How To Build A Swipe File Fast Make Writing EASY And Persuasive!

In this article I’m going to go through how to build a swipe file in a way fast that will give you the confidence to write your sales copy quickly, whether it’s for a sales page, a Facebook ad, a social post, or even an email and destroy writers block.

What is a swipe file in copywriting

A swipe file is a collection of all the ads, headlines, and other copywriting resources, that you're going to use over and over again to assist you with writing persuasive copy.

Without a swipe file, I wouldn’t recommend anyone write a single word!

Because essentially you won’t know or understand your competitors or prospects enough to tap into their desires, their desperate problems, or find the big idea.

And it will be difficult to always find inspiration from the top of your head.

How do you find sales copy to swipe

To find copy to swipe I recommend that you Sign up for different email lists of top copywriters.

Because they’ll hit you with multiple emails and will give you the links to their sales pages and when you keep seeing certain promos over and over again this is most likely their control copy.

How to determine if the copy is successful

It's worth mentioning that in most cases, you don’t know if the copy is successful or not, but here are a few ways to determine this.

You can rely mostly on the reputation of the person/product or service, and if it’s a sales page that’s being constantly shown by them, this is a good indicator that this is working well.

Another method is using the Facebook ad library is probably one of the most powerful marketing tools out there.

The good thing about it is you can tell if the copy is successful by the date, if it has been running for a long time it’s a good indicator it must be working.

Screenshot of two facebook ads in the facebook ad library showing he active start date of the ads.

No one pays into Facebook for long periods without it paying back them back.

You can literally find working copy directly in the Facebook ad library, and when you do make sure to screenshots of the Facebook ad copy and then go through the funnel taking notes and screenshots along the way.

What should you look for and put into your swipe file

knowing what to look for when it comes to what you should add to your swipe file is a crucial part of copywriting research.

Because it’s what you’ll be using when you write your copy and what I do is two things…

I research each of these steps from two perspectives, one is from the avatar or customers perspective.

The other is the competitors perspective, basically what solutions are the competitors promising and delivering for the customer's problems.

How to structure and layout a copywirting swipe file

To give an example mainly focusing on the competitors prospective.

Using Either a document, or an excel spreadsheet and add each of the following.

  1. The full copy link - of where you sourced the information.
  2. Add the desperate problems they're calling out.
  3. The unique promise.
  4. What proof are they using.
  5. What story are they telling.
  6. What Mechanism they're using to solve the problem.
  7. What level of awareness are they angling their copy.

Then go through the copy, emails, and ads and start pinpointing things you notice with any of these 7 points.

What's the problem they're focusing on with these customers?

How are they going to solve the problem with their mechanism?

What angles are they using with their promise?

How are they using proof to convince their customers?

What stories are they telling?

Where are they meeting the prospects at?

Buy the front end or enter the funnel of high converting sales pages of your competitors

Going through the funnel of your competitors will give you a HUGE advantage and teach you what upsells, angles, and emails’ are being sent to people who purchase.

You’ll Discover different promos and ideas of how they are structuring their campaigns.

All of this information is an absolute gold mine because what you're going to do is NOT STEAL, but follow the structures and strategies of what’s working.

Diagram showing example and steps of entering a sales funnel.

I mean why wouldn’t you?
Don’t invent anything, when everything is already done.

But again don't steal, innovate the ideas and structures and make new and yours.

Add all of this into your swipe documents and continue to it out.

By the end, you’ll have the most precious thing for your campaigns which is your complete swipe files.

I’m forever using my swipe files, without them I wouldn’t know what to write or what to sell.

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