kind of works and flows on Facebook? Are you tailoring it for the people of the audience or the medium?
Mateo: 10:14 – Yeah, so there are different kinds of lenses that you can use, if that makes sense. So, and yeah, this will definitely also depend on the audience for sure. So I mean, there’s lots of ways you can kind of describe this or you know, some people say there’s five lenses, 10 lenses, 10, different kind of approaches or tones of voices. I think there are three popular ones that I’ve seen referenced by different people and copywriters in the internet marketing space. The first is kinda like that competitive lens. And so the idea here is that your headline or your ad copy, it’s a little bit more aggressive. And this is if you’re targeting, you know, people with Type A personalities, people who are competitive. So actually this might kind of, this might work for certain people who are attracted to CrossFit and that the competitive aspect aspect to training.
Mateo: 11:12 – You know, the famous one in our space is the old Mike Chang ads. And he wasn’t even the first one to come up with these. There were people doing this in the 90s, but it’s like trainers hate this guy. Find out the revolutionary Chinese herbal supplement that he’s discovered that allows him to eat like a pig, but like look shredded 24/7 or whatever it is. You know what I mean?
Mike: 11:34 – It didn’t work for me.
Mateo: 11:35 – You tried them?
Mike: 11:37 – Bought it, didn’t work.
Mateo: 11:39 – But that’s like the competitive kind of aggressive kind of lens, if that makes sense. The tone of voice, the way of speaking.
Mike: 11:47 – It’s a bit challenging, right?
Mateo: 11:49 – Or you see this on, you know, headlines in a lot of the YouTube spaces now, especially if you go down any kind of political rabbit holes where, you know, college student destroyed by, you know, so and so, pundant when he visited a college campus or whatever.
Mateo: 12:11 – So this kind of aggressive language, it’s attractive to certain people and it piques your curiosity, makes you want to click.
Mike: 12:17 – So setting up a bit of a confrontation, right? It’s kind of like train wreck kind of stuff. Gotta click.
Mateo: 12:24 – You know, you want to dominate the search results with this one SEO trick. Like that’s, you know, so that can work, right, depending on your audience. And you can have fun with that kind of a tone. Sometimes you can, I know John likes to be a little bit irreverent, and that tends to get noticed because yeah, you know, you want to be kind of confrontational, kind of feisty. So that’s one kind of lens. The other one is the benefit-driven kind of a lens. And this is geared more towards like analytical people, people who basically need like a rational reason to do something.
Mateo: 13:04 – I need to understand, I need to have like a, a clear, logical reason to take the next step of clicking this ad.
Mike: 13:10 – The Spocks.
Mateo: 13:10 – Yeah. The Spocks of the world. Exactly.
Mike: 13:13 – Mr. Spock needs a reason to buy this product.
Mateo: 13:16 – So, you’re showing the benefits of your service or your program, you’re using numbers, data, statistics, that kind of thing.
Mateo: 13:26 – So it’s kind of data driven and it’s really like you’ve gotta show them the logic, you gotta to show them the data and you’ve got to give them kind of clear links between everything.
Mateo: 13:34 – Yeah. I’ve seen a quote, I don’t know if this—a couple of people have been given credit for coining this quote or for saying this quote. You know, numbers are like brain candy, right? Our brains are attracted to numbers.
Mateo: 13:50 – And so if you’re throwing that in there, you know, especially for the more analytical people, your ad might get noticed a little bit more.
Mike: 13:57 – Top five reasons your gym is failing.
Mateo: 14:00 – Exactly. The most famous one that I could think of is, you know, Geico, 15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance. Very effective headline, very effective ad copy. And you remember it. I remember it cause you know, well obviously they have commercials everywhere, but again, the numbers thing, right? And that’s the benefit, right? Your benefit for you is you could save 15% of your car insurance. So, that’s the benefit-focused lens. You said top five reasons, you know, 60, you know, all that stuff. The third one is the, you know, more inspirational lens, right? So this is the idea that you’re kind of highlighting what’s possible for your prospects after they use your services, right?
Mike: 14:52 – We’re talking cocoon and the butterfly here.
