Back in 2021, I entered a writing contest where I wrote ‘benefit bullets’ for a podcast.

Spoiler alert: I won.

Here’s the receipt from the man Kevin Rogers, himself.

^^ Now, I didn’t do it alone. I actually got some great advice from a fellow copywriter named Jimmy Parent.

If you don’t know Jimmy,  he’s one of the funniest copywriters out there IMO.

And if you’re not checking out his stuff regularly, I’d get on his list ASAP.

Ok, so here’s how I won the contest.

Quick overview: The contest required me to write 10 bullets for an email. This email would talk about a podcast and the bullets would boost desire to get people to click over and listen.

The podcast featured an author named John Lee Dumas, who was promoting a book called “the uncommon path to common success.”

If you haven’t heard of John Lee Dumas, you can learn more about the book by clicking here. 

Here was my winning approach.

Step 1: Listen to podcast and write down anything that interests me

This was pure gut reaction.

I just listened to the pod and wrote down “fascinators.”

So for example, if John Lee said something about success at the 1:30 mark that I thought was interesting and would benefit the reader, then I noted down what he said there.

The lesson here is if it would interest me, it might interest somebody else.

Which brings me to the next point.

Step 2: Focus on the complainers + know your client’s preferences

There were two types of audience I had to keep in mind for this contest.

First, you have the contest judger/client – Kevin Rogers of Copy Chief in this case.

Now, Kevin is a former standup comedian. He’s also a big music fan. So I know he likes artists such as Van Halen.

He also likes comedy and making fun of the “copy bro” types.

So I wrote some bullets throwing shade at the business people we see with the lambo and g-string bikini women.

I figured he’d get a kick out of that.

The other audience was business owners.

So I went several Facebook groups to find what their pain points were.

Lesson here: Find the complaints of your audience. That’s where the gold is.

Also, keep in mind who’s going to read your stuff. What do they like? What makes them stop and read?

Step 3: Combine bullets in a
“curiosity + benefit” style

Next, I combined the fascinators with the benefits of the podcast to address the complainers.

The purpose of this was to make the bullets exciting while also explaining benefits.

An example of one bullet I wrote in this style was….

• Wantapreneurs exposed: How million-dollar posers led John to create a radically transparent form of marketing (You’ll never look at the preachy, lamboghini-driving, woman-in-a-g-string-on-the-beach having guru the same way again). (11:52)

^^ If you notice, I use some curiosity language here by using a slang term “wantrapeneurs” and talk about exposing them. People are always interested in discovering the real truth or the real secret behind something.

And in the podcast, John points out how to figure out if an entrepreneur is really successful or if they’re just using hackey marketing. I was really proud of this bullet because Kevin laughed out loud as he read it.

You’ll also notice it has some rhythm to it. Read the “you’ll never look at the preachy, Lamborghini-driving…” part again.

One guy who’s amazing at this kind of rhythm talk is famous pro wrestler Rick Flair. When he says “I’m the limousine riding, kiss-stealing, woo! son-of-a-gun” you get captivated because of the rhythm he’s speaking in. He’s inserting long phrases with short phrases to make it interesting. That’s what I was looking to do here.

Step 4: Let bullets sit for 24 hours, then edit the heck out of them

This is where the real work comes in.

Go away for 24 hours then come back and edit the words again.

Eliminate unnecessary words.

Read them out loud and notice any bumps.

Ask yourself “if I was a complete random person on the internet reading this, would I be able to understand what’s being said without any hitches?”

That’s it. Once that’s done, you’re good to go.

I recommend trying this out yourself with any of your own products you create or write about.