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Ian Brodie

Ian Brodie

Ian Brodie is the best-selling author of Email Persuasion and the creator of Unsnooze Your Inbox - *the* guide to crafting engaging emails and newsletters that captivate your audience, build authority and generate more sales.


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Christopher Booker says there are just 7 basic plots in fiction: overcoming the monster, rags to riches, the quest, journey and return, comedy, tragedy and rebirth.

Whether he's exactly right or wrong, its certainly true that the same “formulas” come up time and time again in successful literature.

It's the same for poetry, music and art too. There are certain patterns which are appealing to the human eye, ear and brain.

So if you want to write a bestselling novel or a number one pop song, you stand a better chance of success if it follows one of the successful formulae of previous hits.

That's not to discount creativity. And it's not to say that there aren't plenty of successes that trod a different path. Just that your safest bet is to be creative within a pattern that people find inherently appealing.

I believe it's the same with marketing too.

A friend of mine shared an idea he'd had for a sales letter with me a couple of weeks ago, asking for feedback.

I pointed out that the headline looked and sounded a lot like John Caples' classic ad from 1926, “They laughed when I sat down at the piano…but when I started to play!”

He liked that connection (the Caples letter made millions for the US School of Music) and ran with it. He wrote a brilliant sales letter in that style and it ended up being his most successful promotion ever.

Now his letter is far from a copy of the Caples original. If you read it and didn't know the inspiration you wouldn't pick up any connection.

It's very different. But it has the same kind of feel and cadence. It picks up on the same emotions – the hero doubted at the start proves his detractors wrong.

Marketing that works can be repeated again and again.

David Ogilvy's classic ad for Rolls Royce “At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock” was actually based on an ad for Pierce-Arrow cars from 30 odd years earlier.

And it's been re-swiped and used by Landrover just recently too.

Martin Conroy's “Two Young Men” advert for the Wall Street Journal that ran from 1975 to 2003 and reputedly generated them over a billion in sales was actually based on an ad from 1919 for the Alexander Hamilton Institute.

Successful marketers – whether they're writing sales letters or emails or blog posts – take their inspiration from “swipe files” of marketing that's worked well in the past.

Marketing that works because it's based on timeless principles of human nature.

Have you got a swipe file?

If you haven't it's time to start building one.

Whenever you see an ad or an email or a web page that works to sell to you take a copy and file it. Ideally make sure the marketing piece is proven to work (Denny Hatch's “Million Dollar Mailings” is a great source for this).

Of course, you must, must, must use these for inspiration and NOT to copy verbatim.

But just reading through classic marketing before you write can have a big impact. And studying them and learning what makes them work is even better.

You might even get your best results ever like my friend.

    Ian Brodie

    Ian Brodie

    https://www.ianbrodie.com

    Ian Brodie is the best-selling author of Email Persuasion and the creator of Unsnooze Your Inbox - *the* guide to crafting engaging emails and newsletters that captivate your audience, build authority and generate more sales.

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