7 Step Copywriting Tutorial

I've been a professional copywriter for 7+ years and a copy coach to over 400 copywriters. Today I'm going to give you a complete seven step copywriting tutorial with formulas and examples. So you can write copy, even if you've never done it before. 

Let's get started. 

The first three steps are all research. If you try to sit down and write copy without doing any research, you're going to write crappy copy. So don't do that. Write good copy. 

Let's start with step one. 

Step one is a research step. Know your avatar. What that means is you have to know exactly who you're writing to. You're not writing to everybody. You're writing to one specific person with one specific problem. 

So to get started, you have to think about the product or service you're selling and ask yourself… 

• How old are the typical customers? 
• Are they male or female? What's the split? Is it a 60/40 ratio of male to female? Is it 70/30? 
• What kind of attitude do they have? What kind of beliefs do they have? Where are they in life? 
• Envision your avatar’s typical day. What are the emotional pains and desires that they go through?

Specifically, you want to know the demographics. Aka, where they come from, how old they are, that kind of stuff. 

You also want to know their main pain point. Most sales of products and services are driven by the pain point. 

What is the main pain point that's driving their purchase?

For example, if someone buys a hair loss product, it's because they're looking in the mirror, seeing their hair start thinning and then start panicking and thinking things like oh my god I'm losing my hair, girls are not going to like me, etc. That's what drives them to make a purchase. 

So you have to know the pain point. You have to know the emotional benefit they’re after. 

How do you find all this stuff? 

You can go read reviews on Amazon, poke around on Reddit, or wherever or your avatar might hang out. 

If it's a diabetes product, then go hang out on diabetes subreddits. If it's a Keto product, go hang out on keto subreddits. Figure out what it is like to try to lose weight. You have to know what your avatar’s life is like. 

I'm gonna give you a secret tip here. If you can talk to a real life example of your avatar, that is the best possible solution. That is the best possible way to do research and know your avatar. 

For example, if you are trying to sell a fitness product, go talk to people who bought fitness products before and ask them why they bought. Ask them what they want. That's step one. 

Step two, you have to understand your marketplace. 

What does that mean? That means that you act like your customer. Go to the internet and pretend you’re them and you’re looking for the solution. Click ads, read emails, etc. If it's a dietary supplement, go try to figure out how to buy diabetes supplements.

Do research the way your customer would.

Then you'll start getting pitched stuff and can look at how other products are being sold.

After this, you’ll know your marketplace. You’ll know what other products are being pitched, who your competitors are, and how their products are being sold. 

When you find competitor products, here are some questions to ask. What benefits are they pitching? What kind of words are they using? 

Whatever language they’re using in their ads is there because it works. Most of the stuff that you see has been tested. So you can trust the benefits they’re pitching and the pain points they’re hitting on. 

Now we’re approaching the final research step. I teach research in three phases. Marketplace, product, customer. 

Step three is dissecting your offer. This is the final research step. What does that mean? That means to use whatever product or service you’re selling. 

Act like your customer. Use it. See how it works. And what you're specifically doing here is using it like your customer would and thinking about it the way they would. 

While doing this, you want to figure out your unique selling proposition; your USP. What that means is, how is this particular product superior to other products in the marketplace? Is it easier? Is it cheaper? Or is it more expensive and higher value? What is it that makes your product superior? 

You want to break it down to just one big idea of how it's superior. 

You're also looking for the unique mechanism. This is connected to the USP. Your unique mechanism is how your product works to fix the problem in a different way than competitor’s products. Does it fix your prospect’s problem in a unique way that other products don't do?

Step four is to plan your copy piece. 

Copy is broken down into ingredients. A piece of copy, like a landing page or email, is kind of like a recipe.

You've got a bunch of ingredients that are common in each. And they're mixed together in a certain way to create a recipe.

Certain elements are added here, certain elements there. 

What are these copy elements? 

Some of the different copy ingredients include… 

- Your vehicle

- Your benefit

- Even if statements

- Without statements

- Ease/convenience 

- Proof

- Dimensionalization

You can learn more about these copy ingredients in depth in my free book High Income Copy Templates.

Once you've got all these ingredients filled out, you're ready to put them together into a recipe.

It's kinda like, you've collected your ingredients and now you're gonna craft the recipe with it. 

Step five is to outline your copy piece. 

So you want to create the logic skeleton. You're basically taking people from the point of awareness they're starting at, and leading them to an action you want them to take. 

You want an airtight logic sequence that brings them from the point they enter, which is whatever grabs their attention, to making the purchase.

The first thing you want to think about here is your customer's awareness level. I've seen tons of writers make mistakes here. 

Imagine you walk into a car dealership, and you already know that you want to buy a Ferrari sports car. Then the car salesman walks up to you and starts pitching you with a 20 minute long thing on how you should get a Ferrari sports car. 

In that specific case you’ll probably be like, bro, I already want a sports car. So all this is just boring me and making me lose my interest.

Whereas if he just came in and said… hey, you want a Ferrari sports car? Here are the different options. What type do you like? What color do you like? Here it is. This is much more likely to get a sale because it’s starting at the customer’s awareness level. 

So what you want to think about when it comes to your product, is what your customer’s awareness level is.

Start there, and then..

Construct a logic sequence with all these copy ingredients that lead them to the purchase.

Once you've got your outline, you are ready to write. And that is step six. You write your copy piece. 

This is simple. You’ve got your outline already, so you just fill it out. Write a little block copy for each section of your outline. And boom, you've got your first draft. 

Now here's one important thing for when you're writing. This is where most people get writer's block. The key here is, you have to be okay with your writing being imperfect on the first draft. 

First drafts usually suck. The magic comes out in the editing process. When you're writing, try not to judge yourself. Just keep writing. If it sucks, that's okay. 

Just keep writing and finish it. Later you can go back and start editing. 

That leads us to step seven, which is to edit your copy. 

Most writers actually skip this, but it’s a very important step. 

When editing, you want to focus on… 

Simplification 

Simplify your copy. Your copy should be at a fourth grade reading level, so that anyone can read it and understand it. If you have big sentences, chop them up into smaller sentences. Make it easier to understand. If you have big words, use simpler words. Make it conversational.

Clarity 

Is anything unclear? Make it more clear using power verbs. Instead of saying something like “you will be able to” increase your copywriting income. Say, increase your copywriting income. 

Use verbs that are in the present tense, past tense or future tense. Don't add stuff like “you will be able to” or “you will gain the ability to” or “you will have been”, etc. Clear those out and replace them with power verbs. Those are active and are more powerful. 

Specification and Visualization

If I had to teach one thing in the editing process, it’s to be more specific. Anytime I read your copy and have to ask, what do you mean, I want you to be more specific and visual. 

Finally, find the lead. 

At the end of the editing process, what you want to do is look at all your best sentences and find all your best ideas and concepts. And then just bring those up into the lead, because those will grab attention the most. 

That's what the lead or the first 500 words need to do. They need to grab attention. This is the most important part because if it doesn’t grab a reader’s attention at the beginning, then they're not going to read the rest. 

So there you have it. That is my seven step process to write a piece of copy. If you want a done for you outline to follow that has all the steps, this $100 million copywriting system is yours today FREE.