Swipe Your Way To Copywriting Success

Anyone who has been involved in marketing, online or off, for any length of time knows that creating a swipe file is a huge help when it comes to designing your own marketing campaigns. For those who don't know, a swipe file is a file or collection of tabloid, magazine ads, direct mail pieces, headlines, techniques, etc. Essentially, whenever you see an example of great marketing you add it to your marketing collection. What is great marketing?...that's the tricky part. Fortunately, there's about a billion books on the subject. Remember, a swipe file is where you go for inspiration when you create your own campaigns... not to copy them, just to learn from them and create your own messages.

Before the Internet, a swipe file would contain a bunch of direct mail marketing pieces, newspaper ads, postcards, etc. I have boxes and boxes of newspaper, direct mail pieces and magazine ads that added tremendously to my successful advertising campaigns. Today you can still have a file folder full of those kinds of things, but you should also consider starting a digital collection where you can put great examples of email marketing, ezine ads, headlines, digital sales letters, etc.

Check out these hard to find ads from the "all time greats" and add them to your swipe file.
http://www.hardtofindads.com/home