Shadow me on a Copywriting Job

DANNY MARGULIES

Watch me do a copywriting job from start to finish

Some things are easy to learn from someone telling you how to

do them. Like:

• Putting on a hat

• Clapping your hands

• Boiling an egg

But there are other things you just have to watch someone else

do first in order for you to really get it. Examples:

• Parallel parking

• Ironing a shirt

• Freelance copywriting (this is the one we’re mainly

concerned with here today)

Most jobs are like this. When I was 17 and started waiting on

tables, they didn’t hand me a manual and say, “read this.” They

paired me up with an experienced waitress and said, “follow her

around and watch everything she does!”

They call this shadowing, and they do it in a million different

industries, from air traffic control to welding.

Today I’m going to let you shadow me on a freelance copywriting

job.

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I’ll walk you through the entire process, start to finish. You’ll see exactly what I did, how I did it, and even what I was thinking every step of the way.

And once you see me go through the steps, it will be 10x easier for

you to do it, too.

NOTE: This happens to be an email copywriting job. But

copywriting is copywriting. With a little tweaking you can apply

these exact same lessons to just about any form of copywriting

imaginable.

Everything starts with the brief

Before you even think about writing anything, you need to get a

brief from your client.

The word “brief” sounds formal, like a meeting where everyone’s

wearing suits and holding dossiers with charts and graphs

and whatnot. But in reality it’s usually just an email or a phone

conversation where the client gives you key information about

the project (for example, how many words you need to write).

Some briefs are more thorough than others.

I’ve worked with clients who hand you a mind-blowingly

detailed brief that reads like a Freudian psychoanalysis of their

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target customer. These are usually bigger, more sophisticated

companies.

But many of the small businesses you’ll be working with — at least

for a while — will give you some basic information and send you

off to the races. That’s perfectly OK. I’ve worked with briefs that

are little more than a Dunkin Donuts napkin with three sentences

scribbled on it. The only thing that matters is that you get enough information to do your job.

If the client’s brief doesn’t tell you everything you need to know,

you can and should ask questions to help you fill in the blanks.

Again, totally normal. Just make sure you ask them all at once.

The last thing the client wants is to get constant emails from

you throughout the project. It’s annoying and it reduces his

confidence in you.

In the job you’re shadowing me on, the client’s brief was a simple email that contained the following info:

• The type of business I was writing for — a pest control

company

• The goal of the emails I was hired to write — to get readers

to schedule a free pest inspection

• Who the emails were being sent to — mostly middle aged

women with families

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• The types of services the company offered — rodent

removal, bedbug removal, etc. (each email would pitch a

different service)

• How many emails were needed — 12 (they planned to send

their customers one email per month for a year)

Could I have used more information than this? Sure. But this was

enough to get the job done. Remember, that’s all you care about.

Now that you understand the basics of what a brief looks like, I’m

going to show you the exact details of how I tackled this job.

First, let’s talk about…

The secret to nailing a freelance copywriting job

One of the most common questions I get from new copywriters

is:

“What if I do all the work, only to find out the client doesn’t like

any of it?”

The answer is: You don’t do all the work.

Yes, you heard me right. You do not do all the work.

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You do a little bit of the work. Then you show that little bit to the

client to make sure he likes it before you do the rest.

I call this the Green Light Method. I’ve been using it for years, and

it’s one of the “secrets” of my success.

In the job we’re discussing, I initially wrote and sent the client

the first email only. Then, once he approved it, I went ahead and

wrote the rest. And I did it with full confidence that he would love

it because I knew I was on the right track.

But for argument’s sake, let’s pretend he wanted me to make

some changes to that first email. Since it’s just one email, it

wouldn’t be hard to do. Meanwhile, I’d be learning exactly what

he wanted the rest of the emails to look like so I could nail those

going forward.

With the Green Light Method, you win either way.

I can’t tell you how many freelance copywriters go off and write

all 12 emails in one shot. Then, if the client isn’t happy, they’re

completely screwed. They have to go back and rewrite them all!

To be a top freelance copywriter, you need to make sure you’re on

the right track before 95% of your work is done.

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The psychology of a winning outline

Now that you’ve been briefed and you have a game plan for

ensuring the client will love your final copy, it’s time to write an

outline.

There are 3 big benefits to having an outline:

1. It makes it easier to write the email (since it gives you a

“roadmap” to follow)

2. You can use the same outline for all 12 emails, making your

job and life way easier

3. You can even send the client the outline for his approval,

before you write a single word of the actual copy

Keep in mind we’re not just writing an outline that sounds nice.

We need to craft it strategically so it’ll have a good chance of

achieving the results the client is looking for.

The best way to do it is to begin with the end in mind.

From the client’s brief, we know two things for sure about what

this email needs to look like when it’s finished:

• It needs to offer one specific pest inspection service (e.g.

black widow spider inspection)

• It needs to end with us asking the reader to schedule a free

pest inspection

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So, working backwards from there…

What do we have to say to the reader in order to motivate her to

want to schedule her free inspection?