Mateo: 14:53 – Yes, exactly. And you know, something that we’ve used for Two-Brain is, you know, learn how to market your business on Facebook with zero technical knowledge, right? It’s like you’re already starting to kind of overcome some of—you’re starting to handle some objections that I was like, Oh, I don’t want to use Facebook ads cause I’m, you know, computer illiterate. Like don’t worry, learn how to do it with zero technical knowledge, right? Zero technical experience. I’m not a techie person or the, you know, Facebook marketing for your gym, for the non-computer geek or whatever. Right? That’s kinda the idea.
Mike: 15:32 – So that’s an aspirational kind of thing, right? Like that’s aspirational where you’re showing that you’re taking them, you know, you’re at a spot and maybe you think that you can’t get to this thing, but we’re going to show you how, and we’re gonna help you do it.
Mateo: 15:41 – Yeah. For the gym owners, right? Like, you know, the gym for non-gym people or you know, CrossFit for people who are scared of the gym. But that’s kind of the idea, right? You know, the six-week challenge, if you’re talking about that, if you’re talking about some kind of a program, your ad copy is going to mention like, you know, for total beginners, don’t worry, we can take you from zero to hero in six weeks or whatever it is. Right? So that’s kind of the other lens, that you can kind of work with. So that was a long way of answering your question about yes, so tone is taken into consideration. I don’t know that we lead with that when we’re writing our ads. You know, we’re kind of just writing, kind of based on, you know, what comes out’s usually just kind of just like an aspect of our personalities. But you do want to think a little bit about your audience, and make sure that your tone reflects that.
Mike: 16:50 – Well, the reason, you know, the reason it comes out I think like that is because it’s hard wired for you. Like you’ve done this for so long, you know this stuff. It’s not like you’re looking up the three lenses or whatever every time you’re trying to write an ad, you’ve just got that in there where it’s like, I’ve got a challenge kind of ad, I’m going to write a second one that’s gonna be a little more inspirational. Like you’ve got this down. Again, like when I write blogs and stuff, I don’t have to sit there and go through like I don’t write an outline and things like that. It’s just I know the piece and I can go. But those ideas are super helpful for people out there who are trying to think of how can I frame an ad or I don’t know what to say. You sit down and you got the blinking cursor and they’re struggling. Those are three really good ways that people can now take a look at presenting an offer.
Mateo: 17:29 – Oh no, I was just gonna—you made me think of something. The other cool part is it, you can write an ad with all three lenses, and what’s great about Facebook is it’s going to tell you which one wins better. You know what I mean? Or does better, right? Facebook will pick the winner or show you the winner for you, so then you know for next time, okay, well my audience really responds to this kind of a tone or doesn’t.
Mike: 17:49 – And that goes back to what you said before where you’re testing stuff. So it’s like whatever you write, if it doesn’t work, write something different, then try that again, then test it and start evaluating. You also talked a little bit, we won’t get into the weeds with it, but you’ve talked about dynamic creative, where if you are really good at writing stuff, you can write a whole bunch of different stuff. Let Facebook serve it up to people and then Facebook will tell you, this one sucks. It’s out. This one is working really well. More people are gonna see it. Correct?
Mateo: 18:14 – 100%. Yeah. I mean, John does that. He writes like five to 10 headlines and you’re able to plug them all in and it’ll match it up with all the different images, different ad copy that you wrote, and it’ll find for you the winning combo.
Mike: 18:28 – Okay. So we won’t get into the details of that because that’s a lot of people aren’t gonna be able to just crank out five. Like John can do it like a machine. You can do it. A lot of people, you know, all those combos are gonna be tough. They’re thinking about how do I write one thing? We’ll give some advice here. What are some do’s, essential stuff for ad copy when you’re writing, what is some stuff you just, you kind of have to do?
Mateo: 18:51 – Well, what you could do is just sign up for Two-Brain and we’ve got a catalog of ad copy that we’ve tested that you don’t have to write for yourself and you can copy and paste right into your Facebook ads manager. You don’t have to worry about a single thing.
Mike: 19:08 – So you just need to know control A, control V.
Mateo: 19:10 – Yeah, exactly. Yep. You just copy paste and you’re good to go there. So that’s step one. Step two is yes. If you’re trying to you know, get involved yourself, step two would be find a professional and have them do it for you. You know, that’s the other way, especially if you’re an entrepreneurial minded and you’re trying to set up systems and you’re trying to get to your Perfect Day where you’re just sitting on the couch drinking coffee and then coming in to coach two classes and then you’re done.
