44
HOW TO
CHANGE AVERAGE
WRITING INTO
HYPNOTIC WRITING
L
et me tell you a secret. As I mentioned earlier in this book,
whenever someone hires me to rewrite their sales materials, I
run a Copy Translation Service in my head. What I do is read each
sentence of their site as though it were written in a foreign lan-
guage. The foreign language is Ego Copy. It was written by the per-
son who owns the company and is usually full of fluff. What I do is
translate that Ego Copy into Reader Copy. That means I take their
line and turn it into a line that speaks to the reader’s interest. An
example might help.
Nearly every sales letter you read will contain a westatement. It’s
usually something like “We have been in business five years” or “We
love to make donuts” (or whatever they make).
All of those are Ego Copy statements. That’s a foreign language
to your readers. It doesn’t appeal to them at all.
What I do is translate those Ego Statements into Reader Benefits
or Reader Copy. I might turn “We have been in business five years”