How about telling her how the free inspection can benefit her?

OK, good start. But how can we make it better?

What about mentioning the dangers that each pest poses to the

reader and her family? That gives her even more motivation to

take you up on your offer. Getting better…

But there’s still room for improvement.

Can you see how?

Here’s a hint: How can we make sure the reader opens and reads all 12 of the emails the client is going to send her?

Keep in mind that most people won’t take the free inspection on

the first few emails. Just like you don’t jump at most of the free

offers that make their way to your inbox.

So we need to avoid the reader seeing an email from our client

and thinking, “Oh, they’re just trying to get me to do a free

inspection so they can try to sell me afterward. No thanks!”

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Instead, we need to get her to think, “Hey, I like these guys! They

send emails that are really helpful and useful. I’ll keep opening

them, even if I’m not interested in their free pest inspection just

yet.”

Did you catch that? The key to writing a good marketing email

is in the above paragraph. It’s being helpful and useful. (Sonia

Simone from Copyblogger calls this the cookie content approach.)

So… How can we be helpful and useful to the reader while also

achieving our goal of getting her to keep reading our emails — and

ultimately schedule a free pest inspection?

How about giving her some expert tips on how to avoid and prevent infestations in her home?

Sounds like a great option, doesn’t it? I mean, what mom doesn’t

want to protect her family from harmful pests, right?

OK, let’s recap this real quick…

In order to achieve our goals, here’s what needs to get covered in

each email:

• Introduce a specific pest “threat”

• Educate the reader on why that threat is potentially

harmful to her and her family

• Give her tips on how to avoid and prevent the threat

• Offer her a free inspection to ensure she and her family are

100% pest free

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That’s it. We could complicate it, but there’s no need to. (And it

probably wouldn’t work as well.)

Those four points above were my entire outline for this project.

I sent it to the client with a quick explanation of why I thought it

would be effective, and he instantly approved.

Notice that all of the planning above is based on simple logic and

common sense.

For the most part, that’s all you need.

Next stop…

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Research

Sometimes clients give you everything you need and you don’t

need to do any additional research on your own.

For example, if you’re writing an About Us page for a web design

business, the brief will probably tell you everything you need to

know about the company.

But there are lots of copywriting jobs where you’ll want to do a bit

of extra fact finding beyond what the client gives you.

For instance, in the job you’re shadowing me on, I didn’t know

anything about:

• The specific dangers posed by pests like mice, bed bugs,

etc., or

• How to protect your home against pests

As you’ll recall from my outline, those are both things I needed

to know before I could start writing. I could have asked the client

about it, but why waste his time when I can easily Google it

instead? The less you rely on your clients to help you do a great

job, the more they’ll love you.

Time to consult Google…

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First, let’s look for the “scary” stuff that will help us motivate people to action:

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Next, let’s find some expert tips to help readers kick some pest ass:

Voila, there you have it.

Everything you need to know to write an email about black

widow spiders, right at your fingertips.

20 years ago this same type of research would have taken hours

or days.

It’s a great time to be a freelance copywriter.

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Write the headline

OK — you’ve got a solid brief, an outline, and you’re armed with

some expert pest control knowledge that will help you provide

value to the reader.

Now you’re finally ready to do some actual writing.

All copywriting starts with a headline. For emails, we usually call

this the subject line.

A lot of people over-complicate this part. But there are really only

two things your subject line needs to do:

• Get the person to keep reading

• Tell the truth

#2 isn’t just there for moral reasons.

It’s easy to get people to open an email with a headline that

overexaggerates, or says something crazy like, “iPhone 6s recalled

for spontaneous combustion.”

But your readers will be pissed when they see it’s bullshit.

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For email marketing, there are two basic strategies for writing

your subject line:

• The straightforward approach. This is where you tell

readers exactly what they’ll find out in the email. (e.g. Top

10 hairstyles for men)

• The curiosity approach. Here, you tease readers with a line

that makes them want to open the email, but doesn’t tell

them what they’ll find inside it. (e.g. Make all your friends

jealous)

I decided to give the client a couple of straightforward subject

line options:

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I tend to like the straightforward approach better than the

curiosity approach because:

• It’s less risky (a subject line like “Hey.” can easily backfire)

• A subject line about a deadly spider lurking inside your

house is pretty compelling and should get plenty of people

to open the email

Btw, the reason I included two options is because some clients

like to test out a couple of different headlines to see if one works

better. So it never hurts to give the client a couple to choose

from.

Write the beginning

Your introduction is very important, because it sets the stage for

the rest of the email.

If you mess it up, the person on the other end of it will click the

trash button almost immediately, without a second thought.

But if you do it right, she’ll happily read the whole email and may

even take you up on your offer at the end.

There are two things that will help make your introduction

successful:

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1. Expand on what you told her in the headline. The fact that

she opened the email means you’ve piqued her interest

with the subject line. But now you need to raise the stakes

in order to guarantee she reads the whole message. This

is where we’re going to tell her more about the specific

dangers black widow spiders pose to her and her family.