Mateo: 19:41 – And then you get to play with the dog. Yeah. You want to find someone to be able to do this for you. If you’re not there yet and you need to kind of innovate and do it yourself, you know, something that helped us, I know that has helped me is there are a lot of templates online that can kind of help you get started, right? You don’t want to rely on templates because then all your ads will start to sound like a robot made them, but they can at least help you get your mind going in the right direction and it’ll kind of help you understand the flow and then you can start to inject, you know, what’s really relevant for your audience and then you put in your personality and all that good stuff. So I mean, if we’re talking headlines, for example, this might not be completely relevant for the ads we write for gym owners, but one I’ve seen is, you know, end result that your people in your audience want plus a time period and then plus like an objection-handling thing.
Mateo: 20:46 – Right? You know, increase walk-ins this month without paying Zuckerberg for ads, right?
Mike: 20:56 – That’s all three.
Mateo: 20:56 – That would be a headline maybe we might write for the gym owners. Maybe if you are creating an ebook, maybe a recipe book for people in your audience and you’e a gym owner, how to make gluten-free pizza in 10 minutes under five bucks. That could be another headline and that’s again, just following that really simple formula I just gave you.
Mike: 21:23 – Say that formula for me one more time.
Mateo: 21:24 – So it will be end result that the person wants plus the time period plus plus handle the objection. People you know, want to eat paleo, but they know it’s expensive. So if you had a paleo cookbook, you know, that headline could be, like I said, how to make gluten-free pizza in under 10 minutes for under five bucks.
Mike: 21:45 – Lose 20 pounds in six weeks without working out.
Mateo: 21:47 – Exactly. I don’t even know if either of those things are possible. What we just said. I don’t know if you can get ingredients for a gluten-free pizza for under five bucks. I don’t think you can lose weight without working out, but yes, that’s kind of like, you know, one way to go about it. Another one is, you know, take this action plus this time period plus the end result. Right? So, watch my video series. It’ll take five minutes, become an expert closer or whatever, become an expert at sales, just making stuff up here. But that’s kinda the idea, right? And there are tons of formulas out there. Those are just two that I Googled before this talk to kind of jog my memory of where I’ve seen them and what I’ve used before.
Mike: 22:41 – And there’s infinite variations you can start to play with, I’m sure, when you have your offer in mind, you can then tailor those things and kind of play with things a little bit. And by always linking them up to features and benefits and some of the lenses that you talked about.
Mateo: 22:52 – Exactly. So that’s your headline, and I mean that’s not an exhaustive talk on headlines. There’s so much more that we could go into about writing effective, clickable headlines.
Mike: 23:07 – Hold on. Mateo, hold on. Chris Cooper just handed me some ad copy here. I’m just going to test it out for you. Give me one sec. Hi guys. Before we go any further with Mateo, I want to ask you a question. Remember when pictures of bloody hands and vomit attracted clients to your gym? That was a thing, but it stopped working in about 2011. It’s also not enough to be a great coach or programmer. The key to success in 2020 is building a personal relationship with each client, then helping that client’s friends and family. Total ad spend: zero bucks. The average gym owner can also add 45 grand a year in revenue just by keeping each client a few months longer. Two-Brain’s new affinity marketing and retention guides will give you everything you need to know. These are lead magnets. You can get both and 13 others for free. Visit TwoBrainbusiness.com/free-tools. Is that ad copy any good or do we want to redo that?
Mateo: 23:55 – Oh man, I mean it went so fast. I’d love to like break it down piece by piece, but like the one thing—let’s talk about the first part, right? So if you’re trying to write the body of your text for your ad copy, there’s a few ways you can start. The first one is not the first one, but one of the popular ones, which Chris literally just, what you just read hits is, ask the question, right? So, what you’re talking about is you need, you need a hook, right? The first piece is like a hook. Well, the first piece, you got to get their attention. You’ve got to get their attention. That’s what the headline’s for the or the image or whatever it is. You’ve got to get their attention.
