Copywriting: Tactics vs Strategy

When it comes to writing VSLs/advertorials or any high-level copy, there are two things to keep in mind: copywriting tactics (the specific words you use, the sentence structure, the tricks of the trade) and strategy (the flow, the structure, the overall emotional journey).

It's very important to understand the hierarchy here. Strategy comes first; we must decide what emotional journey we want to take the prospect on.

This dictates our structure and format. Is it a first-person story? An informational VSL? An authority figure narration?

When deciding on the strategy, one of the best places to start is to see what successful competitors are doing. Most of the time, they have found a format (a "story arc" that their VSLs follow) that resonates with the market.

Now you want to break down their VSL into a structure; identify the key sections of the flow; hook, lead, agitation, dismissing alternative solutions, etc. Label them with a few words. This will make it easy to build and follow a structure of your own based on something that you know works for the market.

Once you have the outline of your structure, you can begin filling it in and writing the VSL. Now, you are using a proven flow/story arc that gives you a much higher chance of profitability as opposed to just starting from scratch and using your best guess as to how to plan the VSL.

When filling in the structure and writing your copy, research becomes very important. What are the key pain points? What are the main emotional pains? What kind of words and language does the audience use to describe their pain/desire?

This is the tactics part, and a lot of this comes down to practice combined with deep research. Research shows you WHAT to say to hook them in and build desire and belief, practice/skill shows you HOW to say it in the most compelling way (sentence structure, active language, simple reading level).

So, in short, make a deliberate effort to determine what structure you will use, research thoroughly, write your copy, and spend time polishing and editing your wording.