Copywriting Lessons What I Learned From Vic Schwab

Vic Schwab is known to some of us as the guy who wrote ‘How To Write A Good Advertisement.’ A great book that helps you as much as a copywriter as a marketer.
Schwab got into mail order copywriting at an early age. All copywriters who have at least a respect for mail order understand the principles of selling in print. He went on to run his own ad agency with his partner. He famously worked on the ads for
Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends And Influence People,
Charles Atlas Body Building products
Sherwin Cody’s English Classics Course.
The most important lessons for me when I read Schwab’s book were too numerous to mention but I’ll give you the brief highlights.
Schwab’s devotion to split testing was maniacal. Which is to be expected from a copywriter who cut his teeth in the mail order business. You were always testing looking for a better ad. How to Write a Good Advertisement gives you a readymade play book for split testing.
This was my first exposure on how to track response regardless of the response mechanism. Schwab talked about tracking with coupons (I hadn’t read Hopkins yet so it was new to me here), phone numbers so that regardless of the next step you knew how many respondents there were so that you knew which ad worked better.
Schwab had all sorts of tactics for adjusting response rates. How to get more leads from the same copy. Less leads from the same copy, how to improve lead quality.
Finally Schwab introduces us to his simple but effective structure for writing persuasive ads:
Get Attention
Show People an Advantage
Prove It
Persuade People to Grasp This Advantage
Ask For Action
It is a simple but effective way to write sales copy. That is why I think it is such a valuable little tool.
Schwab also goes in depth in his book on how to use this structure for maximum effect. This is probably why Gary Halbert was such a big fan of this book – using it as part of his foundation course in writing copy that sells.
Schwab is a master copywriter and a great teacher. His book contains a great many ideas that are either still relevant today or else can easily be adapted for today’s marketing. So take your chance to learn from this great master of both copywriting and direct response marketing.