Mateo: 24:38 – You got to get them to stop scrolling, right? So that’s what your headline is. That’s what your picture is. And we can talk about pictures in a little bit here, but you’re trying to get them to stop scrolling. Once they stop scrolling, you’ve got about like five seconds for them to like maybe read a little bit and you need to hook them in that amount of time. So itThat needs to happen right away, right at the top of that body of the Facebook ad text. And so, there are many ways to do a hook. And one of them is the one that you just said, which is, ask the question. And so it was like, you remember when you used to see those images and then it’s like, ah, I remember that. Or it’s like, hey, quick question, are you looking to lose weight in six weeks? Or hey, quick question. Have you ever tried eating paleo but it’s too expensive? You know, all those.
Mike: 25:27 – Cause the brain wants to answer, right? The brain just wants to answer.
Mateo: 25:30 – So that’s the ask-the-question kind of way of starting off your ad copy.
Mike: 25:37 – So that’s a good point that you’ve made. Like just I want to really emphasize like what you just said is you have minimal time to get someone’s attention. That’s why you like on YouTube, when you see an ad pop up on a video that you’ve clicked the video, you want, an ad pops up and you can skip in five seconds or whatever. They’ve got five seconds to get your attention. They’re front loading everything into that five seconds to try and get you watch more and not hit skip. So a big action item guys is when you’re writing ad copy is you got to get that front, the very first part has to be something that impacts people.
Mateo: 26:07 – Yeah, I mean another one, I used to do Facebook live videos in the group for our clients. And I would go over some of these ads that we would see. Someone who was in our space, not a obviously direct competitor, but like the guy who does kinobody, Greg O’Gallagher, he’s gone viral cause he has that YouTube video where he pretends he’s like Bruce Wayne and he basically sells like an online training program. It’s like a PDF and teaches like macro stuff. And I think he also like now sells supplements. But anyway, he has a really, really great ad and it says, quick question, have you ever wondered how Hollywood celebrities get so shredded so fast, so quickly for their roles? That is a great hook cause like, yeah, I have wondered that and a lot of people in our audience, a lot of guys especially are probably asking that same question and then he goes and breaks it down.
Mateo: 27:01 – So anyway, asking a question is a great way to hook a hook your reader. Another one is use an anecdote, and that’s kind of sort of, this ad copy kind of combined the two. It was both a question and like an anecdote of like this used to be that thing you would see, remember. And the anecdote’s like a relatable story, right? That you can use to grab people’s attention. And that was a relatable story. We used to see those posts of bloodied hands on Instagram after the Open or just working out all the time.
Mike: 27:35 – And then all the Navy SEALs and military guys and girls signed up for CrossFit. Now we’ve got to find someone else.
Mateo: 27:40 – Yeah. And using an anecdote is great cause it also allows you to build rapport and connect with your prospect. It makes you seem like, oh, like you’re a real human who’s had real experiences like I have, know what I mean?
Mike: 27:52 – Chris is good for that. Cooper’s great at that.
Mateo: 27:52 – He’s a master at that. If we’re talking about ad copy, you gotta stop, get people’s attention. That’s I guess step one and step two is you got to hook them.
Mike: 28:08 – Okay. I’m going to skip t, the thing that I think might be—you tell me if I’m right. I think this might be the second most important thing after that first, you know, grab their attention. You got to give them a call to action. Am I right?
Mateo: 28:22 – Yeah. That’s at the end for sure.
Mike: 28:25 – If I miss something, fill it in.
Mateo: 28:28 – Yeah, that’s definitely the last step. But once you hook them, you kind of want to start talking to them about, you know, you’re highlighting some problem and then you’re going to talk about your awesome, the benefit of your service or some kind of promised solutions.
Mike: 28:55 – Features and benefits, transformational stuff, aspirational things, motivational stuff, everything that’s going to tell people how they’re going to get from their current state to their desired state via your product or service.
