I figured it was about time I got a review up of the copywriting workshop in York. This is only going to be quick while I’m in between sales letter rewrites, so don’t expect too much.

The workshop started on Thursday 28th June at 2pm, and ran for about 5 and half hours that afternoon. We quickly got into the action and learned all about the anatomy of a sales letter (which I was already comfortable with) and then — after a quick coffee break — we got right into profiling your target customer.

It was at that point things changed. I mean, I’d never thought about profiling in such a way before. I’ve always done it otherwise you have no idea who you’re trying to write your letter to, but I’d never thought about it in such detail.

And neither had (from what I can tell) anyone else in the room. We were on the rocks and getting hammered by the constant, belting waves of a guy called Trevor Crook.

Now let me tell you, this guy knows a thing or 2 about copywriting. He’s a typically Aussie so what you see if what you get and he doesn’t pull his punches, which is exactly what I like. What’s the point in glossing things over? It’s no good for us and frustrating for him.

Yes, Trevor knows his stuff. And one exercise he gave us to do at the end of that first day really taught me exactly how to know when you’ve got your profile spot on. I mean really, it left me in no doubt at all as to when I knew exactly who I was trying to sell to.

I won’t reveal the exercise but it was a real eye-opener which made me sit up and take notice (even more so) of what Trevor is all about. The guy also likes a beer or 10, so we were to be found propping up the bar in the evenings as well. Again, more time to get to know him as a person which is a real bonus at something like this.

Friday was a long day. We started at 8:30am and didn’t stop until 8:30pm. But we covered a HUGE amount which, yet again, took my already good knowledge of copywriting to an entirely new level.

Things we covered included crafting an irresistible offer, how to create money-pulling bullets and how to create attention-grabbing headlines that practically force your readers’ eyes down the page.

And when that was done… it was time for the God Father himself… the one and only… Ted Nicholas.

Man the the guy is a living legend. When he speaks he commands attention. Every word he says is full of information you MUST record and digest. If you follow what Ted has to say then you will make a fortune… it’s almost impossible not to.

Ted spoke to us for 4 hours on the Friday. It felt link 4 minutes it went so fast. And when you throw in the dancing, affirmations and silly faces (been to one of Ted’s seminars? You’ll know what I mean) the time just flew by.

When the day was done we ate dinner in the bar, which was nice, although it took an age for the food to come. A few beers later I was ready for the sack.

Saturday didn’t let up. We started with the opening paragraph of the sales letter, which again I know all about but was ‘forced’ to think of it slightly differently to how I usually would. That took a lot of thought and, as soon as we were done (or not, as the case was for many, and understandably so) we moved onto the body copy.

After lunch, Trevor took us through establishing credibility and crafting a winning guarantee. Again, all stuff I know but was now thinking in much greater detail than ever before.

Things didn’t slow down, with the art of closing the deal coming right after, but we were in for a treat. You see, Trevor was supposed to take that session but after a brief word with the God Father, Ted agreed to take that session.

Boy am I glad he did. No doubt Trevor could have done a great job, but no one owns a room like Ted Nicholas does.

We had time for a quick break before moving onto writing the P.S’s. Again, it was another session with loads of information coming our way. Finally, after a very long day of hard writing, learning and a few laughs along the way, it was time to quit for the evening.

Low and behold, my server had dropped so after attempting to get that going I had barely enough time to grab a shower and run down the street after the others as we were eating at a Chinese restaurant Peter had booked up for us.

All I can say is, Well Dome Peter! Great food, just a shame about the semi-cold beer. But Trevor put an end to that in his usual way and got the waitress to throw half a dozen bottles of Tiger in the freezer.

From the Chinese we nearly went on to a club but decided against it in the end. Trevor and I sunk another beer in the pub before heading back to the hotel for a few more, um, beers.

It was a late night but a good laugh, especially after someone, who will remain nameless to protect the innocent, sunk a vodka and Red Bull. Music and helping ourselves behind he bar ensued. And for those of you who know me, you’ll be surprised to learn that I’m not talking about myself.

Still, being lucky enough to need little sleep I was fine(ish) on Sunday, which was just as well as we had to put all of the bits we’d got down over the previous 2 and a half days into a real sales letter. That was followed by editing the copy and, for the final afternoon session, writing copy for marketing, such as Adwords (I was up talking about this for 5 minutes) press releases (which Ted took and again, owned the room) and some additional information on writing articles to market with.

