At the end of this session you will understand and be able to use a toolkit of planning techniques that will save you time and add firepower to your copy.

Video 1 – Getting ready For Action: reaping the planning dividend
We begin our journey to copywriting mastery here. But before we lay finger to keyboard or pen to paper, we need to do something very important. We need to think. At the end of this session you will be able to approach any new copywriting project with confidence that you’ll be focusing on the right things. Especially the desired outcomes.

Exercise 1: The Planning Dividend
Exercise 2: Prospect research

Video 2 – Emotion Versus Reason: busting the biggest myth about buyer behaviour
In this session, we look at the power of emotion in shaping decisions. You will learn how to identify the key emotions you need to target if you’re going to get your prospect to say, “yes”.

Exercise 3: Uncovering your prospect’s motivations

Video 3 – The Copy Brief: what you must know before writing a single word
Many copywriters, especially when under pressure, fail to spend enough time understanding what they’re trying to achieve. In this session, I teach you the importance of the brief, what it is and how to create a good one.

Exercise 4: Picturing your prospect
Exercise 5: Turning features into benefits part 1

Video 4 – Three Useful Planning Tools: did I say ‘useful’? How about ‘essential’?
When time is tight, these pre-made planning tools will take the hard work and the stress out of your copy planning process. I use them every day in my agency and they must have saved me thousands of hours of fruitless pencil-twiddling.

Exercise 6: Turning features into benefits part 2
Exercise 7: Objection Overcome

Video 5 – The Time Machine: the simple little trick that guarantees time for planning
Want to plan but feel you simply don’t have the time? Don’t worry. You are not alone. The answer lies not in working longer but in working smarter. In this session you’ll see how a simple time-management trick can guarantee that you always have time for planning.

Exercise 8: After reading my copy, my prospect will:
Exercise 9: KFC

Video 6 – Structuring Your Copy For Maximum Impact: how to apply THE best copy formula
In this session, and the next three, we look at an age-old sales formula and discover how to apply it to copywriting. Exercise 10: Grabbing Dave’s attention Exercise 11: Making benefits interesting

Video 7 – Three Techniques For Making Benefits Sound More Interesting: and how to use them
Everybody knows (or they should) that copywriters should focus on benefits not features. But how do you that without becoming repetitive or boring? Like this, of course!

Exercise 12: Analysing a sales letter for AIDCA

Video 8 – Convincing Them to Say Yes: because a customer saying ‘no’ is a waste of money
OK, they’ve heard your pitch and they’ve been seduced by your smooth benefits patter. But they are still wavering. They’re torn. This is how you convince them that it’s safe to act.

Video 9 – Closing the Sale: the only effective way to ask for the order
Every successful sales person knows you have to ask for the order. But how do you do it in writing? What are the “do”s and “don’t”s? This session gives you an ironclad way of approaching the call to action.

At the end of this session you will have a firm grasp of the techniques professional copywriters rely on to make the sale.

Video 10 – Mastering Tone of Voice: because how you say it makes all the difference
This is where the sizzle lies, not the steak. How you say something can have a profound effect on the effectiveness of what you say. In this session we start to explore the importance of tone of voice.

Exercise 13: Recognising tone of voice
Exercise 14: From impersonal to personal – changing tones

Video 11 – Using Register to Modify Tone of Voice: using the ‘social class’ of language
Register. What the heck is that? It’s a simple concept that allows you to vary the tone of voice of your copy. It has an impact on the words you choose, and the sorts of sentence structures you employ. Your reader won’t know you’re using it, but boy, does it make a difference on how they react to your copy.

Exercise 15: Cashing in on register
Exercise 16: Modifying tone of voice

Video 12 – The Simple Style That Sells, part 1: putting everyday language to work for you
In 99 out of 100 cases you want to use a simple, direct plain speaking style for your copy. Maybe if you’re selling luxury watches or nuclear installations you’ll want something more technical, but even rich people and engineers understand Plain English.

Exercise 17: Defining a paragraph

Video 13 – How to Use Paragraph Length as a Sales Magnet: hint – English teachers are wrong
Everything your teachers and lecturers told you about paragraphs … is correct. It’s just that it isn’t very useful for your work as a copywriter. In this session, I teach you the only thing that really matters about paragraph length.

Exercise 18: Using Plain English words and phrases

Video 14 – The Magic Word That Makes Your Copy Pop: and it isn’t ‘abracadabra’
It contains precisely three letters. It puts your reader at the centre of every single piece of copy you write. Even people with the reading age of a child can probably understand it. Now let’s see why it’s so powerful.

Exercise 19: Rewriting noun-heavy copy

Video 15 – The Simple Style That Sells Part 2: more tips and tricks using Plain English
We’re well on the way to filling our Plain English tool bag with the sorts of effortless style tricks that keep prospects reading and interested. Time to add a few more techniques to its bulging depths.

Video 16 – Why Exclamation Marks Are a Really Bad Idea: and what to use instead
Want to come across like a used car salesman? Feel free to skip this video. Everybody else, watch and learn.

