If you’ve always wondered about content marketing, you’re not alone. It’s a confusing term and there’s no standard definition to describe what it means.

It really depends on your point of view.

Well, we have a point of view on this podcast, and it is the point of view of direct-response copywriting.

Now, to be sure, not EVERY word you write is part of a sales letter, even from our point of view.

But every word should lead in some way to a sales process at best or build up the business another way at worst.

And a lot of people get lost along the way, chasing shiny objects and striving for accomplishments that really don’t mean very much, outside of the momentary thrill of bragging rights.

We’re going to sort things out today so you can decide for yourself what matters and what you should be going after with your content marketing.

Links:

Cultish Content
https://cultishcontent.com/
Garfinkel Coaching

https://garfinkelcoaching.com

My new book, The Persuasion Story Code

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ

Social media can be a HUGE waste of time, but sometimes when you’re scrolling you come upon a gem.

I did last week, and it led to all kinds of crazy thoughts.

I was on Twitter/X, and I discovered this post by lesser known but A-plus screenwriting expert Tom Vaughan, who has written eight films.

On Twitter/X, he wrote:

I have noticed many younger writers prefer to forgo a romance in their screenplay. This is fine. You don't NEED a romance in a story that's not about the romance.

But you do need to fill that space. It's the RELATIONSHIP that is vital. A friend, parent, child, or sibling.

Audiences care about relationships. Perhaps more than anything else. And we want to see how those relationships affect the protagonists. For better and for worse. A key job with your screenwriting is to know the most important one in your story.

My first thought was, yeah, he’s right. Second thought: Uhh, I need to know more about this.

Third thought: OK, wiseguy, that’s fine for MOVIES. But what about copywriting?

I did some research and some thinking and you’ll be surprised how much the most famous ads in history involve relationships, as well as the most profitable one ever tracked.

I’ll share some interesting and useful information about all this today.

Resources

Tom Vaughan’s Twitter/X handle: @storyandplot

Tom Vaughan’s website:​​https://storyandplot.com/

Coaching with me: https://garfinkelcoaching.com

If you’re noticing the advertising landscape changing a lot and changing fast, it’s not your imagination playing tricks on you.

Things really are changing.

Our special guest a few weeks ago, Mike Pavlish, pointed this out. He noted that “ugly” ads were outperforming “pretty” ones–that is, user-generated content, UGC, homemade ads of a sort, were vastly outperforming slick, polished, high-production-value ones.

He’s right, of course.

UGC puts a person just like you in the ad. Or at least that’s the intention. Real people, not models and spokespeople. Talking about the product in their own real-life experience.

You’re seeing these ads all the time. But how do you make one for yourself?

We’ll take a deep dive on that question today.

If you’d like help putting together a user generated content program, drop me an email david @ davidgarfinkel . com andwe’ll figure something out together.

People always talk about opening your copy with a story, but most of the time, when you say what kind of story, they’ll look at you like you’re an idiot and say, “Hero’s journey, of course,” like there were no other viable options.

Well, the problem with that is, the way the great purveyors of hero’s journey stories, Hollywood Screenwriters, use them is as a macro story. The whole two hour movie is one long hero’s journey.

Within that framework are a lot of micro stories. And today we’re going to look at three types of micro stories. Two of them opened blockbuster movies you’re probably familiar with: The Dark Knight and Inception. The third type of micro story propelled the hit movie Rocky to a rousing finish, and provided its most memorable scene.

I’ve never known anyone, including my friends in the screenwriting industry, identify these story types, much less show how they can be used to increase attention and desire in sales letters.

So you’re in for a world premiere of these techniques. Get out the popcorn.

And… if you’d like some help writing stories that are much simpler and more compact than hero’s journey stories, let me invite you to check out my book, The Persuasion Story Code.

I walk you through writing 25 different kinds of proven micro sales stories in there. We’ll put a link in the show notes:

The Persuasion Story Codehttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ

Think about these two things:

First, learning to write copy, and

Second, then actually writing it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if those two things, learning to write copy and then doing it, were free of confusion, anxiety, and terror?

That was the burning question that started me on the path of mentoring copywriters. I wanted to make it happen. Because early on, I had such a rough time learning myself.

Learning copywriting was so different from anything I had ever done that it seemed it didn’t matter what I had done before.

Anyway, after all this time I’ve gotten pretty good at teaching other people to write copy. And that was after having hit a fair number of home runs with copy I had written myself.

I haven’t eliminated confusion, anxiety and terror altogether, but I’ve reduced them by A LOT.

And then, along came AI. Problems anew.

AI can make things better or worse, depending on what you know and what you know how to do.

What do you need to understand that is largely misunderstood out there (which is why we have so many ineffective copywriters)?

I can tell you today with absolute certainty.

RESOURCES

This is very affordable, if you’re not in a place to make a significant investment in your copywriting education, no matter how much you need it.

It’s entirely digital, but with a twist. It was originally a group-coaching product, and there’s a progressive set of exercises everyone does.

They’ve retained the feedback the coaches to the same exercises you’ll be doing. There’s also AI advice with each lesson. The coaches include Dr. Harlan Kilstein, Kevin Rogers, Chris Haddad, and me! It’s John Carlton’s Simple Writing System. Here’s my affiliate link:

https://m190.isrefer.com/go/swshs/dgarfinkel/

The other option is to book a Copy Reset Session with me. We’ll go over a piece of copy, and I’ll critique it for you. Tell youwhat strengths and weaknesses I see. Including in the headline/hook or lead, intrigue and curiosity, easy and clear call to action, use of images and other sensory details, and stories.

