This is the wrong way to research your copywriting.

You come across as needy and you get bad information.

Cathy Goodwin
3 min readOct 20, 2024
Image by Scott Graham on Unsplash.

What’s the number one rule of copywriting?

No, it’s not about words. It’s about knowing your audience and creating copy that resonates…copy that makes them say, “You read my mind.”

And with that requirement comes the need to do research. I explain in detail how to do this in my course on getting inside your prospect’s mind.

But now I want to talk a little about how *not* to do research. It’s always tempting to do this, but you never know…

Recently I got an email from someone I’ll call Nellie.

The first problem was that the email was marketing “Personal to Cathy from Nellie.” It’s not personal. I don’t know Nellie. She’s sending me a form letter that’s probably unprotected by the privacy laws because it goes to so many people. She can’t claim it’s between us!

But the bigger problem was that Nellie wrote, “I see you didn’t sign up for my paid program. Would you mind completing a questionnaire? We want to improve.”

I can think of at least a dozen reasons NOT to sign up for this program. For one thing, I’m not in the target market. Also the copy is weak: I don’t know what benefits I’d be getting…

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Cathy Goodwin
Cathy Goodwin

Written by Cathy Goodwin

Create a compelling marketing message that attracts your ideal clients through your unique selling story. http://cathygoodwin.com