A couple years back I got to spend some time with copywriting legend Ted Nicholas in a day-long copywriting workshop.

Ted gave a lot of insight into many of the ads he has written over the years, and it’s easy to see why his copy has generated more than $4.9 BILLION for himself and his clients, including Nightingale-Conant, Agora, Marriott Corporation, Dearborn Financial Publishing, and Fischer Publishing, to name a few.

While Ted covered a lot of the basics important to the foundation of successful copywriting, he also touched upon a few oft-misunderstood concepts, such as the hidden benefit, which isn’t obtained by reviewing the product.

Instead, he asked us to challenge ourselves with the following question: “If I had unlimited God-like powers and could grant my prospect the biggest benefit I could imagine, what would it be?”

Ted also shared many of his offline copywriting strategies with us, and I ultimately found my mind spinning with ideas to test online (a certain type of lift letter, for one).

Ted also stayed for the duration of the seminar over the weekend as an attendee and speaker, and I was lucky to get some one-on-one time with him on a few occasions. That time was well-spent and packed with a million-dollar education. Just one idea he shared with me was worth fifty times the cost of the seminar to me.

I want to tell you about one little gem in particular that we discussed, as it may help your business as well.

I had been talking to a potential client, who wanted to expand his market reach and have sales copy written in other languages besides English. He was exploring the option of retaining a copywriter who could write copy in these foreign languages.

Well, I knew Ted had many of his sales letters translated into other languages, and I asked him about the necessity of writing copy from scratch in a foreign language. What Ted suggested (and what he has done) was to have the control letter translated, rather than writing a new one. But the translation should be done by someone who understands marketing (i.e. NOT a foreign language professor or standard translator).

You see, as long as the market remains the same, the underlying emotional hot buttons are also the same, whether you are talking to Americans, Germans, Hispanics, etc., etc.

In other words, a person from Brazil usually has the same wants and desires as someone from the Netherlands.

Are you starting to see some potential here?

Simply by having your website copy translated into multiple languages, you are extending your reach dramatically. Or, alternatively, if you are thinking about entering the Latino market, for example, it may be easier than you think, especially if you have customer support people who already speak Spanish.

And by having multiple versions of your sales letter online in different languages, it increases the likelihood that prospects from those countries will find your sales letter in a search engine. These are prospects that you wouldn’t have attracted before.

Ted also showed us a variety of envelope teaser copy split tests, successful ads, and of course I picked up his huge 700+ page swipe file.

Ted’s story of success is an inspiration to me and many other entrepreneurs out there.

In fact, when Ted first went into business he was in debt to the tune of $96,000, and the future looked bleak. He soon realized that the tiny cashflow coming into his small business was falling far short of what he really needed to survive in the long-term.

But then he came up with a novel idea. Leveraging the small reserve of cash he had left, Ted came up with a genius master plan to remake his business and attract paying customers in droves.

As a result, today Ted is without question a tremendous role model of entrepreneurial success. He’s a highly sought-after international speaker and marketing consultant, a well-read author, and one of the most highest paid and successful copywriters in the world.

I recently learned that Ted sat down for a mind-blowing 99 minutes of “marketing legend reveals all” information-packed interview.

In it, Ted revealed his mindset and some rather clever marketing strategies behind some of his most successful campaigns. I’m constantly amazed by how much he is a walking spigot of sales ideas and tactics.

You can get all the details on Ted’s interview and download it here.

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