A final Q&A session finished with only a handful of us left as a lot of the other attendees had to catch a train. I had to drive home but decided I was too tired for the 150 mile trip, especially as I was gonna get caught in the London traffic heading south. So I stopped another night in the hotel which, again, involved a few beers. But nothing silly.

It was a good decision as I got 5 minutes with Ted Nicholas and spent an hour or so talking to Peter Twist (www.mastermindlounge.com). He’s a great guy and gave me a terrific idea I’m going to run with in the next few weeks.

I also had dinner with my mate John Wigham, which was great as I didn’t get too much opportunity to chat with him during the workshop.

Anyhow, that’s the 4 days. Lots learned, lots of fun, a few drinks and a couple of potential JVs set up as well. Not to mention the additional copywriting skills I now possess. I’m in no doubt my conversion rates will be climbing considerably from now on… especially as my average conversion rate was already way higher than the average before the workshop.

I just want to extend my thanks to Peter Woodhead for managing to pull the whole thing together, and to Trevor ‘Toe Cracker’ Crook who did a terrific job in not only talking for 90% of the workshop but also in giving us a ton of fun in the evenings. And of course a HUGE thanks to Ted Nicholas who was insperational during the 4 days.

… about my newsletter signup form, because they wanna get in my head and see what goes on in there. Well, since switch to WordPress I haven’t sorted out the form… but I will.

Too much to do, not enough time. But I’m losing potential subscribers so I guess I better get it sorted!

Keep an eye out. It’ll be up again soon.

During the copy writing workshop in York (which I’ll write a review of when I get an hour spare) I spend 5 minutes at the front talking about Google Adwords.

I just wanted to follow up that quick review with another tip that will hopefully make things easier for you when it comes to getting your keywords into your ads. Remember, when your keywords are in your ads they are displayed in bold, so they stand out more.

The idea here is to get the keywords used to trigger your ad to be in the ad headline, therefore attracting more attention and ultimately more clicks.

This requires a couple of things. Firstly, your Ad Groups need to be well maintained with only a small number of highly related keywords in each. In other words, if you’re selling cars for example, you’d need an Ad Group for Ford, another Ad Group for Volvo, another Ad Group for TVR, and so on. You could break this down even further to Ad Groups such as Ford Mondeo, TVR Cerbera etc. but for this example we won’t go that deep.

Next, you need to do your keyword research and split the relevant keywords into the relevant Ad Groups. All this is doing is making your campaigns much easier to manage and makes the next part work really well.

You see, Google have some called DKI, which means Dynamic Keyword Insertion. And what this does is insert the keyword within your Ad Group which caused your ad to be displayed.

Now, if you are using DKI in the headline of your ad, here’s how you would do it:

{keyword:Default Headine}

Let me explain how that works. The ‘keyword’ part tells Google to insert the keyword which triggered your ad into the headline, that is, if there is enough room. Remember, you only get 25 characters.

And that’s what the ‘Default Headline’ part is for; it tells Google what the default headline should be if there isn’t enough room for the keyword, if the keyword contains a trademarked term or if it breaks their editorial guidelines.

So in the car selling example, you could have this:

{keyword:Cheap Ford Mondeos}

Side Note: There’s dodgy information out there claiming it’s the keyword the searcher used which is displayed in your ad. Not true! It’s the keyword within your Ad Group which triggered your ad that’s displayed.

Finally, there’s a few variations of the ‘keyword’ setting. You can use the following:

{keyword:Default Headine} - displays the keyword in all lower case
{Keyword:Default Headine} - capitalises the first letter of the first keyword
{KeyWord:Default Headine} - capitalises the first letter of every word in the keyword

There are a couple of others but I can’t remember what they are. The one I use in just about all cases is the last one: KeyWord.

So, will this help with your clickthrough rates? It should do, yes. As with everything related to advertising you need to test it to see which works best. Sometimes things aren’t what they seem and you must also let your target audience tell you what they want to see in your ad. Never try to second-guess them.

One final tip: please download Google’s Adwords Editor. It makes life so much easier. When I spoke about 33,000 keywords in a single campaign I wouldn’t have been able to do it without that software. And it’s free! Get it from here.

Hope that helps you out if you’re after more info about Google Adwords. If you want to know more, go to www.replytojimbob.com and I’ll see what I can do.

I couldn’t get on with Joomla! so came back to trustworthly Wordpress. Nothing to do with Joomla! - more like me not being bothered to learn.

I’ll see about getting my posts moved over at some point… or not, depending on how busy I am after the copy writing workshop tomorrow.