Analogies can help to make new things more familiar, like the tagline for Dentastix: 'You brush, they chomp'. This draws a parallel between dogs and their owners to suggest that Dentastix are 'the toothbrush for dogs'.

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'Think like a wise man, but communicate in the language of the people.' – W.B. Yeats

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It's easy to think of persuasion as making someone do something against their will. But that's coercion or blackmail, not persuasion. No copywriter can make a reader do something they really don't want to do.

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'All writing is rewriting.' – Ernest Hemingway

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Simple writing flows from clear thinking and deep knowledge. Albert Einstein said, 'If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.'

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As Don Draper of 'Mad Men' says, happiness is a billboard saying 'You are OK'. Whatever you're selling, you're *always* selling peace of mind.

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Contrasts highlight differences to express some sort of tension between two things, while resolving them into one message. To explore contrasts, think about how you could highlight the differences between benefits, or different aspects of the same benefit.

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Copywriting is really copy*thinking*. The actual writing is just capturing the results of that process.

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Sometimes, different groups use the same product in different ways, or get different benefits from it. Your copy may need different messages for each group. For example, Uber needs to appeal to both drivers and passengers.

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Well-known sayings can be persuasive, because they express things that 'everybody' knows to be true.

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Use a metaphor to say 'if this then that' with a powerful image: 'You wouldn't try to fill a bucket if it had a hole. But that's what business owners do when they try to boost revenues without thinking about customer retention.'

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No tool is right for every job. You may not want to use copywriting formulas every time, or obey them too slavishly. But they can still help you remember what you need to include, or give you a basic structure to build on.

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In general, verbs (doing words) are more powerful than adjectives and adverbs (describing words). Look through your descriptions and ask yourself: would it be better say what something does, instead of what it's like?

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People may never express the emotions that make them buy a product. They'll give a rational answer if you ask them, but it may not be true. So it's important to consider what they do, as well as what they say.

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Strong calls to action can be powerful, but they're not 'get out of jail free' cards. They won't magically spur the reader into action if you haven't built up a strong case in the rest of your copy.

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Intriguing headlines are a risk. You're gambling short-term relevance in the hope of winning longer-term interest. If the gamble pays off, they'll be more absorbed and curious upfront than they might have been otherwise.

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Build a benefit into your call to action to turn it into an offer of a deal – 'do this and you'll get that'. For example: 'To start earning this unbeatable rate of interest, open your account today.'

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When readers come to a piece of copy for the first time, they're thinking, 'What's in this for me?' – not the product, but just reading the ad. So your headline is the 'ad for the ad', in the same way as a cover is the ad for a book.

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Verbs write the reader's future by making future events real. Use them in preference to adjectives, adverbs or abstract nouns.

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Background info is great, but the more product knowledge you have, the easier it is to 'go native' and start seeing things from the client's viewpoint rather than the reader's.

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Put your benefits to the 'so what?' test. For any feature, keep asking 'so what?' until you get to a clear benefit. If there's no good answer, you probably shouldn't write about that feature.

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