LESSON #4 of 7:
"HUH? A Multi-Million-Dollar
Fill-In-The-Blank Outline?!"
PLUS: A never-shared-publicly clip from an actual internal AF Copy School...
From: Todd Brown
West Palm Beach, Florida
We pick-up still inside Joe's office...
(Let's rewind 30 seconds...)
"Okay, so let me make sure I'm following you so far...," I say.
"Your copywriters are reading, researching, finding a Big Idea, pitching you the idea, getting it approved, identifying which lead type works with their type of idea, then writing the lead, in 24 hours, following the lead type template. Correct?"
"Correct."
"Okay, so, what next? How do they write the rest of the copy for the body of the campaign," I ask.
Joe pauses for a moment.
"That's the easiest part of the whole thing. Because we simply have them follow our 5-step outlining system we call COPYBOARDING."
"Sounds like some military torture tactic or something," I say.
Joe chuckles.
"Yeah, we probably need to come up with a better name. Should be something like Rapid Writing System or Fast Copy or something like that. I don't know."
"Why the emphasis on speed," I ask.
"Because with Copyboarding our new copywriters are banging-out full, finished campaigns in just days."
"Whhaaaat?! DAYS?! Are you serious, dude," I say. Choking on my own saliva. "Prove it."
"Okay," retorts Joe, clearly up for the challenge.
"Peter Coyne, a kid in his mid-twenties, never wrote a single piece of copy in his life... came-up with his first Big Idea, identified the correct lead type to use, then followed Copyboarding to write an entire campaign in just 10 days. And it produced $4,600,000.
Matt Insley, also never wrote a single piece of copy before... followed the AF research process, found a Big Idea, then used Copyboarding to write the body of his campaign in just 7 days. It did $10,500,000.
And how about one more just for the heck of it," Joe continues... now with an air of cockiness. "Robert Phillips, a dude from Columbia, used the same process to write his entire campaign in just 2 days. And generated $8,100,000."
The room goes silent...
I'm stunned.
That's over $23 MILLION DOLLARS from three new copywriters, I think to myself. At an average of just one week of writing. Sheesh.
If Joe had a mic I would have fully expected a mic drop at that moment.
Not sure what to say I blurt out...
"Ya big show off!"
Joe chuckles again.
"Alright, enough bragging about how good the AF Copywriting Process is," I say. "Explain what COPYBOARDING is and the five steps."
Now back in full teaching mode, Joe says, "It's just like storyboarding a movie. Only, for us, it's how you arrange your persuasive argument. It's all about anticipating possible objections from the prospect... and then overcoming those objections in the right order."
Joe then writes down the following 5 steps on a piece of paper:
And he explains:
- Step 1: Once the copywriter has found their Big Idea using the AF research process...
- Step 2: They list out all the possible objections a prospect could have to their idea...
- Step 3: They organize the objections into a proper story arc or flow...
- Step 4: They turn those objections into benefit-driven subheads...
- Step 5: Then they fill-in the copy in-between the subheads...
And then he says...
"And that's it. This little process keeps our folks... even those brand new to writing copy... on track perfectly with the body of their copy in a way they would never be able to accomplish without it.
Because they have the objections... because they have the objections in the order they need to overcome them... because they've turned those objections into benefit-driven sub-heads... the rest of the copy is easy and quick to write because it just fills-in in-between those subheads."
Now let me stop the story for one second:
.
.
Because the images above suck -- I know -- I asked Joe if I could share a special video clip with you of him explaining this process.
*** PLEASE UNDERSTAND ***
What you're about to see is a 2-minute clip from an actual internal AF Copy School -- the 8-week (twenty hour) internal training all copywriters go thru.
A full AF Copy School was recorded simply for documentation.
None of this was ever meant to be shown outside of Agora. In fact, nobody outside of the Agora Companies has ever seen this clip or any of the Copy School recordings.
And, yes, people in the direct response world have tried desperately for years to get their hands on this material.
Many have offered big, BIG money to try and buy the full recordings.
NONE have ever been granted access.
It's completely raw, unedited, and recorded guerilla-style.
Here's the 2-minute clip:
Back to our story...
.
.
"Pretty friggin' amazing, Joe. You guys have made it so brain-dead simple. Clearly. Now what? What else do you teach the writers," I ask.
"Ahhh. We haven't even talked about the most important piece yet," he says with a seemingly devious grin.
"So, let me have it, man. Don't hold back."
"Okay," Joe says. "But let's go back down to the copywriters room and I'll explain the whole key to..."