Scandalous copywriting lesson

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The guy in the documentary said this:

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“From the moment he founded it, he never stopped playing with it, trying to change the format to find the winning formula.”

“He” is William Griffin. 

“It” is The National Enquirer, which Griffin founded.

I just watched “Scandalous” — a doc about the aforementioned tabloid — and I learned Griffin didn’t immediately get it right. Go figure. He had to tinker with it, with the content, with the distribution strategy. 

Eventually, after a series of highly informed and measurable guesses, he nailed it. But there was a lot of trial and error, a lot of testing, guessing.

I’m a copywriter. 

I’ve written a thousand headlines. Every single one was a guess — a best guess based on what I researched about my market and whatever I was selling.

Making those informed guesses is half of conversion copywriting. The other half is testing them against each other.

The National Enquirer took t-i-m-e to become the most read newspaper in America. Your landing pages and email sequences and social ads will need time to evolve, too.

No, you won’t get it just right the first time — and yes, that’s just fine because:

"Failing often, and testing big differences, shows you are trying hard enough."
- Copywriting pioneer, Gene Schwartz

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Hey there, thanks for reading. :)

If you want more “micro” content, feel free to explore 100s of articles, interviews, courses, and series — all free. 

Enjoy!

Eddie Shleyner 
VeryGoodCopy, founder

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