At the end of this session you will be able to write great headlines and use pro copywriting hacks in your copy.

Video 17 – Does Humour Belong in Advertising (and if not, why not)?
Did you put “Make my reader laugh” as the commercial objective of your copy? If you did, then yes, humour does belong in advertising. If you put anything else, be very, very careful. Let me explain why.

Exercise 20: What Plain English sales copy sounds like

Video 18 – How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Writing Headlines
Writing headlines can make even seasoned copywriters break out in a sweat, cry, fling things around their office or climb under the duvet and whimper like a dog that’s lost its bone. But we don’t have time for that. So I’ll show you how to take the sting out of this crucial job of the copywriter.

Video 19 – The Ideal Length for Any Headline and how to know when you’ve hit it
Ask the general public about headlines and my money’s on them saying, “Has to be short”. To which you could reasonably ask, “How short?”. Turns out that’s precisely the wrong question to ask. Allow me to explain.

Video 20 – What is FUD (and Why Does it Matter)? – playing on humanity’s oldest fears
What is FUD? Well, it’s a close cousin of FOMO. Any better? OK, in this session we’ll look at a seriously powerful way of grabbing attention and persuading your prospect that you have something worth reading.

Exercise 21: Headlines for your product

Video 21 – Tips and Tricks the Experts Would Rather Keep to Themselves: tough luck for them
Why should the experts have it all their own way? In this session I break the big taboo and spill the beans on a bunch of masterclass-level copywriting tricks that put you in the premier league.

Exercise 22: Retelling a case study as a story
Exercise 23: Story opening for an email

Video 22 – Building Rapport Using the Oldest Technique of All: bring a trowel
A famous British prime minister once said, “Everybody loves ________, and when it comes to royalty, you should lay it on with a trowel”. Fill in the blank or watch the video. Your copy will never be the same again.

Video 23 – The Seven Mystical Words of Power: and how they produce their magnetic effect Use just one of these words in your copy and you’re harnessing a racehorse. Use all seven and hold onto your hat – it’s going to be a fast ride all the way to the bank.

At the end of the session, you will be able to take the selling power of your first draft and double it overnight.

Video 24 – Editing and Proofing Your Copy: giving your copy three more forward gears
Whenever I edit my copy, there are three big changes I aim to make on the first pass. In this session I start to walk you through them one at a time. They’re so simple, but so powerful. I’m sure once you’ve seen them you’ll agree.

Video 25 – The PLUSS Dashboard: scoring your first draft to diagnose weak spots
I developed this diagnostic framework to take some of the subjectivity out of judging copy quality. You have five dials, each representing a different aspect of your copywriting. Let’s take a look at how it works.

Exercise 24: Using the PLUSS dashboard
Exercise 25: Cutting unnecessary adjectives and adverbs
Exercise 26: Translating clichés into Plain English
Exercise 27: Tightening flabby copy

Video 26 – Cutting the Flab From Your Copy: why a chainsaw is your best friend
Just like a person who’s eaten too much in the holiday break, our first drafts can often be a little on the lardy side. In this session we look at ways of putting them through a fitness regime to slim them down.

Exercise 28: Making redundancies
Exercise 29: Pouring concrete on abstract nouns

Video 27 – Proofreading and Polishing: if it glistens, it’s gold
When you think you’ve done everything to improve your copy, do this. It’s boring, it’s time-consuming and it’s absolutely no fun at all. Compared to the potential for disaster if you don’t do it? It’s like eating a chocolate sundae in the park.

Exercise 30: Review of progress

At the end of the session, you will be able to produce copy for web pages, emails and digital media that works for SEO AND human beings.

Video 28 – Writing Copy for the Web: timeless truths and technological triumphs
Technology moves so fast. But human behaviour doesn’t. In fact, compared to digital advances, we look like glaciers. In this session we look at what has changed and, just as importantly, what hasn’t.

Video 29 – Making Your Copy Easy to Read for Your Visitors: readability online
One thing we need to mindful of is how easy it is for visitors to read our copy on screens. This session gives you a few helpful pointers. One bonus tip: try reading your digital copy on the device it’s meant for.

Exercise 31: Writing SEO copy
Exercise 32: Writing tags

Video 30 – How to Write Killer Email Copy: for subject lines to sign-offs
Emails are a little like old-school sales letters. And there are a lot of similarities. The subject line is like the envelope outer. The From field is like the return address on the back flap, or the logo on the front.

At the end of the session, you will be able to present yourself as a copywriting expert.

Video 31 – How to Sell Your Copy: pitching yourself as an expert so people use your copy
If you’re lucky, the only person who has to judge or approve your copy is you. For everyone else, understanding how to “sell” your ideas to a manager, client, boss or investor “gets it” is vital. So let’s have a look at how it’s done.

Video 32 – How to be a Language Expert: justifying your choices and convincing sceptics
If you can explain why you chose “tiny” over “minuscule” or used a full stop instead of a semi-colon, there’s a good chance you’ll earn their respect and they’ll leave your copy alone. Here are some more ideas for you to try.