The Fine Art of Swiping

by BethAnnErickson

As a business owner, I’m sure you’ve raised your pen and drafted more than one ad.

If you’ve done any rudimentary research at all, I’m also sure that you’ve run into the concept of “swiping” your advertising copy.

Here’s a perfect illustration. I recently spoke with a potential client. Very important project… one that could easily net him at least 20k per month.

He led me to his web page and I started laughing. “You so totally stole (name omitted) sales page,” I said.

“I swiped it,” he replied.

“I see that,” I answered. “That’s one heck of a swipe.”

And his version wasn’t pretty.

First, let’s talk a bit about swiping.

It’s fairly routine for copywriters to turn to successful sales pitches and model new ones after them. After all, if a particular website generated a huge profit in one field, the general sales structure will often work again.

However, what this guy had done was copy and paste the entire web page into a document and simply changed the product, revised a couple bullets, and slipped his name at the end.

That, my friend, wasn’t a swipe. It’s called plagiarism.

Worse yet, it resulted in a really bad sales pitch.

You see, every product, service, whatever you’re selling has what’s called a USP, Unique Selling Proposition. This USP represents everything that’s unique, different, awesome about your product.

When you plagiarize a sales pitch, you run the very real risk of not illustrating your USP in a compelling, dynamic way.

And this is exactly what this marketer did.

His copy ran flat. It didn’t sell. No zing. No magic. Nothing.

Plus, by stealing a highly recognizable website, he lost all credibility with me… someone he was hoping to hire to help him sell more product. After all, after “swiping” some brilliant web copy, why wasn’t his current website working?

Well, I think you can answer that, right?

So, how do you go about elegantly swiping a successful sales piece?

Well, you don’t plagiarize or blatantly steal the content.

You analyze why the piece worked, who the audience was, what the state of world was, the date the piece ran, what patterns response followed… there’s far more than cutting and pasting involved.

You also have to analyze you own business. What is your USP? Who is your audience? What kind of tone do they respond to? What are their price points and why? How have you pitched them in the past and how does this fit in with the puzzle that is your marketing plan? What have you done to lead up this pitch?

See… there’s an art to successful swiping.

An elegant swipe slips into your business plan like a hand into a velvet glove.

A great swipe is utterly unrecognizable from the original. Your customers shouldn’t look at it and gasp, “I’ve read that before.” You certainly don’t want them to laugh at your ad and think it’s a joke.

Somewhere along the line, you want your swipe to glide away from the original and become something utterly unique… an ad that’ll work for a very long time. A sales message that’ll bring in mucho profits without any controversy. (And if you plagiarize, believe me, you’ll face controversy.)

I mention all this because many newbie copywriters are now swiping like mad. You can wind up paying top dollar for an ineffective piece that could have been whipped out in a matter of a few minutes. Unfortunately, your results will probably reflect this lack of research.

Also, if you write your own copy and have been told that all you need to do is “swipe” a successful letter and you’re on your way to huge profits… well I think you know the answer to this outlandish claim.

As for my potential client, he’s still running his swiped web page. Lucky for him, the person he swiped from is very kind and doesn’t intend on contacting his lawyer. The client says he’s planning on re-writing the page on his own.

I wonder who he’ll “swipe next.”

It’s really too bad because if he simply invested in a competent copywriter, he could really make a dent in his unique niche, easily netting tens upon thousands of dollars every month.

As is, unfortunately, he’s not even breaking a few hundred a month.

But I guess that’s what happens when you try to swipe without understanding even a few of the complexities of the persuasive process…

~~~

Beth Ann Erickson helps businesses world wide ratchet their profits skyward with authentic high profit ads. Professional copywriters Bob Bly and Harlan Kilstein call her writing, "Powerful" and a "Marketing Wizard." http://BethAnnErickson.com

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