Ultimate copywriting framework, Choosing a niche for your business and more...
Market Curve Episode XXX
Hey friends,
Welcome to Episode XXX of Market Curve - a bi-weekly newsletter exploring the intersection of marketing, writing and persuasion.
Ultimate Copywriting Framework by Mr. Direct Marketing
Nicknamed Mr. Direct Marketing by his peers, Bob Stone is a legend in the marketing and copywriting world. He died back in 2007 but his work still lives on.
One of the timely indicators of timelessness is ideas that stand the test of time. Yeah, I know there's a lot of "time" in there but it's for good reason.
Timeless principles are what you want to go for. If something has been around for a long time and hasn't been ripped to shreds by the brutal forces of the market, you know you've hit gold.
And that's what Bob Stone did.
He hit gold with each of his marketing campaigns.
He also hit gold when it came to sharing his ideas and frameworks when it came to writing successful copy.
So here is Bob's ultimate 8-step framework for copywriting.
Use it on your landing pages, email copy, what have you, and you will see results.
Step #1: Promise A Benefit In Your Headline Or First Paragraph – Your Most Important Benefit
Step #2: Immediately Enlarge Upon Your Most Important Benefit
Step #3: Tell The Reader Specifically What He Is Going To Get. Don’t overlook the intangibles that go along with your product or service
Step #5: Back Up Your Statements With Proof And Endorsements
Step #6: Tell The Reader What He May Lose If He Doesn’t Act
Step #7: Rephrase Your Prominent Benefits In Your Closing Offer
Step #8: Incite Action – NOW
By Shounak.
How to train your 24*7 online salesman to sell s**t even when you’re sleeping
Your landing page is your 24*7 online, never-sleeping salesman. Much better than your run-of-the-mill door-to-door salesman.
So when you go about writing your landing page copy, shouldn’t you spend some time making sure your salesman is all trim and proper? And most importantly, that he can close the sale?
You need a structure in place to make sure that you train your salesman to sell things while you sleep.
This is what I’ve tried to do in this guide. I’ve aptly labeled it as:
“42 questions to ask while editing your landing page copy”
To spy or not….
"Spying is wrong"
"No one likes an eavesdropper"
These are sentences we have come across sooner or later at some point in our lives.
So much so that sometimes we forget that spying is cool af. It's way cooler if you do it right.
Especially in business. You need to be a good spy (dare I say detective) in business. And you need to be a great detective while spying on your competition.
You need to know everything about them. Their team, their products, their features, their weak points, their biggest fear.
You need to know them better than they know themselves.
Because business is simply this.
"Finding a flaw in the existing solution and showing them how that flaw is costing the target market time and money"
While marketing your product (or while building it), take time to study your competitors, know them inside out. Take copious notes.
Remember to keep your friends close but your enemies closer.
By Shounak
How to choose a niche for your business
How many times have you heard the phrase "riches are in the niches?" And no, it is not a cliche.
Now that I have gotten my rhyming game on point, I want to show you how you can go about choosing your niche. So you can be rich.
In 8 (not so simple) steps ;)
Step 1: Open your eyes and look for problems around you in any niche, genre etc. The trick here is to question the status quo and find out what's wrong with the status quo. Write those down.
Step 2: Once you find those problems, find out in which markets those problems exist. Find out markets that have a significant number of players but not too much. It's even better if those players are incompetent and struggling
Step 3: Reduce the outputs in Step 2 to the ones you found in Step 1. In other words, you want to find the intersection of Set A and Set B, where Set A = output in Step 1 and Set B=output in Step 2.
Step 4: Find out what the average consumer is paying to solve these problems within the market. Delete markets where the ARPU is low.
Step 5: Find out if the market is long-term (>7 years) and you can play long-term games with long-term people. If not, delete it.
Step 6: Make a list of all the markets that remain and the corresponding solutions to problems within the market.
Step 7: Rank them on the basis of ease of doing it - how easy it is for you to execute within the market. Maybe you have experience within it, or you have a passion for it, etc. Basically, you want to align your personal desire with that of the market.
Step 8: Bring out the champagne! You've found your niche!
By Shounak
There’s something very special about sending a letter (albeit a virtual one) to people all across the world. We are now 150 people strong.
Back in school, my class strength was 50 and I used to shudder to speak in front of such a large audience. Those 50 felt like 500.
And now we are three times that size.
And we’ll keep on growing for sure.
And you know I can’t do this without your help.
So if you like the s**t I put out, then you can show your appreciation by doing any of the things below:
You can tweet me (free)
You can buy my landing page guide ($9)
You can buy a copy of my “landing page tech stack” ($9)
You can buy the first issue of my paid newsletter ($12)
You can buy a mini landing page roast ($49)
You can rent my time to live roast your landing page ($99)
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