2. Build trust. People do business with people they trust.

Show her that you’re a helpful, friendly person who first

and foremost has her back. Don’t worry about selling right

now. Her inbox is bombarded by companies trying to sell

her things. She ignores 99.9% of them. The only way to get

her to let her guard down is by offering value first.

Take a look at what I ended up with — it’s simple but effective:

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Notice how I don’t say a word about the pest control company,

the services they provide, or the free inspection. Right now I’m

just building rapport and offering her something useful. She

doesn’t care about us. Why should she? She’s concerned with

making her life better. Always remember that.

Also notice how difficult it would be for her to stop reading the

copy at any given point. With every sentence she will want to

know how to avoid black widows more and more. One of my

favorite copywriters, Joe Sugarman, calls this the “slippery slope.”

I think about it every time I write a piece of copy.

Write the middle

Now that we’ve established rapport with the reader and started

to build trust in the introduction, it’s time to deliver on our

promise and give her some expert tips on how to stay safe from

black widow spiders.

This section of the email has two jobs. One is very

straightforward: Listing out the tips themselves in bullet point

format (bullets make them easy to read).

The other is a little more subtle. It’s where we transition into the

offer for the free inspection.

You don’t want to just jump from “here’s how to avoid black

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widows” to “want a free inspection?”. You need to connect the offer to the “value” portion of the email so that it feels like even more value (which it is).

Watch how I did it here:

Do you see how seamlessly that sets up the free inspection we’re

about to offer?

If we’d just gone straight from the tips to the offer, the copy

would start to feel like a sales pitch disguised as a value email.

The reader’s guard would shoot right back up.

Instead, we want the entire email to feel valuable.

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And we accomplish that by making sure that the transition stays

connected to the value:

Do-it-yourself tips → call for help if you see a black widow → btw,

since black widows are good at hiding, a professional inspection

is a good idea.

If you look closely you’ll see that the entire transition feels like

we’re just giving her additional tips — not segueing into an offer.

Write the end

Alright. You’ve established rapport with the reader, earned her

trust, delivered value — now it’s finally time to present your offer.

Here are some tried and true guidelines for writing this last

portion of the email:

1. Add scarcity to the offer.

You need to either limit the number of people who can redeem

the offer, or limit the amount of time it’s available.

Otherwise, people won’t respond. They’ll say, “I’ll think about this

later.” But when they close the email, they’ll forget about it and

never come back.

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Your offer will also feel less valuable to them if there’s no limit on

it, because we value things more when they’re scarce.

(When was the last time you were thankful for air?)

2. Mention at least one benefit.

No one cares about a free pest inspection, 50% off of teeth

whitening, or a complimentary singing lesson.

They care about keeping their family safe, having an attractive

smile, and becoming the next American Idol. In other words,

they’re interested in the big benefit of the offer, not the offer

itself. So make sure to mention that when you present it.

3. Write a very specific call to action.

This isn’t the time to be subtle. Be direct and tell the reader

exactly what to do next. Be specific — don’t give vague

instructions.

If there’s any doubt about how to take action, your reader won’t

do anything at all. There’s no such thing as being too detailed

here.

4. Include a “PS”.

Most people will skim your copy, not read every word. Adding a

PS section at the very end acts as a safety net…you can’t skim past

the last line!

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This is a great place to repeat the offer, the scarcity, and the call

to action.

That’s it, you’re done. Congratulations!

I could walk you through the remaining 11 emails, but the process

for each one was exactly the same. Except they were even less

work since we front-loaded a lot of the effort.

That’s the beauty of having a proven system. Each job may be a

little different, but this is the same basic process I — and other

copywriters I’ve mentored — have successfully used thousands

of times before. And with a little bit of effort, it will work for you,

too.

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Frequently asked questions

What did you do when you were done writing the copy?

When I finish a piece of copy I put it away and don’t look at it for

at least one full day. Then I go back and read it over. I guarantee

that when you do this you will find some mistakes or areas you

can improve. You can repeat this process multiple times if you

want to.

What software did you use to write the copy?

I write everything in Google Docs. It’s free, simple, and easy to

use.

How did you send the copy to the client?

Once it was done, I put it into a Microsoft Word Document and

emailed it to him.

What do you do if a client doesn’t know how many emails he needs?

When that happens, I always recommend that we start off with 5.

It’s a good number to start with — not too many, not too few.

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How did you get paid?

Since I found this client on Upwork, he put the entire payment

into escrow before I started working. When I finished, the

payment was released to me quickly and easily.

Should I use Upwork too?

Yes. I used it to make over $115,000 in a single year.

I want to become a copywriter, but I don’t have experience. How do I get started?

Use my Crystal Ball Technique. It’s the fastest way to go from

having no experience to getting your first paid copywriting job

and beyond.

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About Me

In 2012, I quit my job and decided to try my hand at freelancing

despite having no experience, no formal training or education,

and no network whatsoever.

Within 24 months, I’d already closed my first six-figure year.

Today I’m helping others live their dream of being well paid online

freelancers too on my blog Freelance To Win.

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