Content lessons from a multimillion dollar writer.

I spend a lot of money on knowledge these days.

I want to cut down the time from learning to execution and getting results. Most of the time, it happens by building relationships with the right people and paying for their time and expertise.

Last week, I got to spend time with two really amazing people.

One is a mentor of mine who helps people build, scale, and sell physical product brands for up to 8 figures.

The other guy is a copywriter who typically charges $50,000 per year to consult with people. He’s sold over a million dollars worth of products from a single sales letter. Fair to say he’s a ninja with words?

These guys are heavy hitters. To be honest, I’ve paid tens of thousands of dollars over the years to hang in the same circle as them and to get one-on-one access to their time.

Even though these guys are in the business of selling stuff, the power of writing and the ideas that we were talking about carry over to making content about cars perfectly.

We were talking about writing great headlines (hooks) and leads (the first part of a story) for advertisements and landing pages.

Sean, the copywriter, and Greg, my mentor, were talking about the concept of meeting your audience where they are.

Meaning, if you are talking way above their level of knowledge or awareness, your messaging will go right over their head.

He was helping me figure out how to position some of my content and make it more impactful.

So, I figured I’d share what we talked about here too.

This way, you can learn from these guys without spending a lot of money like I have.

If these two can help sell tens of millions of dollars worth of stuff, then their strategies can surely be used to make our car content better, right?

Here's the idea.

There's this concept in direct response marketing called “awareness levels”.

It’s a model created by one of the best copywriters of all time, Eugene Schwartz.

Basically, each person who sees an advertisement is aware, to some extent, of a problem they have and a solution (product) to the problem.

Here's how Schwartz lays it out.

In simple terms, he's saying that if you try to sell a product to fix a problem that people aren't aware of yet (unaware), or don't know there is even a solution to, you won't sell many units.

However, telling a lengthy story to sell a product to someone who already knows about it (most aware), and is just waiting for a discount is totally unnecessary.

The big idea here is that you need to talk to people at their current level of awareness if you want to create high-performing ads or sales copy.

Sean said that understanding this is the difference between ads that fail and ones that sell millions of dollars' worth of products. Even if the products stay exactly the same.

I had a big "aha" moment when he explained this to me. Not for running ads, but for making content.

As car enthusiasts, we get really invested in the tiny little details that are specific to our projects.

We get excited about all the nerdy stuff. And we want to talk about it.

But the more nerdy and specific we get, the smaller and smaller the group of people who would be interested in it. They are “unaware”.

I’ll take a leap here and guess that you are trying to grow your audience, right?

So, why would you create a bunch of content about the specific valve timing of your engine, using lots of technical jargon?

And using hyper-specific use cases.

Sure, that’s an interesting topic. But only to a very specific and small group of people.

Which is not going to help you grow your audience. It’s like trying to catch fish in a bathtub, if there were only two fish to catch.

Instead, try to think about framing the topic in as broad a way as you can. A way that would have much wider appeal.

You can still talk about the valve timing but in a way that more people would be interested in.

Social media is not like forums for a very specific type of car.

It’s a broadcast channel allowing you to reach hundreds, thousands, or millions of new people.

And if you want to take Eugene Schwartz’s advice, start by telling a story instead of blabbering on about technical details.

Stories are universally interesting and humans naturally flock to them.

Simple stories appeal to more people and will help grow your audience.

It worked for Eugene Schwartz and many other copywriters to sell hundreds of billions (maybe trillions) of dollars' worth of products in every market imaginable.

Now apply this idea to your content and see the difference it will make.

Catch you later,

Sam “is a sucker for a good story” Webster

P.S. I am going to start doing a few consultation calls every month to give people some one-on-one help like I get from my mentors. I don't have a lot of time nowadays (turns out babies are busy), so the slots are limited.

I'll help you come up with content ideas and get your account set up to start turning strangers into followers on autopilot. We'll get you up and off to the races in no time. (Don't worry, I don't charge $10k+ for my time).

P.P.S. I've got 5 spots available for March, so if you want to lock in a spot, you'll need to jump on this fast. Just reply to this email and we can set up a time to chat.