Mateo: 29:06 – Exactly. Couldn’t have said it better than you just did right now. So, again this is almost kind of formulaic and you know, we talked about how you want to be careful of that stuff, but yeah, it’s like ever wonder how Hollywood celebrities get shredded so quickly? How do they do it? Well you can now get shredded this summer with our awesome six-week challenge for a limited time only at half the price. So you’re highlighting that kind of benefit or your promise or whatever it is that your program is going to do for people who are, you know, in your audience, right? Another way to do that instead of the Hollywood thing is like, are you looking to get shredded this summer? Get shredded this summer with our six-week challenge, right? Like you can’t use that on Facebook which is why I’m talking about it now. Like you won’t get approved with that kind of an ad, but that’s kinda the way you want to think about it, right? You want to ask the question and then provide like, you know, have you ever got started with a fitness routine and then just stopped? Well, do you want to like stick to one and actually get results? Join our six-week challenge for a limited time only, it’s half off. So it’s just a very simple promise-based kind of piece of text.
Mike: 30:28 – Yeah. And one of the things that you mentioned in one of your, I think the third example, previous, was some scarcity. You know, you said limited time here and that’s one of those ones that definitely in copy seems to motivate people. There’s a current video game that I’m playing and you know, there’s some stuff that you can buy and when it says, you know, you can buy it, I don’t care, but when it says expiring soon, I want to buy it. Right. That scarcity definitely motivates people.
Mateo: 30:50 – Yeah. We’re bouncing around, but yes, 100%. If you can work in scarcity and urgency, especially when you get around to asking about taking action, you definitely want to do that. And that’s why I said, you know, there’s no really one template for this cause you can put that in various places. You know, just depending on how you want the copy to flow, you can put at the beginning, you could put at the end, you can put in the middle, you can repeat it over and over and just say it in different ways. If you’re doing long-form copy, you know, there’s no one right way to do that. So you your hook. You’re stopping them from scrolling, you’re getting their attention, you’ve got your hook, and then you’ve got your awesome promise or your benefit of your service or your promise and then everything else under that, it’s just going to support that, right?
Mateo: 31:43 – So everything you’re writing should support and lead back to that either by talking about social proof, so, you know, are you looking to get shredded this summer, get shredded this summer with our ultimate six-week challenge for a limited time, only at half the price. This is the same six-week challenge that’s been given five stars by 1000 Hoboken locals. Or this six-week challenge designed by Mateo Lopez, trainer to the celebrities. Or this six-week challenge was designed by scientists in a lab from the CrossFit kingdom and so you know it’s gonna work. You know, something like that where you’re supporting the benefit or you’re supporting what you’re claiming, right? You’re supporting your promise.
Mike: 32:30 – Structure around that claim and you’re proving it, basically, it’s telling people why it’s gonna work or why they should trust you or, you know, building your authority essentially.
Mateo: 32:41 – And the next thing you want to do is you want to make sure that this relates back to the reader. You may have already done some work if you started with your hook as like an anecdotal story. So that’s kind of in that ad you read me from Chris, he kinda did that. This is a relatable story, so you’re already—
Mike: 32:59 – I won’t blame Chris for that one. That was me. I won’t pin my mistakes on Chris.
Mateo: 33:01 – Oh well there you go. You already kind of started to do that, but if you haven’t in your ad copy, you know, you can transition back to the reader and be like, basically you’re just saying, if you’re this kind of person with this kind of situation, then this program is the right one for you, right?
Mike: 33:26 – You’re qualifying a little bit.
Mateo: 33:27 – Exactly. If you’re a Hoboken local looking to get in shape but don’t know where to start, then this program is for you. Right? That kind of transitioning there to tie it back to the person reading. So the last piece is what you said, Mike, is that final call to action. So what do you want them to actually do? If you’re ready to get started, if you’re ready to get shredded this summer, click the link below and book your intro at the gym today or download this paleo cookbook now to be the master at gluten-free pizzas and impress all your friends, whatever it is.
Mike: 34:09 – It’s funny cause you don’t see it all that often. But if you look at ads enough you will see ads that forget a call to action. And there are some funny ones I’ve seen people put up where it’s like they’ve got what looks to be an okay ad and then there’s just nothing. It’s like there was a funny one, it wasn’t a good ad, but someone put it up in the group the other day. Pardon me. And it was like a snow-clearing service or something like that. And there was just, I’ll do this, here’s the price, here’s the thing, here’s the benefit. And there was like no phone number, no contact info or something like that. And it was like a flyer that someone had printed and no call to action equals no sales.
Mateo: 34:41 – Where I see this error the most actually is on people’s websites. It’s like people will land on someone’s website and there’s no kind of a benefit or promise or a brand promise or benefit to the reader. And there’s no call to action on the site when they land there. Like there’s nothing.