I’ll tell you how to improve the copy and make specific suggestions you can use right away.

We can also look at your positioning or USP. I’ll let you know any quick fixes you can make, as well as suggest long-term structural changes.

And, for you to use at no additional cost forever, I’ll give you a custom GPT to review your copy. It will give you a detailed review, with suggestions. I’ve used a similar GPT for my own work.

The fee for this session, which we’ll record and you’ll get full access to the recording for your own private use, is 5% of what you’d pay for a year of coaching with me. So it’s an investment, but it’s a very affordable one if you’re serious about your copy.

Just send me an email if you’re interested and we can discuss if and see if this is a fit for you. I’ll put my email address in the show notes. It’s david@davidgarfinkel . com

Today we have the fourth and final installment of our hit Old Masters Series segment, Copywriting 101. 

We’ll be talking about the last seven fundamentals.

And if that little voice in your head is asking, “What the heck are we doing reviewing fundamentals?!”, let me remind you of what basketball legend Michael Jordan said: “Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise.”

It’s so easy to get caught up in the latest new new thing. But a dedication to fundamentals is what helps you get what you really want.

So that’s what we’ll cover today.

Our returning champion Mike Pavlish has written dozens of VSLs that have brought in $10 million or more. In fact, over the last 30 years, Mike’s copy has brought in over $810 million in sales.

And his work is still bringing in the big bucks today.

How good is Mike? On his website he’s got testimonials from legends like Gary Bencivenga and Bob Bly. But this one from an eye doctor named David Tavel, who has 24 clinics across Indiana, really stood out to me:

“Your copywriting pulled two to one compared to a big New York ad agency. I have been in business for 45 years and this is the best response ever. The results speak for themselves.”

Recently, Mike sent out an email that started out this way:

I've been in direct response for over 30 years.

I've written over $810 million in sales.

I've seen a lot of trends come and go.

But what's happening right now is different.

The speed of change is like nothing I've everseen.

Here are the trends I think every directmarketer needs to watch.

I asked Mike to come back on the podcast to talk about these trends.

A few days later one of our subscribers who lives in Spain, Norm MacLeod, asked me to invite Mike as well!

Mike graciously agreed, and we’ll get to those trends today.

Mike’swebsite: https://mikepavlish.com

We’re going through massive and disruptive upheavals all over the place, and of course copywriting is no exception.

I’m seeing the need for a complete mindset shift to survive, thrive and even dominate in copywriting.

It’s curious to me that the mindset shift is a return to the garden. I know that phrase means a lot of things, depending upon your background.

What I mean by a return to the garden is, going back to basics. From the first glimmers of online marketing to the original Facebook analytics and now the unstoppable march forward of AI… ironically, all the non-human things those advances caused are being stripped away from the copy that gets results.

What stands out is genuine human messaging, just like in a store or at a bar or at a Starbacks, one person talking to another. These days, more than anything else, that’s what works.

With everything that’s happened, we need to make a conscious shift in mindset to get back to the garden and write the kind of copy that was working before all this technological intrusion started and messed things up.

And that’s what I want to talk about today. Listen closely–it will make a big difference for you.

If you’d like help shifting to this new mindset and developing the skills to go with it, check out my coaching program:

https://garfinkelcoaching.com

As we return to our hit Old Masters Series segment, Copywriting 101, I’d like to let you know that the first edition of John Caples’s book Tested Advertising Methods was published in 1932–that’s 94 years ago!

Caples updated the book more than once over the decades–the last edition was published in 1998.

But the interesting thing is, over that 60 plus year span, the fundamentals remained the same. And they haven’t changed in the last 30 years, either.

Just in the same way that storytellers still refer to Aristotle and scientists and engineers still depend on Newton’s three laws of motion, copywriters can reliably depend on the fundamentals Caples laid out.

We are going to explore six more of them today.

And if a little voice in your head is asking, “What the heck are we doing reviewing fundamentals?!”, let me remind you of what basketball legend Michael Jordan said: “Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise.”

RESOURCE

Tested Advertising Methods, 5th Edition, by John Capleshttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0130957011

The future for copywriters and AI is pretty clear:

AI will not replace copywriters.

But… copywriters who know how to use AI will replace those who don’t.

Sounds simple enough.

However, once you get into it, you realize using AI to create copy that converts sounds easier than it is.

And the question boils down to: How do you do it?

I’ve been wrestling with that question for a couple years now, and I’ve found the answer.

If you already know how to write copy without AI, there’s still some work involved to write copy with AI… but it’s a lot easier.

If you really don’t know how to write copy, there are some things you need to learn… or help you need to get… in order to create copy that works using AI.

Either way, there’s a path for you to be one of the copywriters of the future… one who knows how to use AI to write copy.

That’s what we’ll talk about today.

Finally, the best way to find out about the upcoming workshop where I’ll be teaching the five skills and how to get a superior competitive position is to make sure you’re on my Friday email list.

If you get an email from me every Friday, you’re on it. Obviously.

If not, go to

https://persuasionstorycode.com

And sign up at the bottom of the page.

You’ll also get the first two chapters of my bestseller The Persuasion Story Code, absolutely free.

And we’ll post the link in the show notes.