Dear agency owner,
Your client doesn't just want a new page. They want the business it can bring.
More inquiries. More sales. A campaign they can feel good about running again.
And somewhere between the media plan and the thank-you page, the sales message has to do its job.
That's where I can help your team. To understand how I approach the work, let me take you back to where I learned to sell.
When I was a boy, I wanted to learn how to make money.
At seven, I sold newspapers in Taos, New Mexico. I'd stand by the McDonald's drive-through and sell to people waiting for their morning breakfast and coffee.
I bought my first Walkman that way.
It worked great. Until, a couple of months later, the manager kicked me off the property.
Later, I sold alarm systems door to door in high school. And during a summer break from college, I sold home-delivery subscriptions to the New York Post on the sidewalks of Manhattan.
Busy people. A few seconds to get their attention. A reason to stop, listen, and buy.
That's selling.
“Learn how to market.”
At 19, I drove from Phoenix to Vancouver, B.C., for a four-day business conference. A wealthy man there gave me a piece of advice:
Learn how to market.
Learn how to write advertising copy.
So I set out to learn this “marketing” thing.
I studied the legends of direct response. I read. Then I read some more. And when I got hold of books on ad writing, I did the work.
At one point, I was rewriting entire ads and sales letters by hand:
- 1-page space ads by Eugene Schwartz
- 4-page sales letters by Robert Collier
- 8-page direct-mail letters by John Carlton
- 20-page magalog ads by Clayton Makepeace
My hand cramped. My eyes stung. The hours were long.
These old-school selling greats kept talking about the value of face-to-face, door-to-door sales experience.
That felt good. I'd already done some of that work.
But experience on a sidewalk didn't make writing effective sales copy easy. It still took know-how. Practice. Testing.
It took work. It still does.
It's easier than ever to make marketing.
Making it sell is another story.
Today, everybody has access to tools that would've seemed impossible when I started.
AI can write a headline in seconds. Build a page. Draft a presentation. Produce another hundred versions before lunch.
That helps. I use it, too.
But a page full of words isn't the same as a persuasive sales presentation.
You feel the difference when the copy doesn't convince. When people click but don't inquire. When conversion rates slip and profit margins get thinner.
Your customer still needs
a reason to say yes.
Someone still has to understand the market. Find the right appeal. Shape the offer. Make the case. And follow what happens next.
Experience still wins.
A fresh set of eyes.
An experienced pair of hands.
Over the past 35 years, I've learned how to sell. How to market. How to communicate with wildly different markets to get people to buy.
That's the experience I bring to your agency's client work.
Maybe your media team is getting the right people to the page, but too few take the next step. Maybe a promising offer is buried under safe, forgettable copy. Or the strategy is sound, but your team needs another senior pair of hands to execute it.
Let's look at the brief, the buyer, and the point where the message stops doing its job.
I can help with research, the sales argument, and the copy itself—working through your agency's process, with the scope and handoff agreed before we begin.
Your team leads the client relationship. We agree on client contact, confidentiality, reviews, and delivery as part of the project.
Let's see what we can find.
Otto Ruebsamen
Direct response copywriter & agency partner · Otto Corp, LLC
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