Mike: 35:00 – Book a call.
Mateo: 35:00 – Exactly. Book your intro, book now. Looking to get in shape? Book your intro now. Like that’s that’s really a simple—you have to have at least that on your website.
Mike: 35:21 – How do I do this thing? How do I do the thing that you’re telling me to do?
Mateo: 35:25 – Exactly. So we bounced around a lot there, but that’s essentially the flow for writing. You know, that’s like the 101, the basic, just like if you want to get just something written down that can be effective, that’s kind of the flow. But again, it really comes down to the offer, you know, get shredded this summer with a free six-week challenge, I mean, that’s gonna get a lot more clicks than the one we just wrote 10 seconds ago. You know, I mean, now not everyone can offer that, so there’s somewhere in the middle between those two where I think, you know, there’s kind of the sweet spot if you can get there.
Mike: 36:09 – So I’ll give you from listening to this and learning here, I’ll give you a summary and you tell me if I’m astray here. You wanna you want to catch their attention early with a headline and the very first line or two, maybe five seconds, whatever it is, you got to capture attention. After that, you’re going to, you know, present your offer and support it with either social proof, expertise, authority, research data, something like that. And that can go on very—that can be a short thing or it can be a long thing. I’ve seen you guys write long and short ads, see which one performs better. And then you’re gonna try and relate this to the person’s needs and benefits. Likely you’re going to swing it back their way. You know, people like, you need this thing or have succeeded with this thing.
Mateo: 36:50 – You’ve been suffering with this problem for this long. Like this is the solution here.
Mike: 36:54 – Yup. And then you’re going to close by telling them what to do. And I think if our listeners take a look at ads that they see or listen to stuff, Super Bowl ads are coming up, big ones are coming up. Take a listen to stuff. If you listen to these ads and look at them, you’re going to see those parts in there, and you’re going to see variations of it and you’re going to see some really clever, weird stuff that brilliant people come up with and totally break the mould. And that’s like, that’s where some pretty professional people come up with some amazing stuff that you’ll see probably in the Super Bowl, but they’re all going to have some elements of that in there.
Mateo: 37:25 – Mike, you summarize it better than I could and that was amazing.
Mike: 37:29 – Well, I’m taking your info and just spitting it right back at you. So, people out there, Mateo, you brought this up, if people are listening and they’re just like, I do not want to do this, at Two-Brain, we do have stuff that you can cut and paste. You don’t have to figure out ad copy yourself. Correct?
Mateo: 37:45 – Correct. Or like, you know, do what I did, which was just spy on everyone else’s and see what people in your neighbors, your industry are doing and see what’s working. And then you know, don’t reinvent the wheel. Just make it your own. Look at the big franchises, right? I mean, Orangetheory, their offer is pretty much the same every time. And they’re just kinda rotating through different images and different ways of phrasing it. But it’s try a free class, book a free class. That’s it. That’s all they really pump out. And they just present that in a different way, remix it when they need to refresh their campaigns. But, so that’s an option, right? Look at the Orangetheory, go to the business’ page on Facebook, go to page transparency and go to the ad library and you can just see what people are doing around you and see what’s working and go from there.
Mike: 38:45 – And of course, as we always recommend, test. Check your data. If you write something you think is great, but the market thinks it sucks, then it therefore sucks. If you think it’s bad and the market thinks is great and it’s crushing it and bringing you leads, you need to hit more of that. So check your data all the time. It’s not like it was in the past where you would just throw something up and just hope it works. Now you can check it, alter and then recreate stuff that really works. So always check it out. Look at your data. I’m going to give you a call to action right here. I’m Mike Warkentin with Mateo Lopez. This is Two-Brain Radio. Please remember to subscribe for more great shows. And if you’re a gym owner and if you need some help growing your business, Two-Brain managers can show you the exact steps to add $5,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Book a free call on TwoBrainbusiness.com to find out more iv you’re a person who wants to do this. I don’t know. Did I close it out Mateo? Is that okay? It wasn’t bad.
Mateo: 39:34 – I think you got the job done, Mike.
Mike: 39:36 – All right, we’re good. All right, thanks for listening guys. We’ll catch you next time on Two-Brain Radio.
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